5

Framework for a Center for the Synthesis and Translation of Paleoenvironmental Data

In view of the preceding analysis of alternatives, the committee has advanced a framework for a synthesis and translation center that focuses on the evaluation and interpretation of paleoenvironmental events and facilitates broad participation of prospective stakeholders at every step of the process. With translational goals embedded directly into synthesis, scientific assessment is informed by and conducted alongside the development of decision-relevant information that assists with measures to enhance disaster preparedness and community resilience. Ideally, project proposals and requests for assistance coming to this new center will arrive from diverse sectors, and it is critical that the center remain accessible to the entire community of stakeholders (see Table 5-1). Proposal evaluation and promotion of the center’s availability must keep this objective in mind to ensure that the flow of information and project development remain open to the entire community of stakeholders.

A synthesis and translation center, as proposed here, that serves all stakeholders on an equal footing does not currently exist in the United States. The work that would be done by this center has the clear potential for significant and sustained economic benefit to the country. The studies done at the center would deepen understanding of extreme events and provide decision-relevant information that would substantially improve the ability of governments, communities, and businesses to plan for, adapt to, and mitigate future extreme events. This chapter elaborates upon the benefits of a center to diverse sectors, suggests key organizational personnel and attributes, and provides the outlines of a budget that could fulfill these goals and objectives.

The committee’s vision recognizes the centrality of having participation from diverse stakeholders (see Table 5-1), which may include scientists, businesses, governments, and communities, as well as the need to converge on common goals for the center’s work. Questions that the center might consider include the frequency and magnitude of past extreme events, the processes that governed such events, and the risk of similarly extreme events in the near future. The development of strategies for adaptation, mitigation and resilience could then be guided through a collaborative process. The center would provide the expertise, assistance, and tools to facilitate stakeholder engagement, data assembly, analysis, synthesis, and translation, and provide clear communications that inform communities, businesses, and governments.

The center should have an outreach strategy to engage local and regional stakeholders, as many extreme events have regional impacts that cross governmental jurisdictions. One part of this outreach strategy could be having facilitators in the center with expertise in outreach and engagement and the ability to recognize and support the participation of experts from all relevant sectors, from shaping research priorities to reviewing draft products and helping define how results will be translated into decision-making applications. The creation of an advisory board with members from different sectors could ensure that a full consideration of stakeholder interests, including regional perspectives, will help in guiding the center’s work.

There are advantages to a center that can advance best practices in synthesis and translation across multiple stakeholder communities and types of extreme events. There are common practices among the scientific and computational experts that can guide synthesis and common needs among decision makers and others users that affect what information is needed and how it is used. Accordingly, the center should not limit its consideration to specific regions or types of extreme events. Instead, the center should focus on gathering the best information to address the critical questions it is tasked to investigate, using state-of-the-art approaches to analyzing and integrating paleoenvironmental data and models and providing policy-relevant insights into the societal risks associated with present and future extreme events.

STAKEHOLDER COMMUNITIES SERVED BY A NEW CENTER

Potential to Advance Policy-Relevant Science

For the scientific community, a center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events could facilitate innovative approaches to extreme-event research by equipping scientists with state-of-the-art informatics, robust datasets, and advanced computational tools to advance their studies. The

TABLE 5-1 Examples of Stakeholders that Could Participate in and Benefit from Projects to Analyze, Synthesize, and Translate Information Related to Paleoenvironmental Extreme Events

SOURCE: Committee generated.

center could thus resolve important scientific questions and guide translational work while also serving as a training ground for students and postdocs with transdisciplinary interests. Examples of pressing questions with strong societal relevance that could be addressed by the proposed center include the following:

