A Vision for Continental-Scale Biology: Research Across Multiple Scales (2025)
Chapter: Summary
Summary1
INTRODUCTION
Our planet is facing many complex environmental challenges, including biodiversity loss and rapidly changing climate conditions, driven by intensifying human–nature interactions worldwide. Human actions cause global and regional changes, having profound impacts at local scales. Conversely, local-scale environmental changes can contribute to regional and global impacts. For example, the spread of invasive species is a global phenomenon driven primarily by trade and other human activities and can involve organisms traveling many thousands of miles to a new location. However, local-scale data on ecosystem dynamics and on how new organisms may adapt can help to guide the most appropriate responses to limit their spread. Similarly, at global and regional scales, human-caused climate change can lead to environmental shifts such as more frequent droughts that may impact the health of forests; conversely, forests may be able to mitigate the effects of climate change via carbon sequestration. Further, local changes in vegetation may drive local to regional changes in atmospheric circulation and create “ecoclimate teleconnections” over even larger scales.
Increasingly, scientists are recognizing that research across multiple scales, from the molecular to regional to global, can provide new insights into the interacting factors that are contributing to these challenges. Dramatic advances in the biological sciences in recent years mean that researchers now have some of the tools needed to study life at many scales, from identifying mutations in a single gene to monitoring changes in plants, animals, and microbes over an entire continent. Available tools include networked observatories of standardized biological sampling across ecoclimatic gradients; experiments that manipulate variables and are replicated across space and/or time;
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1 This summary does not include references. Citations for the information presented herein are provided in the main text.
observational studies using remote sensing or sensor technology to capture population-level or community dynamics; genetic and microbial sampling; biodiversity collections; and modeling approaches enabling inferences from observations or predicting outcomes over large spatial extents and through time. These tools have the potential to usher in a new era of continental-scale biology (CSB) in which researchers use new multiscaled, multidisciplinary theory, advances in research infrastructure, and the development of a skilled workforce to address challenges that cross multiple scales from molecules to organisms, and from ecosystems to biomes to the biosphere (Figure S-1). CSB offers the wide lens needed to address the urgent challenges of declining biodiversity, climate change, emerging infectious diseases, the spread of invasive species, food security, and environmental justice. CSB is an interdisciplinary frontier that will require theoretical, empirical, and cultural integration across allied disciplines as varied as hydrology, engineering, and social sciences.
STATEMENT OF TASK
As the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and other stressors accelerate, there is an urgent need to gain knowledge of these critical factors, how they interact, and how they should inform decision making. Several recent National Science Foundation (NSF) initiatives—for example, Reintegrating Biology, Understanding the Rules of Life, the Biological Integration Institutes, and Macrosystems Biology—have sought to enhance our understanding of biological systems by integrating methods and knowledge from the many subdisciplines of biology and other scientific disciplines, and at many different scales. This report, prepared at the request of NSF, complements these initiatives by identifying productive routes for the development of continental, multiscale biology and strategies to facilitate the concomitant reunification of biology across organizational, spatial, and temporal scales.
The statement of task for the report was as follows:
An ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will conduct a consensus study to identify how biological research at multiple scales can inform the development of a continental scale biology. The committee will convene a series of virtual community workshops to inform its deliberations.
Specifically, the committee will identify and discuss:
- Practices that have been used successfully to translate knowledge, approaches, and tools from small-scale biological research to regional- and continental-scale, and vice versa. For example, how might understanding fine-scale biological discoveries alter specific measurements or experiments that researchers undertake at larger scales and vice versa?
- Challenges that prevent uptake of these practices.
- Specific research questions that could serve as pilots for implementing research projects that integrate one or more successful practices.
Finally, the committee will review and refine the practices and questions into a set of recommendations for the research community, funders, and decision makers.
SOURCE: Stacy Jannis.
COMMITTEE’S APPROACH TO THE STATEMENT OF TASK
The committee approached the statement of task by first identifying key characteristics that define CSB. The report envisions a CSB that addresses biological processes and patterns that emerge at broad organizational, spatial, and/or temporal scales that cannot be answered by observations and experiments conducted at either fine or large scales alone. CSB inherently incorporates multiple scales, from the subcellular to the global biosphere, from local to global spatial extents, from less than a second to millennia in time. Specific CSB research may operate across one, two, or all three kinds of scales:
organizational, spatial, or temporal. Further, CSB takes a systems approach, treating biological systems as part of coupled human and natural systems, given widespread human impacts and intensifying human–nature interactions worldwide. Understanding scalability and how biological properties (e.g., patterns and processes) vary or remain the same across scales is an important area of inquiry for CSB. CSB is enabled by emerging theory; recent developments of experimental and observational networks, tools, and analytical techniques; and changes in the culture of biological science that facilitate collaboration among multidisciplinary teams with members from around the globe.
