Siberia Integrated Regional Study: multidisciplinary investigations of the dynamic relationship between the Siberian environment and global climate change

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The SIRS is a mega-project within the Northern Eurasia Earth SciencePartnership Initiative (NEESPI), which coordinates interdisciplinary, national andinternational activities in Northern Eurasia that follow the Earth System ScienceProgram (ESSP) approach. Under the direction of the InternationalGeosphere–Biosphere Program (IGBP), SIRS is one of the Integrated RegionalStudies (IRS) that aims to investigate environmental change in Siberia under thecurrent environment of global change, and the potential impact on Earth systemdynamics [1]. The regions of interest are those that may function as ‘choke orswitch points’ for the global Earth system, where changes in regional biophysical,biogeochemical and anthropogenic components may have significantconsequences for the Earth system at the global scale. Siberia is a large andsignificant region that may compel change [2].Regional consequences of global warming (e.g. anomalous increases in coldseason temperatures) have already been documented for Siberia [3]. This result isalso supported by climate modeling results for the 20th–22nd centuries [4].Future climatic change threatens Siberia with the shift of permafrost boundariesnorthward, dramatic changes in land cover (redistribution among boreal forest,wetlands, tundra, and steppe zones often precipitated by fire regime change) andthe entire hydrological regime of the territory [5–8]. These processes feed back toand influence climate dynamics through the exchange of energy, water,greenhouse gases and aerosols [9]. Even though there have been a handful ofnational and international projects focused on the Siberian environment, scientistshave minimal knowledge about the processes that control change in thisunderstudied region, particularly those concerning the primary components thatinfluence regional climate (i.e. cloud cover, precipitation) and responses andfeedbacks to and from terrestrial and aquatic systems. This provides a strongimpetus for the SIRS project.SIRS was initiated at a boreal forest conference in Krasnoyarsk in 2002 under theauspices of the IGBP and ESSP regional strategy by Will Steffen (IGBP) and the