Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 106 (2001) 249–251
Book reviews
Fire, Climate Change, and Carbon Cycling in the Boreal Forest
Eric S. Kasischke, Brian J. Stocks (Eds.); Springer, New York, 2000, 461 pages, ISBN 0-387-98890-4
This book is volume 138 of the Ecological Studies Series of Springer, a series that publishes collections of conference papers. Fire, Climate Change, and
Carbon Cycling in the Boreal Forest results from a
workshop held in Fairbanks, AL in September 1995. Many of the papers were generated by the 43 atten-dees at the workshop, but several other papers were added to cover the Russian component of the boreal forest. The final product is 25 chapters authored by 49 scientists from Austria, Canada, Germany, Russia and the USA. Nordic scientists are notably absent, partly because of the small role that fire plays in bo-real Europe. Despite the 2000 publication date of the 1995 conference, many of the papers were written more recently, referencing work published in 1998 with 1999 contributions being “in press”.
The book brings together a collection of papers dealing either with fire or carbon cycling alone, or with combinations of these, often bringing in potential projections of climate change. Many of these chapters are tied together and cross-referenced, so the reader may need to consider several chapters when study-ing a given topic. This connectivity is achievable in a book, whereas it could not be accomplished in individ-ual journal publications. The book includes a section with color plates that is especially useful for the maps and geographical information system outputs. A full subject index is a great help. The editors are definitely a driving force behind the book, co-authoring 15 of the 25 chapters (Eric S. Kasischke is a lead author on seven papers), plus writing the introductions to each of the four sections. Therefore, the audience is exposed to the work done by a relatively small group of scientists.
The book is divided into four major sections. Section I, “Information requirements and fire manage-ment and policy issues”, gives good background in-formation on fire in the North American and Eurasian boreal forest, including a discussion of general fire chemistry. The recognition that “it is neither practical nor feasible to exclude forest fires from the northern landscape” is a well-known concept to the fire-science community, but much of the public believes that all fires can be readily extinguished. The second sec-tion on “Processes influencing carbon cycling in the North American boreal forest” describes a variety of concepts dealing with fire, carbon loss and cli-mate. This section also includes Russian data with a good insight into the problem of the under-reporting and uncertainty associated with fire data. The third section, “Spatial data sets for the analysis of carbon dynamics in boreal forests”, deals with a combina-tion of fire and carbon losses, including two general chapters on the use of remote sensing. Section IV on “Modeling of fire and ecosystem processes and the effects of climate change on carbon cycling in bo-real forests” presents analyses of carbon losses from fire.
It is clear from several chapters (as well as from other papers published elsewhere) that:
1. Fire is an important agent for carbon losses through direct combustion and post-fire decomposition. 2. Fire shapes the boreal forest, renewing stands at a
relatively high frequency, with young forests being a lesser carbon sink than mature forests.
3. A changing climate will likely increase fire occur-rence in the boreal forest because of more severe fire weather.
4. The complex interactions are uncertain if the bo-real forest experiences a different fire regime, a changing climate and vegetation feedbacks (i.e., what will the boreal forest look like?).
250 Book reviews
5. If fire increases, a positive feedback to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could ensue because of greater direct carbon emissions and reduced car-bon sinks in vegetation.
Many of the chapters in this book provide good general reading that would appeal to someone new to the discipline or to students wanting a good general overview. The general nature of many of the chapters compromises the presentation of quantitative results. Some of the discussions involve general concepts without presenting data. Although this book is not a collection of research papers, a few chapters do provide excellent sources of data on boreal forests, largely derived from other studies. I suggest that readers use this book as a general overview, but be cautious about the direct use of information because much of this is built on previous work published elsewhere. In many cases, the referenced work is available in the gray literature, an asset for this book since this work is often neglected in the primary liter-ature. In some cases, primary references are not used, so the reader needs to do some hunting to be assured that the correct source is cited. There are very few typographical errors in the book, although Fig. 23.6 is printed in the place of Fig. 23.5.
This book complements other collections on fire such as “The Role of Fire in Northern Circumpolar Ecosystems” (Wein, R.W., MacLean, D.A., 1993, Wiley, New York), and “Fire in Ecosystems of Boreal Eurasia” (Goldammer, J.G., Furyaev, V.V., 1996, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht). I recom-mend it as good general reading on the effects of fire on the carbon cycle in boreal forests.
Brian D. Amiro
Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre Edmonton, AB, Canada T6H 3S5 E-mail address: bamiro@nrcan.gc.ca (B.D. Amiro).
Fax:+1-403-435-7359.
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Repairing damaged wildlands: a process-oriented, landscape-scale approach
Biological Conservation, Restoration, and Sustainabi-lity 1. Steven G. Whisenant (Ed.); Cambridge Univer-sity Press, Cambridge, 1999, 312 pages, ISBN 0-521-47001-3 hardback, ISBN 0-521-66540-X paperback
There are two basic reasons for undertaking restora-tion of a disturbed wildland. The first is to renew a land unit for some ecological service, such as a range-land or watershed. The second is to recover a habitat for some plant or animal species of concern. Profes-sor Whisenant has set out to describe an approach and structure for undertaking the former. The emphasis of this book is on ecosystem processes, and the landscape setting. Individual species and community structure is of secondary concern as long as the processes are recovered. Clearly, this approach has limited use for restoring habitat for a particular species or sub-species as the exact biotic requirements for species with specialized habitats do not enter into consideration.
In one sense, this is a major philosophical break-through for a management-oriented discipline, such as Range Science. This approach acknowledges the importance of native species in resource management. Individuals in resource-management departments al-ways have contended with the more prevalent focus on highly bred, highly productive species and agro-nomic, high technology-driven methods to stabilizing disturbed lands to make them productive. Professor Whisenant clearly acknowledges that there is an im-portant role for diverse, relatively stable, wildland ecosystems and sets about to define all the steps necessary to succeed in restoring such systems.
In defining these steps, he separates the material into eight chapters. The first chapter is an overview of definitions and processes of disturbance, and justifies the use of the term repair. The material is generally of useful value as an introduction. Unfortunately, he allows himself to be dragged into the semantic argu-ment of what is versus is not restoration, and then uses yet another term, repair, as a means of getting around the issue. I believe that there is nothing wrong with the use of restoration here. Certainly, restoration is an ideal, but most natural and human undertakings are! However, the readers should not let this rather mun-dane and uninteresting section dissuade them from the remainder of the book.
