Terrestrial Observations (GTOS)
Created: 1996
President/Chairman: Prof. Riccardo Valentini
The Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS) was established in January 1996 by its co-sponsoring organizations (FAO, ICSU, UNEP, UNESCO and WMO) in response to international calls for a deeper understanding of global changes and their impacts on the Earth System and its ability to support sustainable development. The GTOS mission is to provide policy-makers, resource managers and researchers with access to the data and information they need to detect, quantify, locate, and warn of changes (especially reductions) in the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to support sustainable development. The programme focuses on five issues of global concern:
- changes in land quality;
- availability of freshwater resources;
- loss of biodiversity;
- climate change; and
- impacts of pollution and toxicity.
GTOS is developing a global system of networks, called GT-Net, that links existing terrestrial observation sites and networks in order to facilitate access to, and exchange of, data and information. Some networks are based on environmental issues (e.g. biodiversity, ecology, glacier, hydrology, permafrost) while others are regional or national (e.g. AMAP, CERN, LTER, ROSELT, etc.). The Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring Sites meta-database (TEMS, www.fao.org/gtos/tems) is another central component of the GTOS programme, providing information on observations that are taken in more than 700 sites around the world. GTOS undertakes projects which demonstrate the value of linking existing networks by generating data sets which are useful in studying global change (e.g. demonstration project on Net Primary Productivity and the Global Terrestrial Carbon Observation initiative (TCO). Close collaboration is maintained with other international science programmes, such as the IGBP, as well as the Secretariats of international environmental Conventions.