• How does one distinguish between climate variability and long-term change? Extended observations and paleoenvironmental data make it possible to assess whether the frequency and magnitude of specific events often associated with the climate system (e.g., droughts, floods, hurricanes) fall within the window of natural climate variability or result from long-term climatic trends with identifiable climate drivers (Shenoy et al., 2022).
• What is the relationship between background or mean conditions and extreme events? In the realm of climate and weather, understanding how the magnitude or intensity of extreme events changes in response to known modes of variability in the climate system can lead to better prediction of extreme events. For instance, understanding the link between Atlantic hurricanes and multidecadal fluctuations of temperature in the North Atlantic can be helpful for predicting the frequencies of these storms (Ting et al., 2019).
• Is it possible to estimate the recurrence of extreme events such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions? These geologic hazards are relatively rare and irregular, but one can estimate probabilities of future events over time with the help of deeper studies of paleoenvironmental data. For example, studies aimed at understanding the Cascadia subduction zone have proved to be some the most successful examples of interdisciplinary paleoenvironmental science as they combine terrestrial, lacustrine, and marine geology with dendrochronology, historical records, indigenous knowledge, and modeling in paleoseismology.
• How can artificial intelligence (AI) advance the understanding and prediction of extreme events? AI systems trained against reanalysis datasets can now quickly generate very large (greater than 10,000-member) ensembles of the possible states of the climate system. The ensembles can be examined for potential, rare “black swan” states of the climate system that may produce locally devastating extreme events. Alternatively, methods that integrate physics-based modeling and machine learning can help identify how shifts in the mean state of the climate system and its forcings may impact the frequency or magnitude of extreme events, especially on long timescales. These simulations could then be checked against paleoenvironmental data proxies that provide evidence about changes

• in the frequency or magnitude of extreme events (Tier 2 or Tier 1) and incorporate information about the mean state of the climate system (Tier 3).
• How resilient are ecosystems? Extreme events can test ecosystem resilience, i.e., whether the system retains its fundamental structure and function after significant disturbance or transitions to a fundamentally different alternative stable state (e.g., Mumby et al., 2007). These transitions may have significant impacts on the ecosystem services provided by the affected ecosystems. For example, the intensification of fire regimes in the western United States and other semiarid regions worldwide is raising concerns that these highly disrupted ecosystems may transform to new states (Keeley et al., 2019; Jackson, 2021), affecting associated communities, economies, and ecosystem services. The paleoenvironmental record may provide insights into how ecosystems transition among alternate stable states and the role of extreme events as forcing factors (Carstensen et al., 2013; Seddon et al., 2014; Jensen et al., 2021; Karp et al., 2023). Paleoenvironmental data enable a comprehensive study of the environment both prior and subsequent to extreme events, including the rates and transient processes that emerge during rapid environmental and ecological change (Williams et al., 2021; Stemkovski et al., 2025) as well as the short-term and longer-term effects of rapid ecosystem transformation. Understanding these effects on ecosystem services is critical to making informed resource management decisions.

By addressing these and other questions, the center can accelerate the scientific understanding of how factors such as land-use planning, infrastructure modifications, water resource management, and emergency preparedness can increase or decrease the risks and impacts of extreme events and deliver actionable information that will help mitigate the adverse consequences of extreme events for coupled natural and human systems.

Benefits to Resilience and Planning

As currently envisioned, the work of a center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events (CPREE) could contribute substantially to the development of policies and practices that impact public safety, disaster preparedness, socioeconomic well-being, and ecosystem services. The synthesis of data from multiple archives and longer time spans could provide a better estimation of the frequency and magnitude of extremes and the return interval of large-magnitude extreme events, meaning the average time between similar events, such as a 100-year storm. This center could act

as a meeting ground for geoscientists and engineers to interact with social scientists, community planners, public health professionals, and educators seeking to improve societal resilience to extreme events. Armed with better information, engineers will have the data needed to design more robust civil infrastructure, communities could develop suitable building codes and site plans, and community leaders could implement appropriate hazard-mitigation policies and public safety measures to withstand earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and other destructive events that impact structures, destroy economies, and cause loss of life. Better data will inform the risk assessment of critical facilities and provide insurance companies with superior planning tools and resources needed to enable a robust response to claims arising from extreme and widespread disasters.

