The World Atlas Of Trees And Forests Exploring Earths Forest Ecosystems 1st Herman Shugart by Herman Shugart, Peter White, Sassan Saatchi, Jérôme Chave 9780691226743, 0691226741 instant download after payment.

This book is about forests—their extent, diversity, function, beauty, variation, and vital
planetary significance. In so many dimensions, forests are remarkable. The juxtapositions
of chaos and calm, serenity and change, and shelter and danger manifested in the forest
experience touch the deepest roots of our consciousness. Homo sapiens originated from a
forest species and subsequently adapted to the savanna woodlands of Africa. An appreciation
of trees and forests is in our very bones.
The World Atlas of Trees and Forests seeks to reveal the wonders of forest
ecosystems by assessing how they work, where they are, and how they look.
What are the advantages of treeness that cause this state to emerge, seemingly
independently, in very distantly related plants? How do trees balance the
advantages and dižculties of expending energy to both grow large and produce
viable oŠspring? How do growth and regeneration processes at diŠerent scales
interact to generate quasicrystalline patterns of forests that are visible from
an airplane? And how do forests function as working mechanisms? This book
answers these questions and more by examining samples of the Earth-spanningdomain of forests and their functioning. By comparing major forest systems
across the planet—tropical and subtropical rain forests, temperate forests, cloud
forests, boreal forests, and so on—we uncover what scientists currently know
about forest function and the responses of trees to diŠerent environments.