The committee identified four integrated major research themes that CSB is particularly well positioned to support and for each theme identified potential questions that could serve as pilots for implementing research projects. These themes and questions are neither mutually exclusive nor comprehensive, but rather are intended to stimulate discussion about directions for the development of the field. Following the themes, the committee developed conclusions and recommendations on theory, research infrastructure, and training and capacity-building efforts to develop and maintain CSB; overarching recommendations; and a vision for CSB.
THEMES AND POTENTIAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The committee identified four major themes in the types of research that CSB is particularly well positioned to support and, in each theme, identified a series of research questions that could serve as pilots for implementing research projects. The four major research themes are interrelated, as shown in Figure S-2. For instance, the fourth theme, “sustainability of ecosystem services” is related to the first three because biodiversity and ecosystem functions are essential to produce ecosystem services, resilience and vulnerability are key in maintaining ecosystem services, and connectivity is central to shaping distribution and use of ecosystem services across space and over time.
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function
A pivotal theme of biological research over the past half century has been the relationship between biological variation, or biodiversity (in terms of taxonomy, function, phenotype, genotype, or phylogenetic placement) and ecosystem functions, for example, the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, oxygen, water, and trophic interactions. Much of the experimental work has been conducted at local scales, but generalities have emerged to indicate that biodiversity is important to ecosystem function at multiple scales. As yet, there is scant evidence available to define these relationships and to decipher how they may change across scales—information that will be central to determining how biodiversity across spatial and temporal scales drives local-to-Earth system function. A CSB approach offers the opportunity to use emerging tools, including satellite remote sensing, genetic sequencing, multi-omics, artificial intelligence, and automated monitoring systems, together with developing theory, to examine the
SOURCE: Stacy Jannis.
linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem functions across scales, and to learn how these relationships may shift in the face of global change. Potential research questions related to this theme include:
- How does complexity of a biological system at one scale influence emergent properties of the system at the next scale, and how do those properties feed back to influence complexity and variation at all scales?
- How do ecosystem functions emerge from biological complexity, what mechanisms are involved, and how do these vary across temporal and spatial scales? How do major global changes—including climate change, human-induced land- and water-use changes—and the spread of pests and pathogens, impact how the diversity of life influences and interacts with functions and processes of emergent systems?
- How do human-induced changes in land use and water use, habitat fragmentation, and, conversely, habitat connectivity at local and regional scales affect continental-scale biodiversity?
- How does theory support our understanding of the causes and consequences of continental-scale biodiversity in the context of major global changes and human activities?
- How does the distribution of composition, diversity, and complexity of ecosystems influence the cycling of carbon, nutrients, and water at continental scales, and how do these cycles feed back to influence the composition, diversity, and complexity of local systems?
- How do internal factors in a focal place and flows between focal and other places influence biodiversity and ecosystem functions across scales?
Resilience and Vulnerability
Resilience is the capacity of a system to withstand or recover from human and environmental disturbances. It consists of three components: stability, resistance, and recovery. A stable ecosystem can resist disturbance by maintaining structure, function, and composition. A resilient ecosystem can recover from disturbances over time and essentially return to its original state. In contrast, a vulnerable system is sensitive to disturbance and lacks adaptive capacity when conditions change. Ideally, multiple metrics should be used to provide a composite assessment. CSB research can be used to assess the sensitivity of biological systems and their adaptive capacity to resist, recover, or change in biological composition and function in response to disturbances. Potential research questions related to this theme include:
- How do biodiversity and human activities influence the resilience of biological systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales? How does this relationship shift across scales of biological organization, from the population (diversity within a species) to the biome?
- Which ecosystems and functions at what scales are most exposed and vulnerable to natural and human disturbances?
- What are the tipping points and thresholds of resilience and vulnerability across scales? What continental-scale drivers affect the spatial and temporal patterns of ecosystem vulnerability at local, regional, and national scales, and how do local to regional drivers affect vulnerability and resilience at the continental scale?
- How does the resilience or vulnerability of one system, for example, to land use or climate change, affect resilience or vulnerability of other systems near and far?
