Second Growth – The Promise of Tropical Forest Regeneration in an Age of Deforestation - Softcover

Chazdon, Robin L

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022611807X ISBN 13: 9780226118079

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2014

Synopsis

For decades, conservation and research initiatives in tropical forests have focused almost exclusively on old-growth forests because scientists believed that these "pristine" ecosystems housed superior levels of biodiversity. With Second Growth, Robin L. Chazdon reveals those assumptions to be largely false, bringing to the fore the previously overlooked counterpart to old-growth forest: second growth. Even as human activities result in extensive fragmentation and deforestation, tropical forests demonstrate a great capacity for natural and human-aided regeneration. Although these damaged landscapes can take centuries to regain the characteristics of old growth, Chazdon shows here that regenerating-or second-growth-forests are vital, dynamic reservoirs of biodiversity and enviornmental services. What is more, they always have been. With chapters on the roles these forests play in carbon and nutrient cycling, sustaining biodiversity, providing timber and non-timber products, and integrated agriculture, Second Growth not only offers a thorough and wide-ranging overview of successional and restoration pathways, but also underscores the need to conserve, and further study, regenerating tropical forests in an attempt to inspire a new age of local and global stewardship.

About this title

About the Author

Robin L. Chazdon is professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut and coeditor of Foundations of Tropical Forest Biology and Tropical Forest Plant Ecophysiology. She lives in Storrs, CT.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022611807X
• ISBN 13: 9780226118079
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 440