Well-informed analyses produced by the center could also aid in identifying longer-term trends relative to average conditions, allowing societies to prepare for and adapt to episodes of drought, wildfire, and severe storms. Farms, forests, and water resources can be devastated by longer-term changes in climate, which in turn can lead to shortages in critical resources. Information and decision support that allow federal and state agencies, communities, and businesses to anticipate, adapt to, and respond to change with better environmental planning will reduce the potential impacts as well as the costs associated with recovery (Morss et al., 2011; Aghababaei et al., 2018; U.S. Chamber of Commerce et al., 2024).

Benefits to Public–Private Partnerships

Interviews with stakeholders from the insurance sector revealed that risk analyses and catastrophe modeling rely heavily on data products produced by federal agencies and the academic sector, such as climate analysis datasets, downscaled climate projections, and flood hazard maps. Most of these products are based upon instrumental and direct observational data and so are limited to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a relatively short period of time. Hence, there is the potential that these products collectively mischaracterize the risk associated with rare but large extreme events in the climate and geological systems.

Recognizing this risk and uncertainty, stakeholders in the business community (see Table 5-1) may wish to partner with the center or support center studies that provide critical information pertinent to their interests. In the past, the reinsurance sector has funded research into the study of past tropical cyclones (paleotempestology) and other extreme events, which has advanced understanding of how shifts in the tropical rain belt and other factors affect the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes in different locations (Donnelly et al., 2001a; Lin et al., 2014; Donnelly, 2025; Sullivan et al., 2025).

The center’s ability to recruit subject-matter experts and provide state-of-the-art tools and methodologies gives the private sector periodic but critical access to important knowledge when needs dictate. Working groups that are supported by industry and comprise teams of academic, agency, and private-sector researchers can efficiently address needs that span multiple sectors. Studies may support trainees with skills that are relevant to the private sector or lead to intellectual property involving products or services that provide economic and social benefits. In this respect, the center could facilitate new public–private partnerships to better model the risk of particularly catastrophic extreme events and create evidence-based guidelines for business activities such as supply chain management and industry siting needs and requirements.

THE CRITICAL ATTRIBUTES OF A NEW CENTER

The following section outlines the framework for a center that connects scientific expertise with the information needs of public agencies, communities, and other stakeholders; conducts in-depth analyses and syntheses; and provides actionable recommendations that could enhance societal resilience to future extreme events.

Insights from Successful Models to Shape a Synthesis and Translation Center

Design of the CPREE can draw from highly successful center models such as the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), and the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Laboratory (ESIIL). As indicated by their titles, these National Science Foundation–funded centers have different emphasis areas, but they have similarities in (a) considering a broad scope of questions that involve heterogeneous datasets, (b) facilitating diverse participant interests and perspectives, and (c) supporting the processes of data assembly, analysis, and synthesis. Another example of such a center is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis, which was founded in 2009 and serves as a synthesis center for engagement among agency and academic scientists. These synthesis centers typically host and facilitate question- and mission-oriented working groups that are populated by academic and agency-based scientists and center-hosted postdoctoral researchers and that operate on a finite timeline, typically 1–2 years. These working groups are supported by dedicated center staff who provide expertise in computational and informatic resources, communications, and community engagement. The paleoenvironmental synthesis and translation center considered here can be similarly organized, with resource needs defined, at minimum, by achieving staffing to support these essential functions, with further resourcing flexibly

scaled to the number and urgency of studies underway and the interests of participating scientists, businesses, communities, and governments.

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.

Mission and Goals

The mission of the synthesis center is to help improve societal resilience to future extreme events by gathering, analyzing, and sharing information about past extreme events among interlinked networks of scientists, community leaders, policy makers, natural resources managers, and businesses. Synthesis products created by the center could provide novel scientific insights, inform resilience planning and emergency preparation strategies, assist with risk evaluation and prediction, protect vital economic infrastructure, and save lives.

