关键词: 美国全球变化研究计划, 全球变化, 土地覆被

Abstract: According to United States Global Change Research Program prepared by the subcommittee on Global Change Research of the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources Research, this paper simply introducs the goal, content and plan of land cover study in U.S. The USGCRP has advanced our understanding of the key global environmental science issues on the land cover changes. To understand the land cover changes in the terrestrial ecosystem, the goal of USGCRP is to understand, predict, assess and respond to the causes and consequences of the land cover changes in terrestrial ecosystem resulting from human induced and natural influences, and to provide a stronger scientific basis for the development of environment and resources. The USGCRP supports research projects to inventory the current land cover of the Earth and to document the changes; to improve understanding of the dynamics of land cover change; and to document and understand chemical, physical, and biological processes in the terrestrial and their relationship with Carbon Cycle. For land cover research of next ten years, USGCRP will face with some new challenges, such as estimation of time and space of changes in climate and land cover, region analyses of driving force of environment and social economy influence on land cover changes, comprehensive evaluation for changes in climate, land cover, social economy. Because of U. S. leading position on this field, this paper implies basically the international new tendency on land cover change study.

Key words: Global Change, Land cover, U.S.Global Change Research Program