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Trees and Forests of Tropical Asia: Exploring Tapovan
Informed by decades of researching tropical Asian forests, a comprehensive, up-to-date, and beautifully illustrated synthesis of the natural history of this unique place.
Trees and Forests of Tropical Asia invites readers on an expedition into the leafy, humid, forested landscapes of tropical Asia—the so-called tapovan , a Sanskrit word for the forest where knowledge is attained through tapasya , or inner struggle. Peter Ashton and David Lee, two of the world’s leading scholars on Asian tropical rain forests, reveal the geology and climate that have produced these unique forests, the diversity of species that inhabit them, the means by which rain forest tree species evolve to achieve unique ecological space, and the role of humans in modifying the landscapes over centuries. Following Peter Ashton’s extensive On the Forests of Tropical Asia , the first book to describe the forests of the entire tropical Asian region from India east to New Guinea, this new book provides a more condensed and updated overview of tropical Asian forests written accessibly for students as well as tropical forest biologists, ecologists, and conservation biologists.
Trees and Forests of Tropical Asia invites readers on an expedition into the leafy, humid, forested landscapes of tropical Asia—the so-called tapovan , a Sanskrit word for the forest where knowledge is attained through tapasya , or inner struggle. Peter Ashton and David Lee, two of the world’s leading scholars on Asian tropical rain forests, reveal the geology and climate that have produced these unique forests, the diversity of species that inhabit them, the means by which rain forest tree species evolve to achieve unique ecological space, and the role of humans in modifying the landscapes over centuries. Following Peter Ashton’s extensive On the Forests of Tropical Asia , the first book to describe the forests of the entire tropical Asian region from India east to New Guinea, this new book provides a more condensed and updated overview of tropical Asian forests written accessibly for students as well as tropical forest biologists, ecologists, and conservation biologists.
448 pages, Paperback
Published October 14, 2022
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September 28, 2023
A somewhat odd publication, as it is a condensed version of a much lengthier and more technical reference book on the subject by the author, intended for a more general readership. However, as the content was really academic and dense, the result was a book that neither explained the topic satisfactorily but was still too technical for the layperson to enjoy.
The book covered a really broad area in terms of both geography and topics, taking in the whole of South and Southeast Asia consisting deciduous and scrub thorn forests of India to the classic ever wet dipterocarp forest of Malesia up to New Guinea. The abiotic environment of soils, geology and climate were all given chapters, followed by an overview of tree species, animal plant interactions, evolutionary history and possible reasons for high diversity, both neutral theory vs. conventional niche theory. The reader was meant to refer to the original text book but without that handy it was tough to follow the long and convoluted writing. The final few chapters on human aspects were interesting but seemed out of place, being social science oriented, which was not the authors' forte.
Quality of the print edition was poor as well, with figures directly extracted from a larger format book presumably, with no thought to legibility, and photos that were quite random and unrelated to the text. I also found a few factual errors, dates and numbers in tables that were wrong, perhaps signs of a hastily put out work with little editorial oversight.
The book covered a really broad area in terms of both geography and topics, taking in the whole of South and Southeast Asia consisting deciduous and scrub thorn forests of India to the classic ever wet dipterocarp forest of Malesia up to New Guinea. The abiotic environment of soils, geology and climate were all given chapters, followed by an overview of tree species, animal plant interactions, evolutionary history and possible reasons for high diversity, both neutral theory vs. conventional niche theory. The reader was meant to refer to the original text book but without that handy it was tough to follow the long and convoluted writing. The final few chapters on human aspects were interesting but seemed out of place, being social science oriented, which was not the authors' forte.
Quality of the print edition was poor as well, with figures directly extracted from a larger format book presumably, with no thought to legibility, and photos that were quite random and unrelated to the text. I also found a few factual errors, dates and numbers in tables that were wrong, perhaps signs of a hastily put out work with little editorial oversight.
Displaying 1 of 1 review