The book deals with all practical issues in connection with practical tree seed procurement and supply in tropical countries, with necessary background information and documentation of applied methods. It starts with seed collection and follows the processes of the standard fates of seeds. The text covers simple hands-on methods and more advanced methods. A synthesis and discussion of recent findings in seed research is given.

Addresses One of the Supreme Threats to Biodiversity

As the worldwide human population explodes and trade becomes increasingly globalized, the transboundary movement of plant species from their place of origin to foreign regions is escalating and expected to experience continued growth in the coming decades. Invasive Plants and Forest Ecosystems takes an informed and integrated approach to the current onslaught of invasive species, spotlighting the tremendous challenges they pose for natural resource managers charged with the maintenance of biological diversity and the sustainable production of forest wealth. It addresses the havoc these alien invaders are wrecking on native forest ecosystems and the staggering $300 billion annually in damage and control costs they incur.

An Up-to-Date Synthesis of Invasive Plants, Their Impact, and Control Strategies

Examining invasion ecology through both synthesis and original research chapters, this compilation gives a bird's eye view of the ecological impact alien invaders have both in temperate and tropical climates. With internationally recognized contributors, this text explores the socioeconomic and policy aspects of adaptive collaborative management strategies that are crucial to controlling alien invasive plants. This book successfully captures the current state of knowledge surrounding this fast-growing ecological issue, making it an indispensable resource for those committed to the protection of global forestry and natural resources.

This open access book presents and analyzes the results of more than 30 years of long-term ecological research in riparian forest ecosystems with the aim of casting light on changes in the dynamics of riparian forests over time. The research, focusing on the Ooyamazawa riparian forest, one of the remaining old-growth forests in Japan, has yielded a number of interesting outcomes. First, it shows that large-scale disturbances afford various trees opportunities for regeneration and are thus the driving force for the coexistence of canopy trees in riparian forests. Second, it identifies changes in reproductive patterns, highlighting that seed production has in fact quantitatively increased over the past two decades. Third, it describes the decline in forest floor vegetation caused by deer grazing and reveals how this decline has affected bird and insect populations. The book illustrates the interconnectedness of phenomena within an ecosystem and the resultant potential for cascade effects and also stresses the need for long-term ecological studies of climate change impacts on forests. It will be of interest to both professionals and academics in the field of forest science.

Remote sensing and GIS are increasingly used as tools for monitoring and managing forests. Remotely sensed and GIS data are now the data sources of choice for capturing, documenting, and understanding forest disturbance and landscape pattern. Sitting astride the fields of ecology, forestry, and remote sensing/GIS, Understanding Forest Disturbance and Spatial Pattern: Remote Sensing and GIS Approaches takes you through the general biological or landscape ecological context of forest disturbance to remote sensing and GIS technological approaches and pattern description and analysis, with compelling applied examples of integration and synthesis. Written by experts, peer-reviewed to adhere to the strictest standards and highest quality criteria, these chapters discuss natural and human-caused forest change and consider factors such as biological setting, monitoring approaches, scale issues, and pattern analysis. The book explores forest disturbance and spatial pattern from an ecological point-of-view within the context of structure, function, pattern, and change. It concludes with a summary of the issues related to detection and mapping of forest disturbances with remotely sensed and GIS data. The authors elucidate how the elements presented, from ecological underpinnings, data considerations, change detection method, and pattern analysis, combine into a problem solving, information generating approach. You may find this subject covered briefly in a small sub-section in remote sensing forestry texts, or in limited technical detail in the ecology literature. The in-depth, detailed information provided in this book allows you to develop an understanding of the application of BOTH remote sensing and GIS technologies to forest change and the impacts of fire, insect infestation, forest harvesting, and other potential change influences - such as extreme weather events. This book provides guidance on how to master the challenges of capturing and characterizing forest disturbance and spatial patterns.

Trees and plants are important components of the human environment having significant presence beyond agricultural and recreational values. Colour Atlas of Woody Plants and Trees presents a photographic compilation of morphological features of trees and shrubs giving attention to their unique aspects not presented in existing books. By increasing awareness to users through high quality, full-color photographs and informative text, this book demonstrates the enormous diversity of vascular trees and plants living today. Features: Full color atlas offers concise, but highly informative text accompanied by over 200 high-resolution digital tree images Contains images of the anatomy of tree structures and evolution of the most important features of trees Presents information on the varied structure and morphology exhibited by trees and demonstrates their vital importance in the current struggle for the survival of our human society Surveys the most important morphological features of plants, shrubs and trees Presents aspects of plants and trees both common and rarely seen in nature Bryan Geoffrey Bowes is a retired Senior Lecturer in the Botany Department at Glasgow University and was a Research Fellow in ETH Zurich, Harvard University, and University of New England, Australia. His research interests encompass plant anatomy and ultrastructure, plant regeneration, and morphogenesis in vitro.

