Tropical Rainforest Responses to Climatic Change

✍ Scribed by R. J. Morley (auth.), Mark Bush, John Flenley, William Gosling (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 489
• Series: Springer Praxis Books - Environmental Sciences
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This updated and expanded second edition of a much lauded work provides a current overview of the impacts of climate change on tropical forests. The authors also investigate past, present and future climatic influences on the ecosystems with the highest biodiversity on the planet.

Tropical Rainforest Responses to Climatic Change, Second Edition, looks at how tropical rain forest ecology is altered by climate change, rather than simply seeing how plant communities were altered. Shifting the emphasis on to ecological processes, e.g. how diversity is structured by climate and the subsequent impact on tropical forest ecology, provides the reader with a more comprehensive coverage. A major theme of the book is the interaction between humans, climate and forest ecology. The authors, all foremost experts in their fields, explore the long term occupation of tropical systems, the influence of fire and the future climatic effects of deforestation, together with anthropogenic emissions. Incorporating modelling of past and future systems paves the way for a discussion of conservation from a climatic perspective, rather than the usual plea to stop logging. This second edition provides an updated text in this rapidly evolving field. The existing chapters are revised and updated and two entirely new chapters deal with Central America and the effect of fire on wet forest systems. In the first new chapter, the paleoclimate and ecological record from Central America (Lozano, Correa, Bush) is discussed, while the other deals with the impact of fire on tropical ecosystems. It is hoped that Jonathon Overpeck, who has been centrally involved in the 2007 and 2010 IPCC reports, will provide a Foreword to the book.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xxxiv
Cretaceous and Tertiary climate change and the past distribution of megathermal rainforests....Pages 1-34
Andean montane forests and climate change....Pages 35-60
Climate and vegetation change in the lowlands of the Amazon Basin....Pages 61-84
The Quaternary history of Far Eastern rainforests....Pages 85-123
Rainforest responses to past climatic changes in tropical Africa....Pages 125-184
Prehistoric human occupation and impacts on Neotropical forest landscapes during the Late Pleistocene and Early/Middle Holocene....Pages 185-212
The past, present, and future importance of fire in tropical rainforests....Pages 213-240
Ultraviolet insolation and the tropical rainforest: Altitudinal variations, Quaternary and recent change, extinctions, and the evolution of biodiversity....Pages 241-258
Climate change in the Amazon Basin: Tipping points, changes in extremes, and impacts on natural and human systems....Pages 259-283
Plant species diversity in Amazonian forests....Pages 285-314
Biogeochemical cycling in tropical forests....Pages 315-341
The response of South American tropical forests to recent atmospheric changes....Pages 343-358
Ecophysiological response of lowland tropical plants to Pleistocene climate....Pages 359-380
Tropical environmental dynamics: A modeling perspective....Pages 381-409
Modeling future effects of climate change on tropical forests....Pages 411-429
Conservation, climate change, and tropical forests....Pages 431-443
Back Matter....Pages 445-454

✦ Subjects

Climate Change; Geoecology/Natural Processes; Meteorology/Climatology