WCRP).
Led by Professor Yasunari of Nagoya University, Japan, GAME research focused on water and energy cycles of Eurasia. The study area, which included eastern Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau, central China, and Thailand, has diverse meteorological conditions and quite heterogeneous land surface conditions. Intensive field campaigns carried out in these areas from 1996 to 2000 resulted in new insights into hydrological and meteorological processes. In addition, the project collected extensive hydro-meteorological data, which have been published on CD-ROMs and on the Internet (http://www.suiri.tsukuba.ac.jp/Project/aan/aancenter.html) Six international conferences were held to discuss GAME, and a special issue of the Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, published in 2001, summarized the meteorology-related results. The present special issue focuses on the hydrological characteristics of the GAME region. The nine papers in this issue were nominated from those presented at 'The 6th International Study Conference on GEWEX in Asia and GAME', held from the 3 to 5 December 2004, in Kyoto, Japan. These papers present distinctive hydrological characteristics of the GAME region.
In reflecting on the GAME project, we gratefully acknowledge the many organizations and individuals who helped to carry out GAME research. We also thank