Tropical Rain Forest Ecology, Diversity, and Conservation

by Ghazoul, Jaboury; Sheil, Douglas

• ISBN13: 9780199285884
• ISBN10: 0199285888
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-07-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Tropical Rain Forest Ecology, Diversity, and Conservation introduces and explores what rain forests are, how they arose, what they contain, how they function, and how humans use and impact them. It explores biodiversity conservation as well as livelihood security for the many communities that are dependent on rain forests - inextricable issues that represent urgent priorities for scientists, conservationists, and policy makers.

Author Biography

Jaboury Ghazoul's first encounter with tropical rain forests in 1993 was a prolonged one, spending one year living rough in the forests of Vietnam where his scientific subjects were disturbingly close. It was during this year that he learnt to distinguish the sound of a chainsaw from the call of a cicada. Imbued with such knowledge and confidence, he began to study the reproductive ecology of plants in the context of land use change, working in Thailand and Costa Rica, employed by the Center for International Forestry Research and the Natural History Museum, London. Since joining Imperial College London in 1998, and ETH Zurich from 2005, he has expanded his research interests to encompass a variety of issues relating to tropical plant ecology, genetics and conservation. He generally selects nice places to work, and is thus currently engaged in research in India, Malaysia and the Seychelles.
Douglas Sheil spent the first three years of his life in Nigeria. He returned to the tropics several times as a Natural Sciences student in Cambridge, before gaining a Masters Degree in Forestry and its relation to Land use from Oxford in 1989. He worked in East Africa for two years before returning to Oxford to complete his doctorate examining long-term dynamics of Ugandan rainforests in 1996. From 1998 to 2008 he worked for the Center for International Forest Research in Indonesia - where he was for a time the only staff ecologist. His work has taken him to all the main rain forest regions of the World. He is now director of the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC), a field station under the Mbarara University of Science and Technology, located in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, in South West Uganda - a site famed for its mountain gorillas. His publications have covered a wide range of tropical forest topics. Current research includes ecology, conservation and human needs.

Table of Contents

Tropical Rain Forests: Myths and Inspirations

The Natural Heritage

An Exuberance of Plant Life

The Great Unseen: Fungi and Microorganisms

More than Monkeys: the Vertebrates

The Little Things: Invertebrates

Origins, Patterns, and Processes

From the Beginning: Origins and Transformation

Many Rain Forests: Formations and Ecotones

So Many Species, so Many Theories

Processes and Cycles

Plant Form and Function: What it Takes to Survive

The Ever Changing Forest: Disturbance and Dynamics

The Bloomin' Rainforests: How Flowering Plants Reproduce

Nature's Society: Life's Interactions

Our Future Legacy

Forests in the Anthropocene

People of the Forest: Livelihoods and Welfare

Biodiversity in a Changing World

A Matter for Scientists and Society: Conserving Forested Landscapes

Requiem or Revival

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.