Ecosystem Dynamics of the Boreal Forest: The Kluane Project FROM THE PUBLISHER
This book describes the Kluane Boreal Forest Ecosystem Project which operated from 1986 to 1996 in the southwestern Yukon. It begins by describing the area and its physical setting, and then the background of the project and the wisdom that had accumulated to 1986, on how this system might operate. The details of the experiments set up are presented, partly to help the reader appreciate the difficulty of working at -40 degrees and partly to aid the reader should they contemplate doing similar experiements in the future. Then they examine the three trophic levels of plants, the herbivores, and the predators in detail to provide some surprises about how the individual species operate within the overall system. Finally, they synthesize their findings in a model of the boreal forest vertebrate community, and provide an overview of what they have discovered and what remains to be done. Over the ten years of this project the 8 faculty members from three Canadian universities and 26 graduate students joined with 75 summer assistants and 18 technicians to expend 153 person-years of effort to produce the picture they develop here. No one ever thought that ecology was a simple subject like chemistry, but when they began this project they hoped to join forces to make a major advance in our understanding of the boreal forest ecosystem.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
The boreal forest is one of the world's great ecosystems, stretching across North America and Eurasia in an unbroken band and containing about 25% of the world's closed canopy forests. The Kluane Boreal Forest Ecosystem Project was a 10-year study by leading Canadian ecologists, examining the impact of the snowshoe hare cycle on the plants and other animals of the boreal forest. This report on the project traces the plant-herbivore relationships and the predator- prey relationships in this ecosystem in an attempt to understand what drives small mammal population cycles. Krebs teaches zoology at the University of British Columbia. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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