Eoin Brodie presenting Grand Challenge, “Earth’s Microbial Engines” at the EESA Townhall on October 31, 2016
The Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) recently held a townhall (Oct. 31) to preview the upcoming release of its 10-year strategic plan. Deputy Director Horst Simon, as well as Directors from other Lab Areas, joined the full house. Five Grand Challenges have been identified to drive EESA’s research over the coming decade:
- Earth’s Microbial Engines—Solving environmental challenges with translational ecology
- Climate & Carbon Sink—Expanding climate solutions using ecosystem approaches
- Future Water—Science solutions for water resiliency at scale
- Sustainable Earth—Smarter utilization of subsurface resources
- Resilient Systems—Disruption-ready strategies for critical energy, water and built systems
The strategic plan also identifies three crosscutting technologies or platforms, needed to enable progress on many of the Grand Challenges. The three crosscutting efforts include: Community Field Observatories; Nimble and Networked Sensing Systems; and Scale-Adaptive Data and Simulation Capabilities.
EESA’s strategic plan is slated for release in early April 2017.