Areas of interest Role of the land-surface, terrestrial biosphere and hydrological processes in modulating regional climates, past, present and future. Global vegetation modelling, with a specific emphasis on fire disturbance and vegetation emissions; analysis of plant traits with respect to climate, as a tool for developing improved representations of plant-functional types in global vegetation models; benchmarking of vegetation-model simulations. Reconstruction of past climate and environmental changes at continental to global scales; use of reconstructions in conjunction with climate-model experiments to diagnose the mechanisms of past climate and environmental changes; benchmarking of climate-model simulations.