Summary

Extreme environmental events, including floods, droughts, wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural hazards, pose persistent risks to ecosystems, infrastructure, and human life. The societal and economic impacts of these events are large and growing as population and development expand into hazard-prone regions. Modern observing systems, such as satellites, weather stations, and seismic stations, have greatly advanced understanding of the nature, occurrence, causes, and impacts of extreme events, but because they have been in existence for only the past century or two—or less—the data from these systems have captured only a small fraction of Earth’s full range of environmental variability.

That limitation can be addressed through the use of paleoenvironmental data, which are data derived from such natural archives as sediments, ice cores, tree rings, corals, and speleothems. The use of these data makes it possible to extend knowledge of extreme events from the past couple of centuries to millennia—and, in some cases, billions of years—into the past. By studying these records it is possible to learn about the past occurrence of extreme events, to document their frequency, and to study the processes that produced them. It is also possible to learn how Earth systems, including ecosystem services, have been affected by these events, and how societies have responded to and recovered from them. Furthermore, paleoenvironmental records can reveal the past occurrence of extreme events like floods or earthquakes of greater magnitude or intensity than have been recorded by modern observing systems. This makes it possible to obtain a more accurate estimate of the true hazard risk facing a particular area.

However, while paleoenvironmental data offer critical insights into extreme events, they are often difficult for both researchers and the public to access. The diversity of paleoenvironmental records, their varied analytical methods and interpretation, broad storage distribution, and limited digital discoverability, findability, and accessibility all limit the potential of translational work on paleoenvironmental data to inform risk assessment, planning, and resilience. Such translation of the data into information that can be used by nonscientist stakeholders is particularly important, as it helps fulfill the potential of the science to benefit society. If access to paleoenvironmental data could be significantly improved, it would help strengthen disaster planning, improve infrastructure design, enhance risk reduction, protect economic investment, and save lives.

THE STUDY ORIGIN AND STATEMENT OF TASK

The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to form a committee to evaluate potential functions and criteria for a new center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events. The committee’s charge (Box S-1) directed it to provide an overview of existing facilities and online resources that curate paleoenvironmental data relevant to extreme events; identify potential goals and objectives for a new center; and define criteria for its establishment and maintenance, including possible organizational structures and resource needs.

The committee sought input from a broad range of perspectives to inform deliberations, including discussions and presentations with BOEM Environmental Studies Program leadership, managers of paleoenvironmental databases and informatics specialists, academic generators and users of paleoenvironmental information, representatives from the insurance and environmental risk-management field, and leaders of synthesis centers. Together, these insights emphasized the need for a national effort to organize and support a new synthesis and translation center for paleoenvironmental information capable of addressing scientific and societal needs.

THE ROLE OF PALEOENVIRONMENTAL DATA IN UNDERSTANDING EXTREME EVENTS

Modern observational networks such as satellites, weather stations, and seismic stations provide precise measurements of atmospheric, hydrological, and geological processes, but the data from them do not go far enough back in time to capture the full statistical range of extreme events. These observational data can be supplemented and extended much farther back in time through the use of paleoenvironmental data, which may be physical,

chemical, or biological in origin and which can reveal extreme events from the deep past.

The committee observed that paleoenvironmental data tend to fall into three different tiers:

• Tier 1: Direct records of individual events, such as flood deposits or tree-ring fire scars, that constrain the magnitude and timing of discrete events.
• Tier 2: Time-averaged indicators of frequency and magnitude that reveal long-term patterns of event occurrence, even when individual events cannot be resolved or identified.
• Tier 3: Large-scale environmental conditions, such as sea-surface temperature or greenhouse gas concentrations, that influence the likelihood or intensity of extreme events.

Developing a robust understanding of the causes, impacts, and implications of past extreme events requires integrating all three of these tiers of data, but together these tiers can provide an empirical basis for understanding the frequency and causes of extreme events across Earth’s history. This tiered

framework is intended to guide the selection and use of paleoenvironmental data according to research needs or decision-making context.

