Download or read book Tropical Forest Ecosystems in Africa and South America written by Betty Jane Meggers and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postdrifting mesozoic. Africa, the "Odd man out". Floristic relationships between tropical Africa and tropical America. Angiosperm evolution and the relationship of the floras of Africa and America. Palms in the tropical forest ecosystems of Africa and South America. Problems related to the transoceanic transport of insects, especially between the Amazon and Congo Areas. Limnology of the Congo and Amazon Rivers. Ecology of fishes in the Amazon and Congo Basis. Birds of the Congo and Amazon Forests: a comparison. Some problems of cultural adaptation in Amazonia, with emphasis on the Pre-European Period. Recent human activities in the Brazilian Amazon Region and their ecological effects. Temperature zone influence on tropical forest land use: a plea for sanity.
Download or read book Palms written by Dennis Victor Johnson and published by IUCN. This book was released on 1996 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasing demands on the world's natural resources pose a serious threat to palm biodiversity. This action plan identifies the most threatened palm species in order to present recommendations for conservation measures that cater to their specific requirements, and to provide strategic guidelines for the conservation and sustainable utilization of the many palms that provide food, construction material, and an important source of revenue for many people.
Download or read book Foundations of Tropical Forest Biology written by Robin L. Chazdon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-02 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a timely collection of pioneering work in the study of these diverse and fascinating ecosystems. It consists of facsimiles of papers chosen by world experts in tropical biology as the 'classics' in the field.
Download or read book Conservation and management of tropical forests and biological diversity in Zaire written by Jeff Goodson and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Biodiversity and Ecosystem Processes in Tropical Forests written by Gordon H. Orians and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although biologists have directed much attention to estimating the extent and causes of species losses, the consequences for ecosystem functioning have been little studied. This book examines the impact of biodiversity on ecosystem processes in tropical forests - one of the most species-rich and at the same time most endangered ecosystems on earth. It covers the relationships between biodiversity and primary production, secondary production, biogeochemical cycles, soil processes, plant life forms, responses to disturbance, and resistance to invasion. The analyses focus on the key ecological interfaces where the loss of keystone species is most likely to influence the rate and stability of ecosystem processes.
Download or read book Tropical Environments written by Martin Kellman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive introduction to the complex systems of the tropics, covering a broad, cross-regional range of humid through to semi-arid tropical climate zones. Offers a balanced mix of biophysical and human management issues.
Download or read book Agroforestry Realities Possibilities and Potentials written by H.L. Gholz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1987-08-31 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Biogeography and Ecology of Southern Africa written by Marinus J.A. Werger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 1402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southern Africa is certainly not a naturally bounded area so that there are several possibilities for delineating it and concepts about its extent. Wellington* discussed the various possibilities for delineation and suggested that one line stands out more clearly and definitely as a physical boundary than any other, namely the South Equatorial Divide, the watershed between the ZaIre, Cuanza and Rufiji Rivers on the one hand and the Z ambezi, Cunene and Rovuma Rivers on the other. This South Equatorial Divide is indeed a major line of separation for some organisms and is also applicable in a certain geographical sense, though it does not possess the slightest significance for many other groups of organisms, ecosystems or geographical and physical features of Africa. The placing of the northern boundary of southern Africa differs in fact strongly per scientific dis cipline and is also influenced by practical considerations regarding the possibilities of scientific work as subordinate to certain political realities and historically grown traditions. This is illustrated, for example, in such works as the Flora of Southern Africa, where the northern boundary of the area is conceived as the northern and eastern political boundaries of South West Africa, South Africa and Swaziland. Botswana, traditionally included in the area covered by the Flora Zambesiaca, thus forms a large wedge in 'Southern Africa'.
Download or read book The Subsidy from Nature written by Anthony Bennett Anderson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature subsidy; The regional setting; The natural history of babassu; Babassu in the household economy; Babassu in the market economy; Propects for development; Nature subsidy revisited.
Download or read book A Survey of the Lepidoptera Biogeograhy and Ecology of New Caledonia written by J.D. Holloway and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I spent four months in New Caledonia in 1971 with the object of making a quantitative survey of the night-flying macrolepidoptera with light-traps and an assessment of the Rhopalocera and microlepidoptera. This fieldwork was financed by a Government Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Investigations adminis tered by the Royal Society, and by a grant from the Godman Fund. I devoted a further three weeks to sampling on Norfolk I. , and, with the help of local naturalists, Mr. and Mrs. F. JOWETT, was able to produce a detailed account of the biogeography and ecology of the moth fauna (HOLLOWAY, 1977). This book is an account of the results of the New Caledonian work, together with reviews of the geology, phytogeography and general zoogeography pre sented as background for the Lepidoptera fauna and its geography. Previous work on the macroheterocera, primarily papers by VIETTE (1948- 1971), had recorded not many more than a hundred species, a very low total considering the area of the island relative to that of the Fiji group where the moths were being studied by Dr. G. S. ROBINSON when the New Caledonian expedition was at the planning stage. The Fijian fauna then promised consider ably to exceed three hundred species. Evidently many more species awaited discovery in New Caledonia.
