The North American Carbon Program: It takes a village

Abstract:

The North American Carbon Program (NACP) was created in 2002 in response to the need to reduce uncertainties surrounding the magnitude of North America’s contribution to the overall Northern Hemisphere carbon sink. The breadth and depth of the science that has been fostered by the NACP is impressive, and matched only by the strength of the community that it has helped to create. Following the first NACP All Investigators’ meeting in 2007, the NACP community came together to embark on a variety of synthesis efforts aimed at gleaning deeper scientific insights through systematic intercomparison studies. These syntheses span a variety of scales, a variety of greenhouse gases, and include both land and coastal regions. The last five years have seen a dramatic return on this investment, and in many ways the community continues to gain momentum. This talk will provide an overview of the science enabled by the NACP and its synthesis efforts, as well as of the community’s vision for the future of carbon cycle science in the United States.