Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests

Though seasonally dry tropical forests are equally as important to global biodiversity as tropical rainforests, and are one of the most representative and highly endangered ecosystems in Latin America, knowledge about them remains limited because of the relative paucity of attention paid to them by scientists and researchers and a lack of published information on the subject. "Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests" seeks to address this shortcoming by bringing together a range of experts in diverse fields including biology, ecology, biogeography, and biogeochemistry, to review, synthesize, and explain the current state of our collective knowledge on the ecology and conservation of seasonally dry tropical forests. The book offers a synthetic and cross-disciplinary review of recent work with an expansive scope, including sections on distribution, diversity, ecosystem function, and human impacts. Throughout, contributors emphasise conservation issues, particularly emerging threats and promising solutions, with key chapters on climate change, fragmentation, restoration, ecosystem services, and sustainable use.Seasonally dry tropical forests are extremely rich in biodiversity, and are seriously threatened. They represent scientific terrain that is poorly explored, and there is an urgent need for increased understanding of the system's basic ecology. "Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests" represents an important step in bringing together the most current scientific information about this vital ecosystem and disseminating it to the scientific and conservation communities.

"Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests emphasizes the growing impact of human activities on ecological processes in these forests--a topic of critical importance given the high rate of conversion and fragmentation of tropical dry forests around the world."--Katherine Renton "Chamela Biological Station, National Autonomous University of Mexico", "[Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests]...provides a much-needed overview of seasonally dry tropical forests in their respective regions. It is perhaps true that rain forests generally receive the lion's share of researcher and conservation attention, but SDTF are no less fascinating, and equally in need of conservation intervention."--Jaboury Ghazoul "The International Biogeography Society"

Rodolfo Dirzo and Harold A. Mooney are professors, and Hillary S. Young is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology, Stanford University. Gerardo Ceballos is a professor of biology at Instituto de Ecologia, at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.