The millions of life-forms on the planet are supported by complex biogeochemical cycles and physical transfers of materials and energy. Global change science is an interdisciplinary effort to understand these systems. This new field is also concerned with how one of these life forms, human beings, is altering processes, changing material and energy flows, transforming ecosystems, eliminating and rearranging species, and introducing artificial chemicals and species into the environment. But even when the physical and biological processes are illuminated by science, there is still a need to know how and why human societies create these changes and what we might do about them.

In 1986 the Office for Interdisciplinary Earth Studies (OIES) was formed at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research to stimulate research in global change science and to help scientists, government officials and the international community as they shaped this new field. Under its founding director, John A. Eddy, OIES organized a series of two-week summer workshops held at Snowmass, Colorado. Each of the first three Global Change Institutes addressed some aspect of global change science from an interdisciplinary perspective: greenhouse gases, past climate changes, and earth system modeling. The papers from each of these institutes have been published by OIES.

In 1991, a new and expanded approach to the Global Change Institutes was attempted; global change scientists were joined by social scientists to examine both the human causes and global consequences of altered land-use patterns on the planet.