Plants at the Margin: Ecological Limits and Climate Change

Description

Margins are by their very nature environmentally unstable - does it therefore follow that plant populations adapted for life in such areas will prove to be pre-adapted to withstand the changes that may be brought about by a warmer world? Biogeography, demography, reproductive biology, physiology and genetics all provide cogent explanations as to why limits occur where they do, and the purpose of this book is to bring together these different avenues of enquiry. Crawford's numerous beautiful illustrations of plants in their natural habitats remind us that the environment remains essential to our understanding of plants and their function. This book is suited to students, researchers and anyone with an interest in the impact of climate change on our world.

R. M. M. Crawford has taught and researched at the University of St Andrews since 1962, pursuing the study of plant responses to the environment in a wide range of habitats in Scotland, Scandinavia, North and South America and the Arctic. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Linnean Society and an associate member of the Belgian Royal Academy.

'The book is very wide-ranging across the globe. Every page is worth reading. ... attractively laden with many colour photographs of plant close-ups and vegetation as well as maps and diagrams. ... The colour photographs are very well-chosen and highly informative. Few scientific texts are so generously enlivened with colour. ... This is a very fine book I wish I could have written myself. I found it to be extremely thorough and highly informative, and so I can recommend it without reservation to conservationists and others needing to understand plant ecology, not least the effects on global warming on plants.' BRISC Recorder News