Tropical deforestation: A multidisciplinary primer

Abstract

Tropical deforestation is a compact book designed to give undergraduate students in environmental science a broad-based perspective on the manifold threats facing tropical forests and their biota. Co-edited by a political scientist, Sharon Spray, and a biologist, Matthew Moran, it is part of a book series on environmental challenges that includes other works on global climate change, loss of biodiversity, and wetlands (all co-edited by Spray and Karen McGlothlan). The novelty of Tropical deforestation is that it explicitly attacks the vexing problem of rampant forest loss from distinct perspectives, including biological sciences (ecology, biogeography, landscape ecology), physical sciences (soil science, geography), and social sciences (economics, political science). This multifaceted approach largely works, and there is just enough conceptual overlap among the chapters to reinforce key concepts.