Tropical Forests

Tropical Forests

Author: Thomas K. Rudel

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780231131940

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Known as "the Garbo of Chinese letters" for her elegance and the aura of mystery that surrounded her, Eileen Chang is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential modern Chinese novelists and cultural critics of the twentieth century. In Written on Water, first published in 1945 and now available for the first time in English, Chang offers essays on art, literature, war, and urban life, as well as autobiographical reflections. Chang takes in the sights and sounds of wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong, with the tremors of national upheaval and the drone of warplanes in the background, and inventively fuses explorations of urban life, literary trends, domestic habits, and historic events. These evocative and moving firsthand accounts examine the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of the Japanese bombing and occupation of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Eileen Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. Her nuanced depictions range from observations of how a woman's elegant dress affects morale to descriptions of hospital life. With a distinctive style that is at once meditative, vibrant, and humorous, Chang engages the reader through sly, ironic humor; an occasionally chatty tone; and an intense fascination with the subtleties of modern urban life. The collection vividly captures the sights and sounds of Shanghai, a city defined by its mix of tradition and modernity. Chang explores the city's food, fashions, shops, cultural life, and social mores; she reveals and upends prevalent attitudes toward women and in the process presents a portrait of a liberated, cosmopolitan woman, enjoying the opportunities, freedoms, and pleasures offered by urban life. In addition to her descriptions of daily life, Chang also reflects on a variety of artistic and literary issues, including contemporary films, the aims of the writer, the popularity of the Peking Opera, dance, and painting.


Tropical Forests: Management and Ecology

Tropical Forests: Management and Ecology

Author: Ariel E. Lugo

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 1461224985

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Forestry professors used to remind students that, whereas physicians bury their mistakes, foresters die before theirs are noticed. But good institutions live longer than the scientists who contribute to building them, and the half-century of work of the USDA Forest Service's Institute of Tropical Forestry (ITF) is in plain view: an unprecedented corpus of accomplishments that would instill pride in any organization. There is scarcely anyone interested in current issues of tropical forestry who would not benefit from a refresher course in ITF's findings: its early collaboration with farmers to establish plantations, its successes in what we now call social forestry, its continuous improvement of nursery practices, its screening trials of native species, its development of wood-processing technologies appropriate for developing countries, its thorough analysis of tropical forest function, and its holistic approach toward conservation of endangered species. Fortunately, ITF has a long history of information exchange through teaching; like many others, I got my own start in tropical forest ecology fromjust such a course in Puerto Rico. And long before politicians recognized the global importance of tropical forestry, the ITF staff served actively as ambassadors of the discipline, visiting tropical coun tries everywhere to learn and, when invited to do so, to help solve local problems. It is a general principle of biogeography that species' turnover rates on islands are higher than those on continents. Inevitably, the same is true of scientists assigned to work on islands.


Tropical Deforestation

Tropical Deforestation

Author: Thomas K. Rudel

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1993-07-29

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780231514989

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Addressing decades of rain forest destruction, concerned scientists, often in concert with various environmental movements, have amassed an impressive amount of information on deforestation in areas throughout the world. In Tropical Forests, Rudel draws upon hundreds of these studies to develop a broader perspective on the problem of deforestation. Through a meta-analysis, Rudel identifies the forces that have driven forest cover change since 1980 and spells out their implications for efforts to conserve biodiversity and expedite sustainable development in the tropics. Rudel builds on local studies to offer clear explanations of what has happened in each of the world's tropical forest regions. He assesses global trends while also offering vivid descriptions of the effects of deforestation in specific areas. His work concludes with a chapter that describes policy directions for conserving biodiversity and promoting sustainable development in each region.


The Earth as Transformed by Human Action

The Earth as Transformed by Human Action

Author: B. L. Turner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-01-29

Total Pages: 740

ISBN-13: 9780521446303

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Earth as Transformed by Human Action is the culmination of a mammoth undertaking involving the examination of the toll our continual strides forward, technical and social, take on our world. The purpose of such a study is to document the changes in the biosphere that have taken place over the last 300 years, to contrast global patterns of change to those appearing on a regional level, and to explain the major human forces that have driven these changes. The first section deals strictly with the major human forces of the past 300 years and the second is a detailed account of the transformations of the global environment wrought by human action. The final section examines a range of perspectives and theories that purport to explain human actions with regard to the biosphere.


The Rainforests of West Africa

The Rainforests of West Africa

Author: MARTIN

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 3034877269

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Nowhere eise in the world did industrialized countries leave such early marks in the rainforest as in West Africa. Past and present developments here are in one way or the other significant for rainforests on other continents as weil. West Africa is a pioneer in both a good and a bad sense. This is reason enough to take a closer Iook at the history of moist tropical West Africa. Until recently, no one really seemed to be interested in the rainforests except for a few specialists. The world's scientific community neglected to study the incalculable riches of tropical forests, to make the public aware of them and their due importance. Although interdisciplinary research has been a popular topic for some decades now, it was not applied to just the most complex habitat on earth. Scientists from all fields studied only that which was easiest to record, seemingly blind to a myriad of details awaiting closer examination. Botanists wentabout establishing their herbariums and paid much too little attention to the vegetation as a whole, or to the significance of useful plants for local populations. Zoologists, too, busied themselves with collecting and describing species. Anthropologists, on the other hand, tended to overlook faunal details: in their ignorance of the animal world, they wrote of tigers and deer in Africa. And finally, foresters saw neither the forest nor the trees for the timber - and even confused rainforests with monocultures of fir trees.


Tropical Forest Resources Assessment Project

Tropical Forest Resources Assessment Project

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher:

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 9789251010877

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

FAO pub-UNEP pub. Technical report on a survey of forest resources in tropical zones of Africa - explains methodology; estimates trends in natural woody vegetation, logging and other forest products, and plantations; and includes case studies of 36 countries. Bibliographys, diagrams and statistical tables.


The Environment and Development in Africa

The Environment and Development in Africa

Author: Moses K. Tesi

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780739101315

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The premise of The Environment and Development in Africa is that current environmental problems in sub-Saharan Africa are an outcome of the continent's development activities. Whether these activities have generated economic growth and raised living standards or have led to growth without overall increases in living standards-or have even contributed to a decline in people's well-being-developments in that region have produced effects that have degraded Africa's environment in many ways. This book presents a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the context of the environmental issues facing sub-Saharan African states. Contributors discuss the problems associated with generating the capacity to manage Africa's environmental concerns; assess the impact of economic development efforts on the region's environment; and examine various societal and policy responses to environmental problems and to development problems linked to ecological decay. This is an important book for scholars and policy advisors concerned with African studies and global environmental issues.