Abstract

The study of plant ecology - the interactions between plants and between plants and their environment — can be and is undertaken by scientists at numerous spatial and temporal scales. This chapter considers the complexities involved in predicting the response of the global biosphere to climate ch... Show moreThe study of plant ecology - the interactions between plants and between plants and their environment — can be and is undertaken by scientists at numerous spatial and temporal scales. This chapter considers the complexities involved in predicting the response of the global biosphere to climate change. The chapter reviews the three main classes of predictive models, namely, gap models, soil-vegetation-atmosphere-transfer (SVAT) models, and dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). It explains the ways in which both new and established models use the complex-adaptive properties of ecosystems to assist with simplification of predictions in each approach. Recently, a new ‘second generation’ of vegetation models has been developed that combines the global prediction capacity of DGVMs with the ecological process representation of gap models. Ideally, future vegetation models should be able to represent the scope and co-existence of more numerous vegetation types. Show less