Agriculture comprises 50% of Earth’s habitable land (~11% crops, 39% pastures/managed ecosystems) and are critical to human health and well-being. Imaging spectroscopy has emerged as an important tool for management in these ecosystems, including characterization of carbon, nutrient, and water dynamics, and as a testbed for unravelling genetic diversity and stress biology in vegetation. Over the next decade, forthcoming spaceborne imaging spectroscopy missions have the potential to enable global scale mapping of natural and stress-induced variation in plant function, such as nutrient and water stress, physiological stress caused by insects or pathogens, or genetic variation. Managed ecosystems afford the opportunity to tease apart drivers of leaf, plant, canopy and ecosystem function that are often challenging in natural ecosystems. This session will highlight the contributions of imaging spectroscopy to understanding functioning of agro-ecosystems in the global biosphere, and as one element of the diversity of functioning of Earth’s vegetation.