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Title: MIDWESTERN REGIONAL CENTER OF THE DOE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATIC CHANGE RESEARCH

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1121625· OSTI ID:1121625
 [1]
  1. Michigan Technological University

The goal of NICCR (National Institute for Climatic Change Research) was to mobilize university researchers, from all regions of the country, in support of the climatic change research objectives of DOE/BER. The NICCR Midwestern Regional Center (MRC) supported work in the following states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. The MRC of NICCR was able to support nearly $8 million in climatic change research, including $6,671,303 for twenty projects solicited and selected by the MRC over five requests for proposals (RFPs) and $1,051,666 for the final year of ten projects from the discontinued DOE NIGEC (National Institute for Global Environmental Change) program. The projects selected and funded by the MRC resulted in 135 peer-reviewed publications and supported the training of 25 PhD students and 23 Masters students. Another 36 publications were generated by the final year of continuing NIGEC projects supported by the MRC. The projects funded by the MRC used a variety of approaches to answer questions relevant to the DOE’s climate change research program. These included experiments that manipulated temperature, moisture and other global change factors; studies that sought to understand how the distribution of species and ecosystems might change under future climates; studies that used measurements and modeling to examine current ecosystem fluxes of energy and mass and those that would exist under future conditions; and studies that synthesized existing data sets to improve our understanding of the effects of climatic change on terrestrial ecosystems. In all of these efforts, the MRC specifically sought to identify and quantify responses of terrestrial ecosystems that were not well understood or not well modeled by current efforts. The MRC also sought to better understand and model important feedbacks between terrestrial ecosystems, atmospheric chemistry, and regional and global climate systems. The broad variety of projects the MRC has supported gave us a unique opportunity to greatly improve our ability to predict the future health, composition and function of important agricultural and natural terrestrial ecosystems within the Midwestern Region.

Research Organization:
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
DOE Contract Number:
FC02-06ER64158
OSTI ID:
1121625
Report Number(s):
DOE-MTU-ER64158
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English