Way Forward

Abstract

The International Society for Tropical Ecology (ISTE) organised the 14th Tropical Ecology Congress (TEC) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in December 2014 on the theme of “Tropical Ecosystems in a Changing World”. During the congress, ecologists from across the world critically evaluated the status of the current research vis-à-vis global change and deliberated on developing a broad road map for future research on tropical ecosystems. The present volume could be considered as a small step forward towards this research agenda in the tropics. Though the rationale behind bringing forth this volume is manifold, the major one is to present the contemporary insights on the impacts of global change factors, especially that of climate change, on tropical forests in India, Nepal and Indonesia and more so in the Himalaya. We hope that important scientific information presented in the book will serve not only as a baseline for finding solutions to a range of policy-related questions—such as what are the impacts of climate change, biological invasion, biodiversity loss and forest degradation on the structural and functional integrity of studied tropical ecosystems—but also help in identifying the knowledge gaps that impinge on the sustainable management of ecosystems in the tropics.