Publisher Summary This chapter discusses a number of factors influencing the throughfall
and stemflow quality and their variation. The effect of the canopy in altering the precipitation …

Vegetation on sandy soils, ranging from open grasslands and shrublands to closed‐canopy,
thin‐trunked forests, can be found in patches throughout the Amazon. Despite variation in …

The productivity of rainforests growing on highly weathered tropical soils is expected to be
limited by phosphorus availability. Yet, controlled fertilization experiments have been unable …

In the Amazon Basin, substrate lithology and erosional regime (seen in terms of transport‐
limited and weathering‐limited denudation) exert the most fundamental control on the …

The ecosystem concept--the idea that flora and fauna interact with the environment to form
an ecological complex--has long been central to the public perception of ecology and to …

For millennia, Amazonian peoples have managed forest resources, modifying the natural
environment in subtle and persistent ways. Legacies of past human occupation are striking …

Lignin, elemental, and stable carbon isotope compositions are reported for local plants and
for coarse (> 63 µm) and fine (< 63 µm) suspended particulate materials collected along a …

Forest structure and dynamics vary across the Amazon Basin in an east-west gradient
coincident with variations in soil fertility and geology. This has resulted in the hypothesis that …

A general model is presented in which the dynamics of decomposition in terrestrial
ecosystems are determined by a set of hierarchically organized factors which regulate …

Designed to help students understand the multiple levels at which human populations
respond to their surroundings, this essential text offers the most complete discussion of …