Mission

Maintaining high agricultural yields is vital to our national economic and security interests. Our mession is to explore approaches to enhance economic and environmental sustainability of agricultural systems under the condition of climate change, enhanced ultraviolet radiation environment, and more frequent extremes in temperature and precipitation. More precisely, the following approaches and techniques will be exploited.

To develop an integrated agricultural impact assessment system capable of achieving credible and quantitative assessments of key stress factors and evaluating alternative cultural practices for sustainable agriculture production. Crop growth models, ecological models, hydrological and water quality models, and radiative transfer models will be coupled with climate models to synthesize an infrastructure to provide a state-of-the-art prediction and assessment tool tailored to the agricultural community and deliver credible products that have spatial and temporal resolution. Remote sensing data and techniques will alos be integrated to extend this system to regional, national, and global scales.
To evaluate response of plants, forests, ecosystems, and animals to UV-B radiation and other climate stress factors through experiments in growth chambers, greenhouses, and fields. We will work with agricultural/forest researchers from universities and research institutes to evaluate the isolated effects of elevated UV-B on agricultural crops, livestock, forest and range resources. Furthermore, we will assess the combined effects of UV-B and other climate stress factors such as moisture (drought), temperature, ozone, soil nutrients and CO₂.
To establish ultraviolet climatology based on the high quality data from the USDA UV-B Monitoring and Research Program to extend our knowledge of spatial distribution and temporal variation of solar ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth surface as well as its role in the changes of the Earth environment.
To collaberate nationally and internationally to develop, improve, and evaluate our knowledge and products.