High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, or NCED, is an NSF Science and Technology Center- a collaborative partnership among educational, research, and public/private entities that aims to create new knowledge of significant benefit to society. Its mission is to understand the dynamics of the coupled processes that shape the Earth’s surface—physical, biological, geochemical, and anthropogenic—and how they will respond to climate, land use, and management change. NCED is headquartered at the University of Minnesota`s Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory.