Hidden Forest : Biography of an Ecosystem [Hardcover]

Jon R. Luoma (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805014918 | ISBN-13: 978-0805014914 | Publication Date: May 1999 | Edition: 1

From the leaves at the top of the canopy to the insects living deep beneath the soil, a forest is a complete, unfied ecosystem. each evetn, from the growth of a single sapling to a cataclysmic fire, is critical to the life of the forest as an organism. In this text, Jon Luoma chronicles the work of a scientific research project that, over the course of several decades, have brought together scientists to piece together the long-term natural history of an old-growth forest of the Pacific Northwest. What emerges is a wealth of information that even now is pointing the way to a new approach to forest management, one that will allow for the cutting of trees for timber, while preserving the beauty and integrity of the woods.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Tucked away into the verdant folds of the Cascade foothills east of Eugene, Oregon, there is a forest that has been forming since before Columbus first set foot in the New World. The 16,000-acre Andrews Experimental Forest is an old-growth forest, a description largely unknown to the American public until the late 1980s, when the spotted owl swooped into notoriety. In some forestry circles, other adjectives like decadent are used to describe this forest's towering Douglas firs, western red cedars, and western hemlocks--that is, a forest that has reached maximum wood fiber capacity. Loggers contend that allowing such giant trees to die, rot, and fall over is a waste of resources. "I'm clearcutting to save the forest," declared a partisan newspaper ad in the go-go timber years of the 1970s, when old growth was liquidated at an unprecedented rate to make way for managed forest crops. The only problem with this view is that it misses the forest for the trees. In The Hidden Forest, Jon Luoma takes us below--and above--the canopy to view the natural processes of an ancient forest and visit with the scientists working there.

The Andrews is unique in that it brings together scientists from diverse fields to join a collaborative effort, with the end result being an entire ecosystem under the microscope.

In the heart of summer research season, scientists can be found burrowing in the soil under logs; or trapping insects fifteen stories or more up in the tree canopy with the aid of rock-climbing gear; or scrambling crablike in a neoprene wet suit in a rushing, buffeting mountain stream....

One optimistic scientist is examining the process of rot in fallen trees, a study that will take two centuries in the case of these old-growth logs, meaning that "it will be up to the contemporaries of [his] great-great-great-great-grandchildren to complete the analysis he has begun." Others are busy identifying thousands of species new to science. To date, this research has yielded a "wellspring of key discoveries," turning the environmental and scientific communities upside-down. But meanwhile, the last remnants of unprotected Pacific old-growth forest continue to fall to the chainsaw. "It remains to be seen," writes Luoma, "how long it might take some entrenched U.S. Forest Service managers to fully embrace more ecosystem-based approaches." The Hidden Forest is testimony as to why sooner is better than later. --Langdon Cook

From Publishers Weekly

The tallest species of spruce, hemlock, fir, cedar and pine trees on Earth coexist in the old growth of the Andrews Forest, in central Oregon, where decades of research by a cluster of scientists has raised the question, as Luoma puts it: "How does an entire ecosystem work?" Following some of those scientists through their woods, Luoma has created both a guide to the Andrews Forest and a book about why and how ecologists and foresters came to know the importance of old growth. In 1970, the Forest Service wanted to clear "inefficient" ancient forests, and even to scrap rotting logsAbut ancient trees, experts were even then discovering, host irreplaceable flora and fauna, and rotten floating logs are key to healthy streams. Luoma shows how the Andrews team discovered the gaps, perils and horrors of the old pro-logging "scientific forestry," and what the new students of forests know instead. Hurt by the 1980 eruptions of Mt. St. Helen's, the Andrews area provoked political blowups later on, when it turned out to shelter the endangered spotted owl. And beyond the owls' fame lurk thousands of species whose importance to forest life is still being explored. Everything on or in the Andrews soil, for example, depends on the detritus-grinding work done by the jaws of one type of millipede. Like John McPhee, Luoma writes a clear reportorial prose, affable and supple enough to accommodate his range of facts, quotes and ideas. And, like McPhee, he explains natural science's recent discoveries by telling the stories of the discoverers. The result is an engaging yet serious outline of what we know about forestsAand what experts are still finding out. Agent, the Young Agency.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company; 1 edition (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805014918
• ISBN-13: 978-0805014914
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #840,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ought to be required reading., June 13, 2007

