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IGCP 500
is the successor to the now-completed IGCP 413 ("Understanding
future dryland changes from past dynamics").
The aims
are coherent with the overall purpose of the IGCP scheme and
will be specifically pursued through a series of project objectives.
These aims and objectives are:
- To
enhance the welfare of dryland societies by contributing
to a better understanding of what drives climate change
and variability, environmental change and key resource availability
over timescales ranging from millennia to subdecadal.
- To
investigate the dynamics of key dryland landscape and resource
elements, especially hydrological dynamics and aeolian system
dynamics, and their impacts on and interactions with the
human use of drylands.
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- Through
the above scientific goals, enhance capacity in cutting
edge dryland science and to provide a significant dryland
input to the co-IGCP CHANGES
initiative.
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This
new IGCP project will achieve its objectives by:
- Fostering
collaboration and the exchange of ideas and methods between
scientists in a range of disciplines and from different
countries working on common research problems of relevance
to society.
- Being
interdisciplinary and thereby bringing together different
perspectives and expertise to best address the research
objectives. The disciplines involved are drawn from both
physical and social sciences and include archaeology;
anthropology; botany; chemistry; climatology; development
studies; ecology; geography; geology; history; oceanography;
physics.
- Focusing
elements of its activities within countries of the developing
world that possess drylands and therefore are at risk
for the expansion and intensification of dryland and desert
conditions during the 21st century, due to the impacts
of anthropogenically-enhanced global warming.
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| Dunes
and bare rock surface, Gobabeb, Namibia |
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Cooperating
with other projects and research programmes with complementary
themes and concerns is a key strategy for IGCP 500. Such relevant
projects include:
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Ripples,
Namibia
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The
co-IGCP CHANGES
programme, which aims to database records of global change from
under-researched environments, including drylands. |
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PAGES,
a core project of IGBP, and its constituent initiatives. |
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The
INQUA Commission
on Palaeoclimate |
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The
Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR)
programme of the World Climate Research Programme |
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The
ACACIA
(Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa)
project |
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The
Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment |
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The
International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG) |
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The
Third World Academy of Science (TWAS) |
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The
Land Use and Land Cover Change (LUCC)
project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global
Environmental Change (IHDP). |
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The
IGCP programme homepage
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Updated!
