The Mission of our facility is to provide a stimulating environment and exceptional resources for the development of innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges, and for the training of a new generation of transdisciplinary earth system scientists. Our scientific goal is to develop and operationally apply innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to better understand, map and model the multiscale dynamics of landcover and landuse patterns and processes. This requires integrating multidisciplinary components from Geographic Information Science, Geocomputing, Landscape Ecology, Remote Sensing, Computer Vision and Resource Management.