From Atmospheric Sciences to Ecology: Building an Interdisciplinary View of Climate

The advent of the Biosphere-Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) provided the opportunity to expand climate science from it geophysical roots to include terrestrial ecosystems, their biogeophysics and biogeochemistry, and other ecological processes occurring on land. With these models, the biophysics of plant canopies - with their leaf area, leaf physiology, and stomatal conductance - became central to understanding Earth’s climate and how it changes. Studies of tropical deforestation with BATS, for example, showed the profound effect of tropical forests to regulate regional and global climate through exchanges of energy, moisture, and momentum with the atmosphere. Subsequent development of BATS emphasized dynamic plant canopies and introduced nitrogen regulation of canopy dynamics - concepts that are now fundamental to modeling Earth’s land surface. Now, we think of climate change in a myriad of ecological processes including land use and land cover change, the carbon cycle, aerosols, and reactive nitrogen – all of which have a strong terrestrial ecosystem component. Despite these interdisciplinary advances, the study of vegetation-atmosphere coupling and the role of terrestrial ecosystems as central to understanding climate remains challenging. The rules by which life operates do not conform to the foundational principles of fluid dynamics that govern atmospheric physics; nor, too, does the ecological conceptualization of ecosystems conform to that required in global climate and Earth system models. Atmospheric scientists and ecologists must step beyond the core tenets of their disciplines to effectively communicate among, rather than across, disciplines. There is, for example, much to be learned by applying atmospheric concepts related to uncertainty analysis, natural variability, and prediction to the land and its ecosystems. There is a broad academic spectrum from the geosciences to the biological sciences. The study of Earth’s land, its watersheds, and its ecosystems – the realm in which people live, experience weather and climate, and influence the atmosphere – requires that we bridge the gap between these sciences, for both scientific discovery and to manage the planet for a sustainable future. Yet interdisciplinary communication among atmospheric scientists and ecologists has proved difficult over the past 100 years and more. The enduring legacy of Robert Dickinson and other pioneers of his generation has been to build a path forward in this intellectual wilderness.