National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

Initiative 15 of the NCGIA focuses on the role of GIS in global change research. Global change research links disciplines with vastly different terminologies and conceptualizations creates enormous problems, many of which are intimately associated with the issues of geographic data modeling. As a technology of geographic data, GIS is potentially the key to data integration and the successful handling of the heterogeneous databases that global change research requires.

The second specialist meeting of Initiative 15 was devoted to a discussion of advanced geographic data models for global change research. The second specialist meeting was held on Thursday, January 25 through Friday, January 26, 1996, in the El Dorado Hotel in Santa Fe. This report presents the results of that meeting; a list of the participants appears as Appendix I.