Connectivity
Relationships between habitats and living things in one place can have profound effects on ecosystems in other places, both near and far. However, more systematic ways are needed to effectively integrate the influences of biota, habitats, ecosystem functions and materials, abiotic components (e.g., air, climate, geophysical conditions, soil/land, water), and humans across time and space. CSB can offer tools that can combine data and insights from each of these realms across time and space, helping to build a stronger understanding of the system as a whole. For example, interdisciplinary frameworks provide a systematic way to combine data and insights from different ecosystems across time and space. Potential research questions related to this theme include:
- How do human–nature interactions vary across organizational, spatial, and temporal scales, and what are the impacts of economic globalization and environmental changes on these dynamics?
- How do human activities and environmental changes (including climate change) in one system generate cascading effects across adjacent and distant systems?
- How do interactions within a focal system, between adjacent systems, and between distant systems create feedback, synergistic, or trade-off effects on resilience and sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystems across scales?
- How do risks associated with invasive species, pathogen emergence, and other shocks such as natural disasters spread across adjacent and distant systems at multiple scales?
Sustainability of Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems, including the provisioning of food and water; the regulation of floods, drought, land degradation, and disease; nutrient cycling and soil formation; and nonmaterial benefits such as recreational, spiritual, and religious benefits of nature. Sustainability relates to an ecosystem’s ability to continue to provide services, without any change in the level of service being provided, in the face of environmental disturbances or state changes. CSB research brings knowledge, via systems’ resilience and vulnerability to stressors, on how sustainability of ecosystem services may be affected across temporal and spatial scales. Potential research questions related to this theme include:
- Which ecosystem services are most sustainable at different scales in the face of human activities and environmental change?
- How do socioeconomic, urbanization, and land-use changes affect ecosystem services across local to continental scales?
- What factors across scales affect ecosystem services at the scale of interest, and how does the sustainability of an ecosystem service shift across spatial scales?
- How does sustainability of ecosystem services at one scale affect sustainability at other scales?
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THEORY, RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE, AND TRAINING AND CAPACITY BUILDING TO DEVELOP CSB
Theory
Theory is essential to CSB because it provides a structured framework that allows us to understand and explain biological phenomena. Theory helps bridge gaps in our current understanding of both small- and large-scale biological and ecological processes and patterns. Requirements of CSB theories are several: (1) they need to be applicable at multiple spatial and temporal scales, encompassing attributes of individuals (traits,
genes), populations, and species assemblages on landscapes up to the entire biosphere; (2) they need to mesh with diverse datasets, technologies, and monitoring programs, both guiding their development and being flexible enough to change in response to new knowledge; (3) they must forge connections across biological processes from the molecular and cellular levels to populations, entire ecosystems, and the biosphere; and (4) they should be comprehensive, unifying disparate domains from microbial processes to ecological and physiological processes and material flux through the biosphere. The committee concluded that theory is especially needed in three areas.
Conclusion 3-1: Theory is needed that links research at multiple organizational, spatial, and temporal scales, from micro to meter to landscapes up to the biosphere. The multidimensional and hierarchical multiscale nature of biodiversity requires solutions that can address cross-scale questions and identify cross-scale phenomena. For this approach, theory is needed that meshes with our current technologies and informatics that collectively monitor biosphere processes. Theory also needs to be based on conceptual frameworks that integrate multiscale data. This includes molecular, microbial processes, genomes, environmental DNA, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, stable isotope labeling, and metabolomics. These data sources are crucial for linking local ecological and physiological processes of organisms to broader patterns and data collection efforts such as the distribution of species, movement of individuals and species, the functioning of ecosystems, and the flux of material and matter through the biosphere at multiple scales. This integration will enable the refinement and development of CSB theory, enhancing our ability to model and manage environmental changes effectively. By incorporating larger-scale data from remote sensing, tower-based systems, global animal tracking, and sensor networks, we can enrich this framework, providing a more comprehensive understanding necessary for predictive modeling and sustainable ecosystem management.
Conclusion 3-2: Theory is needed to improve climate and global change models by including biological feedbacks. Biological processes that result in feedbacks to ecosystems and climate are a challenge to incorporate into climate and global change theories, presenting considerable uncertainty. The inclusion of biological feedback in theories of continental-scale models of global change will enhance our ability to predict future trends and identify cross-scale solutions and will be a key component of clarifying and improving climate and global change models. Refinement of biological feedback theories into continental-scale models and extension to climate and global change theories will improve our ability to predict future trends as well as identify solutions that cut across scales.
Conclusion 3-3: Theory is needed that incorporates the effects of human-induced environmental changes (including climate change) to predict changes within an ecosystem and to assess metacoupled cascading effects across adjacent and distant systems.