The chemicals from plant sources, generally termed as phytochemicals, play an important role in acceptance or rejection of the plant by the pests as they could be distasteful or toxic on one hand or on the other hand specialist herbivores have the capability to feed on many such chemicals, as they are able to process these natural products in a manner that is beneficial to them. In the wake of increasing environmental degradation due to burgeoning synthetic chemicals, there has been a process going on to rediscover the usefulness of plants and herbs and a continued effort for more than 2 decades has been to study the green products for cures for several ailments and pest management. In fact, according to Indian Medicinal Plants: A Sectoral Study, the global trade for medicinal plants amounts to about US $ 60 billion and the world demand continues to grow at the rate of 7 per cent per annum. Although many such plants are known in literature, neem has been one of trees with mani-fold virtues. Indian neem tree, Azadirachta indica A. Juss, which is a large evergreen tree, is an outstanding example among plants that has been subject matter of numerous scientific studies concerning its utilization in medicine, industry and agriculture. So far neem preparations have been evaluated against more than 500 species of insects and more than 400 hundred are reported to be susceptible at different concentrations.

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) - the conversion of molecular nitrogen into ammonia - is one of the most important reactions in ecology and agriculture. It is performed exclusively by microbes (prokaryotes) that live in symbiosis with plants. This book summarizes the latest research on this reaction, the participating microbes and the genetics of how their relevant genes could be transferred into the plants. In the light of a more sustainable and less ecologically damaging agriculture, this is becoming an increasingly pressing issue.

This book investigates the fundamental role that tropical bioproductivity - or more specifically net primary productivity - has played in shaping the global geographies of food, finance, governance and people. The book examines the basic astronomical and thermal properties of our planet to illustrate the dynamic nature of the tropics and how the region resides at the very heart of global energetics, driving the environmental flows that shape planetary climate and bioproductivity. The author explores how the region's relatively small, but hyper-productive, land area provided the groundswell for the economic, social, political and demographic changes that fuelled empires, European colonialism and nation-building. Also covered are discussions on how the critical intake of capital needed to fuel the industrial and technological revolutions driving modern globalization was first expropriated from the tropics by harnessing the region's natural productivity and biological crop diversity and then transforming it into tradeable commodities using the inhabitants' labour and knowledge. With modern tropical nations accounting for the bulk of people living in poverty and registering some of the highest income disparities, the author presents cross-cutting evidence showing that their histories and the persistence of expropriating institutions have fostered anocratic tendencies, poor governance, unorthodox financial flows and mass migration. Tropical Bioproductivity cuts across vast geographies, topics and histories to deliver a readable narrative that links people, places and events with the environmental mechanics of our planet. It will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental studies, economics, history, agriculture, anthropology and geography.

Timber sourcing is shifting from extraction from natural forests to forms of cultivation that are increasingly agricultural in nature. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach to examine the socio-political, biophysical and discursive dimensions of this divergence of wood production from forests. This analysis challenges the historical integration of wood production and forest ecosystem management exemplified by the institutions of forestry with their inherent wood/forest connection. This has significant implications for how wood and forest socio-ecological systems confront change and challenge ideas about how to achieve sustainability. Historically, the institutions of stewardship forestry were founded on ideals of sustainable systems in long-term equilibrium. However, these occur within rapidly evolving social and technological contexts that constantly challenge the maintenance of any equilibrium. This creates considerable tension within wood and forest socio-ecological systems and their institutions and governance. Moving beyond adaptation to transformation, however, requires a willingness to consider post-forestry conditions, such as integration of emerging wood cultivation systems into agricultural and landscape approaches, and increasing management of extensive forest ecosystems for non-wood values in the absence of wood production. This book includes four case studies: a global modelling of shifts in wood production and three national case studies (Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand), each analysing shifts in resilience in wood and forest socio-ecological systems using a different disciplinary approach. This book will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and professionals in forestry, land use, conservation, rural studies and geography.

