Description
Book SynopsisTropical forests represent the world''s most biodiverse ecosystems and play a key role in hydrology, carbon storage and exchange. Many of the human-induced pressures these regions are facing, e.g. fragmentation and deforestation, have been widely reported and well documented. However, there have been surprisingly few efforts to synthesize cutting-edge science in the area of tropical forest interaction with atmospheric change. At a time when our global atmosphere is undergoing a period of rapid change, both in terms of climate and in the cycling of essential elements such as carbon and nitrogen, a thorough and up-to-date analysis is now timely. This research level text, suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in plant ecology, tropical forestry, climate change science, and conservation biology, explores the vigorous contemporary debate as to how rapidly tropical forests may be affected by atmospheric change, and what this may mean for their future.
Trade ReviewYadvinder Malhi and Oliver Phillips have been at the forefront of global change research in the Tropics for decades and are eminently qualified to produce an overview of the current state of reasearch. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Malhi and Phillips have produced a timely summary that will hopefully inspire the next phase of research into tropical forest response to atmospheric change. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
This book is an important first step in this direction, where climate change and human activities are impinging upon tropical forests with serious consequences for biological diversity, the hydrological cycle, carbon storage, the nitrogen cycle, fire frequency and atmospheric composition. Researchers in tropical ecology, tropical forestry, climate research and conservation biology will find this book valuable in an extremely important area of research spanning several disciplines over the next years and beyond. * Compton Tucker, Environmental Conservation 33(4): 364-369 *
...a tight well-edited volume written by leading researchers. Peter Thomas, Bulletin of the British Ecological Society 2006, 37:2
The editors are to be commended for inviting authors whose approaches and conclusions differ, the result is a series of stimulating chapters. BioScience, April 2006
Table of ContentsCONTEMPORARY ATMOSPHERIC CHANGE IN THE TROPICS; ATMOSPHERIC CHANGE AND ECOSYSTEM PROCESSES; OBSERVATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY CHANGE IN TROPICAL FORESTS; THE PAST AND FUTURE OF TROPICAL FORESTS; SYNTHESIS
