Forest ecosystems: Concepts and management. Richard H. Waring and William H. Schlesinger. Academic Press, London, 340pp. ISBN 0-12-735441-7. Price: £21 (Soft Cover)
✍ Scribed by J. Roberts
- Book ID
- 102264542
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1987
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 392 KB
- Volume
- 1
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-6087
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In 1947, the late Alex S. Watt highlighted a dilemma in ecology which persists to the present time. Watt recognized that on the one hand studies can concentrate on a particular plant species or community and assess the effects of factors which influence it (autoecology), but it is quite another problem to investigate the interrelationships of all components of an ecosystem equally in all disciplines. The ultimate ideal which Watt foresaw was a fusion of the detailed, isolated information and that this synthesis would be of particular scientific and practical importance. The contribution made by Watt is still very high valued not only in the U.K. (e.g. Newman, 1982) but also in the U.S. A. and elsewhere (e.g. Boormann and Likens, 1979; Shugart, 1984).
A shortage of solutions to problems that confront us today, e.g. forest dieback and stream acidification and the influence of rising carbon dioxide levels on global climate, serve to illustrate major shortcomings in environmental research. These are, firstly, a lack of knowledge of certain fundamental processes but, secondly, and now it seems more seriously, an uncertainty of the interdependence and interaction of primary processes in terrestrial and aquatic systems at all scales from the plant community level up to the Biosphere.
Clearly, the objective of writing a book on forest ecosystems presents the authors with the same problem that faces researchers into forest ecosystems. In Waring and Schlesingers' book the concept of the ecosystem is fully supported. For the very good reason that the book is principally aimed at students, the first half of the text is devoted to a description of the basic processes that operate in forests. The authors justification is that 'in this book we take the view that there are no emergent properties of ecosystems, such as nutrient conservation, that cannot be predicted from a thorough knowledge of the components of the ecosystem and their interactions'. This view then probably determines the structure of this book in which the first half deals with three main processes of plant life: carbon fixation and respiration, water uptake, and nutrient uptake. Each of these fundamental processes is assigned a chapter which is adjacent to one devoted to the primary processes operating at the ecosystem level. After an Introduction, we find Chapter 2 on the carbon balance of trees is paired with Chapter 3 (Forest Productivity and Succession). Chapter 4 on Tree-Water Relations is followed by Hydrology of Forest Ecosystems.
Three closely-linked chapters then follow on nutrient cycling through forests, nutrient uptake, and decomposition and soil development. At the end of the book the authors look at forests on a broader scale and examine firstly the response of forests to natural disturbance and then the interrelationship of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The last chapter is a fairly short one on forests and global ecology.
The early chapters of the book, while providing a good description of primary processes operating in forests, serve a more general role: a student reading the chapters that detail the primary processes of photosynthesis, respiration, water relationships, and nutrient uptake will have gained a fundamental understanding of these physiological processes. Should the student require a more detailed treatment then texts such as Monteith (1973), Jones (1983), and Nobel (1983) are suitable. A strong point of the review book though is the clear and fairly full treatment it gives to the description of the processes in