This is a handbook on the subject of crop pests. Including 288 colour photographs, the book contains information which has been edited and updated from the series of advisory leaflets issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) which have been a widely acknowledged source of valuable information for many years. Much of the information, which has been revised by entomologists of the Agricultural Development Advisory Service (ADAS), should be of interest in other countries of Northern Europe and throughout temperate regions of the world. The book contains descriptions of the pests, their life histories, the damage they cause, their natural enemies and the strategies for control. The demand for the continued availability of the wealth of knowledge and practical experience originally incorporated into the MAFF leaflets has prompted the publication of this book. This publication should be a useful handbook for all those involved with applied entomology and crop protection, particularly agricultural and horticultural students, crop consultants and advisers, those working in the agrochemical industry and proficient farmers, growers and entomologists.

Remote sensing and GIS are increasingly used as tools for monitoring and managing forests. Remotely sensed and GIS data are now the data sources of choice for capturing, documenting, and understanding forest disturbance and landscape pattern. Sitting astride the fields of ecology, forestry, and remote sensing/GIS, Understanding Forest Disturbance and Spatial Pattern: Remote Sensing and GIS Approaches takes you through the general biological or landscape ecological context of forest disturbance to remote sensing and GIS technological approaches and pattern description and analysis, with compelling applied examples of integration and synthesis. Written by experts, peer-reviewed to adhere to the strictest standards and highest quality criteria, these chapters discuss natural and human-caused forest change and consider factors such as biological setting, monitoring approaches, scale issues, and pattern analysis. The book explores forest disturbance and spatial pattern from an ecological point-of-view within the context of structure, function, pattern, and change. It concludes with a summary of the issues related to detection and mapping of forest disturbances with remotely sensed and GIS data. The authors elucidate how the elements presented, from ecological underpinnings, data considerations, change detection method, and pattern analysis, combine into a problem solving, information generating approach. You may find this subject covered briefly in a small sub-section in remote sensing forestry texts, or in limited technical detail in the ecology literature. The in-depth, detailed information provided in this book allows you to develop an understanding of the application of BOTH remote sensing and GIS technologies to forest change and the impacts of fire, insect infestation, forest harvesting, and other potential change influences - such as extreme weather events. This book provides guidance on how to master the challenges of capturing and characterizing forest disturbance and spatial patterns.

Bringing together a wealth of knowledge, Environmental Management Handbook, Second Edition, gives a comprehensive overview of environmental problems, their sources, their assessment, and their solutions. Through in-depth entries and a topical table of contents, readers will quickly find answers to questions about environmental problems and their corresponding management issues. This six-volume set is a reimagining of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, published in 2013, and features insights from more than 500 contributors, all experts in their field. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying environmental management are presented here in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the major environmental systems. Features The first handbook that demonstrates the key processes and provisions for enhancing environmental management Addresses new and cutting-edge topics on ecosystem services, resilience, sustainability, food-energy-water nexus, socio-ecological systems, and more Provides an excellent basic knowledge on environmental systems, explains how these systems function, and offers strategies on how to best manage them Includes the most important problems and solutions facing environmental management today In this first volume, Managing Global Resources and Universal Processes, the reader is introduced to the general concepts and processes used in environmental management. As an excellent resource for finding basic knowledge on environmental systems, it reflects an extensive coverage of the field and includes the most important problems and solutions facing environmental management today. This book practically demonstrates the key processes, methods, and models used in studying environmental management.

Bringing together a wealth of knowledge, Environmental Management Handbook, Second Edition, gives a comprehensive overview of environmental problems, their sources, their assessment, and their solutions. Through in-depth entries and a topical table of contents, readers will quickly find answers to questions about environmental problems and their corresponding management issues. This six-volume set is a reimagining of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, published in 2013, and features insights from more than 400 contributors, all experts in their field. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying environmental management are presented here in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the major environmental systems. Features The first handbook that demonstrates the key processes and provisions for enhancing environmental management Addresses new and cutting-edge topics on ecosystem services, resilience, sustainability, food-energy-water nexus, socio-ecological systems, and more Provides an excellent basic knowledge on environmental systems, explains how these systems function, and offers strategies on how to best manage them Includes the most important problems and solutions facing environmental management today In this second volume, Managing Biological and Ecological Systems, the reader is introduced to the general concepts and processes of the biosphere and all its systems. This volume explains how these systems function and provides strategies on how to best manage them. It serves as an excellent resource for finding basic knowledge on the biosphere and ecological systems and includes important problems and solutions that environmental managers face today. This book practically demonstrates the key processes, methods, and models used in studying environmental management.

