This work aims to provide a complete overview of an alpine ecosystem, based on the long-term research conducted at Niwot Ridge, Colorado, USA. The alpine ecosystem features conditions near the limits of biological existence, and is a useful laboratory for asking more general ecological questions. Overall, this is an important and sophisticated effort involving much data collection under sometimes extremely severe conditions for both observers and instruments. Many of the chapters could stand alone as significant contributions in their own disciplines; together they render this one of the most impressive syntheses available of an alpine ecosystem.