Preface

Long-term shifts in weather patterns are referred to as climate change. Natural shifts have always occurred, but during the last two centuries human activities have become a major driver of climate change.

We tend to equate climate change with rising temperature; however, its increase is only one part of the story because the planet is an interconnected system in which a change in one area affects all others. It is clear that climate change includes changes in water availability (scarcity and excess), melting ice and rising sea levels, extreme weather events, losses in biodiversity, and so on. Climate change can affect every aspect of our lives such as health, food availability, security, employment, and so on.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the current alterations are evolving at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years and "since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact."

Climate change has a perilous impact on natural ecosystems and agricultural production, threatening lives and livelihoods. Increases in global temperatures are accompanied by other abiotic stresses such as drought, flooding, and changes in soil nutrient composition that reduce crop yields. Extreme weather events are already more intense across the globe, placing additional pressure on our production systems.

Abiotic stresses tend to occur in combination rather than individually and the plant responses (physiological, metabolic, and molecular) to the combination of stresses are significantly different than those to individual stresses. Faced with the challenges of climate change, biological studies strive to decipher how plants perceive different stressors, how the signals are transduced within plants, what are the response pathways elicited by them, and how are they genetically determined.

As climate change has already introduced alterations that are irreversible, we still have to devise strategies to mitigate their impacts on our crops and food supply and protect our production systems. Thus, this book provides a comprehensive overview of stress biology to increase understanding of its factors and influences and how to mitigate it.

> **Manuel Oliveira and Anabela Fernandes-Silva** Department of Agronomy, Universidade Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), Vila Real, Portugal

Section 1

Climatic Stressors and

Their Effect on Plants

**1**

Section 1
