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Stephen Law's dream job had him working in the nation's best environment--its forests. Raised on a farm in rural Maine, Stephen became a civil engineer for the U.S. Forest Service, and A Forest Environment was written from his experiences. He loved the woods and the animals that lived there, hunted, fished and loved to camp and explore.

In a chronicle spanning two generations, Stephen shares his adventures in the wild, as well as the insights of his father, a veteran of the Maine woods, in the early 1900s, working for the paper industry.

Join Stephen as he comes face-to-face with a bear for the first time, catches 22 trout on 22 casts and hunts mountain goats. Traveling all the way from the woods of Maine to the forests of Alaska, Stephen learns how engineers for the U.S. Forest Service built roads and bridges so the forest resources could be managed to meet the needs of the greatest number of people in the long run. He shares these lessons of the twentieth century with readers of the twenty-first century in an intimate and humorous story-telling style.

Advocates of maintaining our nation's forests, casual outdoor enthusiasts, and those completely new to the idea of 'the great outdoors' will discover the charm and wonder to be found in A Forest Environment.

Pack your camping gear and get your fishing rod and hunting rifle because A Forest Environment is going to take you on an adventure of a lifetime. ... Read more

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Taking a unique anthropological apprach, Bush Base: Forest Farm explores the management of resources in third would development programmes. The contributors, all distinguished anthropologists with practical experience of development projects, focus on the role of human cultural imagination in the use of environmental resources. They challenge the traditional sharp distinction between human settlement and natual environment (farm or camp, forest or bush), and argue that development programmes should place at their centre an appreciation of people's cosmologies and cultural understandings. ... Read more

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Unplanned deforestation, which is occurring at unsustainable rates in many parts of the world, can cause significant hardships for rural communities by destroying critical stocks of fuel, fodder, food, and building materials. It can also have profound regional and global consequences by contributing to biodiversity loss, erosion, floods, lowered water tables, and climate change.People and Forests explores the complex interactions between local communities and their forests. It focuses on the rules by which communities govern and manage their forest resources. As part of the International Forestry Resources and Institutions research program, each of the contributors employs the same systematic, comparative, and interdisciplinary methods to examine why some people use their forests sustainably while others do not. The case studies come from fieldwork in Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Nepal, and Uganda.People and Forests offers policymakers a sophisticated view of local forest management from which to develop policy options and offers biophysical and social scientists a better understanding of the linkages between residents, local institutions, and forests.Contributors: Arun Agrawal, Abwoli Y. Banana, C. Dustin Becker, Clark C. Gibson, William Gombya-Ssembajjwe, Rosario Leon, Margaret A. McKean, Elinor Ostrom, Charles M. Schweik, George Varughese, Mary Beth Wertime. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good editors, frustrating contributors
Like most edited books, this one shows every sign of editors valiantly trying to get the authors onto the same page, while the authors ignore (or actively resist) their suggestions.Having edited a book myself, I'm all too familiar with the pattern - - and I side with the editors.

The editors present a common framework focusing on the importance of (mostly local) institutions in explaining successful and unsuccessful forest management in developing countries.It's not as strong as a real theory would be, but it's useful enough as a unifier for a collection of hypotheses that Ostrom draws out in her conclusion.About half of the chapters - - those written by one of the editors - - use the framework in a serious way, while the other half don't.The editors' chapters address larger issues about local management of common pool resources, while the other chapters tend to be largely descriptive case studies of local problems.

Both editors and contributors are part of an intellectual community that's interested in successful management of environmental problems (such as common pool resources) at the local level.It's an important topic, but it encourages the worst kind of case study research.All too often, research involves going off to a study site chosen for practical reasons such as language skills, local contacts, or government permission.Analytical questions get pushed off to the side, and I'm afraid that's true of many chapters here too.

