A Vision for Continental-Scale Biology: Research Across Multiple Scales (2025)
Chapter: 1 Introduction
1
Introduction
Our planet is facing many complex environmental challenges, from the loss of biodiversity to the effects of rapidly changing climate conditions—many of them driven by intensifying human–nature interactions worldwide. Human actions are causing global and regional changes that are having profound impacts at local scales, and conversely, environmental changes at local scales 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 the new organisms may adapt can help to guide the most appropriate responses to limit their spread (LaRue et al. 2021). 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 (Bonan 2008). Further, local changes in vegetation may drive local to regional changes in atmospheric circulation and create “ecoclimate teleconnections” over even larger scales (Stark et al. 2016).
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 (Heffernan et al. 2014). 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; observational studies that use remote sensing or sensor technology to capture population-level or community dynamics, genetic and microbial sampling, and biodiversity collections; and modeling approaches that connect disparate information
to enable inferences from observations or predict outcomes over large spatial extents and through time.
A central challenge is to bring large volumes of new and existing data and information together in a way that improves the ability to classify, interpret, and predict biological and physical processes. The federal government has developed a number of networks that collect data and information to address a basic question or to respond to a societal concern. For example, the question of how and where acid deposition is affecting air and water quality is being investigated through the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and the Clean Air Status and Trends Network. Investigation of the biospheric fluxes of energy, carbon, and water across the U.S.’ terrestrial ecosystems’ boundary layer is being conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ameriflux network. Some networks are established not to answer a particular question but rather function more as data collection or observational networks. For example, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) collects long-term open-access ecological data in 81 field sites across the United States (see more on NEON in Chapter 4).
In addition to such networks, centers that facilitate synthesis by groups of scientists with diverse, but complementary expertise play useful roles in addressing questions of critical importance. Synthesis centers have been extraordinarily successful in bringing together scientists from different perspectives and skill sets to address specific challenges. NSF-funded synthesis centers in the United States have included the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, and now the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab.
PAVING THE WAY FOR A CONTINENTAL-SCALE BIOLOGY
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. Conducted at the request of NSF, this report identifies 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 report complements recent NSF initiatives, for example, Reintegrating Biology, Understanding the Rules of Life, the Biological Integration Institutes, and Macrosystems Biology (Box 1-1), which 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.
By integrating biological research across subdisciplines and across organizational, spatial, and temporal scales, continental-scale biology (CSB) promises to reveal new insights on complex biological phenomena and help inform responses to the planet’s most pressing environmental crises. CSB seeks to enhance our understanding of cross-scale interactions across biological organizational, spatial, and temporal scales, recognizing that there are biological phenomena that may only be revealed across scales and
BOX 1-1
Related NSF Initiatives
NSF supports a wide range of biological research, from the subcellular to the biosphere. NSF’s Biology Directorate recognizes that “[a]chieving a coherent understanding of the complex biological web of interactions that is life is a major challenge of the future. This challenge will require that knowledge about the structure and dynamics of individual biological units, networks, subsystems, and systems be compiled and connected from the molecular to the global level and across scales of time and space.”a
NSF initiatives that respond to these challenges include:
- The Reintegrating Biology workshops in 2019 solicited input from the biological research community regarding new research questions that could be addressed by combining approaches and perspectives from different subdisciplines of biology, key challenges and scientific gaps that would need to be addressed to answer these questions, and the physical infrastructure and workforce training needed.b
- The understanding of the Rules of the Life program, one of 10 “Big ideas” initiated by NSF in 2016, aims “to identify the casual predictive relationships that could be ‘rules of life’. . . [and] to train the next generation of researchers to work across scales and scientific disciplines and to foster convergent research” (NASEM, 2023, p. 4).
- The ongoing Biology Integration Institutes program supports diverse collaborative teams that conduct research, education, and training on critical questions spanning multiple disciplines within and beyond biology.c Biology Integration Institutes are designed to integrate across subdisciplines and scales in biology, including spatial, temporal, and biological scales. For example, Advancing Spectral biology in Change ENvironments to understand Diversity (ASCEND) uses spectral information as a common data type (collected from satellites, airborne platforms, uncrewed aerial vehicles and handheld sensors) to decipher the causes and consequences of plant diversity in changing environments within and across individuals, communities, ecosystems, and continents. Enabling Meaningful External Research Growth in Emergent Technologies (EMERGE) examines biological interactions and their responses to change by employing a “‘genes-to-ecosystems-to-’genes” approach. Specifically, the team investigates how the genetic and metabolic features of microbial communities, and their biotic and abiotic interactions, give rise to ecosystem outputs, specifically carbon gas emissions, and how ecosystems in turn impact gene expression and allele frequencies. The Regional OneHealth Aerobiome Discovery Network (BROADN) works to understand the microbiome of the air and how it impacts human, animal, and environmental health.
