The aim of the book is to provide an introduction to the world's tropical rain forests for a broad audience, to describe their structure and functioning, their value to man, and what heis doing to them. Examples are drawn from all parts of the humid tropics. Today there is more research being conducted in tropical rain forests than ever before. Some is driven by curiosity, some by the desire to harness these forests to mankind's needs. What generalizations can be made? To what extent are there real differences between rain forests in different places, and what are the current frontiers of know-ledge? Is present-day concern about man's impacts on tropical rain forests justified? The book seeks to provide an answer to these questions, at a simple level accessible to all who want to know something about these grand forests. In lands where tropical rain forests occur man has lived in closest dependence on them since time immemorial. Europeans became aware of them over two millenia ago (Chapter 1). Increasing knowledge since the Renaissance with the voyages of discovery and then the colonial era revealed that there are in fact many different kinds of tropical rain forest (Chapter 2). Plants exist in a luxuriance and a diversity of bizarre forms undreamed of in temperatre latitudes (Chapter 3). Animal life is also rich and diverse (Chapter 4). Modern science continues to unravel the many kinds of complicated interdependence of plants and animals, for example in flower pollination and seed dispersal (Chapter 5). Tropical rain forests have waxed and waned in extent through geological time, and the present patterns of species' distributions are a result of these historical events. The former idea that these great forests have survived immutable "since the dawn of time" is a romantic fallacy, as investigations of the last three decades have shown (Chapter 6). The forests are also continuously changing at the other end of the time scale, the lift span of an individual tree. The elucidation of forest dynamics (Chapter 7) has been the other major breakthrough of recent years. We now know a great deal about the ecology of individual tree species and the particular requirements for growth of their seedlings in canopy gaps formed by the death of big trees. Silviculture, the manipulation of forests by man to favour tree species of his choice, is dependent on understanding these innate characteristics. Tropical rain forests can be a sustained source of timber, renewed by regrowth after felling, so long as (and it is a vital proviso) man works within the limits of their natural dynamics. Tropical rain forest nutrient cycles (Chapter 8) are also now reasonably well understood, with enough detailed studies made for tentative generalizations to be possible.
