Forest Canopies Forest Production, Ecosystem Health and Climate Conditions

About this book

Forests cover approximately 30 percent of total land area and function as habitats for organisms, hydrologic flow modulators, and soil conservers, constituting one of the most important aspects of the Earth's biosphere. The canopy is one of the uppermost levels of a forest, below the emergent layer, formed by the tree crowns. The canopy is home to unique flora and fauna not found in other layers of a forest. Trees in the canopy are able to photosynthesise very rapidly thanks to the large amount of light, so it supports the widest diversity of plant as well as animal life in most rainforests.

This book presents a wide variety of topics on the ecosystem in forest canopies. Included is a study on light distribution patterns and how it effects the daily photosynthesis of herbaceous vegetation. Recent progress, concerns, and future directions in simulations of vegetation processes are presented as well, in the terrestrial biosphere model that is coupled to a climate system model.

Contents

Preface; A New Paradigm of Forest Canopy Interception Science: The Implication of a Huge Amount of Evaporation during Rainfall; Exotic Herb Layers as Ecological Filters in Forest Understories; Quantitative Analysis of Canopy Photosynthesis Influenced by Light Simulation Models; Lidar Remote Sensing for Forest Canopy Studies; Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics of Different Land Use in Southeast Asia; Carbon Stable Isotopes of Mammal Bones as Tracers of Canopy Development and Habitat Use in Temperate and Boreal Contexts; Simulating the Two Way Feedback between Terrestrial Ecosystems and Climate: Importance of Forest Ecological Process on Global Change; Atmospheric Deposition and its Leaf Surface Interactions in Japanese Cedar Forests; Effects of Forest Canopy Gaps on Litter Microarthropod Populations in the Southern Appalachians; Interactions between Urban Vegetated Surfaces and the Atmosphere; Index.

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