This book takes a multi-disciplinary and critical look at what has changed over the last ten years in one of the world's most important and dynamic ecosystems, the Amazon floodplain or várzea. It also looks forward, assessing the trends that will determine the fate of environments and people of the várzea over the next ten years and providing crucial information that is needed to formulate strategies for confronting these looming realities.

This book takes a multi-disciplinary and critical look at what has changed over the last ten years in one of the world's most important and dynamic ecosystems, the Amazon floodplain or várzea. It also looks forward, assessing the trends that will determine the fate of environments and people of the várzea over the next ten years and providing crucial information that is needed to formulate strategies for confronting these looming realities.

The Amazon Basin contains the largest and most diverse tropical rainforest in the world. Besides the Andes and the Atlantic Ocean, the rainforest is bounded to the north by the Guiana crystalline shield and to the south by the Brazilian crystalline shield, marked at their edges by cataracts in the rivers and often dominated by grasslands. This book is motivated not just by the Amazon's scientific interest but also by its role in many ecosystem functions critical to life on Earth. These ecosystems are characterized both by their complexity and their interactive, higher-order linkages among both abiotic and biotic components. Within Amazonia, the Western Amazon (west of 65° latitude) is the most pristine and, perhaps, the most complex within the Amazon Basin. This Western Amazon may be broadly divided into non-flooded forests (e.g. terra firme, white sand, palm) and forests flooded with white water (generally referred to as várzea) and with black water (generally referred to as igapó). Here, for the first time, is a book devoted entirely to Western Amazonia, containing chapters by scientists at the forefront of their own areas of expertise. It should be a valuable resource for all future researchers and scholars who venture into Western Amazonia, as it continues to be one of the most beautiful, mysterious, remote and important ecosystems on Earth.

Fish and Fisheries. Forest and Forestry. Conservation. Soils and River Dynamics. Land Resource Management. The Case of the Vanishing Stingless Bee.

“In his long career of exploration and scholarship, Hemming has become a powerful advocate for the Amazon.”—The New York Times, John Hemming Amazonia is one of the most magnificent habitats on earth. Containing the world’s largest river, with more water and a broader basin than any other, it hosts a great expanse of tropical rain forest, home to the planet’s most luxuriant biological diversity. The human beings who settled in the region 10,000 years ago learned to live well with its bounty of fish, game, and vegetation. It was not until 1500 that Europeans first saw the Amazon, and, unsurprisingly, the rain forest’s unique environment has attracted larger-than-life personalities through the centuries. John Hemming recalls the adventures and misadventures of intrepid explorers, fervent Jesuit ecclesiastics, and greedy rubber barons who enslaved thousands of Indians in the relentless quest for profit. He also tells of nineteenth-century botanists, fearless advocates for Indian rights, and the archaeologists and anthropologists who have uncovered the secrets of the Amazon’s earliest settlers. Hemming discusses the current threat to Amazonia as forests are destroyed to feed the world’s appetite for timber, beef, and soybeans, and he vividly describes the passionate struggles taking place in order to utilize, protect, and understand the Amazon.

The Amazon -that name was given to the biggest river on earth and is often used for the whole area of its basin too. This geographical region is currently referred to as Amazonia, thus emphasizing the peculiar character of its aquatic and terrestrial reaches. The Amazon embodied the dream of many a naturalist to explore what for a long time was a terra incognita. In recent years, however, Amazonia has emerged as a main centre for 'development' by some of the countries in which it lies and by foreign industrialized nations. The development projects and enterprises have aroused woridwide interest and have given rise to discussions on their aims and their consequences to the Amazonian nature. Limnological and ecological investigations in Amazonia started only about 40 years ago. The editor had the good fortune to partake in them from the very beginning. He spent his decisive years in Amazonia, and dedicated his life's work to that research and to that country and the Amazonian people. Nearing the end of his scicntific activities, hc is gratcful to bc ablc to summarizc in this book most of the knowledge we possess at present of Amazonian limnology and landscape ecology.

"Rainforests occupy a special place in the imagination. Literary, historical and cinematic depictions range from a ghastly Green Hell to an idyllic Garden of Eden. In terms of fiction, they fired the already fervent imaginations of storytellers as diverse as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling and even George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in whose books and films they are inhabited by dinosaurs, trod by Indiana Jones, prowled by Mowgli the Jungle Boy and swung through by Tarzan of the Apes. But rainforest fact is no less fascinating than rainforest fiction. Brimming with mystery and intrigue, these forests still harbor lost cities, uncontacted tribes, ancient shamans, and powerful plants than can kill - and cure. The rainforest bestiary extends far beyond the requisite lions, tigers and bears. Flying foxes and winged lizards, arboreal anteaters, rainforest giraffes, cross-dressing spiders that disguise themselves as ants and bats the size of a bumblebees all flourish in these most fabulous of forests along with other zoological denizens that are equally bizarre and spectacular. And no scientist immersed in these ecosystems believes that all the wonders have been found or revealed. Tropical rainforests merit their moniker. They flourish in the tropics - the more than 3000 mile-wide equatorial band between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. And these forests are hot, humid and wet, receiving in the Amazon, on average from 60 to 120 inches of rain per year - as compared to a mere 25 inches in London or 45 inches in Manhattan. However, several sites in the rainforests of northeastern India, of west Africa and western Colombia are drenched by over 400 inches of precipitation per annum. To a large degree, rainfall in the tropics is determined by the so-called "Intertropical Convergence Zone" (ICZ), a band of clouds around the equator created by the meeting of the northeast and southeast trade winds. Also referred to as the "Monsoon Trough," and known to - and dreaded by - sailors over the centuries as the "Doldrums," since the extended periods of calm that sometimes manifested there could strand a sailing vessel for weeks. The constant cloud cover due to the ICZ, the ferocious heat, and the abundant rainfall combine to produce high humidity, sometimes close to 95 per cent in the Amazon, a challenge for visitors unused to such torpor. According to Rhett Butler of Mongabay: "Each canopy tree transpires 200 gallons of water annually, translating roughly into 20,000 gallons transpired into the atmosphere for every acre of canopy trees. Large rainforests (and their humidity) contribute to the formation of rain clouds, and generate as much as 75 per cent of their own rain and are therefore responsible for creating as much as 50 per cent of their own precipitation.""--