The goals of the center are as follows:

1. Launch and support mission-oriented working groups that have access to state-of-the-art computational and informatics resources and expertise and knowledge about the complex paleoenvironmental data information ecosystem and that are charged with the analysis, synthesis, and translation of paleoenvironmental data through the combined participation of scientists, policy makers, businesses, and community leaders.
2. Enhance the understanding of past extreme events, their magnitude, likelihood, underlying Earth system states, causative processes, and potential societal impacts, working at scales of integration beyond those feasible by any individual research scientist and team to generate breakthrough science and impactful societal benefits.
3. Create decision-relevant knowledge that enables agencies, organizations, and communities to consider actions and policies that improve preparation for, and responses to, extreme events.
4. Advance the communication of extreme event hazards and solutions to all stakeholders through collaboration, partnership, and innovation.

The center would not be involved in such functions as the collection of new data, sample rescue initiatives, and the direct maintenance of repositories, although the committee maintains that these are crucial gaps (Chapter 3). The center would be in a position to assist in communicating

the importance of continued funding and support for existing physical and digital repositories that allow scientists to access and analyze both data and samples.

Siting and Support

A synthesis and translation center could be housed and supported in several ways, with each offering distinct advantages for collaboration and impact. One option would be a university-based model, which could take advantage of academic research capacity and training networks. Alternatively, a university–federal agency partnership such as the Climate Adaptation Science Centers or the network of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Institutes could provide a strong bridge between fundamental research and applied decision making. A broader university–interagency structure, such as the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, would allow multiple agencies to participate in governance and resource sharing. The center could also be fully housed within a federal agency, following the example of the USGS Powell Center, and supported through either single-agency or multiagency funding mechanisms. Another path would be an interagency model involving organizations such as USGS, NOAA, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and replace with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), enabling coordinated investment and integrated missions. Finally, an independent or private institution could provide flexibility in structure and partnerships while still maintaining strong connections to federal and academic collaborators. These options reflect a wide range of viable institutional homes capable of supporting a national center with substantial scientific and societal impact.

Any such support model should be invested in for a minimum of 8 years and ideally 10 years or longer to allow time for the center to launch, for partnerships to be built among stakeholders, and for working groups to assemble and carry out projects. Support for this center should not displace support for other components of the paleoenvironmental data ecosystem (Chapter 3) and, where possible, should augment the capacity of other paleoenvironmental data nodes to improve data interoperability and accessibility (Wilkinson et al., 2016) because the integration and synthesis capacities of this center will rely critically upon the data-preservation and data-sharing capacity of these other data ecosystem components. Because this center would help advance insights into the risks associated with a broad range of extreme events and how to reduce exposure to these risks, the funding model for this center should align more with funding models of synthesis centers, such as NCEAS, rather than principal investigator–driven research awards within the paleoenvironmental data ecosystem. Accordingly, its funding model should align with those of longstanding synthesis

centers, which typically rely on sustained support and, where appropriate, contributions from a coalition of federal agencies reflecting the breadth of interests served.

Organizational Structure

Interviews with synthesis center representatives indicated that a centralized organization with a director, dedicated staff, and visiting staff (including postdoctoral scientists and experts on loan with permanent positions elsewhere who could serve on specific projects) are critical for success. Similarly critical are access to meeting and working space and cyberinfrastructure. The center structure could have a strong foundation in permanent staff who can provide consistent administrative, facilitative, and communications support and be dynamic and able to recruit experts in accordance with proposal evaluation and working group needs. One best practice for forming a high-functioning working group is providing substantial face time during work and in social settings so that strong working relationships across disciplines and sectors are built (Baron et al., 2017). Hybrid or virtual meetings can support the project’s work when in-person meetings are infeasible. Recommendation 5-1 would meet the goals above.

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.

