Plants at the Margin: Ecological Limits and Climate Change
Cambridge University Press, 3/20/2008
EAN 9780521623094, ISBN10: 052162309X
Hardcover, 476 pages, 25.1 x 19.3 x 3 cm
Language: English
Margins are by their very nature environmentally unstable - does it therefore follow that plant populations adapted for life in such areas will prove to be pre-adapted to withstand the changes that may be brought about by a warmer world? Biogeography, demography, reproductive biology, physiology and genetics all provide cogent explanations as to why limits occur where they do, and the purpose of this book is to bring together these different avenues of enquiry. Crawford's numerous beautiful illustrations of plants in their natural habitats remind us that the environment remains essential to our understanding of plants and their function. This book is suited to students, researchers and anyone with an interest in the impact of climate change on our world.
1. Recognizing margins
2. Biodiversity in marginal areas
3. Resource acquisition in marginal habitats
4. Reproduction at the periphery
5. Arctic and sub-Arctic treelines and the tundra taiga interface
6. Plant survival in a warmer Arctic
7. Land-plants at coastal margins
8. Survival at the water's edge
9. Woody plants at the margin
10. Plants at high altitudes
11. Man at the margins
12. Summary and conclusions.
'The book is very wide-ranging across the globe. Every page is worth reading. ... attractively laden with many colour photographs of plant close-ups and vegetation as well as maps and diagrams. ... The colour photographs are very well-chosen and highly informative. Few scientific texts are so generously enlivened with colour. ... This is a very fine book I wish I could have written myself. I found it to be extremely thorough and highly informative, and so I can recommend it without reservation to conservationists and others needing to understand plant ecology, not least the effects on global warming on plants.' BRISC Recorder News