The Tropical Rain Forest

The rain forests of tropical America Africa Asia and Australia are rapidly vanishing. With a focus on ecology this book discusses rain forests as complex natural systems that are continually changing in response to climate and soil conditions as well as to shifting cultivation logging and other human activities. The completely revised edition includes new chapters on climate (contributed by R.P.D. Walsh) microclimates and hydrology (contributed by R.P.D. Walsh) soils (contributed by I.C. Baillie) and an appendix on quantitative methods (contributed by P. Greig-Smith). This book first published in 1952 is now a classic and represents an important record of what has become of the rain forest in the twentieth century and will be meaningful reading for botanists ecologists tropical biologists conservationists and general readers.