Center Functions and Proposed Budget

Topic Selection and Working Group Assembly

The selection of paleoenvironmental research questions with the potential to provide critical insights of significant societal relevance is foundational to the center’s work. Evidence from existing synthesis centers suggests working group applications are numerous, the selection process is highly competitive, and demand substantially exceeds the number of groups that can be supported. Given the recent increase in extreme events such as drought and wildfires and the rise of data science and artificial intelligence, initial demand for synthesis of paleoenvironment events may be significant. Thus, an important function of the center is the assembly of a body of experts to select topics and ensure that assembled working groups contain the needed expertise (e.g., science, policy) to ensure actionable outcomes. This body of experts can be convened as an advisory panel, similar to proposal evaluation activities of federal agencies, on an as-needed basis, in accordance with the funding availability and proposal evaluation cycles.

Data Science, Analytical Tools, and Cyberinfrastructure

Discussions with experienced synthesis center leaders revealed that working groups typically require significant assistance with assembling diverse datasets as well as with understanding the array of analytical and computational tools and workflows available for synthesis work. Thus, an important function of the center is to discover and evaluate the quality of the data and to provide them to working groups in a usable form. For example, ESIIL has developed the concept of a “data cube,” a curated dataset containing information specified by the working group and assembled by data science staff. The provision of analytical and computational tools is efficient as it allows teams to focus on their primary project goals and develop appropriate workflows rather than struggle with information technology systems and unfamiliar programs and data formats. This practice also provides experience for the staff on processes and approaches that may be useful for future synthesis opportunities.

As such, the center will need access to staff (permanent and shared) with expertise in data science, informatics, and cyberinfrastructure as well as domain expertise (recruited) in the specific field of inquiry so that the limitations, possibilities, and context of the data are fully understood at onset. Shared positions with universities and state and federal agencies

or limited-term positions such as postdocs, visiting research scientists, or sabbatical positions would enable the center to attract experts with different qualifications and maintain state-of-the-art perspectives that match underway projects.

Translation and Communication

Transdisciplinary work requires considerable communication among working group members so that all perspectives are represented in the synthesis effort and synthesis goals enjoy broad consensus. Arriving at a shared understanding and strategy can be time intensive and requires accommodating the concerns and time demands that many participants (e.g., emergency planners, policy makers) must balance. This process may be accelerated by professional facilitation or by experienced staff who have guided working groups in the past. The center could have funding to bring in professional facilitation when needed, so that the working groups remain mindful of stakeholder perspectives and also focused on both scientific quality and societal impact.

External communications are often critical for delivering synthesis outcomes to interested community members, funding agencies, extension agents, industry, nonprofit organizations, and governmental bodies. As such, a communications staff member with expertise in science communication can assist with production of newsletters, press releases, and social media postings that provide information to stakeholders and create a pathway for further interactions.

All inferences drawn from scientific evidence carry some uncertainty, and clearly communicating that uncertainty can improve how stakeholders and decision makers evaluate risks, avoid false confidence, and make better choices. Best practices for conveying uncertainty tend to involve a probabilistic approach (Simpson et al., 2016). For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses a probabilistic approach combining quantitative assessments and a qualitative statement of confidence. Confidence assessment incorporates the type, amount, quality, and consistency of evidence as well as the agreement among various lines of evidence. A low confidence statement has limited evidence and low agreement, while the highest confidence reflects robust evidence with a high degree of agreement (Mastrandrea et al., 2010). One alternative approach, known as structured decision making (SDM), is designed to explicitly address deeper sources of uncertainty, including uncertainty related to human behavior, decision priorities, future choices, and differences in how stakeholders value outcomes—factors that cannot be resolved through additional data alone (Simpson et al., 2016) This approach establishes a formal, transparent, and collaborative process that ensures the direct involvement of stakeholders

(Martin et al., 2009). SDM is used by the U.S. Geological Survey to balance complementary knowledge from physical and social sciences, incorporate competing values and goals, and integrate science and policy (Lyons et al., 2008; DeWeber and Peterson, 2020; Smith et al., 2020). Because the use of paleoenvironmental data inherently carries uncertainty and by necessity involves diverse stakeholders, the proposed center would benefit from some type of structured decision procedure that can address these diverse sources of uncertainty and stakeholder perspectives (Simpson et al., 2016).

