The Ecology of Tropical East Asia
Richard T. Corlett
Abstract
Tropical East Asia is home to over one billion people and faces massive human impacts from its rising population and rapid economic growth. It has already lost more than two-thirds of its forest cover and has the highest rates of deforestation and logging in the tropics. Hunting and the relentless trade in wildlife products threatens all its large and many smaller vertebrates. Despite these problems, the region still supports an estimated 15–25% of global terrestrial biodiversity and is therefore a key area for conservation. Effective conservation action depends on understanding ecological pat ... More
Tropical East Asia is home to over one billion people and faces massive human impacts from its rising population and rapid economic growth. It has already lost more than two-thirds of its forest cover and has the highest rates of deforestation and logging in the tropics. Hunting and the relentless trade in wildlife products threatens all its large and many smaller vertebrates. Despite these problems, the region still supports an estimated 15–25% of global terrestrial biodiversity and is therefore a key area for conservation. Effective conservation action depends on understanding ecological patterns and processes in the region, but previously information was scattered among numerous publications in several different languages. This book describes the terrestrial ecology of the entire East Asian tropics and subtropics, from southern China to western Indonesia. This edition updates the contents and extends the coverage to include the similar ecosystems of northeast India. The book deals with plants, animals, and the ecosystems they inhabit, as well as the diverse threats to their survival and the options for conservation. It provides the background knowledge of the region’s ecology needed by both specialists and non-specialists to put their own work into a broader context.
Keywords:
Asia,
physical geography,
biodiversity,
biogeography,
ecology,
forests,
conservation,
tropics,
subtropics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199681341 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199681341.001.0001 |
