A SPECIAL YEAR    The North American Mathematical Sciences Institutes listed below announce a special year of emphasis on the Mathematics of Planet Earth in 2013, interpreted as broadly as possible. Earth is a planet with dynamic processes in the mantle, oceans and atmosphere creating climate, causing natural disasters, and influencing fundamental aspects of life and life-supporting systems. In addition to these natural processes, humans have developed systems of great complexity, including economic and financial systems; the World Wide Web; frameworks for resource management, transportation, and energy production and utilization; health care delivery; and social organizations. Human activity has increased to the point where it influences the global climate, impacts the ability of the planet to feed itself and threatens the stability of these systems. Issues such as climate change, sustainability, man-made disasters, control of diseases and epidemics, management of resources, and global integration have come to the fore.

Mathematics plays a key role in these and many other processes affecting Planet Earth, both as a fundamental discipline and as an essential component of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research.