Book Description

Warren Dean chronicles the chaotic path to what could beone of thegreatest natural disasters of modern times: the disappearance of theAtlanticForest. A quarter the size of the Amazon Forest, and the most denselypopulatedregion in Brazil, the Atlantic Forest is now the most endangered in theworld.It contains a great diversity of life forms, some of them found nowhereelse, aswell as the country's largest cities, plantations, mines, andindustries.Continual clearing is ravaging most of the forested remnants. Dean opens his story with the hunter-gatherers of twelve thousand yearsago andtakes it up to the 1990sthrough the invasion of Europeans in thesixteenthcentury; the ensuing devastation wrought by such developments as goldanddiamond mining, slash-and-burn farming, coffee planting, andindustrialization;and the desperate battles between conservationists and developers in thelatetwentieth century. Based on a great range of documentary and scientific resources,WithBroadax andFirebrand is an enormously ambitious book. More than a history of atropicalforest, or of the relationship between forest and humans, it is also ahistoryof Brazil told from an environmental perspective. Dean writespassionately andmovingly, in the fierce hope that the story of the Atlantic Forest willserve asa warning of the terrible costs of destroying its great neighbor to thewest,the Amazon Forest. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A Great Book!
To read this book is to learn how a colonization exterminated the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Laws, economics process, natives agriculture, how the urbanization burned the forest and fens. Except the first chaptre, about the evolution of the forest by geologic times, all is perfect.
I use this book in my class - Geography of Brazil and the students love it. (...)

What can I say?It's great!
Having actually lived in the country and visited the Amazon rain forest, this depiction of the destruction of the Atlantic rainforest and the effects there is highly factual and rather interesting.It is one of theonly successful ecological histories about a forest!If you want a goodread about the disappearance of one of Brazil's most historical aspects,then this book is for you.

Impressive environmental history of Brazil
This book is bound to change your view of Brazilian history, and of environmental history. A must read for anyone interested in either. A good Portuguese language translation is available. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Trouble in Paradise
This account of efforts to understand and deal with threatened bird extinctions on Guam is a gem of a book. The paperback's blurbs focused on Jaffe's "ecological detective thriller."But I found most compelling the seamlessness of the book's widely-informed joined elements -- including biographical and political sketches of great pith, accessible population biology, and a good-scientists-versus-stupid-and-finally-thwarted-others story.

The ecological culprit was not some natural substance, and not even one of homo sapiens' products (the book's index lists only three references to DDT).Nor was he us.But he was (and is) one of our fellows -- a little predator incredibly well adapted to feeding on birds' eggs.

After the paucity and untimeliness of the governmental response to the Guamanian situation had sunk into my consciousness, it seemed ironic that the book ends with the United States Air Force establishing a50-acre "environmental reclamation experiment" which Jaffe hopes will provide the setting for much more effective research on the culprit. Like The Lord of the Flies ends with her majesty's warship rescuing the island-stranded, warring boys from themselves. ... Read more

Book Description

Far into the Atlantic Ocean, the outflow from the Amazon River creates a "sweet sea" of fresh water. At the river's mouth, a vast delta of river channels and marshes, floodplain and upland forests, open and scrub savannas, floating meadows, and mangrove swamps hosts an astonishingly diverse assemblage of plant and animal life. So rich is this biological treasure house that early European explorers deemed it inexhaustible.In this highly readable book, Nigel Smith explores how human use of the Amazon estuary's natural resources has been affected by technological change, rapid urban growth, and accelerated market integration. Avoiding alarmist rhetoric, he shows how human intervention in the estuary has actually diversified agriculture and helped save floodplain forests from wanton destruction. His findings underscore the importance of understanding the history of land use and the ecological knowledge of local people when formulating development and conservation policies. The book will be of interest to everyone concerned with the fate of tropical forests, conserving biodiversity, and developing natural resources in a sustainable manner. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

WATCH, READ AND LEARN - AMAZON MEETS ATLANTIC
Nigel Smith is a longtime student of the Brazilian Amazon.In this illustrated book, he attempts to capture the social, economic and environmental reality of the estuary region of the Amazon river, where it meets the Atlantic Ocean.

This is a wonderfully illustrated book, with the pictures going a long way in capturing the reality of the region.The region is quite peculiar even within the Amazon in that it suffers the influence of the Ocean, with ingredients such as daily tides and beaches that are not common elsewhere in the Amazon.

The social and economic contrasts are vast: on the one hand, there is the city of Belem, with over 1 million people and a cosmopolitan feel to it; on the other hand, you have the people who live in the banks of the thousands of rivers that crisscross each other on the way to the Ocean, living very simple lives, often without electricity.The book depicts, with few words and many images, the distinct local living conditions.

The environmental aspect, which makes the region all the more interesting, is present throughout.Despite an economy heavily dependent on natural resources, especially in the Marajo island, the author presents an ecossystem that is often well integrated with man.For example, he demonstrates how people survive off gathering acai (a local plant), crab or eels, in such a way that the resources are naturally replenished.

The sweet sea is clearly a distinct region from the rest of the Amazon, and hence deserves unique attention.The books gives one a full view of life there (human or not), which is quite amazing.I highly recommend this book for the armchair voyageur, or to someone considering visiting Belem and surroundings.It will definitely give you a perspective that most of the locals don't even have.

Historical and natural history of the Amazon estuary
Author's field works and photographs document changes in the way people and their environment interact. Book design: Heidi Haeuser. ... Read more

Book Description

Nouragues is a tropical forest research station in French Guiana. It was established in 1986 for research on natural mechanisms of forest regeneration. Since then a lot of research has been done on this and related topics. This book provides an overview of the main research results, and focuses on plant communities, vertebrate communities and evolutionary ecology, frugivory and seed dispersal, and forest dynamics and recruitment.The appendices give (annoted) checklists of plants, birds, mammals, herpetofauna and fishes found in the same area. ... Read more