Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology [Paperback]

Park S. Nobel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0125200250 | ISBN-13: 978-0125200257 | Edition: 2

The functioning of all living systems obeys the laws of physics in fundamental ways. This is true for all physiological processes that occur inside cells, tissues, organs, and organisms. The new edition of Park Nobel's classic text has been revised in an unprecedented fashion, while still remaining user-friendly and clearly presented. Certain to maintain its leading role in teaching general and comparative physiological principles, Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology now establishes a new standard of excellence in teaching advanced physiology.
The book covers water relations and ion transport for plant cells, including diffusion, chemical potential gradients, and solute movement in and out of plant cells. It also presents the interconnection of various energy forms, such as light, chlorophyll and accessory photosynthesis pigments, and ATP and NADPH. Additionally, the book describes the forms in which energy and matter enter and leave a plant, for example: energy budget analysis, water vapor and carbon dioxide, and water movement from soil to plant to atmosphere.

Key Features
* Over four hundred fifty updated references
* Thorough text revisions intended to improve clarity of presentation
* Enhanced coverage of bioenergetics, and gas and water fluxes
* Thoroughly revised figures
* Revised calculations in all chapters
* Reformatted problems with solutions
* New information on root properties and especially global climate change
* Established and classic equations presented in an easy-to-refer-to list
* Appendices with conversion factors and constants

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for the First Edition
"The best available source for the student or researcher to learn or to review the physical aspects of the majority of plant-physiological processes."
--QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY
"The 540 pages of the text are crammed with information and analysis... The book contains an enormous amount of information, carefully presented and well discussed. One of the strengths is the use made of examples and, as mentioned, the quantitative approach. An important feature is the inclusion of numerical problems at the end of chapters which certainly tax the understanding gained from the information in the text...Another useful feature of the book is the extensive appendices, with numerical values of constants and coefficients, conversion factors and definitions... Essential reading for students of biology, particularly the ecological and environmental sciences with interest in the plant component. It is a valuable, well-established text concerned with basic principles and, therefore, should be useful to all who wish to understand how plant systems are structured, how they function and are regulated and controlled in particular environments. This text will be valuable to undergraduate students of ecology, environmental sciences, and biology and should be read by biochemists as well...Should be available in every library."
--ANNALS OF BOTANY
"Nobel's books are widely acknowledged for their outstanding rigour and clarity of exposition, and the excellence of the examples of plant behaviour with which he illustrates points... In total, these chapters, with the appendices and lists of symbols and abbreviations, provide a very sound and up-to-date account of the physicochemical bases of transport and (photo-) chemical transformation processes in plants and their environment. The development of the quantitative arguments is very carefully executed... The exposition is aided by the worked examples in the text, and by the numerical problems at the end of each chapter. For the first time in this sequence of books, the solutions to the problems are given (at the end of the book)...[I] wish to convey my gratitude to Park Nobel for having succeeded in the extremely difficult task of making this latest book not only more up-to-date, but even clearer and more user-friendly than the earlier books. No other text so effectively integrates the cellular biophysical aspects of energy transformations and transport processes with the more environmental (largely terrestrial) ways of applying physicochemical principles to the study of plant performance. The book deserves to be widely read and will be of great use for a substantial time."
--PLANT, CELL AND ENVIRONMENT
"A 'must' for any advanced course on plant physiological ecology and environmental physiology."
--J. ROZEMA, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
"The book is probably more accessible to students now than ever before... It is the author's concern for its teaching value that has set this book apart over the years... The style and content make this book unique among textbooks in plant physiology... The book is unique in its careful development of physiochemical principles across a wide spectrum in plant physiology. It is truly inspiring to realize that Park Nobel has produced such an important book over the years while maintaining one of the most prolific research programs in plant ecophysiology worldwide."
--PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN
"Nobel's text, in its various incarnations, has long provided a relatively painless introduction to topics such as diffusion, chemical potentials, active transport, carbon and water fluxes, and energy budgets. It has been accessible to students with little prior training in thermodynamics, physics, or chemistry; its success is attested to by the fact that there really is little in the way of direct competition for the topics it covers. The recent revision maintains the focus of the previous ones, being concerned more with basic concepts than with detailed experimental data, though there is excellent guidance given on the values and ranges of many important physiological parameters... If anyone is capable of helping readers develop this understanding, it is Park Nobel."
--ECOLOGY

Book Description

Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology, 3rd edition, establishes a new standard of excellence in the teaching and quantitative understanding of plant physiology. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 474 pages
• Publisher: Academic Press; 2 edition (April 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0125200250
• ISBN-13: 978-0125200257
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,655,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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)([e-mail].

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book ever, October 14, 2008

By 

E. Bobich (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology, Third Edition (Hardcover)

There is no question that Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology is the most comprehensive and well-written book on the biophysical properties of plants from cells to whole organisms. No one has ever synthesized the material in this manner prior to Nobel and it is doubtful anyone ever will.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, August 29, 2011

By 

Reay - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology, Fourth Edition (Hardcover)

Book is a great review of photosynthesis, and pulls together the different parts of photosynthesis to make a readable whole.

4 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Libro de Fisiología, May 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Physicochemical and Environmental Plant Physiology (Paperback)

pienso que este libro es un valioso aporte al conocimiento de las respuestas fisiológicas de las plantas a los estímulos de su medio ambiente, ya que permite relacionar los fenómenos naturales externos (medioambientales) con el funcionamiento interno de un vegetal, apotando información para el proceso de comprensión de los comportamientos vegetales, un área con mucho conocimiento incompleto todavía