Lugano aftermath and contemporary advances in Ecological Modelling

This paper contains an editorial to the special issue of Ecological Modelling devoted to the relevant materials presented at the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (IEMSs) 2002 meeting in Lugano, Switzerland. Fifteen papers were selected for publication after rigorous peer review. Thus, this special issue consists of a set of high quality articles and reflects the contemporary advance of current research in Ecological Modelling. The work presented here relates to both aquatic and terrestrial ecology, as well as theoretical ecological analysis. In addition, one of the papers is devoted to specific case studies of industrial ecology. Analysis of indirect effects is a recurrent issue of a number of papers presented here. A couple of papers are devoted to the investigations of indirect effects specifically. However, examples of how Ecological Modelling has been helpful for eliciting indirect interactions could be found in other papers presented here as well.