THE EARTH SYSTEM EVOLUTION PROGRAM OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH

The Earth today is very different from that of four billion years ago; it has evolved physically, chemically, and biochemically. It is the goal of the Earth System Evolution Program (ESEP) of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research to understand the interactions among the complementary parts of the Earth system to eventually identify the underlying processes responsible for the Earth's major evolutionary steps.

The geological record of change spans the entire history of our planet and involves many processes that operate, or have operated, on widely different scales of space and time. The ESEP was launched in 1992 and follows an integrated approach to study the evolution of the Earth in which geochemistry and geodynamics are blended in an innovative fashion that has not previously been attempted.

Throughout the world there are many groups of scientists working on issues of global change, but most such programs are focused on phenomena of relatively short time scale, mainly involving atmosphere - hydrosphere interactions over the past few hundred to few thousand years.

The ESEP differs in its aim in that it is directed principally toward phenomena that operate on both short and long time scales, involving all parts of the Earth system. Its emphasis is therefore not only on the study of our planet's response to recent changes but on the Earth's system behavior over the last 4.5 billion years as documented in the geological record.

Abstract Co-Authored by the ESEP–CIAR Members