The GPRC was established in 1993 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. It became one of the six regional centers of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change (NIGEC). The overall vision of NIGEC may be stated as the performance of (academic) research on the (regional) interactions between ecosystems and climate in support of the climate change program of the U.S. Department of Energy. This vision led to the development of a series of priority research goals that guided the areas to which NIGEC support was directed, the most enduring of which was the measurement of the exchanges of carbon and energy between the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems and the use of those observations to evaluate climate and carbon cycle models. Other goals that have been identified as relevant over the years include atmospheric radiation and aerosols, modeling of the response of regional ecosystems to climate change, and integrated assessment of the impacts of environmental and ecological changes. In order to better integrate environmental research programs, the DOE decided to terminate funding for NIGEC in 2007. As mentioned above, the GPRC is a UNL Center approved by the Regents of the University of Nebraska and continues its operation with an updated focus, outlined in the previous section.

The GPRC was initially led by Dr. William Easterling as Director and Dr. Blaine Blad as Associate Director. In 1997, Dr. Shashi Verma became the GPRC Director after Dr. Easterling left the University of Nebraska. In July 2001, Dr. Blad retired.