In short: read it for the editors, whose chapters provide interesting analyses of local solutions to forest management problems.
... Read more

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When Europeans first reached the land that would become the United States they were staggered by the breadth and density of the forest that they found. The existence of that forest, and the effort either to use or subdue it, has been a constant theme in American history, literature, economics, and geography up to the present day.In this magisterial and unprecedented book, Michael Williams tells us of the meaning of the forest in American history and culture; he describes and analyzes the clearing and use of the forest from pre-European times to the present, and he traces the subsequent regrowth of the forest since the middle of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A landmark text
This is one of the classics of American environmental history, sitting on the high shelf with Stilgoe's "Common Landscapes of America", Pyne's "Fire in America", Cronon's "Changes in the Land" and "Nature's Metropolis", and Reisner's "Cadillac Desert".

Williams does a masterful job of pulling together social and economic sources (including much primary material) to present a wholly original view of American history.For thousands of years people have shaped the forests of North America, and in subtle ways the forests have shaped us.However, forest history has long been hidden behind the curtain of political events that constitute the official record of "history", aided by the amazing shortness of human memory.Williams brings forest history (and environmental history in general) back into the light with a lucid account of forest history at the scale of the whole nation.

He dusts off long-forgotten sets of nineteenth and twentieth century statistics, and summarizes them in easily comprehended graphs and maps to make the point that the forest resource played an important role in population expansion across North America, in the evolution of our governmental structure, and in development of modern technologies.To the forest ecologist, he says 'Much of the forest you are looking at today is simply an artifact of human intervention in the past'.

Like all works which attempt to convey a long view of history, A&TF becomes a bit vague as it approaches modern day.The owls vs. jobs controversy of the Pacific Northwest is not mentioned, nor are the regrowth of eastern forests and exurban sprawl given the space they deserve.Nevertheless, the accounts of events in the 17th - mid-20th century are excellent, and highly relevant considering we are still dealing with their aftermath.

A history book on forests
Many old pictures tell you the truth. A lot of tables include information of the past. foresters must own this book. ... Read more

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Throughout much of human history, changes to forest ecosystems have come about through natural climatic changes occurring over long periods of time. But scientists now find changes in forest cover dramatically accelerated by such human activities as large-scale agriculture, the building of dams and roads, and the growth of cities with vast areas of asphalt. Changes that once took centuries now take only decades. Seeing the Forest and the Trees examines changes in land cover and land use in forested regions as major contributors to global environmental change. It investigates why some forested areas thrive even in the presence of high human densities and activity while others decline and disappear.

The book brings together findings from an ongoing, large-scale, multidisciplinary research project undertaken by anthropologists, geographers, economists, sociologists, political scientists, environmental scientists, and biologists in more than twelve countries at over eighty locations. After addressing theory and methodology, including chapters on satellite remote sensing, geographic information systems, and modeling of land-cover change, the book presents case studies that compare data across sites and across temporal and spatial scales. It contributes to Human Dimensions in Global Change research and proposes new directions for this area of study. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The second growth club
What people do is behind the build-up of earth-warming gases. For example, carbon dioxide builds up from people using fossil fuels and cutting down tropical forests. Methane builds up from people raising so many animals and so much irrigated rice. These gases change climate. Changed climate means changed air and water, changed farming, and changed life.

In these cases, people change land cover by changing land use. Is it surprising that changing forest cover is so serious? Trees are homes to plants, people, bugs, birds and animals. They keep us all breathing, by adding oxygen to the air. They make sure there's carbon, what with green things growing old and dying. They make sure there's water by getting rainfall into the ground and the water table. They make sure water levels stay about the same in streams and stop soil erosion on stream banks.

Land cover always changes. But that used to be part of natural climate changes taking place over a long time. What's different now is fast-paced land clearing for grazing, farming, and building dams, roads and suburbs. Some forests grow back. Others not.

Natural scientists were the first squeaky wheels about the role of people in all this. They couldn't come up with solutions, on their own, to problem changes in air and weather. They needed the help of social scientists. For everywhere natural scientists were SEEING THE FOREST AND THE TREES they were also seeing HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS IN FOREST ECOSYSTEMS.

