Tropical forests in transition. Ecology of natural and anthropogenic disturbance processes - an introduction

Abstract

Pleistocene climatic changes and Holocene climate oscillations have caused significant fluctuations in tropical forest biomes, which leads to the conclusion that patterns of distribution and species composition of today's tropical forest formations are closely related to the relatively short period of modern climate conditions. Other forces such as anthropogenic forest disturbance, the ecological feedback mechanisms of deforestation and other human-induced environmental changes, determine the present and the possible future development requires detailed knowledge of interacting ecological processees: the coupling of small-scale impacts (eg timber extraction, shifting cultivation, grazing, fire) with large-scale feedback mechanisms (eg atmospheric changes, meso- and macro-climatic change). -from Author