Conclusion 2-1: Paleoenvironmental data provide crucial insight into extreme events by extending the observational records of their occurrence, frequency, and variation to time periods beyond the limited range of direct instrumental observation and by clarifying the drivers that shape extreme events. Each tier offers a distinct but valuable perspective for understanding past extreme events.

DEMONSTRATED SOCIETAL RELEVANCE

Paleoenvironmental data are already used to inform public policy, infrastructure design, and emergency planning across the United States. The following four case studies illustrate how long-term records can improve the understanding of natural hazards and guide decisions and resilience.

1. Flooding and drought in the western United States: Tree-ring reconstructions of past hydrologic conditions have informed Bureau of Reclamation planning for the Colorado River and water resource strategies at utilities such as Denver Water and the Salt River Project. Paleoenvironmental records of past floods in California from lake and cave records have shown episodes of extreme rainfall in California exceeding the range of modern experience, indicating that events even larger than those represented in the ARkStorm scenario—a hypothetical megastorm that devastates much of California—are possible and highlight the need for robust state-level risk assessments.
2. Earthquake-induced tsunami risk: Cascadia and the Caribbean: By integrating multiple paleoenvironmental datasets, including tree-ring chronologies, sediment layers, and oral and written accounts from the Pacific Northwest and Japan, researchers reconstructed in detail the catastrophic January 1700 Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. This event serves as a guide for state and federal hazard-mitigation planning in the Pacific Northwest.
3. Mississippi River Valley flooding: Sedimentary and tree-ring records of flood deposits along the Mississippi River have been used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct flood frequency analyses that are used in river management decisions.
4. East Coast hurricanes: Data recovered from sediment cores, corals, and speleothems extend the history of Atlantic hurricanes back thousands of years, allowing for more accurate estimates of return intervals for such hurricanes.

Together, these examples, which represent only a small subset of many case studies, demonstrate that paleoenvironmental data can deliver actionable information.

Conclusion 2-2: For some regions and types of extreme events, paleoenvironmental data are already being used effectively to improve understanding, preparedness, and policy making. These measures would not have been possible had they relied on instrumental data alone.

THE EXISTING INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM AND ITS GAPS

The United States has built a robust but highly decentralized infrastructure for collecting, curating, and analyzing paleoenvironmental data relevant to extreme events. The committee conceptualized this system as an information ecosystem composed of five linked stages: collection, characterization, interpretation, integration, and translation. This report discusses the country’s existing repositories and databases within this framework and also describes the process by which raw environmental materials become actionable knowledge for hazard and resilience planning.

Collection: Building and Preserving Archives

Paleoenvironmental research begins with the collection of physical materials such as cores and specimens from sediments, corals, ice, tree rings, and other natural archives. These materials are maintained in repositories managed by federal and state agencies, universities, and museums. While this network is extensive, its coverage of the various types of materials is uneven, and some material types remain underrepresented or poorly cataloged, limiting their discoverability, findability, and long-term preservation.

Characterization and Interpretation: From Measurements to Event Histories

At the characterization stage, scientists measure physical, chemical, and biological proxies that record past conditions; at the interpretation stage, these data are used to reconstruct the timing, frequency, and magnitude of past extreme events. Digital archives such as The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s World Data Service for Paleoclimatology, Neotoma, and PANGAEA curate many of these datasets and their interpretations.

Integration and Translation: From Synthesis to Societal Use

The integration stage brings together many records to produce large-scale reconstructions such as the North American Drought Atlas or global compilations of paleoclimate indicators. Such reconstructions have transformed scientific understanding of extreme environmental events, but they often depend on short-term projects and manual data harmonization.

Translation, the final stage, connects scientific findings with planners, engineers, and communities. This step of turning research into actionable information remains the weakest link in the system, with few institutional structures to sustain engagement between scientists and end users.

