Boreal regions are, besides tundra, the globe's only circumpolar terrestrial biome, covering approximately 1.3 9 109 ha in upland forest and 0.26.109 ha in peatland (Olson et al., 1983;Apps et al., 1993). They comprise 20% of the world's forested regions (Olson et al., 1983), second only to moist tropical forests. Although the cold climate and short growing season causes low net primary productivity, decomposition is also slow. Consequently, boreal forests represent a sizeable amount of the global carbon pool (709 Pg) and, unlike most other biomes, are a net sink of 0.7 Pg of carbon annually (Apps et al., 1993). The vegetation is largely coniferous following early successional phases of shade-intolerant, deciduous species. This is a biome of low diversity and low redundancy. While species richness is low in these forests, each species is functionally distinct and so any change in vegetation diversity has immediate consequences at ecosystem, landscape, and global scales (Pastor and Mladenoff, 1992). Populations of plants and animals are noted for extreme fluctuations and even chaotic behavior (Hanski et al., I995). The major management of these regions, to the extent that they are managed at all, is for forest products. However, there are large expanses in essentially pristine conditions and, along with tundra to the north, boreal regions are among the last large expanses of wilderness left on the globe.
Boreal regions have posed fascinating ecological and climatological problems, beginning with the seminal paper by Raup (1941) on the origins of the boreal flora after deglaciation and continuing with the classic paper by Bryson (1966) on the relation of the vegetation of boreal regions to synoptic weather patterns. Because of their large stock of carbon and the likelihood that the greatest changes in global climate during the next century will occur in high latitudes, boreal regions have been receiving increased attention from a variety of disciplines, including atmospheric chemistry and physics, climate systems, ecosystems ecology, and remote sensing.
Boreal Forests and Global Change is a collection of 49 papers on boreal forests addressing various aspects of these problems, presented at the International Boreal Forest Research Association Conference held at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1994. The papers have been previously peer-reviewed and were published in Nos. 1 and 2 of Vol. 82 of Water, Air, and Soil Pollution. This is an excellent collection of