Program: Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles

The original call for proposals for Emerging Topics in Biogeochemical Cycles (ETBC) was issued in September 2007 by the US NSF Directorate for Geosciences (NSF 07-049).

The Geosciences Directorate (GEO) is substantially augmenting our past funding sources to explicitly support emerging areas of interdisciplinary research. We seek to foster transformational advances in our quantitative or mechanistic understanding of biogeochemical cycles that integrate physical-chemical-biological processes over the range of temporal and/or spatial scales in Earth’s environments. We encourage submission of proposals that address emerging topics in biogeochemical cycles, the water cycle or their coupling, across the interfaces of atmosphere, land, and oceans. Proposals must cross the disciplinary boundaries of two or more divisions in Geosciences (e.g. ATM, EAR, OCE) or of at least one division in Geosciences and a division in another NSF directorate.

Although funding programmatic disciplines continues to provide a robust and adaptable framework to build our understanding of the geosciences and the earth as a system, there are classes of emerging and challenging problems that require integration of concepts and observations across diverse fields. Our goal is to enhance such integration. Successful proposals need to develop intellectual excitement in the participating disciplinary communities. Also encouraged are proposals that have broader educational, diversity, societal, or infrastructure impacts that capitalize on this interdisciplinary opportunity.