The Emerald Realm

Fülszöveg

Together, earth's tropical forests make up a globe-girdling emerald realm that occupies just 5 percent of the world's land area-vet nurtures perhaps half its plánt and animal species. From this cornucopia pours an array of foods and herbs, the raw substance of meclicines and chemicals, and a variety of construction materials from bamboo to teak. Inherent in the diversity of rain forests is their plenitude of genetic material-invaluable to science, especially in this age of biotechnology. Genetic materials from wild plants can strengthen food-crop species, building resistance to insects, disease, and drought. In myriad ways rain forests are vitai to our existence, but they are increasingly imperiled. Thoughtlessness, greed, and widespread hunger born of burgeoning humán populations are depleting the forests at an unprecedented rate. Recent deforestations have sparkecl more plánt and animal extinctions than have occurred at any other time since the dinosaurs abruptly died out 66... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Together, earth's tropical forests make up a globe-girdling emerald realm that occupies just 5 percent of the world's land area-vet nurtures perhaps half its plánt and animal species. From this cornucopia pours an array of foods and herbs, the raw substance of meclicines and chemicals, and a variety of construction materials from bamboo to teak. Inherent in the diversity of rain forests is their plenitude of genetic material-invaluable to science, especially in this age of biotechnology. Genetic materials from wild plants can strengthen food-crop species, building resistance to insects, disease, and drought. In myriad ways rain forests are vitai to our existence, but they are increasingly imperiled. Thoughtlessness, greed, and widespread hunger born of burgeoning humán populations are depleting the forests at an unprecedented rate. Recent deforestations have sparkecl more plánt and animal extinctions than have occurred at any other time since the dinosaurs abruptly died out 66 millión years ago. With each day the 20th century's final decade promises to be a teliing crucible for our environment. The Emerald Realm, the National Geographic Society's first book devoted to the world's irreplaceable tropical forests, could not be more ti mely. To prepare this book, writers and photographers journeyed to major tropical forests in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and West Africa. Their five chapters of text and more than 130 photographs capture graceful and ever fascinating wildlife, portray beleaguered tribes of indigenous peoples, and present current dilemmas and prospective solutions. The magnificence, the fragility, the mystery of "the most diverse, the most complex, and the least understood ecosystem on earth" are yours to experience as you enter The Emerald Realm: Earth's Precious Rain Forests. Diminutive by comparison, a pláne passes above thundering Sewerd Falls on ihe Cutibireni River in eastem Peru. Rain forest, dense and green, stretches in all directions. Vissza