To ensure that the scientific potential of EOS is fully exploited, NASA is sponsoring Interdisciplinary Science (IDS) investigations under the EOS program. More than 70 teams of scientists from various institutions and disciplines are developing technologies and models in anticipation of the launch of Terra. Each team is composed of specialists in different disciplines ranging across the atmospheric, biospheric, and marine sciences. Indeed, important advances in the field of Earth science have already been achieved by IDS investigators so that when Terra launches, many of the IDS Teams will already be prepared to assimilate their first products into models.

The following sections discuss just a few examples of ongoing research by IDS investigators and team members contributing to EOS science.

Geographic distribution of the change from 1982 to 1991 in normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of land areas north of 27.75° N, expressed as the average over the northern active growing season of May through September. The top panel shows NDVI increase in percentage over 10 years, determined by linear regression of year-to-year northern growing season averaged NDVI. The middle panel shows climatological NDVI of the active growing season. The bottom panel shows change in spring temperature (March through May) over a 9-year period during the 1980s (1982 to 1990) determined from the average daily thermometer observations. It can be seen that spring-time warming (bottom panel) over vegetated areas (middle panel) has caused increased plant growth in the northern high latitudes (top panel) during the 1980s (Myneni et al., 1997).10

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