Education and Training

Synthesis centers are intellectually vibrant and can expand their impact and influence through educational, training, and fellowship programs. Other synthesis centers, such as NCEAS, ESIIL, SESYNC, and the USGS Powell Center, support graduate students and postdoctoral scientists to participate in working groups or develop projects independently. Trainees gain tremendous exposure to ideas, tools, and new colleagues from academia and from the private and public sectors in a vibrant atmosphere that is distinct from most university settings. Visiting faculty in residence or senior policy officials may serve as formal or informal advisors, offering short courses and lectures and assisting with synthesis efforts. These opportunities can be flexibly offered as a function of the physical size, staffing, and budget of the center and the priorities of the supporting agencies. Such a center offers the potential for an expansion of graduate education to include greater exposure to—and hands-on experience with—translational science applied to extreme events and paleoenvironmental data.

Budget

The committee estimates that a functional synthesis and translation center could operate at an annual cost of approximately $3–6 million (see Table 5-2). That budget would include support for a director (~$340,000 including benefits) to provide leadership and oversight of the center as well as for four staff members (~$900,000 total). The center would also support project experts, such as postdoctoral researchers or visiting experts on sabbatical or temporary appointments ($1,000,000–$2,000,000). Physical space and meeting support are essential for facilitating the collaborative work of synthesis centers, and are estimated at ~$600,000 per year. Travel funds ($80,000–$1,700,000) would enable participants, staff, and experts to convene as needed. Altogether, these investments total approximately $2.9–5.5 million annually, a modest cost given the scope of activities and the potential for significant scientific and societal impact.

TABLE 5-2 Hypothetical Annual Budget for a Synthesis and Translation Center

NOTE: The table represents a range of possible budgets that might be needed for staff and resources. Fixed costs are around $1.8M and the total cost scales with the number, size, and meeting frequency of working groups. The ranges here assume 5–10 active working groups per year, each with 8–20 members and 1–3 meetings of 2–4 days each. Actual costs would depend on the center’s scope and whether existing assets or capabilities could be leveraged. Core funding could be provided by one or more agencies, with specific projects supported by entities such as government agencies or jurisdictions, policy think tanks, or private organizations.

*Cost based on the physical space budget for NCEAS in fiscal year 2023–2024; see https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/annual-reports (accessed February 11, 2026).

SOURCE: Committee generated.

THE PATH FORWARD

Paleoenvironmental data have yielded stunning insights into the evolution of the Earth and the dramatic changes in landscapes and ecosystems that result from extreme events. With new sample collections, innovative analytical methodologies, and breakthroughs in data science, the potential exists to anticipate the onset and impact of many extreme events and to guide preparedness efforts. This potential is best realized when scientific studies are designed, translated, and interpreted in ways that inform actions that produce the best outcomes for communities (Moore and Sobel, 2025). For this to eventuate, significant, ongoing collaboration among stakeholders is required. A synthesis and translation center would fulfill this requirement and help ensure that scientific advances translate into improved outcomes for at-risk communities.

There is a compelling case for establishing such a center, as demonstrated by a recent report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Allstate Insurance, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (U.S. Chamber of Commerce et al., 2024). The three organizations evaluated the benefits of investing in resilience relative to the costs imposed by natural disasters, which include cleanup, recovery, and economic losses that result when impacted communities cannot be productive. Their analysis found that every $1 spent on preparedness and planning can save $13 in the sorts of losses described above. The report also states that in 2022 the global cost of natural disasters was more than $360 billion. The annual investment in a center devoted to synthesis and translation would be, by comparison, modest and would have the potential to produce significant and quantifiable returns. By formalizing these capabilities, the center would ensure that the nation is better prepared not only to understand extreme events, but also to anticipate them, mitigate their impacts, and support resilient communities.