A ‘Sedimentary Record’ of Opportunities

Abstract

Several recent National Academy of Sciences publications (NRC 2005, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2012) and a subsequent community driven initiative report (Transitions 2012) provide the earth surface scientific community a framework of high-priority research targets for the next decade or so. Many of the research opportunities identified by these reports were defined through the efforts of the SEPM community, coordinated by workshops and initiatives (e.g., GeoSystems, Paleopedology, DETELON, and EARTHTIME), to articulate the most enduring scientific issues and associated challenges for the future. As the scientific research agenda has evolved so have the disciplinary boundaries of the scientific community, which now includes geochronologists, geochemists, geomorphologists, ecologists, microbiologists, atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, soil scientists, mathematicians and computer scientists. A singular intellectual challenge, echoed throughout the aforementioned publications, further unifies the broad array of interests and efforts of this diverse scientific community: A better understanding of how earth system processes respond, interact, and evolve over a range of climate states and conditions is pivotal to informing society on critical future issues including climate change, energy and water resources, landscape evolution and management, and ecosystem health and conservation under dynamic environmental conditions (Transitions 2012). The importance of broad-based and cross-disciplinary collaborations involving observation-based scientists and numerical modelers is now fully recognized as a means of realizing the potential of the sedimentary archive of dynamic earth system processes. As the new editors of the Sedimentary Record, we consider this publication forum as an opportunity to articulate the vision and recent discoveries behind this community momentum. We propose a series of articles over the next three years that highlight exciting research directions and that delineate the cultural and technological infrastructure that will be required to fully develop such opportunities and overcome their associated challenges. This article provides an introduction to the proposed journal series; your participation and feedback as to how the ‘Sedimentary Record of opportunities’ might evolve is strongly encouraged.