Tropical

A Neotropical Companion is an extraordinarily readable introduction to the American tropics, the lands of Central and South America, their remarkable rainforests and other ecosystems, and the creatures that live there. It is the most comprehensive one-volume guide to the Neotropics available today. Widely praised in its first edition, it remains a book of unparalleled value to tourists, students, and scientists alike. This second edition has been substantially revised and expanded to incorporate the abundance of new scientific information that has been produced since it was first published in 1989. Major additions have been made to every chapter, and new chapters have been added on Neotropical ecosystems, human ecology, and the effects of deforestation. Biodiversity and its preservation are discussed throughout the book, and Neotropical evolution is described in detail. This new edition offers all new drawings and photographs, many of them in color.

As enthusiastic readers of the first edition will attest, this is a charming book. Wearing his learning lightly and writing with ease and humor, John Kricher presents the complexities of tropical ecology as accessible and nonintimidating. Kricher is so thoroughly knowledgeable and the book is so complete in its coverage that general readers and ecotourists will not need any other book to help them identify and understand the plants and animals, from birds to bugs, that they will encounter in their travels to the New World tropics. At the same time, it will fascinate armchair travelers and students who may get no closer to the Neotropics than this engagingly written book.

In 1974-75, Wade Davis and Tim Plowman traveled the length of South America, living among a dozen Indian tribes, collecting medicinal plants and searching for the origins of coca, the sacred leaf of the Andes and the notorious source of cocaine. It was a journey inspired and made possible by their Harvard mentor, Richard Evans Schultes, the most important scientific explorer in South America in this century, whose exploits rival those of Darwin and the great naturalist explorers of the Victorian age. In 1941, after having identified ololiuqui, the long-lost Aztec hallucinogen, and having collected the first specimens of teonanacatl, the sacred mushroom of Mexico, Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard and disappeared into the Northwest Amazon of Colombia. Twelve years later, he returned from South America, having gone places no outsider had ever been, mapping uncharted rivers and living among two dozen Indian tribes. He collected some twenty thousand botanical specimens, including three hundred species new to science, and documented the invaluable knowledge of native shamans. The world's leading authority on plant hallucinogens, Schultes was for his students a living link to a distant time when the tropical rain forests stood immense, inviolable, a mantle of green stretching across entire continents. It was a world greatly changed by the time Davis and Plowman began their journey, nearly thirty years later, and changed further today.

From the world-famous Machu Picchu Incan ruins high in the Andes Mountains, to Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, to the Iquitos area of Amazonian northeastern Peru, travellers want to experience tropical forests and other stunning habitats and catch glimpses of exotic wildlife. In this book is all the information you need to find, identify, and learn about Peru's magnificent animal and plant life.

This introductory textbook examines diminishing terrestrial and aquatic habitats in the tropics, covering a broad range of topics including the fate of the coral reefs; the impact of agriculture, urbanization, and logging on habitat depletion; and the effects of fire on plants and animal survival.

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• Includes case studies and interviews with prominent conservation scientists to help situate key concepts in a real world context
  
• Covers a broad range of topics including: the fate of the coral reefs; the impact of agriculture, urbanization, and logging on habitat depletion; and the effects of fire on plants and animal survival
  
• Highlights conservation successes in the region, and emphasizes the need to integrate social issues, such as human hunger, into a tangible conservation plan
  
• Documents the current state of the field as it looks for ways to predict future outcomes and lessen human impact

“Sodhi et al. have done a masterful job of compiling a great deal of literature from around the tropical realm, and they have laid out the book in a fruitful and straightforward manner…I plan to use it as a reference and as supplemental reading for several courses and I would encourage others to do the same.” Ecology, 90(4), 2009, pp. 1144–1145

With a landmass larger than the continental U.S. west of the Mississippi and the richest diversity of plant and animal species on earth, the Amazon has always struck its explorers and would-be exploiters as infinite and largely impenetrable. For decades, anthropologists assumed that permanent human habitation was impossible–but they were wrong. Recently, proof of centuries-old Amazonian civilizations has been unearthed, shifting perceptions of the inhospitability of the rain forest–and providing a precedent for human occupation. Today, as developers and environmentalists clash over the region’s future, the seemingly endless forest is fast disappearing in fires, rampant mineral extraction, rogue logging operations, and encroaching urban sprawl.

Through a series of startling human encounters–interviews with government ministers and environmental crusaders, millionaire ranchers and disenfranchised slum dwellers–Mark London and Brian Kelly, longtime explorers and trailblazing chroniclers of the Amazon basin, trace the region’s transformation. Logging thousands of miles, London and Kelly take readers from the mushrooming shopping malls of Manaus to the pristine rain forest that still seems beyond the reach of civilization, from the ghostly ruins of abandoned factories and failed plantations to the thriving agribusinesses that one day may feed the entire world and change this landscape forever. Again and again, they collide with the same fundamental question: Is it too late to strike a balance in the Amazon between economic sustenance for the twenty-one million Brazilians who live there and protection for the world’s last great forest?

London and Brian Kelly have fashioned a complex, vibrant portrait of a region on the edge of crisis. At once a seductive journey and a searing account of political, environmental, and social tumult, The Last Forest is a masterpiece of contemporary reporting.

Over one third of the earth's terrestrial surface is situated in the tropics, with environments ranging from hot deserts to tropical rain forests. This introductory textbook, aimed at students studying tropical ecology, provides a comprehensive guide to the major tropical biomes and is unique in its balanced coverage of both aquatic and terrestrial systems. The volume considers the human ecological dimension, covering issues such as population growth, urbanization, agriculture and fisheries, natural resource use, and pollution. It is international in scope and addresses global issues such as conservation of biodiversity, climate change, and the concept of ecological sustainability. The text is supported throughout by boxes containing supplementary material on a range of topics and organisms, mathematical concepts and calculations, and is enlivened with clear line diagrams, maps, and photographs. A cross-referenced glossary, extensive bibliography, and comprehensive index are included as further aids to study.

This new edition of Whitmore's classic introduction to tropical rain forests has been comprehensively revised and updated, reflecting the changes which have taken place since it was first published in 1990. The sections on human impact have been extended to include a new global assessment of deforestation as well as details of new research on biodiversity and conservation. Discussion of the future of the rain forests and priorities for action is incorporated. The book remains unique in linking rain forest biology and ecology with silviculture, and with concerns over sustainable resource utilization and the future of the tropical rain forests. It includes sections on the diverse animal and plant life forms which are found in the rain forest, and the interconnections between them. Nutrient cycles and forest dynamics are fully explained, with new data on ecophysiology and forest microclimates. The geologic and climatic history of rain forests, and the wide-spread canopy disturbances now understood to have occurred in the past, are explored. Accessibly written, and illustrated throughout with line-drawings and photographs, this is a must for biology and geography students, and anyone else who seeks to know more about the nature and importance of the world's tropical rain forests.

(20080701)

The first text in a series of single topic ecology books, Tropical Forests is an ideal text or supplement for introductory biology, ecology, and environmental science courses. It provides students with an accurate, easy to read, and easy to understand account of this important biome that is often covered too briefly in general texts. This guide provides a compact picture of the world's tropical forests with overviews on the meteorological and geological influences on the biology of the ecosystem. It describes many of the interactions of plants and animals of the tropics in an evolutionary context. It's narrative style and clear illustrations and diagrams engage students, and paint a clear picture of the important concepts presented throughout the text.

• summarizes major scientific findings
• presents new computer models that were used to standardize rainforest definitions
• identifies regions previously not widely recognized as rainforest
• provides the latest estimates on rainforest extent and degree of protection
• explores conservation strategies

(20110601)