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PLENARY SESSION II: Climate and Landscape Change Over Time Climate change means different things to different people. On the one hand, global warming, carbon sequestration, the Kyoto Protocol, and international politics surrounding these topics have brought widespread attention to 21st-century climate change and the effects of human activities on climate. In this context, scientific focus is on modeling future climate change, assessing likely consequences to ecological, physical, and socioeconomic systems, and developing strategies to mitigate impacts. To another community of scientists, climate change invokes research fields that focus on dynamics of the earth's natural climate system. Development of new tools for reconstructing past climates at high resolution has enabled increasingly unified understanding of the occurrence, mechanisms, and landscape consequences of natural climate cycles. Research interest focuses on climate cycles of interannual (2-8 year periods), decadal (10-50 year periods) and century scales, and particularly on the nature of abrupt climate change and so-called regime shifts. Much of the research in this context is retrospective, looking to information from the past to understand the earth's contemporary climate system. This session attempts to combine both perspectives on climate and landscape change, with the goal of presenting current research information on climate variability and climate change relevant to the Sierra Nevada and to resource conservation and socioeconomic planning. Evaluation of future climate and consequences of global climate change in the 21st century will be improved by integration of mechanistic understanding of historic climate processes and ecological adaptations. Successfully achieving resource goals to maintain, conserve, and restore native species and ecosystems will be improved by better understanding of natural cycles of variability that form the backdrop to ecological processes such as fire, succession, population growth and decline. Finally, distinguishing human from natural causes of change is important for prescribing appropriate resource prescriptions and for developing meaningful monitoring and adaptive management strategies. Chairs: Connie Millar (USFS, PSW) and Scott Stine (CSU-Hayward) Speakers:
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