ABSTRACT
With an increased public awareness and scientific uncertainty associated with a changing earth system, the US has crafted policy and programmatic structures to increase understanding and preparedness for variations that may occur as a result of changes to our biophysical surroundings. The US Global Change Research Act of 1990 created mandates for protocols and products through which the scientific and practitioner communities were to make recommendations to the US government and determine how these recommendations should be implemented (see Appendix 2, p149). During the nearly three decades since the act was designed, the original US Global Change Research Program and the preceding Climate Change Science Program underwent many structural and functional changes. By 2010, with the new Obama administration, the Climate Change Science Program was defunct, reverted back to the Global Change Research Program and awaited new initiatives by the Obama administration and the US Congress, following the international meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.
