Jul 10, 2009 - ... land and development in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Harwood Academic. Publishers GmbH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. xxv + 438.
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P. Sillitoe 1996. A place against time: land and development in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. xxv + 438 pages. ISBN 3-7186-5925-5. Price £49 US \$ 75 (cloth). Tim Bayliss-Smith Journal of Tropical Ecology / Volume 13 / Issue 05 / September 1997, pp 776 - 777 DOI: 10.1017/S0266467400010956, Published online: 10 July 2009
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266467400010956 How to cite this article: Tim Bayliss-Smith (1997). Journal of Tropical Ecology, 13, pp 776-777 doi:10.1017/ S0266467400010956 Request Permissions : Click here
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PIERRE-MICHEL FORGET AND DANIEL SABATIER
be regarded as a record of what the tropical rain forest was like in the twentieth century." It is that and much more. This edition follows the general format of the original and uses many of the same chapter headings and subheadings. However, do not be misled into assuming this is just an updated edition. Not only is much of the writing new, but Richards has successfully integrated the relevant literature published since the first edition. Second edition chapters ?.re titled: introduction; structure of primary forest; regeneration; trees and shrubs - vegetative features; trees and shrubs - reproductive biology; ground herbs and dependent synusiae; climate (by R. P. D. Walsh); microclimate and hydrology (by Walsh); phenology; soils of the humid tropics (by I. C. Baillie); composition of primary forests-I; composition of primary forests-II; primary xeroseres and the recolonization of Krakatau; hydroseres and freshwater swamp forests; mangroves and other coastal vegetation; rain forest, deciduous forest and savanna; the tropical rain forest at its altitudinal and latitudinal limits; secondary and deflected successions; and postscript - the future of the tropical rain forest. Of particular note are the three contributed chapters. Perhaps as a tribute to Richards, both contributors far exceed the average contributed chapter. Walsh marshals and synthesizes an impressive array of macro- and micro-climatic information. In an unusually successful overview (30 pp.) that ties in well with the main theme of the book, Baillie succinctly highlights the main soil groups of the humid tropics, their edaphic characteristics, soil-forest interactions, and the effects of forest disturbances on soils. As in the first edition, this book is very much a descriptive tome about tropical forests. The author strived for geographic balance among the three major regions, which makes this an unusually comprehensive reference source. Richards' mastery of the literature is quite evident, particularly of the older Dutch, French and German works. The reader soon notes frequent reference to pre-W. W. II literature, including several from the 19th century. Nevertheless, nearly 40% of the c. 1800 citations are from 1980-1995. More importantly, Richards did an excellent job of integrating new material and pertinent references into the rewritten text. This reviewer found a surprising number of errors, both factual and publishing — too many for such an important reference work. Despite these distractions, the book is outstanding. I am confident that it will serve as a catalyst to new generations of a broad array of scientists and conservationists interested in tropical forests. Gary S. Hartshorn Organization for Tropical Studies, Duke University, Durham NC 27708-0630, USA.
SILLTTOE, P. 1996. A place against time: land and development in the Papua New Guinea Highlands.
Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. xxv + 438 pages. ISBN 3-7186-5925-5. Price £49 US $ 75 (cloth). This is Paul Sillitoes's fourth book about the Wola, who live in the montane rainforest zone of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. His first (1979) focussed on pig exchange, an abiding interest of both anthropologists and highlands men in this region. His second, Roots of the Earth (1983), was a detailed description of Wola agricultural practices. The third, was Made in Niugini (1988). In the current volume Sillitoe moves closer to the soil and vegetation resources that make possible human subsistence and the prestige economy that is based upon a sweet potato surplus. The book was written partly to refute some of the author's earlier assumptions, that the Wola practice shifting cultivation as an adaptation to soils that are acid, leached and infertile. Sillitoe's new paradigm for the Wola is that their agriculture, though sometimes based on classic shifting cultivation with forest fallow, is more, usually a cycle of several years of cultivation followed by short Miscanthus grass fallows, and in some cases allows several decades of almost uninterrupted sweet potato cultivation. Wola informants believe that such sites improve with duration of cropping, an assertion that Sillitoe tests, and partially confirms, through field measurement of yields and laboratory analysis of soils. The Wola system is, he argues, fully sustainable, causes low rates of soil erosion, does not destroy the forest cover, and has been developed over a period of 10,000 years. In short the Wola "are the inheritors of a long-lived farming tradition, accordant with the natural environment, not discordant agents of degradation" (p. 164).
