"The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Environmental Research Laboratory - Corvallis, Oregon (ERL-C), established an Interagency Agreement with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) in September 1990. This agreement began a five year cooperative effort to develop a geographic database for modeling terrestrial climatebiosphere interactions in support of EPA's Global Climate Research Program. Although performing specific tasks under contract to the US EPA, NGDC independently operates a Global Change Database Program (GCDP) as part of its NOAA mission Considerable synergism therefore exists between the tasks performed for the JPA under the "Global Ecosystems Database Project, '' and other activities supporting NOAA Climate and Global Change Program"--Preface

This major new book presents a collection of essays by leading authorities who address the current state of knowledge. The chapters bring together the early results of an international scientific research program designed to address what will happen to our ability to produce food and fiber, and what effects there will be on biological diversity under rapid environmental change. This book addresses how these changes to terrestrial ecosystems will feed back to further environmental change. International in scope, this state-of-the-art assessment will interest policymakers, students and scientists interested in global change, climate change and biodiversity. Special features include descriptions of a dynamic global vegetation model, developing generic crop models and a special section on the emerging discipline of global ecology.

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact.

The research presented here provides a sound scientific basis for management and policy decisions regarding the productivity and sustainability of forest ecosystems in the context of a rapidly changing global environment. It is the synthesis of 5 years of field and laboratory research on southern forests conducted by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service to provide scientific assessments to the US Global Change Research Program, and, as such, is invaluable for policy makers and land use managers.