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Résumé :
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A conference, entitled "Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: synthesis and perspectives", was held in Paris, France, on 6-9 December 2000 under the auspices of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme-Global Change and Terrestrial Eco- Systems and DIVERSITAS, international programmes that foster communication among scientists involved in global change and biodiversity research. The conference was designed to facilitate synthesis of nearly a decade of observation, theory, and experiment in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research. Its goals were to identify central principles, certainties, uncertainties, future directions, and policy implications in this area. This volume provides the first comprehensive and balanced coverage of recent empirical and theoretical research on this question. It reviews the evidence, provides bases for the resolution of the debate that has divided scientists on these issues, and offers perspectives on how current knowledge can be extended to other ecosystems, other organisms and other spatial and temporal scales. It cuts accross the traditional division between community ecology and ecosystem ecology, and announces a new ecological synthesis in which the dynamics of biological diversity and -the biogeochemical functioning of the Earth system are merged.
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