Abstract. The goal of the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) is to improve our understanding of the interactions between the boreal forest biome and the atmosphere in order to clarify their roles in global change. This overview paper describes the science background and motivations for BOREAS and the experimental design and operations of the BOREAS 1994 and BOREAS 1996 field years. The findings of the 83 papers in this journal special issue are reviewed. In section 7, important scientific results of the project to date are summarized and future research directions are identified. IntroductionPersuasive arguments indicate that there will be global warming resulting from the continuing increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration [Houghton et al., 1995; Hasselmann, 1997].However, there are uncertainties about the magnitude and regional patterns of projected global change because of shortcomings in the atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) used for climate simulation. There is a real need to improve (1) our understanding of basic climatic physical and dynamic processes so that we can enhance the realism and accuracy of AGCMs and (2) our ability to quantify global-scale climate variables and parameters to better initialize and vali- The exchanges of energy, water, and carbon between the atmosphere and the continents represent the lower boundary condition for the atmospheric physical climate system and the climatic forcing to terrestrial biota and biogeochemical cycles.• •øCanada Center for Remote Sensing, Ottawa.• •Atmospheric Sciences Resource Center, Albany, New York.•2University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.•3University of Wisconsin, Madison.•4Forestry Canada, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.•5Atmospheric Environment Service, Downsview, Ontario, Canada.•'NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

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Abstract. Large integrated and interdisciplinary field studies, such as the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS), are conducted to refine our understanding of the interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere. Viewed as a case study, the BOREAS research objectives and final data set exemplify the complex nature and requirements of earth systems science research. The management and data system activities required to execute the study also echo this complexity. Rather than several research teams providing the needed management and data support, BOREAS management used a dedicated project staff to handle these functions. As the study progressed, the project staff transitioned from support of logistics and study management to information system operation and data publication, drawing upon the background knowledge gained from the earlier stages of the project. Data publication involves the creation and distribution of quality-checked and documented data with all ancillary information required to make it useful to someone unfamiliar with the study. We assert that the success of large integrated and interdisciplinary field studies depends upon having a dedicated staff. This staff focuses on the overall goals of the study throughout all phases of the effort: contributing to project planning, logistics, management, and data collection efforts; distributing, quality checking, and integrating the diverse data sets; working with the science teams to develop standardized data set documentation; integrating the diverse data and documentation for archiving; and publishing the data for long-term use by the larger scientific community. In this paper, the different phases of BOREAS are discussed, and the contributions that the dedicated staff made are examined. The value of spending resources on a centralized staff for project support and data publication activities is also examined. IntroductionEarth systems science (ESS) attempts to understand the complex interactions of Earth's climate using data from a wide variety of science disciplines. Field studies are an important element of ESS: They help to develop an understanding of important processes and provide a baseline data set for future climate studies of specific regions. Managing a large field study requires a great deal of planning and organization, and the large amount of collected data must also be handled and archived for ongoing and future analyses.The , 1995, 1997a] is a useful case study that illustrates the problems and challenges of a large interdisciplinary field study. In order to create a complete data set that characterizes the ecosystem-atmosphere interactions studied in BOREAS and to preserve this data set for future interdisciplinary modeling and analysis work, resources needed to be allocated for the central storage and integration of the data. The BOREAS Information System (BORIS) integrated and documented the BOREAS data, completing its task with the release of 266 fully documented data sets to an on-line archive and a large subset of th...

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