By 

J. Branson (Seahurst, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hidden Forest, The: The Biography of an Ecosystem (Paperback)

Not only was The Hidden Forest a pleasure to read, but Jon Luoma told me so many things I didn't know. I thought I knew a great deal about forests, since I live next to a park, hike in the mountains, and have read many books about trees, but this book showed me that there really is a hidden forest right under my nose that I'd been mostly unaware of. Now, as I walk the trail through the woods, I think of the 16,000 tiny insects beneath my foot every time I take a step, and I think of the vital work they do that supports all life on Earth.



Policy decisions are being made every day--just recently the Bush administration announced plans to increase logging of old growth forests--in a political and economic climate in which most people are ignorant of the science of forest ecosystems. How can we possibly make the right choices if people are not properly informed? For example, many people have bought into the notion that protecting old growth hurts the economy and costs jobs. In fact, the losses in the salmon industry, billions of dollars, could have been prevented if old growth forests had been protected. Also, millions if not billions of dollars of damage caused by flooding in Washington and Oregon could have been avoided if the Forest Service had followed the advice of the scientists at the Andrews Experimental Forest.



Still, these scientists haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what we need to know about forest ecosystems. They haven't even identified half of the species that live in our forests. How can we know the value of what we are losing if we don't even understand what it is or how it works? Their work should be funded at a much higher level. (Check out their web site: http://www.fsl.orst.edu/lter/index.cfm )



While this book is not for everyone, it should be read by the following people:

--Policy makers in the Forest Service.

--Everyone in the Bush administration.

--People who vote.

--People who live in wood houses or use paper products.

--People who enjoy clean water.

--People who like to breath oxygen.



The rest of you needn't bother to read it.



(While I sound like I'm being paid by either the author or the Scientists and the Andrews Forest, I had never heard of either of them before my mom got me this book for my birthday. I just really liked the book--one of the best and most significant I've ever read.)

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highlighting the Hidden Forest: Luoma as Virgil to Our Dante, June 27, 2000

By 

Charles Barr - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hidden Forest: The Biography of an Ecosystem (Paperback)

Luoma takes the reader on an intimate, guided tour with some of the tenacious pioneers of forested ecosystems research and the mysterious processes whereby the woods become established, grow and change--in the case of the moist coastal uplands of western Oregon, processes that take centuries to complete all their steps. For those who like their science in the field, in the raw, and introduced by the human practitioners struggling (and loving) the dance of theory and experiment, this is a must-have. Ancient Forests rhetoric too frequently airbrushes over the hard scientific inquiry that helped reveal both the uniqueness of the Oregon forested ecosystems research site and yet suggests that some of these hidden processes, or ones similar, will be found to play crucial roles in other forest places as well. If Luoma doesn't beat me to it, I could do worse than spend the rest of my career writing a series for all the Long-Term Ecological Research stations that perform the valuable work of building baselines and foundations in ecology for every major ecological region. At least, this is the sort of book that makes a reader feel that way!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars knowledge made into pleasure reading, June 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hidden Forest: The Biography of an Ecosystem (Paperback)

Luoma knows how to take important scientific work in forest ecology, and turn it into a book that is a pleasure to read. If learning had been this much fun in school, think how well educated we would all be today! Seriously, I like to read well-written books, but I prefer them to be to tell me things I din't know. Hidden forests does. Another really good read out this season is Bullough's Pond, a treatment of ecological history and industrial revolution that I found fascinating, and it read like a novel.