Changing climate, land use change, and invasive species will cause significant impacts to ecosystem structure and function. In order to prepare for these changes, society needs ecological analyses and forecasts at national, regional, and global scales. A wide range of biotic and physical processes link the biosphere to the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. Despite this link, our understanding of the biosphere does not match our increasingly sophisticated understanding of Earth’s physical and chemical dynamics at regional, continental, and global scales. Because many Earth-system processes occur at large scales, they cannot be investigated with disconnected studies on individual sites or over short periods of observation. This session aims to explore continental scale questions in ecology including the impact of connectivity (local patterns and processes affecting broad-scale ecological dynamics) on the global environment, ecosystem-level causes and consequences of invasive species and infectious diseases, ecological consequences of local land use changes at regional and continental scales, and climate change affects on ecosystem processes and biodiversity. The session will encompass a broad range of topics from micro-organisms to ecosystems and from the post-glacial past to the future under climate change. This session aims to demonstrate a wide range of continental scale studies in ecology in both North America and Australia and to illustrate how new observatory systems (e.g. NEON and TERN) will contribute to long-term regional studies in ecology.