Multiple roles for GIS in global change research: towards a research agenda

We propose a research agenda with five principal objectives. 1) This initiative will support the increased integration of GIS and environmental modelling using techniques for managing, manipulating, analysing and displaying spatial data. 2) We will critically assess the quality of existing global data in terms of spatially varying accuracy, sampling methodologies and completeness of coverage, and develop means of managing and visually communicating components of environmental data quality (e.g., error). 3) We will develop spatial database techniques that can manage hierarchical structures across multiple scales of spatial patterning. 4) We propose to develop methods for dynamically linking human and biophysical databases within GIS and for exploring the regional impacts of global change. 5) means of using GIS for detecting, characterizing and modelling changes in ecotones will be explored. -from Authors