The World Atlas of Trees and Forests: Exploring Earth's Forest Ecosystems

As a co-author of a habitats of the world guide I was very excited to open this book. What struck me most when I opened it was not only how beautiful it was, but how it it had some pretty meaty topics covered well. For example, their page on photosynthesis types was both extremely informative and pleasant to see and read.For people interested in geography, yet unfamiliar with GIS, the section vegetation maps will be well worth reading as it shows how mapping has advanced from early mapping through to satalite based mapping now. Again, in some other books a very dry topic, yet made fascinating the read in this work.Making complex ecological concepts accessible to the general public is no easy task, yet they nailed it with this book.

This seems like a wonderful book about forests in general, and high level descriptions of what kinds of forests there are, threats, study of them, type species, etc. But it is not much of an atlas - the actual maps in the book are minimal, worldwide level, and not very detailed. What I assumed this book was given its size and title was a detailed atlas of the world's specific forests - showing their type, extent, dominant species. So something that describes, say, the specific forests of Appalachia - their climactic range, where there are oak-hickory forests within it, etc. I was excited to have a reference book for traveling to different forests in the world (and learning about which ones I should particularly seek out.) And maybe even this book isn't big enough for that. But if you are a map geek looking for lots of data about specific forests, this might not be the book for you. It is a topically wide-ranging look at human history, climate change, the study of forestry, the fossil record, very high-level forest types (i.e., temperate, boreal..)