science activities

focus 4 - human-climate-ecosystem interactions
groups

The organizing body and community of Focus 4 is organized under the name "PHAROS". Pharos was Alexander the Great’s iconic lighthouse that served to warn travelers of danger, and illuminated their past and future directions.

PHAROS is composed of three programs from the old PAGES structure—HITE, LUCIFS and LIMPACS—and a new integrating activity, INTEMODS.

Fig. 1: Focus 4 structure, links and interactions, showing four Working Groups (INTEMODS, HITE, LIMPACS, LUCIFS), short term regional-global priorities (Climate Hotspots, Water, Soil and Land Cover), and links to Cross-Cutting Themes and other IGBP-ESSP programs/projects.


Working Group 1: INTEMODS (Integration and Modeling of Past Human-Climate-Ecosystem Interactions)
– global syntheses of paleodata, regional syntheses of past human-climate-ecosystem interactions, historical environmental diagnoses/profilings of key systems, new predictive modelling approaches

Working Group 2: HITE (Human-Climate Interactions with the Terrestrial Environment)
– interactions between human activities and terrestrial ecosystems through time

Working Group 3: LIMPACS (Human-Climate Interactions with Lake Ecosystems)
– change in lake ecosystems, especially on decadal timescales

Working Group 4: LUCIFS (Land Use and Climate Interactions with Fluvial Systems)
– relationship between external drivers of land use and climate change and internal working of catchments on timescales that encompass the period of agriculture


IGBP-IHDP initiative: IHOPE (Integrated History and Future of People on Earth)
IHOPE is a joint research initiative of the IGBP projects PAGES and AIMES and IHDP (International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change).
– interactions between human behavior and the environment on multiple temporal scales