Trait based ecology is becoming increasingly used to answer questions involving how environmental drivers affect ecosystem processes. The Trait-based framework is particularly suited for these questions since it can integrate individual level dynamics, evolutionary and species sorting processes as well as spatial dynamics. I will present the basic framework and how it can be extended for multiple drivers and traits and the implications thereof. I am going to present recent modeling results from this framework, including how different response processes interact end the implications for total community response and ecosystem processes. These results are put into the context of climate change and how important ecosystem services are affected by it. I will also present validations from field data and the problem of data scarcity for important response traits such as temperature tolerances, nutrient kinetics and predatory defenses.