Editors Emilio F Moran and Elinor Ostrom, along with their contributing writers, all agree the future of forests, forest livers, and people depends on natural and social scientists working together. The problems of the forest, and of the quality of life on earth, have nature and people aspects. But our educational system gets in the way of this kind of problem-solving. From elementary schools all the way through universities, the natural and social sciences are kept apart. That can change, with enough time, goodwill and effort, say the editors and writers. And the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change at Indiana University sets a fine example.

This well-indexed book has helpful tables, photographs and figures. It ends with a good glossary and an up-to-date set of references. The editors say they're writing for university and university-level research settings. The style and wording can be academic. But the problems and problem-solving go with clear graphics, examples and conclusions. So readers should catch all the fine points of what Virginia Tech master gardeners call that most important wildlands-urban interface. ... Read more

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In the Indian context. ... Read more

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The forest ecosystems of the southern United States are the region's predominant land use and comprise vital resources of economic and biological significance. These forests, covering 85 million hectares or 40% of the land area, are subject to numerous physical and chemical stressors. Temperature, precipitation, and nutrition are three factors that currently limit forest ecosystem health and productivity in the region. In a changing global environment, these forest ecosystems face an unprecedented rate of change and will be directly and indirectly affected by additional stresses from air pollutants and climate change, including increasing concentrations of carbon dixoide, methane, other trace gases and atmospheric aerosols, and altered land use patterns.

The research presented in this book provides a sound scientific basis for management and policy decisions regarding the productivity and sustainability of forest ecosystems in the context of a rapidly changing global environment.

This volume is a synthesis of five years of field and laboratory research on southern forests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service to provide scientific assessments to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The book will provide scientific information for policy makers and land use managers. It will also be of interest to researchers in the environmental disciplines of ecology, forestry, atmospheric science, hydrology, soil science, and biogeochemistry.f ... Read more

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Despite the vast number of books and reports on tropical deforestation, there's confusion about the causes of forest loss and forest poverty, and the effectiveness of policy responses. At Loggerheads seeks to describe ways to reconcile pressures for agricultural expansion in the tropics with the urgent needs for both forest conservation and poverty alleviation. It diagnoses the causes and impacts of forest loss and the reasons for the association of forests and poverty. It looks at how policies - modulated by local conditions - act simultaneously on deforestation and poverty, creating tradeoffs or complementarities, depending on the situation. The report brings to the surface problems that impede adoption of favourable policies, describing institutional and technological innovations that might help overcome these impediments. ... Read more

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Discusses rain forest ecology and its worldwide destruction, using the Amazon Basin as a case study. ... Read more

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Coastal East and Southeast Asia are characterized by wet growing seasons, and species-rich forest ecosystems develop throughout the latitudinal and altitudinal gradients. In this region, the Global Change Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystems in Monsoon Asia (TEMA) project was carried out as a unique contribution to the international project Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems. TEMA aimed to integrate forest ecosystem processes, from leaf physiology to meteorological budget and prediction of long-term change of vegetation composition and architecture through demographic processes. Special attention was given to watershed processes, where forest ecosystem metabolism affects the properties and biogeochemical budgets of freshwater ecosystems, and where rivers, wetlands, and lakes are subject to direct and indirect effects of environmental change. This volume presents the scaling-up concept for better understanding of ecosystem functioning.

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Describes the characteristics of a temperate forest and examines the reasons these forests are at risk and what can be done to save them. ... Read more

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Contributed articles with reference to India. ... Read more

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Describes life in the rain forests of the world and how people survive there. ... Read more

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Forests and their Environment examines the nature of forests and the environment in Australia, the management of the forest, its economic importance and non-economic value.Specific attention is given to environmental issues associated with forest management. The language level has been guided by a specialist editor to ensure students can comprehend the topic.The book is most relevant to the curriculum as this is an area studied by a range of secondary school levels. The author has worked with the expertise of CSIRO to include the most recent scientific research on forests and their management. The book will be most useful to students of science, geography, environmental studies and social science in secondary schools. ... Read more