Bringing together a wealth of knowledge, the Handbook of Environmental Management, Second Edition, gives a comprehensive overview of environmental problems, their sources, their assessment, and their solutions. Through in-depth entries, and a topical table of contents, readers will quickly find answers to questions about pollution and management issues. This six-volume set is a reimagining of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, published in 2013, and features insights from more than 500 contributors, all experts in their fields. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying environmental management is presented here in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the major environmental systems. Features of the new edition: The first handbook that demonstrates the key processes and provisions for enhancing environmental management. Addresses new and cutting -edge topics on ecosystem services, resilience, sustainability, food-energy-water nexus, socio-ecological systems and more. Provides an excellent basic knowledge on environmental systems, explains how these systems function and offers strategies on how to best manage them. Includes the most important problems and solutions facing environmental management today.

Forest management auditing is expanding from its traditional focus on forest management, stewardship and Chain of Custody certification to more innovative topics such as ecosystem services, forest carbon credits, Non-Wood Forest Products, wood energy and Fair Trade certification. Forest managers, auditors and project developers require a new range of skills, capacities and expertise to monitor these issues. This book outlines the market-based tools that are required by such professionals to ensure corporate social responsibility in the forestry sector. It shows how a mutual learning process between established forest certification processes and innovative markets is needed. It addresses key topics such as High Conservation Value (HCV) approaches, the role of independent certification versus due diligence process and the engagement of smallholders and SMEs. Beginning with a market and policy analysis, the book fosters a deeper understanding of standards, methodologies and auditing techniques. Numerous case studies are included from a wide range of contexts, including both temperate and tropical forests in developed and developing countries. Overall, the book analyses all the steps towards forest management and forest products and services certification.

This collection represents a unique set of essays on the role of theory in shaping the practice of medicine across disciplinary boundaries. In the context of this volume, "theory" relates to the conceptual models, frameworks, knowledge representations, metaphors and analogies that inform the problem-solving efforts of practitioners seeking to develop novel dialogues both within and across disciplinary boundaries.
Contributors to this volume include computational scientists, chemists, medical researchers, biologists and philosophers, all drawing on personal experience in their respective fields to produce a genuinely interdisciplinary range of perspectives on the common theme of theory in medical thinking and multidisciplinary research practice.
* Selected and edited papers from the 10th North American Forest Soils Conference held in Saulte Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, July 20-24, 2003
* A unique spin-off from Elsevier's highly regarded journal, Forest Ecology and Management
* An estimated 400 pages of the latest findings in forest soil ecology from the most prominent researchers in the field

This book provides a taxonomic account of one of the largest genera of Leguminosae and the largest in the Central Asian flora, genus Oxytropis DC. The genus is represented by 153 species of which 62 are endemic to the region and 78 are endemic to the Central Asian territory.

Originally published in 1990 Tropical Resources presents in-depth coverage of the extremely diverse tropical environments, the resources to be found within the region and their production, and ecological management. The book discusses economic geography and ways of utilizing available resources, including those of tropical forests, wildlife, tidal wetlands and the sea. The book also include chapters on the development and land use of protected areas, the ecological aspects of pasture resources; and the impacts of economic development and population damage. In addition, studies are offered on tropical soils, including their distribution properties and management and the ecological processes at work in tropical forests. For geographers, economists and policymakers, the book provides a wealth of information on tropical resources and their potential development.

The dictionary contains approx. 10,000 terms used today in forest science, management and conservation, comprising forest ecology, forest entomology and pathology, forest fire management, forest geomatics, forest meteorology and hydrology, forest soils and geomorphology, forest surveys and mensuration, genetics and tree improvement, harvesting and forest operations, integrated forest management, photogrammetry and remote sensing, physico-mechanical properties of wood, processing (panels, pulp and paper, sawing, etc.), silviculture, tree physiology, agroforestry, urban forestry, wildlife and wilderness management and arboriculture, wood anatomy and structure.

Across the continental United States, one can identify 20 distinct forest cover types. Most of these are to be found on federal lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Those responsible for the management of trees that form the 20 different cover types and the diversity of forest wildlife that reside in them must have a solid grounding in concepts of forest management, especially silviculture, as well as concepts of wildlife management, in order to integrate both as part of any effective natural resource management plan. Forest Wildlife Ecology and Habitat Management provides both foresters and wildlife biologists responsible for managing forest resources with an integrated understanding of the relationship between forests and wildlife. Based on David Patton's 50 years of experience as a forester and wildlife biologist, the book shows readers how to look at forests as ecological systems and wildlife as part of the energy flow and nutrient cycling process within those systems. He offers readers a fundamental understanding of the natural processes that occur in a forest taking into consideration vegetation, water, and the natural effects of climate and time. He then provides a biological perspective on wildlife, discussing reproduction, behavior, feeding habits, and mobility. He also discusses the various influences on forests and wildlife by both natural and human-caused events. Covering those forest types included in the U.S. National Atlas, and associating over 1,100 wildlife species with 20 major forest types in 48 states, Professor Patton provides recommendations for ways to restore and maintain wildlife habitat by direct and indirect coordination. Towards this end, the author - Evaluates various approaches to integrate forestry and wildlife management Offers a number of practical management strategies, emphasizing a progressive holistic approach

