Methods in Comparative Plant Ecology: A laboratory manual is a sister book to the widely acclaimed Comparative Plant Ecology by Grime, Hodgson and Hunt. It contains details on some 90 critical concise diagnostic techniques by over 40 expert contributors. In one volume it provides an authoritative bench-top guide to diagnostic techniques in experimental plant ecology.

A user-friendly introduction to the methodology of plant population ecology research.

Physiological plant ecology is primarily concerned with the function and performance of plants in their environment. Within this broad focus, attempts are made on one hand to understand the underlying physiological, biochemical and molecular attributes of plants with respect to performance under the constraints imposed by the environment. On the other hand physiological ecology is also concerned with a more synthetic view which attempts to under stand the distribution and success of plants measured in terms of the factors that promote long-term survival and reproduction in the environment. These concerns are not mutually exclusive but rather represent a continuum of research approaches. Osmond et al. (1980) have elegantly pointed this out in a space-time scale showing that the concerns of physiological ecology range from biochemical and organelle-scale events with time constants of a second or minutes to succession and evolutionary-scale events involving communities and ecosystems and thousands, if not millions, of years. The focus of physiological ecology is typically at the single leaf or root system level extending up to the whole plant. The time scale is on the order of minutes to a year. The activities of individual physiological ecologists extend in one direction or the other, but few if any are directly concerned with the whole space-time scale. In their work, however, they must be cognizant both of the underlying mechanisms as well as the consequences to ecological and evolutionary processes.

In the spring of 1969 a small meeting was convened at the CSIRO Riverina Laboratory, Deniliquin, New South Wales, to discuss the biology of the genus Atriplex, a group of plants considered by those who attended to be of profound importance both in relation to range management in the region and as a tool in physiological research. The brief report of this meeting (Jones, 1970) now serves as a marker for the subsequent remarkable increase in research on this genus, and served then to interest the editors of the Ecological Studies Series in the present volume. This was an exciting time in plant physiology, particularly in the areas of ion absorption and photosynthesis, and unknowingly several laboratories were engaged in parallel studies of these processes using the genus Atriplex. It was also a time at which it seemed that numerical methods in plant ecology could be used to delineate significant processes in arid shrubland ecosystems. Nevertheless, to presume to illustrate and integrate plant physiology and ecology using examples from a single genus was to presume much. The deficiencies which became increasingly apparent during the preparation of the present book were responsible for much new research described in these pages.

A review and evaluation of the analysis methods for studying spatial pattern in vegetation.

This textbook covers Plant Ecology from the molecular to the global level. It covers the following areas in unprecedented breadth and depth: - Molecular ecophysiology (stress physiology: light, temperature, oxygen deficiency, drought, salt, heavy metals, xenobiotica and biotic stress factors) - Autecology (whole plant ecology: thermal balance, water, nutrient, carbon relations) - Ecosystem ecology (plants as part of ecosystems, element cycles, biodiversity) - Synecology (development of vegetation in time and space, interactions between vegetation and the abiotic and biotic environment) - Global aspects of plant ecology (global change, global biogeochemical cycles, land use, international conventions, socio-economic interactions) The book is carefully structured and well written: complex issues are elegantly presented and easily understandable. It contains more than 500 photographs and drawings, mostly in colour, illustrating the fascinating subject. The book is primarily aimed at graduate students of biology but will also be of interest to post-graduate students and researchers in botany, geosciences and landscape ecology. Further, it provides a sound basis for those dealing with agriculture, forestry, land use, and landscape management.

Written 30 years ago as the first synthesis of European and Anglo-American methods in vegetation ecology, this text remains as current and topical today as it was a quarter of a century ago, because the progress that has been made in vegetation science is in the computer-based treatment of sample data, not in the creation of new sampling protocols.