Referring to Allan Watt, who himself referred to Pam Berry’s conclusion (Session 1) that: “The strategic research challenge is to devise means of integrating drivers of change, other than climate, into models so that integrated, holistic views of the future of species, ecosystems and landscapes can be provided to inform planning and policy.”, let me just add that this is right at the heart of the objectives of the Integrated Project ALARM (www.alarmproject.net) which has now been running for about one and a half years and will end in January 2009.

A major challenge is to establish working relationships between hitherto mostly unrelated scientific communities. As soon as a common wavelength has been found, the fun/work starts - and that's where we are at this very moment. One aspect of this productive interaction you could already witness in the discussion between Martin Sykes and Miguel Araujo, who are both members of the ALARM team and work within the same module...

I'm optimistic to see more of these productive interactions within ALARM as well as with the outside community. Anyone who is interested in being associated to the ALARM project, for exchange of information and probably joint activities, please get in touch with me - it might well help to adequately tackle the problem of multiple pressures.

Josef Settele
UFZ Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig-Halle, Germany