Study of ecosystems in the context of global change

Global change research requires not only knowledge of how individual species (e.g. pests) respond to climate and land-use change, but also an understanding of the responses of whole systems to their multiple and interacting drivers. An upscaling from single systems to landscapes and continents is an additional essential component of global change research. In contrast to the well-established research methodology in the ecophysiology of species (see Pearcy et al., 1989), the approaches to studying ecosystems as a whole, and the theory required to identify key parameters that drive the multiple interactions at the ecosystem level, are less developed (see Schulze, 1995a).