An important component in understanding and predicting climate change is understanding how carbon, energy, and water are exchanged between the atmosphere and the terrestrial biosphere. ISLSCP was established in 1983 under the United Nation's Environmental Programme to promote the use of satellite data for the global land-surface data sets needed for climate studies. Since then, ISLSCP has played a key role in addressing land-surface processes, developing climate models, experiment design and implementation, and data set development.
Climate models require worldwide information about terrestrial changes that are responsible for interactions between the atmosphere and land-surfaces. It is the goal of all activities within ISLSCP to assess these changes in terms of the physical and biological quantities, which can be related to the exchange of energy and water between the surface and atmosphere.
Since 1983, a series of analyses and field experiments have been conducted to collect and validate satellite data for land-surface models. The First ISLSCP Field Experiment (FIFE) was conducted over the period of 1987-1989 on the Konza Prairie in Kansas. The purpose of FIFE was to provide satellite-derived data on land-surface states such as biomass, cover type, and temperature; and land-surface processes such as transpiration and photosynthesis. The work of FIFE is being continued and extended in the Boreal Ecosystems-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS), which is currently underway in Canada.