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Implementation Strategy. The U.S. Global Change Research Programs's implementation strategy includes: (1) the identification of three major scientific objectives, (2) the integration of the various scientific disciplines, and (3) the integration of the Program with other national and international global change activities. 

(1) Three Major Scientific Objectives

The U.S. Global Change Research Program has three parallel scientific objectives: monitoring, understanding, and predicting global change (see box on page 12 for further details).

The aim of these objectives is to provide detailed assessments of the state of the knowledge of natural and human induced changes in the global earth system. Appropriate predictions on time scales ranging from years to decades, including projections 20 to 40 years into the future, will be developed periodically. These assessments and predictions will provide information in such areas as: ecosystem dynamics, the biological influence on the climate system, concentrations of significant atmospheric constituents, oceanic and atmospheric circulation, and regionally useful information such as predicted changes in growing seasons, precipitation, and soil moisture. Assessments of uncertainties in these predictions will be an integral part of these predictions.

(2) Integration of Scientific Disciplines

The U.S. Global Change Research Program recognizes the need to achieve a greater level of integration among both single-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary scientific activities. The current foundation of earth science research rests primarily on single-disciplinary activities. However, such individual disciplines have limited capability to explain and predict global and regional scale interactive phenomena. Therefore, multi-