Abstract

The concepts and concerns regarding the global effects of a continued increase in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have enjoyed a high visibility in newspapers and scientific journals. This concern is now being translated into big-science projects. These international projects aim to understand better the processes of climate and ecosystem changes and impacts and are being designed under the aegis of the World Climate Research Programme and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. Biological and climatic systems are intertwined in processes leading to impacts and feedbacks and so it has emerged that climatologists, atmospheric scientists, terrestrial and marine ecologists must collaborate in research programmes, else the bases of their future projections are incomplete. This special volume of  Advances in Ecological Research brings together eight papers which propose and demonstrate the two major components of current climate change research, future prediction and interdisciplinary approach.