Forests and Global Change

David A. Coomes is a forest ecologist and conservation biologist working with the forest ecology and conservation group at the University of Cambridge. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Ecology and Biological Reviews and has authored more than 90 papers, including many from his group's work in New Zealand. David F. R. P. Burslem is a tropical forest ecologist at the University of Aberdeen. He has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Ecology, and is a member of the editorial boards of Plant Ecology and Diversity and the Ecological Reviews series. He was an editor of the Ecological Reviews volume Biotic Interactions in the Tropics (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and has authored more than 80 papers on the ecology and conservation of tropical forests. William D. Simonson is a forest ecologist specialising in Mediterranean systems. He has extensive practical experience, working in the UK and overseas, for governmental as well as non-governmental conservation organisations. As a trained editor, he has worked on a range of scientific and educational publications for Cambridge-based publishers.

'Forests and Global Change provides a balanced suite of methodical approaches: long-term plots, a variety of models, phylogenetics and remote sensing … readers not only gain a better understanding of how forests function, but also how that understanding can be used to help conserve them.' Audrey Barker Plotkin, Ecology

• Preface; 1. Forests and global change: an overview William D. Simonson, David A. Coomes and David F. R. P. Burslem; Part I. Forest Dynamics and Global Change: 2. Forests and the climate system John Grace; 3. Global change and Mediterranean forests: current impacts and potential responses Fernando Valladares, Raquel Benavides, Sonia G. Rabasa, Juli G. Pausas, Susana Paula, William D. Simonson and Mario Díaz; 4. Recent changes in tropical forest biomass and dynamics Oliver L. Phillips and Simon L. Lewis; 5. Disequilibrium and transient dynamics: disentangling responses to climate change versus broader anthropogenic impacts on temperate forests of eastern North America Charles D. Canham; Part II. Species Traits and Responses to Changing Resource Availability: 6. Floristic shifts versus critical transitions in Amazonian forest systems Jérôme Chave; 7. Traits, states and rates: understanding coexistence in forests Drew W. Purves and Mark C. Vanderwel; 8. The functional role of biodiversity in the context of global change Michael Scherer-Lorenzen; 9. Exploring evolutionarily meaningful vegetation definitions in the tropics: a community phylogenetic approach Ary T. Oliveira-Filho, R. Toby Pennington, Jay Rotella and Matt Lavin; 10. Drought as a driver of tropical tree species regeneration dynamics and distribution patterns Liza S. Comita and Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht; 11. Tree performance across gradients of soil resource availability Richard K. Kobe, Thomas W. Baribault and Ellen K. Holste; Part III. Detecting and Modelling Global Change: 12. A chemical-evolutionary basis for remote sensing of tropical forest diversity Gregory P. Asner; 13. Forests in a greenhouse atmosphere: predicting the unpredictable? Harald Bugmann; 14. Detecting and projecting changes in forest biomass from plot data Helene C. Muller-Landau, Matteo Detto, Ryan A. Chisholm, Stephen P. Hubbell and Richard Condit; 15. Analysis of anthropogenic impacts on forest diversity as a contribution to empirical theory Adrian C. Newton and Christian Echeverría; Index.