Theory is needed to predict interactions among system components across all scales that impact adjacent and distant environments. The inclusion of theory that incorporates human activity will enable the prediction of synergistic, cascading, or trade-off effects on resilience and sustainability of ecosystems and the biosphere across time and space.
Research Infrastructure
Fully responding to the challenges of developing CSB requires both the enhancement of existing infrastructure and the development of new infrastructure. The committee offers the following recommendation and conclusion to NSF and other agencies.
Recommendation 4-1: To provide infrastructure specifically aimed at supporting continental-scale biology (CSB), the National Science Foundation (NSF) should consider the following options, as available resources permit:
- Explore the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and informatics tools, and open-access databases explicitly focused on CSB, synthesizing knowledge across scales, that would synergize with the synthesis work currently conducted at the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab. A request for proposals (RFP) to support virtual infrastructure and computational science innovations would be of great value to realize the potential of CSB data. For example, linking remotely sensed spectral and structural measurements to physical and biological measurements on the ground could be advanced by developing new algorithmic modalities.
- Build new sensor modalities to improve data collection. This could be achieved by developing interdisciplinary funding opportunities that unite ecology, engineering, atmospheric science, remote sensing, hydrology, and other disciplines such as social sciences.
- Allocate resources for next-generation digitization of biodiversity collections to enhance their utility as reference standards for CSB and to enable the development of digital ecosystem twins. This will require new bioinformatics tools to enable access to and management of preserved and living collections to facilitate their utility for interpretation of in situ and remotely sensed data.
- Develop communities that can leverage interdisciplinary data from NSF platforms and various networks, akin to the use of National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) data by researchers funded by the previous Macrosystem Biology program. An example would be incorporating macrosystems/synthesis research to create living data products (those that are continually updated) that inform biological processes at continental scale. If done, data from one platform could serve as calibration/validation for other data products and layers from other platforms to facilitate interpolation, extrapolation, and/or imputation. Major government assessments, such as the National Nature Assessment, could also leverage data provided by integration of these platforms.
- Support efforts to understand how to sample for continental-scale biological questions. Few spatially distributed networks with standardized sampling exist, and those that do exist require great resources. Investment is needed in research to understand sampling theory (time and space) for capturing continental scales and cross-boundary interactions.
- Explore joint support of integrative science via interagency (e.g., NASA, U.S. Department of Energy) RFPs, for example, multiscale coordinated interdisciplinary field campaigns (e.g., NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, the Biodiversity Survey of the Cape, and the Large-scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia).
- Explore development of interagency incentives and mechanisms for public–private partnerships that can facilitate targeted private investment in data development and integration across scales and types, for example, engaging in AI-driven data analysis and data product development.
Conclusion 4-1: Development of research infrastructure for CSB would also benefit from actions by other agencies. Examples include the following:
- The Small Business Administration could develop agency-specific innovation research (Small Business Innovation Research) and technology transfer research (Small Business Technology Transfer Research) RFPs that focus on AI, machine learning, and sensor development for the biological and environmental sciences.
- NASA’s continued support for the Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) mission, the only satellite instrument dedicated to biological processes that will specifically enable CSB, is an important contribution. SBG will provide continuous data across continents and the globe to fill in the gaps from NEON and enable baseline information to track changes in biological processes through time. Other NASA Explorer and Incubator missions recommended by the Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space include lidar and radar measurements of ecosystem three-dimensional structure.
- Agencies engaged in these efforts could continue to support scientific assessments and action-oriented efforts that inform policies guided by or consistent with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. These include the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
- Continue support of related domestic efforts that contribute to CSB, for example, the ongoing National Nature Assessment, U.S. Geological Survey national Biodiversity and Climate Change Assessment, and the U.S. contribution to the 30×30 Conservation Initiative.
Training and Capacity Building
Recommendation 5-1: The three key areas of training that funders, researchers, and educators should prioritize for developing a scientific workforce with the knowledge and skills necessary to address future challenges in CSB are data literacy, interdisciplinary team science, and promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
These are not unique to CSB, but effective development of this field is particularly dependent upon them. Large-scale spatial and temporal data and data across scales are essential in CSB research; thus, data literacy—from basic to high-level expertise—will be necessary across team members to ensure an efficient workflow. Teamwork involving several disciplinary expertise and skill sets is also inherent in CSB research, such that effective communication and productive interactions across team participants with different backgrounds will be critical to ensure successful project outcomes. Additionally, addressing systemic issues such as career tracks and incentives is crucial for retaining skilled individuals in academia, which in turn maximizes creativity and productivity. To maximize creativity and productivity, team science for CSB also requires inclusivity and diverse perspectives.
