The Andean Cloud Forest

About this book

A book focused solely on Andean Cloud Forests has never been published. They are high biodiversity ecosystems in the Neotropics with a large proportion of endemic species, and are important for the hydrology of entire regions. They provide water for large parts of the Amazon basin, for example. Here, the author has taken advantage of his many years working in Andean Cloud Forests in Ecuador, to edit this book that contains the following sections: (1) Andean Cloud Forests over space and time, (2) Hydrology, (3) Light and the Carbon cycle, (4) Soil, litter, fungi and nutrient cycling, (5) Plants, (6) Animals, and (7) Human impacts and management. Under this premise, international experts contributed chapters that consist of reviews of what is known about their topic, of what research they have done, and of what needs to be done in the future. The Andean Cloud Forest is suitable for graduate students, professors, scientists, and researcher-oriented managers.

Contents

1. Introduction / Randall W. Myster
2. Dynamics of Andean Treeline Ecotones: Between Cloud Forest and Paramo Geocritical Tropes / Fausto O. Sarmiento
3. Analisis Regional en Ecosistemas de Montana en Colombia: Una mirada desde la funcionalidad del paisaje y los servicios ecosistemicos / Paola Isaacs-Cubides, Julian Diaz and Tobias Leyva-Pinto
4. Ecohydrology of Tropical Andean Cloud Forests / Conrado Tobon Martin
5. Litterfall in Andean forests: Quantity, composition, and environmental drivers / Wolfgang Wilcke
6. Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Ectomycorrhizas in the Andean Cloud Forest of South Ecuador / Ingeborg Haug, Sabrina Setaro, Juan Pablo Suarez
7. Nesting ecology of the Tucuman Amazon (Amazona tucumana) in the cloud forest of Northwestern Argentina / Luis Rivera and Natalia Politi
8. Adaptive strategies of frugivore bats to Andean cloud forests / Adriana Ruiz and Pascual J. Soriano
9. Diversification and dispersal of Neotropical fauna: Processes and patterns in Andean species diversity / Juan C. Garcia-Ramirez and Angela M. Mendoza-Henao
10. Mapping Hydrological Ecosystem Services and Impacts of Scenarios for Deforestation and Conservation of Lowland, Montane and Cloud-Affected Forests / Mark Mulligan
11. Conclusions, synthesis and future directions / Randall W. Myster

Customer Reviews

Biography

Dr Randall W. Myster got his PhD from Rutgers University working with STA Pickett. His first full-time position was at the University of Puerto Rico where he worked in old fields, pastures and landslides, and was a CO-PI on two of their LTER grants done in cooperation with the US Forest Service in Puerto Rico. While in Puerto Rico, he also began to work in Ecuador and Peru. That research continued when he got his second full-time position in Oklahoma and also to the present time. He has published 140+ articles in scientific journals and six books on his research in the Neotropics. In the future, he will in Ecuador expand his research to include forests between Cloud forest and Amazon terra-firme forest, and in Peru focus on black-water flooded igapo forest. He puts all of his book royalties back into his research.