For the translation of paleoenvironmental information to be as effective as possible, scientists must work with end users toward outcomes that can be used to solve real-world problems. This co-production of knowledge results in risks being better quantified, hazards being connected to impacts, and people being able to take appropriate measures in their lives and their businesses to minimize their exposure to risk. A great example of translational science is the production of tsunami evacuation maps by the Washington State Geological Survey. These maps communicate to citizens and business owners how to best minimize personal risk in the event of a large earthquake and tsunami along their coast. These risks were first widely recognized from paleoenvironmental evidence. The geological survey works with the Washington Emergency Management Division and local, county, tribal, and other planners and emergency managers to develop, publish, and distribute evacuation maps. Scientists first began to quantify the risk of tsunamis along the Pacific Northwest shoreline in the 1980s, but it has taken decades for that information to be used to make these maps.

Across all stages, the system is rich in data and information but fragmented in coordination, limiting its usefulness beyond academic and subject-matter experts. Metadata standards are inconsistent, linkages between samples and interpretations are weak, and long-term synthesis and translation capacity are limited.

Conclusion 3-1: The current U.S. investments in repositories, digital archives, and analytical frameworks collectively provide infrastructure for the scientific study of extreme events in Earth’s past. However, the infrastructure lacks critical synthesis and translation capabilities to address cross-cutting scientific questions or fulfill societal needs. Addressing these gaps will require coordinated investment in interoperability, reproducibility, and synthesis capacity.

Conclusion 3-2: A new center dedicated to synthesis and translation would bridge this gap by integrating data across repositories, supporting

collaborative analysis, and sustaining engagement among scientists and the policy makers, businesses, and communities that depend on this knowledge. To maximize return on investment and minimize duplication with other efforts, this new center should not support the collection and storage of samples or their measurement but rather focus on supporting the integration, synthesis, and translation of paleoenvironmental data and samples to study extreme events and their impacts. The center could, however, help identify priorities for new data collection.

A VISION FOR A SYNTHESIS AND TRANSLATION CENTER

Through consultation with data managers, synthesis center leaders, and end users, the committee concluded that while there remain needs for new physical storage as well as the coordination of digital repositories and databases, the most urgent unmet need is an enhanced capacity for synthesis and translation—the processes that transform data into usable knowledge.

Conclusion 4-1: Creating a new “umbrella” physical or digital repository would require substantial additional investment, risk duplicating existing infrastructure, and likely exacerbate the sustainability challenges faced by existing scientific facilities and databases. Strengthening coordination and access across existing repositories offers a more effective path forward.

The committee envisions a center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events as a synthesis and translation center that brings together scientists, data specialists, communication specialists, policy makers, and community representatives to identify arenas where progress is needed, integrate existing paleoenvironmental information, and deliver actionable insights on extreme events. The center would provide a focal point that cultivates a culture of data sharing and open access for the benefit of society. Its core functions would include

• Scientific synthesis: Convene mission-oriented working groups comprising policy, academic, agency, and other experts to integrate datasets and conduct interdisciplinary analyses addressing societally relevant questions.
• Data science and informatics support: Provide staff skilled in data assembly, harmonization, and statistical modeling to assist working groups in developing standardized, reusable workflows.
• Translation and communication: Facilitate sustained engagement among stakeholders and produce clear decision-relevant outputs for guidance and resilience planning.

• Education and training: Offer opportunities for postdoctoral researchers, students, and visiting scholars that help build the next generation of scientists skilled in synthesis and translational work, similar to the practices at other grant-supported synthesis and translation centers, such as those at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Benefits of a Synthesis and Translation Center

A synthesis and translation center for paleoenvironmental data would accelerate discovery; strengthen partnerships among agencies, businesses, and academia; and enhance society’s ability to anticipate, prepare for, and mitigate the harm from extreme events. For researchers, the center would enable novel insights into Earth system variability, the drivers of extreme events, the role of ecosystem resilience, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to explore rare but high-impact scenarios. The paleoenvironmental record offers insight and information that is simply not available from instrumental records alone. For planners and managers, the improved estimates on the frequency and magnitude of extreme events that would result from the incorporation of paleoenvironmental data would support safer civil infrastructure, inform better land-use decisions, and provide for more effective hazard mitigation. By extending risk assessment beyond the limits of the instrumental and direct observational data, the center would also enhance public–private partnerships, particularly with the insurance sector, by improving models of catastrophic extreme events and reducing the financial burden of recovery. A center of this type would be expected to reduce the costs of recovering from disasters as well as decrease the mortality and morbidity associated with them.