Dynamics of the seedling shadow in French Guiana
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The book contains a wealth of information on climate, landforms, flora, vegetation, and the dynamics of fallows, assessed both in scientific terms and as aspects- of indigenous knowledge. It will be read by anthropologists as an outstanding achievement in ethnoscience, and by ecologists and geographers most of whom will be unaware that the author only took up soil science (M.Sc. Wye College) in order to train himself to carry out this study. It is a refreshing new look at the sustainability of sweet potato cultivation in the montane tropics, but I am a little concerned at the author's willingness to extrapolate the success of the present-day system back into the mists of time. Modern Wola practices are in fact based on new steel tools and high-yielding varieties of a crop only grown in New Guinea for about three centuries. In the absence of secure oral history or archaeology little can be said about the origins of the modern system, which must be judged as an on-going experiment in sustainability rather than the outcome of age-old Wola wisdom. Tim Bayliss-Smith Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EN, England. Sillitoe, P. 1979. Give and take: exchange in Wola society. Australian National University Press, Canberra, Australia. Sillitoe, P. 1983. Roots of the earth: crops in the highlands ofPapua New Guinea. Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK. Sillitoe, P. 1988. Made in Niugini: technology in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. British Museum Publications in Association with University of Durham, UK.
SWAINE, M. D. (ed) 1996. The ecology of tropical forest seedlings. Man and the biosphere series volume 17. UNESCO and The Parthenon Publishing Group, Carnforth, Lanes, UK. xxviii + 340 pages. ISBN 1-85070-687-5. Price £48 (hardback). This book is a collection of papers about the ecology of seedlings of tropical forest trees from all three main tropical areas. The papers cover a range of topics from the physiological ecology of tree seedlings, including in situ measurements of photosynthesis, through studies of growth and survival in different environments, to reviews of aspects of the biology of seedlings relevant to forestry. Most of the papers are reviews, frustratingly there are no summaries, this is a serious omission because many researchers who might have time to read 13 summaries will not have time to read more than 300 pages with little to guide them except titles and authors. There are lots of interesting things in the book; I choose three illustrative examples. Li reports that of the species germinating in the understorey of the rain forest at La Selva, Costa Rica two species of Cecropia account for 26% of all seedlings. Cecropias are species that I would guess are pioneers in the sense that they require high light for germination - are sunflecks the answer? My second example is the chapter by Hall 'seedling ecology and tropical forestry'. It was interesting to me because I have long suspected that foresters know a lot about tree seedling ecology that ecologists have failed to discover. However this seems not to be the case "most forest based work on seeds, seedlings and regeneration was effectively suspended before any research or monitoring were generally adopted". My third is the chapter by Press, Brown, Barker & Zipperlen on 'photosynthetic responses to light in tropical rain forest tree seedlings' which, beside being generally interesting, reported that Kamaluddin & Grace (1992) discovered that leaves of Bischqfia javanica produced in low light (40 \lm m'7 s"') increased their leaf thickness when transferred to high light (1200 Jim m' 2 s"'), so that their leaf area approached that of leaves produced on plants in continuously high light; this struck me as completely unexpected. I hope that my examples will show why this book will be of great interest to researchers working on both tropical and temperate trees. Edmund Tanner Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EA, UK Kamaluddin, M & Grace, J. 1992. Acclimation in seedlings of a tropical forest tree from Asia, Bischqfia javanica. Annals of Botany 69:47-52.
