Overview

For decades, conservation and research initiatives in tropical forests have focused almost exclusively on old-growth forests because scientists believed that these ""pristine"" ecosystems housed superior levels of biodiversity. With Second Growth, Robin L. Chazdon reveals those assumptions to be largely false, bringing to the fore the previously overlooked counterpart to old-growth forest: second growth. Even as human activities result in extensive fragmentation and deforestation, tropical forests demonstrate a great capacity for natural and human-aided regeneration. Although these damaged landscapes can take centuries to regain the characteristics of old growth, Chazdon shows here that regenerating-or second-growth-forests are vital, dynamic reservoirs of biodiversity and environmental services. What is more, they always have been. With chapters on the roles these forests play in carbon and nutrient cycling, sustaining biodiversity, providing timber and non-timber products, and integrated agriculture, Second Growth not only offers a thorough and wide-ranging overview of successional and restoration pathways, but also underscores the need to conserve, and further study, regenerating tropical forests in an attempt to inspire a new age of local and global stewardship.

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9780226118079

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Reviews

As policy makers come to grips with . . . ecological uncertainty, they are finding Chazdon s recent book, Second Growth, all the more valuable. Five years in the writing and published last year, the tome is a kind of guide to restoration, synthesizing decades of research and explaining how tropical forests can come back on their own and what to do if they don t. It s an opus; it covers all you would want to know and could imagine you want to know about secondary forests, says Thomas Rudel, a rural sociologist at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in New Jersey. There s nothing quite like [it]. The book . . . arrived at a timely moment, just as large-scale forest restoration was gaining momentum. --Elizabeth Pennisi Science

At last, an authoritative and very readable account of the most neglected aspect of tropical forest ecology: the vast areas of second growth that if restored and managed properly will yield enormous human and conservation benefit. Chazdon's book fills a yawning gap in tropical ecology and land management. A great and important work, Second Growth will be an enduring scholarly masterpiece. --Thomas E. Lovejoy, George Mason University Senior Fellow, the United Nations Foundation

A leading voice in arguing that large-scale forest regrowth can help to solve some of the world s problems. . . . Decades of watching the Costa Rican forests recover have taught Chazdon that, at least in areas that still have healthy forests nearby to supply seeds, the main thing human beings need to do is just get out of the way. After all, forests were recovering from fires and other natural calamities long before people ever came along to chop them down. --Justin Gillis New York Times

Second Growth combines an in-depth review with an eloquent case for the importance of understanding, promoting, and managing forest regeneration in contexts ranging from climate change to provision of ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. In doing so, it may help to meet those challenges by providing evidence to ensure that the value of secondary forests is recognized. It will certainly stimulate the science needed to support practical action. --Valerie Kapos Science

Author Information

Robin L. Chazdon is professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut and coeditor of Foundations of Tropical Forest Biology and Tropical Forest Plant Ecophysiology. She lives in Storrs, CT.

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