We live in an increasingly fragmented world, with islands of natural habitat cast adrift in a sea of cleared, burned, logged, polluted, and otherwise altered lands. Nowhere are fragmentation and its devastating effects more evident than in the tropical forests. By the year 2000, more than half of these forests will have been cut, causing increased soil erosion, watershed destabilization, climate degradation, and extinction of as many as 600,000 species. Tropical Forest Remnants provides the best information available to help us understand, manage, and conserve the remaining fragments. Covering geographic areas from Southeast Asia and Australia to Madagascar and the New World, this volume summarizes what is known about the ecology, management, restoration, socioeconomics, and conservation of fragmented forests. Thirty-three papers present results of recent research as well as updates from decades-long projects in progress. Two final chapters synthesize the state of research on tropical forest fragmentation and identify key priorities for future work.

Agroforestry -- the practice of integrating trees and other large woody perennials on farms and throughout the agricultural landscape -- is increasingly recognized as a useful and promising strategy that diversifies production for greater social, economic, and environmental benefits. Agroforestry and BiodiversityConservation in Tropical Landscapes brings together 46 scientists and practitioners from 13 countries with decades of field experience in tropical regions to explore how agroforestry practices can help promote biodiversity conservation in human-dominated landscapes, to synthesize the current state of knowledge in the field, and to identify areas where further research is needed. Agroforestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Landscapes is the first comprehensive synthesis of the role of agroforestry systems in conserving biodiversity in tropical landscapes, and contains in-depth review chapters of most agroforestry systems, with examples from many different countries. It is a valuable source of information for scientists, researchers, professors, and students in the fields of conservation biology, resource management, tropical ecology, rural development, agroforestry, and agroecology.

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) has emerged as one of the most promising remote sensing technologies to provide data for research and operational applications in a wide range of disciplines related to management of forest ecosystems. This book provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art review of the research and application of ALS in a broad range of forest-related disciplines, especially forest inventory and forest ecology. However, this book is more than just a collection of individual contributions – it consists of a well-composed blend of chapters dealing with fundamental methodological issues and contributions reviewing and illustrating the use of ALS within various domains of application. The reviews provide a comprehensive and unique overview of recent research and applications that researchers, students and practitioners in forest remote sensing and forest ecosystem assessment should consider as a useful reference text.

This book brings together a wealth of scientific findings andecological knowledge to survey what we have learned about the“Wet Tropics” rainforests of North Queensland,Australia. This interdisciplinary text is the first book to providesuch a holistic view of any tropical forest environment, includingthe social and economic dimensions. The most thorough assessment of a tropical forest landscape todate Explores significant scientific breakthroughs in areasincluding conservation genetics, vegetation modeling, agroforestryand revegetation techniques, biodiversity assessment and modeling,impacts of climate change, and the integration of science innatural resource management Research achieved, in part, due to the Cooperative ResearchCentre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology and Management (theRainforest CRC) Written by a number of distinguished internationalexperts contains chapter summaries and section commentaries

A wide-ranging review of the effects of heterogeneity on individuals, populations, communities and biodiversity.

Based on a field research on the changing montane and temperate rainforests of Mexico and South America. By concentrating on these largely overlooked environments, this work allows for comparative analysis across areas and helps identify how human disturbance has impacted the biodiversity of all forest types.