The Environmental Biology of Agaves and Cacti constitutes the first comprehensive review of how these two interesting and economically important desert succulent taxa respond, in what turn out to be remarkably similar ways, to specific environmental factors such as water, temperature, photosynthetically active radiation, and nutrients, which affect the exchange of carbon dioxide and water vapor with the environment. Park Nobel first summarizes early environmental research as well as the many ethnobotanical uses of agaves and cacti. He then develops the main themes by considering the three most studied species in detail. Much of the relevant research has been carried out in his own laboratory since the mid-1970s. The book's clear style, many photographs and line drawings, and comprehensive data summaries make it accessible to professionals and interested laypeople alike. Every scientific term is defined the first time it is used. Agaves and cacti are shown to be highly productive compared to other plant groups, and this productivity helps account for their many uses for beverages, food, and animal fodder. Plant ecologists and physiologists, agronomists, environmental biologists, modelers, ethnobotanists, students, amateur succulent enthusiasts, and those responsible for land use and agricultural policy in arid and semiarid regions will all find this book an invaluable resource.
My scientific career began with a Bachelor's of Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 1961. Entering graduate school at the California Institute of Technology, my interests ranged from solid state physics to astrophysics to biophysics. After a Masters Degree, I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, to pursue a Ph.D. in Biophysics, which I received in 1965. My research at that time focused on chloroplasts, the subcellular organelle responsible for photosynthesis. After a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral year at the University of Tokyo followed by another such year at King's College of the University of London, I settled into the University of California, Los Angeles. I have been there ever since (currently as a Distinguished Professor of Biology Emeritus in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)(psnobel@biology.ucla.edu.
A pivotal switch in career occurred during a Guggenheim Fellowship at the Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra in 1973/74. Stimulated by questions from students in a plant ecophysiology course, I moved toward environmental research on air boundary layers for rigid structures that did not flap in the wind. What better specimens than agaves and cacti of deserts! What began as a study of heat transfer across their air boundary layers progressed to everything entering or leaving such plants. Indeed, modeling and computer studies soon involved questions dealing with how desert plants cope with their extreme environment. Using agaves and cacti as taxa of interest, I thus shifted toward ecology, including responses of the roots. Also, I transferred approaches based on physics and engineering to plants with agronomic importance, such as Agave tequilana of tequila fame and various cacti cultivated for fruits and fodder in many regions of the world.
Besides nearly 400 research articles, I have written or edited 15 books. Beginning in 1970, I published a book entitled Plant Cell Physiology: A Physicochemical Approach (W.H. Freeman). As I became more interested in environmental biology, the scope broadened to include whole plants and plant communities. The seventh book in this series is Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology, 4th ed., published in 2009 by Academic Press/Elsevier. I am also engaged in a series of books on agaves and cacti. The first was The Cactus Primer with Arthur Gibson as senior author (Harvard University Press, 1986, reissued in 2009), followed soon by Environmental Biology of Agaves and Cacti (Cambridge University Press, 1988, reissued in 2003). Next came Remarkable Agaves and Cacti (Oxford University Press, 1994) and then the edited book Cacti: Biology and Uses (University of California Press, 2002). I have just finished a book entitled "DESERT WISDOM/AGAVES and CACTI: CO2, Water, Climate Change" to appear early in 2010.
