Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, Durham, NC, USA.
Environ Manage. 2019 Sep;64(3):245-257. doi: 10.1007/s00267-019-01189-0. Epub 2019 Jul 29.
A critical charge for science to inform environmental protection is to characterize the risks associated with climate change, to support development of appropriate responses. The nature of climate change, however, presents significant challenges that must be overcome to do so, including the need for integration and synthesis across the many disciplines that contain knowledge relevant for achieving environmental protection goals. This paper describes an interdisciplinary research framework organized around three "Science Challenges" that directly respond to the needs of environmental protection organizations. Broadly, these Science Challenges refer to the research needed to: inform actions to enhance resilience across a broad range of environmental and social stresses to environmental management endpoints; actions to limit GHG emissions and slow the underlying rate of climate change; and the transition to sustainability across the full spectrum of climate change impacts and solutions; all as situated within an overarching risk management perspective. These Challenges span all media and systems critical to effective environmental protection, highlighting the cross-cutting nature of climate change and the need to address its impacts across systems and places. While this framework uses EPA's programs as an illustrative example, the research directions articulated herein are broadly applicable across the spectrum of environmental protection organizations. Going forward, we recommend that climate-related research to inform environmental protection efforts should accelerate its evolution toward research that is inherently cross-media and cross-scale; explicitly considers the social dimensions of change; and focuses on designing solutions to the specific risks climate change poses to the environment and society.
科学为环境保护提供信息的一个关键任务是描述与气候变化相关的风险，以支持制定适当的应对措施。然而，气候变化的性质提出了重大挑战，必须克服这些挑战，包括需要整合和综合包含实现环境保护目标相关知识的许多学科。本文描述了一个跨学科研究框架，该框架围绕三个“科学挑战”组织，这些挑战直接响应环境保护组织的需求。广义而言，这些科学挑战是指为以下方面研究所需要的：在广泛的环境和社会压力下增强环境管理终点的弹性的行动；限制温室气体排放并减缓气候变化基本速度的行动；以及在气候变化影响和解决方案的整个范围内实现可持续性的过渡；所有这些都置于总体风险管理视角内。这些挑战涵盖了对有效环境保护至关重要的所有介质和系统，突出了气候变化的跨领域性质，需要在系统和地点层面解决其影响。虽然这个框架将 EPA 的计划用作说明性示例，但本文所述的研究方向广泛适用于环境保护组织的各个领域。展望未来，我们建议，为了给环境保护工作提供信息，与气候相关的研究应加速向固有跨媒体和跨尺度的研究演变；明确考虑变革的社会层面；并侧重于设计针对气候变化对环境和社会构成的具体风险的解决方案。