Recommendation 4-1: A new center should accommodate multiple decision-making communities by having the capacity to engage across regions and support projects that synthesize and translate data for any region and the extreme events that may affect them.

Conclusion 4-2: The greatest opportunity for impact lies in a synthesis and translation center with support for both in-person and virtual interactions that links existing repositories and data systems, supports interdisciplinary analysis informed by stakeholder participants, and promotes engagement, synthesis, and translation of science into action.

Organizational Structure and Resource Needs

Successful synthesis centers such as the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Laboratory (ESIIL), and the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS’s) Powell Center illustrate the structures, practices, and resources needed to support effective synthesis and translation across disciplines. Key design elements of these centers include a physical headquarters with meeting facilities to foster in-person collaboration; a director and core administrative and technical staff supporting data management, facilitation, logistics, and communication; visiting scientific experts who bring disciplinary and sectoral expertise; and a competitive proposal process for working groups focused on high-priority topics of regional or national importance. These models provide funding and programmatic flexibility to address the needs of scientists, government stakeholders, businesses, and communities.

Conclusion 5-1: A new synthesis and translation center for paleoenvironmental records related to extreme events should be modeled after synthesis centers such as NCEAS, SESYNC, ESIIL, and the USGS Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis.

For a new synthesis and translation center to operate effectively, an estimated sustained funding on the order of $3–6 million annually would be needed to support core staff, working group meetings, and participant travel for a few working groups each year. Higher levels of funding could support additional working groups. These resource requirements highlight the need for a well-supported infrastructure that can manage and sustain these functions.

Recommendation 5-1: Based on models of other successful synthesis centers, a new synthesis and translation center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events should be based in a physical location with convening space for working groups and with support for hybrid or virtual activities.

Recommendation 5-2: The center should have a director who oversees all aspects of the mission and is responsible for building partnerships across broad communities—both public and private—to gain access to talent and infrastructure. The center should directly support or have access to permanent staff who can assist with scientific tasks such as data assembly and cyberinfrastructure, provide outreach and facilitation that supports stakeholder engagement, and conduct administrative

tasks such as organizing meetings, communication, handling proposals, and travel support.

Recommendation 5-3: Sustained support for this center will be required to allow partnerships among stakeholders to build and bear fruit, which, based on experience with other synthesis centers and translation efforts, is typically a multiyear and even multidecadal effort. The center should have the ability to support multiple project-oriented working groups and to recruit subject-matter experts through term appointments (e.g., postdoctoral researchers) or visiting positions (e.g., sabbaticals) that allow experts to assist working groups to meet the scientific and societal goals of the project.

MEETING FUTURE NEEDS

Paleoenvironmental data reveal Earth’s long history of extreme events. The United States possesses vast physical and digital archives that, through scientific investigation, have already yielded considerable insight into the drivers of natural disasters and the recovery responses of landscapes and ecosystems. Recent studies have shown conclusively that additional data mining, exploration, and synthesis can provide superior estimates of the frequency and severity of extreme events, which in turn are crucial information for governments, businesses, and communities at risk that wish to carry out effective resilience planning and make effective infrastructure investments.

A new center focusing on synthesis, translation, and engagement could serve an important role in bridging scientific discovery and societal needs. It would provide a framework for assembling experts in diverse fields, such as Earth system science, critical infrastructure, and disaster preparedness. And such a purpose-driven center will enable the transformation of isolated scientific records into actionable knowledge and strengthen national resilience to future extremes events.