Leaders: Dr. Zhibin Zhang and Dr. Yury Yu. Dgebuadze
Countries involved: Australia, Chile, China, India, Norway, Russia, USA
Field of research: Integrative Biology
In the 21st century, the globe is facing a tremendouse challenge due to climate change that may significantly alter the earth’s ecosystems and shape humanity’s future. In order to devise strategies to solve these problems and predict furture changes it is cruicial for us as scientists and biologists to fully understand the biological consequences of global change (BCGC) and its underlying mechanisms.
BCGC is a global phenomenon and it requires global responses. Currently, however, most of the existing programs on global change are being conducted by scientists and labs scattered around the world without a clear mechanism for collaborating and sharing information. The results from integration of global data and cooperation in an internationally-oriented BCGC program will by definition be global in scope.
The proposed new IUBS BCGC program is to promote these researches, unite scientists of different countries and disciplines and to establish an international working platform for BCGC information integration and international research collaboration.
The major objectives of the new IUBS BCGC
1. To understand the effects of global change (such as climate change, land use, international trade, pollution,
etc.) on biodiversity losses, species distributions and ecosystem functions;
2. To understand the effects of global change on occurrences of biological disasters, such as outbreaks of
agricultural pests or wildlife diseases;
3. To understand the effects of global change on biological invasions and genetical structures;
4. To understand the effects of global change on transmission of infectious diseases.
