Woodlands

A beautifully illustrated guide to the wildlife, plants, history and magic of woodlands. Children can discover their inner explorer, learning how to identify trees, track animals, build woodland shelters, draw maps and discover legends set in woods. With safety tips and links to websites with virtual tours of woodlands and video clips of wildlife.

Prairie woodlands comprise about 1 percent of the landscape in the northern Great Plains. However, prairie woodlands provide habitat for far more than 1 percent of the wildlife species that occur in the prairie region. With increasing pressures on natural resources, managers need methods for managing wildlife habitat and biodiversity that are based on ecological processes. We studied the small mammals and vegetation in seral stages of four woodland types in central South Dakota. None of the species was restricted to a single seral stage, but abundance of some small mammals varied depending on seral stages of woodland types. To ensure the biodiversity of the prairie, managers should retain all seral stages of all prairie woodlands.

Based on work by the Miombo Network in southern Africa, this book helps decision-makers and general readers alike improve their understanding of the socio-ecology of the Miombo woodlands across southern Africa. It also highlights the importance of and the need for further research on the unique Miombo ecology and its link with economic development. One major challenge facing these woodlands is the influence that direct (both natural and anthropogenic) and indirect drivers of change, as well as interactions between these, have had over the centuries. As such the book explores the socio-economic and ecological interactions that occur in these woodlands and discusses the need for further research to provide a better understanding of these interactions. Drawing on data and information from numerous studies conducted in the last 20 years, the book presents a comparative analysis of policy changes and management experiences in the countries concerned. It also addresses issues of global climate change, since they have an impact on Miombo ecosystem management and restoration, and provides future projections based on an assessment of how climate change has affected the Miombo woodlands in the past.

Features almost 300 colour photographs and brings together more than 60 years of research by a leading voice in British woodland ecology. Trees define woodland. They provide a complex, multi-layered habitat for a great range of wildlife, yet they are wildlife themselves, reacting to their circumstances and each other. Woodlands are important to people, supplying timber, food and fuel, accumulating carbon, and offering places of refuge and refreshment. But they are also under threat: some stand in the way of 'progress' and all are becoming increasingly vulnerable to neglect, disease and climate change. Trees and Woodlands brings together decades of research to explore the ecology, nature conservation and wider cultural value of our native trees and shrubs, and the various ways they have combined as woodland. Incorporating personal experiences from 60 years as a forest ecologist, Peterken describes the long history of use and management; how this has influenced woodland wildlife and our art, beliefs and social attitudes. He concludes that most woods should be managed, their timber and small wood being put to good use, but recognises that this is all part of a larger question: the future of ourselves. Containing nearly 300 photographs, and interspersed with box texts describing the history and ecology of representative woods across Britain, this is a commentary on trees, woodlands and our relationship with them from one of our most highly regarded forest ecologists.

Australia's little known woodlands once covered huge areas of the eastern side of our continent. Woodlands are distinguished from forests by the fact that their canopies do not touch, tree heights are usually lower and they usually have a grassy understorey. They support a fascinating and diverse array of birds, mammals, reptiles, frogs, invertebrates and plants, and have been under massive pressure from grazing and agriculture over the past 200 years. In many cases only small remnant patches of some types of woodland survive. Understanding and appreciating woodlands is an important way forward for promoting their sustainable management and conservation. Woodlands: A Disappearing Landscape explains with lucid text and spectacular photographs the role that woodlands play in supporting a range of native plants and animals that has existed there for millions of years. The book is set out as a series of logically linked chapters working from the woodland canopy (the tree crowns), through the understorey, the ground layers, and to the lowest lying parts of landscape – wetlands, creeks and dams. Each chapter illustrates many key topics in woodland biology with text and images, explaining important aspects of woodland ecology as well as woodland management and conservation.

British Plant Communities is the first systematic and comprehensive account of the vegetation types of this country. It covers all natural, semi-natural and major artificial habitats in Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland), representing the fruits of fifteen years of research by leading plant ecologists. The book breaks new ground in wedding the rigorous interest in the classification of plant communities that has characterized Continental phytosociology with the deep concern traditional in Great Britain to understand how vegetation works. The published volumes have been greeted with universal acclaim, and the series has become firmly established as a framework for a wide variety of teaching, research and management activities in ecology, conservation and land-use planning.