Book Description

This volume contains 53 of the papers presented at the Conference on Tropical Rainforest Research - Current Issues, which was held in Brunei Darussalam in April 1993. The book provides an overview of current knowledge, particularly with respect to south-east Asia, and is divided into three sections - Biodiversity, Forest Dynamics and Socioeconomics. The Biodiversity section emphasises the vast range of life forms in tropical forests and considers the theory and practice of estimating species richness and spatial distribution, while contributions on Forest Dynamics provide a better understanding of the maintenance of this species richness. With an improved background of ideas on rainforest dynamics and biodiversity, better management and conservation strategies are possible, and some of these are explored in the papers on Socioeconomics. The need to demonstrate the total worth of tropical forests to ensure their conservation is taken up by a number of contributors.