Laval-based Canadian Carbon Program launched

The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences is providing $4.4 million over three years to launch the Canadian Carbon Network (CCN) to conduct research that will assist the formation of strategies to mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change. Based at Laval Univ's faculty of forestry and geomatics and headed by Dr Hank Margolis, the CCR is a successor to Fluxnet Canada, an earlier research network that is winding down. CCR will coordinate efforts of scientists at 12 universities and counterparts at Environment Canada, the Canadian Forest Service (Natural Resources Canada), the Ontario Forest Research Institute and the British Columbia Ministry of Forests. The research focus will be on high-precision atmospheric greenhouse concentrations and related isotopes, ecosystems fluxes, regional-to-continental scale modeling of carbon sources and sinks and process modeling to support forest carbon accounting and management. Researchers will also collaborate with the US and Mexico within the framework of the North American Carbon Program. The CCR was originally conceived as an $8.9 million program but a proposal to NSERC for five-year funding was successful, resulting in a substantial reduction in planned research activities....