This Special Issue of Water, Air and Soil Pollution offers contributions from the th 18 IUFRO workshop on Air Pollution Stress, Forest Responses to the Pollution st Climate of the 21 Century held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from September 21 to 23,1998. The meeting was held under the auspices of IUFRO, Research Group 7.04.00 chaired by Dr Kevin Percy of Canada. A new session structure was adopted to stimulate activity within the six working parties and a brief resume of these is presented at the front of this volume. The two, one-day plenary sessions were devoted to the two important air pollution issues, nitrogen deposition and ozone. Invited papers were augmented by a large and excellent contribution of poster papers. The final day comprised parallel Working Party Sessions with pre arranged speakers to stimulate discussions. One hundred and thirty one scientists attended, representing 20 countries and 7 IUFRO regions: Northern Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Mediterranean, North America, Asia and the Western Pacific. Lucy Sheppard David Fowler Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 116: 1, 1999.

Plant leaves are covered by a thin, lipoidal, non-living membrane called the cuticle. Forming the interface between plants and the atmospheric environment, it presents an effective barrier to pollutant entry.
The book provides a comprehensive review of air pollutant effects on the cuticle and covers the following thematic areas: - Cuticular physicochemical characteristics, physiological, regulatory, and protective roles. - Effects, mechanisms, and consequences of air pollutant interaction with leaf cuticles. - Non-anthropogenic and environmental influences on the cuticle and potential of the cuticle for biomonitoring and critical levels mapping. - New developments in experimental methodology and analytical techniques.