BOX 1-1 Continued
- The program Macrosystems Biology and NEON-Enabled Science (MSM-NES): Research on Biological Systems at Regional to Continental Scales, which ran from FY 2010 to FY 2024, supported research on biosphere processes at regional to continental scales and activities to broaden participation of researchers in Macrosystems Biology and NEON-Enabled Science. This program enabled numerous research projects directly linked to continental-scale biology.d
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a See https://www.nsf.gov/bio/about.jsp (accessed November 3, 2023).
b See https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1940791&Historical%20Awards=false (accessed October 17, 2023).
c See https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/biology-integration-institutes-bii (accessed October 17, 2023).
d See https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/macrosystems-biology-neon-enabledscience-msb-nes/503425 (accessed December 6, 2023).
in a multidisciplinary manner. This report aims to identify the key challenges and the opportunities that could be realized by overcoming these challenges, providing a series of recommendations that will help establish and advance the emerging field of CSB. The report builds on the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the many networks and synthesis centers across multiple scales that are already in operation.
For CSB to be useful for addressing specific questions and informing decision making, improved methods will be needed to synthesize the vast amounts of data that have been and will be collected. Conceptual frameworks and theories are needed to provide road maps for organizing data to test hypotheses and address central questions. Emerging technologies will need to be deployed. For example, digital twin platforms may create high-fidelity, real-time digital replicas of biological systems that enable research to conduct virtual experiments that are impractical or impossible in the real world (Goodchild et al. 2024). Collaborative networks can provide a platform for scientists to share data, harmonize methodologies, and synthesize existing information to enhance data quality, quantity, and comparability.
Combining perspectives across disciplines is another powerful means to advance understanding. Some of the most rapid progress that has been made is at the intersection of biology and other disciplines, including the work being done in the synthesis centers mentioned above. The National Research Council report A New Biology for the 21st Century recommended the “re-integration of the many sub-disciplines of biology, and the integration into biology of physicists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to create a research community with the capacity to tackle a broad range of scientific and societal problems” (NRC 2009). The decade and a half since this report’s publication has seen movement in this direction in both the conduct and the cul-
ture of biology. One example comes from the convergence of ecology and engineering that led to NEON. Further, the development of new fields of study—such as landscape genetics, ecological forecasting, macroevolution, macroecology and macrosystems biology, and engineering biology—and the general rise of open science, open data, and researchers’ embrace of large-scale collaborations in the United States and many other countries are enabling the emergence of a multiscale approach to biological research.
Committee’s Statement of Task
The committee’s statement of task is 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.
Nominations for the committee were invited through mailing lists maintained by the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and the Board on Life Sciences; from members of those boards and the National Academy of Sciences; professional societies; and National Academies staff. Expertise represented on the committee includes ecology, macrosystems biology, organismal biology, genetics, cell biology, microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, data science, computer science, and social science. Committee member biosketches are presented in Appendix A.
COMMITTEE’S APPROACH TO THE STATEMENT OF TASK
The committee approached the statement of task by first identifying key characteristics that define CSB (Box 1-2). As stated in the definition, CSB focuses on biological systems across scales, which are an integral part of coupled human and natural systems; that is, CSB takes a systems approach (Liu et al. 2015).
BOX 1-2
Characteristics That Define Continental-Scale Biology
Continental Scale Biology (CSB) addresses questions about 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 (Figure 1-1), from the local to global spatial extents, from less than a second to millennia. Specific CSB research may operate across one, two, or all three kinds of scales: organizational, spatial, or temporal.
Further, CSB treats biological systems as part of coupled human and natural systems, given widespread human impacts and intensifying human–nature interactions worldwide.
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.
CSB is an interdisciplinary frontier. An important task is to address the opportunities and challenges associated with the necessary theoretical, empirical, and cultural integration of CSB with allied disciplines. These include natural sciences such as hydrology (Brutsaert 2023); computer engineering (Wright and Wang 2011); and social sciences such as behavioral science (Fischhoff 2021), economics (Barrett 2022, Dasgupta 2021, Polasky et al. 2019), geography (Cutter 2024, Fotheringham 2024), governance (Bebbington et al. 2020, Brondizio et al. 2009), and political science (Agrawal et al. 2023). This integration is essential not only to making scientific advancements in CSB but also to promoting its application to biological, environmental, and societal problems across local, regional, national, continental, and global scales.
To inform these efforts, the committee organized three public information-gathering meetings. The first, on April 24–25, 2023, focused on frontier research efforts demonstrating CSB. The second, on June 15, 2023, reviewed applications of networks, analytical and sampling tools, and data integration approaches to CSB, and challenges that limit their application. The third, on August 21, 2023, reviewed data collection, collective engagement and involvement, and innovative tools and techniques to aid in the advancement and understanding of CSB. Agendas for all three are presented in Appendix B.
Report Organization
Chapter 2 presents four themes that represent areas where CSB could make the most impact, with examples of specific research questions that could serve as pilots for implementing research projects that integrate one or more successful practices. This chapter also presents examples of research and management efforts corresponding to and integrating the four themes.
Chapter 3 describes how theory can inform the development of observational and experimental programs for CSB and vice versa, and the development of the resources needed to support those programs.
Chapter 4 evaluates the tools and networks needed to conduct biological research across multiple organizational, spatial, and temporal scales, and identifies new tools or enhancements that could more fully realize the promise of CSB.
Chapter 5 identifies training and capacity-building needs and challenges to support CSB.
Chapter 6 presents overarching recommendations and a vision for realizing CSB.
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