Global change and the challenges for agriculture and forestry

A key need of the global change research community is to be able to synthesize the data collected by scientists from a wide range of disciplines and use it to make predictions about our future environment. In an agricultural and forestry context, this will allow predictions of yields under elevated atmospheric CO 2 levels and/or changed climate using data from studies of both the direct effects of global change on plant growth and physiology and indirect effects on soil fertility, water resources, pests and diseases. A conference held at the University of Reading, UK in September 1999, and organized under the auspices of Focus 3 (Global Change Impact on Agriculture, Forestry and Soils; http://mwnta.nmw.ac.uk/GCTEFocus3 ) of the IGBP Core Project “Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems” addressed many of these issues.