Forest certification has been widely accepted as a tool that would encourage industrial and non-industrial management of resources in an environmentally acceptable, socially beneficial and economically viable manner. Much has been written on certification yet five issues have been missing, which this book addresses: an analysis of the scientific basis for the certification standards; a formal and mechanistic incorporation of social and natural system sustainability as part of the standards; the rationale for the different sets of standards that are currently being used to certify governmental, industrial and non-industrial organizations; the success of the different sets of standards in assessing the environmental acceptability, social benefits and economic viability of the managed system; and, the difficulty of certifying small landowners with current protocols. Forest Certification examines the historical roots of forest certification, the factors that guide the development of certification protocols, the players involved in certification, the factors determining the customers to be certified, and the benefits of certification. The book also covers the terminology and other issues intrinsic to certification that direct the structure of standards, the similarities between indicators of different human disturbances within the ecosystem/landscape and certification standards, and, finally, a case study evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of existing certification protocols. Forest Certification is unique in its analysis of the scientific basis for the structure of the forest certification protocols. It documents the roles of human values in the development of assessment protocols but demonstrates how elements of existing protocols should be used to produce non-value based standards.

This book presents a taxonomic account of families of order Tubiflora, namely, Verbenaceae, Labiatae, Solanaceae, and Scrophulariceae, which contain several interesting endemic genera and species that are important for understanding the developmental history of Central Asian flora.

In contexts outside of ecology, the term "disturbance" carries a variety of negative connotations. Within ecology, however, disturbances are neither inherently negative nor positive for ecological systems; instead, their effects depend on the context, scale, and species involved. As ecologists better understand these context-dependencies, the field of disturbance ecology has matured, diversified, and become more complex and nuanced over the past several decades. Ecological Disturbance: Scale, Context, and Nature unites a collection of perspectives that weave together the topics of disturbance ecology and biological diversity. Chapters cover wildfire, disease, herbivory, surface mining, land-use conversions, and forest harvest, among numerous other natural and anthropogenic influences on ecosystems. The book begins with an introduction that reviews how thinking on perturbations and community organization has evolved over the last century, then explores how disturbances might be meaningfully categorized, and how biological diversity has been conceptualized. The introduction also explores the roles of scale and ecological context in disturbance outcomes, and reviews recent analytical and methodological advances relevant to disturbance ecology. The book then moves into forested ecosystems, where much of the early literature on disturbances arose, and focuses on scale-dependence, relationships of natural and anthropogenic disturbance, and recovery or successional trajectories. The next section focuses on emerging disturbances amidst global change, including non-native species, disease, and synergies with other disturbances. The book ends with a section on land-use disturbance, focusing on landscape pattern, resilience, and recovery dynamics. Throughout, the book's material spans a wide diversity of spatial and temporal scales, disciplines, taxa, and levels of ecological organization. This book may be used in a seminar course, as a compendium for disturbance ecology curricula that are at the interface of conceptual and applied ecology, and in other circumstances to illustrate how different authors have handled the various pragmatic challenges that arise in studies that ask broader questions. In an era of unprecedented global change, this book constitutes a valuable source for researchers, students, natural resource managers, and other conservation practitioners interested in delving deeper into disturbance ecology.

At the time of European discovery, the ancient North American forests stretched across nearly half the continent. And while today little remains of this past glory, efforts are underway to bring back some of the diverse ecosystems of that era. America's Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery provides scientists and professionals with essential information for forest restoration and conservation projects, while presenting a compelling and far-reaching account of how the North American landscape has evolved over the past 18,000 years.

The book weaves historical accounts and scientific knowledge into a dynamic narrative about the ancient forests and the events that shaped them. Divided into two major parts, it covers first the glaciers and forests of the Ice Age and the influences of native peoples, and then provides an in-depth look at these majestic forests through the eyes of the first European explorers. Changes in climate and elevation, the movement of trees northward, the assembly of modern forests, and qualities that all ancient forests shared are also thoroughly examined.

A special feature of this book is its self-contained introduction to the early history of Native American peoples and their environment. The author draws on his roots in the Osage nation as well as painstaking research through the historical record, offering a complete discussion of how the cultural practices of hunting, agriculture, and fire helped form the ancient forests.