Download or read book Case Studies in Human Ecology written by Daniel G. Bates and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume was developed to meet a much noted need for accessible case study material for courses in human ecology, cultural ecology, cultural geography, and other subjects increasingly offered to fulfill renewed student and faculty interest in environmental issues. The case studies, all taken from the journal Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Jouma~ represent a broad cross-section of contemporary research. It is tempting but inaccurate to sug gest that these represent the "Best of Human Ecology." They were selected from among many outstanding possibilities because they worked well with the organization of the book which, in turn, reflects the way in which courses in human ecology are often organized. This book provides a useful sample of case studies in the application of the perspective of human ecology to a wide variety of problems in dif ferent regions of the world. University courses in human ecology typically begin with basic concepts pertaining to energy flow, feeding relations, ma terial cycles, population dynamics, and ecosystem properties, and then take up illustrative case studies of human-environmental interactions. These are usually discussed either along the lines of distinctive strategies of food pro curement (such as foraging or pastoralism) or as adaptations to specific habitat types or biomes (such as the circumpolar regions or arid lands).
Download or read book Sacred Leaves of Candombl written by Robert A. Voeks and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Hubert Herring Book Award, Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies Candomblé, an African religious and healing tradition that spread to Brazil during the slave trade, relies heavily on the use of plants in its spiritual and medicinal practices. When its African adherents were forcibly transplanted to the New World, they faced the challenge not only of maintaining their culture and beliefs in the face of European domination but also of finding plants with similar properties to the ones they had used in Africa. This book traces the origin, diffusion, medicinal use, and meaning of Candomblé's healing pharmacopoeia—the sacred leaves. Robert Voeks examines such topics as the biogeography of Africa and Brazil, the transference—and transformation—of Candomblé as its adherents encountered both native South American belief systems and European Christianity, and the African system of medicinal plant classification that allowed Candomblé to survive and even thrive in the New World. This research casts new light on topics ranging from the creation of African American cultures to tropical rain forest healing floras.
Download or read book Woody Plants Evolution and Distribution Since the Tertiary written by Friedrich Ehrendorfer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paleobotany has enormously expanded the documentation of fossil plant groups, floras and vegetation types, supporting its conclusions by technically much improved analyses of microfossils (pollen) and anatomical details. An increasing quantity and quality of all these informations from the geosciences is available when we follow the history of the biosphere up to the present. Simultaneously, research from the biosciences on the morphology, ecology, distribution, systematics and evolution of extant vascular plants, and on the ecogeographical differentiation of the vegetation cover of our planet, has made enormous progress. Thus, a synthetic geo- and bioscientific approach becomes more and more feasible and urgent for further advances in the many problems of common concern. A symposium organized by the "Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher LEOPOLDINA", attractive to paleo- and neobotanists, stimulated the discussion between specialists of the two disciplines. The main results of the symposium are now presented in this volume: Sixteen international contributions outline the current knowledge about the historical differentiation and evolution of woody plant groups and forests, covering the whole biosphere. This survey, from the beginning of the Tertiary up to the present, is a first systhesis of relevant data from the geo- and biosciences
Download or read book The ecology and management of African wetland vegetation written by Patrick Denny and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in the biology of African 'wetlands' was initiated in the last century with the hypothesis that Lake Tanganyika was once part of a Jurassic sea, and was furthered by Cunnington's expedition at the beginning of this century which proved that it was not. In the late 1920's, ecological studies, encouraged by the growing importance of inland fisheries, were started hy British, French and Belgian biologists. Some twenty years later several government limnological research centres and fishery departments were established in tropical Africa, and scientific progress was accelerated. Scientific collaboration between the regions south of the Sahara was started formally in 1951 by the Scientific Council for Africa and stimulated by the International Biological Programme (1964-74) with its emphasis on biological productivity. Some of its interests were takcn on by SCOPE which recently selected continental wetlands as a Special Project; hence this book. The five authors, with-Patrick Denny as editor, have made a very valuable contribution both to science and to thc management of Africa's natural rcsourccs: thcy have filled a gap in the synthesis of knowledge about Africa's environments which is long overdue. The term 'wetland' is used today in several different contexts. For this purpose, it excludes the seas and large open inland waters. which are too deep for rooted plants, but includes the huge areas of floodplains and dambos which may change seasonally from standing water to very dry lands.
Download or read book Cenozoic Mammals of Africa written by Lars Werdelin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-07-20 with total page 1008 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This impressively comprehensive volume is a long-awaited and worthy successor to the now outdated 1978 classic, Evolution of African Mammals. A must-have reference work for everyone interested in mammalian evolution." David Pilbeam, Harvard University and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology --
Download or read book Biotic Evolution and Environmental Change in Southeast Asia written by David Gower and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authoritative reviews and focused case studies on the history and future of the fauna and flora of Southeast Asia.
Download or read book The Tropical Rain Forest written by Marius Jacobs and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, tropical forests have received more attention and have been the subject of greater environmental concern than any other kind of vegetation. There is an increasing public awareness of the importance of these forests, not only as a diminishing source of countless products used by mankind, nor for their effects on soil stabilization and climate, but as unrivalled sources of what today we call biodiversity. Threats to the continued existence of the forests represent threats to tens of thousands of species of organisms, both plants and animals. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that there have been no major scientific accounts published in recent years since the classic handbook by Paul W. Richards, The Tropical Rain Forest in 1952. Some excellent popular accounts of tropical rain forests have been published including Paul Richard's The Life of the Jungle, and Catherine Caulfield's In the Rainforest and Jungles, edited by Edward Ayensu. There have been numerous, often conflicting, assessments of the rate of conversion of tropical forests to other uses and explanations of the underlying causes, and in 1978 UNESCO/UNEPI FAO published a massive report, The Tropical Rain Forest, which, although full of useful information, is highly selective and does not fully survey the enormous diversity of the forests.
