This book is dedicated to Zoltán Tuba. Its origin was a symposium entitled Ecological Responses of Bryophytes to Changing Climate. It was presented at the American Bryological and Lichenological Society (ABLS) meeting with the Botanical Society of America (BSA) in Chico, California, in 2006. Nancy Slack, then president of ABLS, and Zoltán Tuba of Gödöllő University, Hungary, organized the symposium, which included speakers from many different countries. An editor at Cambridge University Press (England) saw the program on the Internet and asked the organizers to write a book on this subject. All the symposium speakers agreed to contribute chapters; subsequently, others doing important work in this field were asked to join them. Zoltán Tuba worked on the book with Nancy Slack from 2006 until shortly before his untimely death at 58 in July 2009. In the fall of 2009 Lloyd R. Stark, an active researcher in this field and co-author of two of the chapters, agreed to work with Nancy Slack to finish the book. Zoltán was a major contributor to research in ecophysiology of bryophytes in relation to climate change, as well as in other fields. He will be greatly missed as a scientist as well as a friend and co-worker.

A number of people have written to the present editors about Zoltán. In addition, part of an obituary by Zoltán's mentor, Professor Gábor Fekete: In Memoriam Zoltán Tuba (1951–2009), in Acta Botanica Hungarica vol. 52/1–2 (2010), is quoted here: