Tropical forests: Try holistic conservation

Fragmentation, disturbance and tree diversity conservation in tropical montane forests

1. Loss in forest cover associated with human activities leads to forest islands within a fragmented landscape. Anthropogenic disturbance may also directly alter tree species diversity. Habitat fragmentation and disturbance may have implications for biodiversity conservation and can affect a variety of population and community processes over a range of temporal and spatial scales. Effects are m...

The potential for species conservation in tropical secondary forests.

In the wake of widespread loss of old-growth forests throughout the tropics, secondary forests will likely play a growing role in the conservation of forest biodiversity. We considered a complex hierarchy of factors that interact in space and time to determine the conservation potential of tropical secondary forests. Beyond the characteristics of local forest patches, spatial and temporal lands...

Natural Forest Management and Conservation of Biodiversity in Tropical Forests

As a reaction to the continued dwindling of tropical forest resources, many research and development organizations have turned to the idea of natural forest management in the hope of making tropical forest lands more profitable while maintaining biodiversity. Assertions of sustainability in logging practices have been inadequately supported, however. We begin with a review of the present knowle...

Tropical Forests

To understand where and why tropical forests exist, one must begin with some essential facts of geography and climatic systems. By definition, ‘the tropics’ lie between 238N and 238S latitude, the area within which the sun lies directly overhead at some point in its seasonal progression. Thefluxof solar energywithin this region is high, due to the fact that incoming sunlight is projected at a 9...

Tropical Rain Forests