Forest ecosystems and global climate changes

The coming global climate changes associated first of all with the increase of atmos-phere greenhouse effect may disturb the natural carbon cycle in biosphere and lead to large-scale ecological consequences. Cognition of the mechanisms of environment sus-tainability in changing climate is connected in many respect with studying the biotic regulation of the carbon cycle. Boreal forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle. The book expounds the regional-local prognostic conception as a scientific basis of monitoring of forest ecosystems under global climatic changes. Predictive landscape-ecological scenarios of the nearest future of temperate forests and their paleogeograph-cal analogs as a single system of global changes have been considered for the first time by the example of a large region the Volga River basin.

Autorentext

Erland G. Kolomytz (b. 1936), an alumnus of Moscow State University, a Profes-sor in Geography and Ecology, an Honored Science Worker of the Russian Federa-tion. His sphere of research includes: (1) empirical modeling of ecosystems using discrete mathematical methods; (2) the theory and methods of ecological and geo-graphical prediction.