This is the first book to examine how tropical rain forest ecology is altered by climate change, rather than simply seeing how plant communities were altered. The book's goal is to provide a current overview of the impacts of climate change on tropical forests. It aims to investigate past, present, and future climatic influences on the ecosystems with the highest biodiversity on the planet.

Résumé

The goal of this book is to provide a current overview of the impacts of climate change on tropical forests, to investigate past, present, and future climatic influences on the ecosystems with the highest biodiversity on the planet. "Tropical Rainforest Responses to Climatic Change" will be the first book to examine how tropical rain forest ecology is altered by climate change, rather than simply seeing how plant communities were altered. Shifting the emphasis onto ecological processes e.g. how diversity is structured by climate and the subsequent impact on tropical forest ecology, provides the reader with a more comprehensive coverage. A major theme of this book that emerges progressively is the interaction between humans, climate and forest ecology. While numerous books have appeared dealing with forest fragmentation and conservation, none have explicitly explored the long term occupation of tropical systems, the influence of fire and the future climatic effects of deforestation, coupled with anthropogenic emissions. Incorporating modelling of past and future systems paves the way for a discussion of conservation from a climatic perspective, rather than the usual plea to stop logging.

Contenu

Cretaceous and Tertiary climate change and the past distribution of megathermal rainforests.- Andean montane forests and climate change.- Climate change in the lowlands of the Amazon Basin.- The Quaternary history of far eastern rainforests.- Rainforest responses to past climatic tropical Africa.- Tropical environmental dynamics: A modeling perspective.- Prehistoric human occupation and impacts on Neotropical forest landscapes during the Late Pleistocene and Early/Middle Holocene.- Ultraviolet insolation and the tropical rainforest: altitudinal variations, Quaternary and recent change, extinctions, and biodiversity.- Climate change and hydrological modes of the wet tropics.- Plant species diversity in Amazonian forests.- Nutrient-cycling and climate change in tropical forests.- The response of South American tropical forests to contemporary atmospheric change.- Ecophysiological response of lowland plants to Pleistocene climate.- Modeling future effects of climate change on tropical forests.- Conservation, climate change, and tropical forests.