OVERARCHING RECOMMENDATIONS
Encompassing all four themes discussed in this report is the fact that CSB is built on connections: from ecoclimatic teleconnections (causal links between phenomena in geographically distant regions), to feedbacks between ecosystems and ecosystem components, to cross-scale interactions that occur when phenomena at one organizational, temporal, or spatial scale influence another. In addition, virtually every natural system on Earth influences and is influenced by human activities, even over long distances. Bringing together these factors is a central challenge of CSB research. In response, the committee makes two overarching recommendations that will help to meet this challenge and support the development of the emerging field of CSB.
Overarching Recommendation 1: The National Science Foundation should establish a core program on CSB.
The committee recommends that NSF establish a new core program on CSB. As described previously, several recent NSF initiatives have sought to enhance understanding of biological systems by integrating the methods and knowledge from the many scientific subdisciplines and at many different scales. However, the scope of CSB is broader than that of any existing NSF program. For example, the core programs in the Division of Environmental Biology support “research and training on evolutionary and ecological processes acting at the level of populations, species, communities, and ecosystems,” but CSB also addresses processes below population levels (e.g., subcellular, cellular) and above ecosystem levels (e.g., regional, continental).
Therefore, CSB would strongly benefit from the establishment of an NSF core program that provides a stable and dedicated funding source to support research addressing the interplay of multiple organizational, spatial, and temporal scales and is based on integrated yet flexible frameworks. This could be a joint effort among the relevant NSF divisions and directorates to help facilitate collaborations, both between the Division of Environmental Biology and other divisions within the Directorate for Biological Sciences (e.g., the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems and the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences), and with other directorates, such as Mathemati-
cal and Physical Sciences; Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure; Engineering; and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. For example, collaboration with the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships could help with the development of new technologies that would advance CSB; work with the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences would help provide additional insight on the increasing influence of human activities on biological systems, and, conversely, the effects of biological systems on human well-being; and collaboration with the Directorate for Geosciences would support work on the linkages between geophysical and atmospheric processes and CSB.
Overarching Recommendation 2: Researchers and funders should develop CSB under integrated yet flexible frameworks.
As discussed in the connectivity theme, CSB addresses questions about biological processes and patterns that emerge at broad organizational, spatial, and/or temporal scales and treats biological systems as part of coupled human and natural systems, given widespread human impacts and intensifying human–nature interactions worldwide. Integrated yet flexible frameworks for CSB would enable researchers to better understand and contextualize the connections among the biological, abiotic, and socioeconomic realms, and the interactions within, between, and among adjacent and distant locations. Such frameworks would help researchers gain a holistic view of local- and regional-scale ecosystems and continental-scale environmental shifts—insights that will allow the development of more effective and sustainable solutions to the environmental and ecological challenges facing our planet. An example is metacoupling framework, which has been applied to analyses of many topics, including ecosystem services, resilience, vulnerability, biodiversity conservation, biogeochemical flows, climate change, freshwater use, land use, pollution, impacts of food imports on food security, and effects of international trade on deforestation. These and other potential frameworks to be developed would provide a sound foundation for future CSB research.
VISION FOR CONTINENTAL-SCALE BIOLOGY
Bold initiatives are needed to create a truly continental-scale biology that addresses questions across multiple organizational, spatial, and temporal scales. The vision for a new era of CSB involves integrating biological subdisciplines as well as other disciplines and scales of research to leverage the biological data revolution, addressing questions unanswerable by fine- or large-scale observations alone. This multidisciplinary systems approach can provide a comprehensive understanding of complex biological systems and their interactions with human and environmental factors, fostering innovative solutions to global challenges.
Although much progress has been made, there are many major gaps in knowledge, theory, data, networks, tools, and training and capacity building needed to support the vision for CSB. Filling these gaps will require the development of new theories and
technologies that encompass not just biology, but atmospheric sciences, mathematics, engineering, physics, geosciences, environmental chemistry, and social sciences. Such effort is crucial to enhance the fundamental understanding of ongoing changes in biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate, disease spread, species invasion, gene flows, and biotic interactions. It is also needed to build workforce capacity by mentoring a new generation of innovative scholars and engaging leaders for global sustainability. By addressing these challenges with coordinated and innovative efforts, we can pave the way for a sustainable and resilient future, ensuring the well-being of our planet and its ecosystems.
