Customer Reviews

The Tropical Rain Forest: An Ecological Study

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The first edition (1952) of Richards' classical book was a much cited pioneering work on Earth's tropical rainforests. This second edition should be completely rewritten but nevertheless the papers referred in its text are mostly decades, and even over 100 years, old. Consequently, you cannot be sure if the theories discussed in the book correspond to the modern views. However, the book is massive and exhaustive, written by a very experienced scientist who has studied tropical rainforests when they still streched over vast areas. The discussion is somewhat concentrated on a few sites where the author has first-hand experience, but a great range of other locations is discussed through countless references. Plenty of tree species and their characteristics have been mentioned. Animals are not discussed at all. There are a lot of photos, but unfortunately the photos, also the newer ones, are mostly of extremely poor quality, like copied with an office copier from 1980's. There is an index of plant names with families they belong to.