Reading the Woods
Seeing More in Nature's Familiar Faces
Brown, Vinson Publisher: Collier Books, New York, USA
Year Published: 1969
Pages: 159pp
Resource Type: Book
Looking benearth surface appearances to understand more about what is happening in the woods.
Abstract:
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Looking Behind the Surface
1. Recognizing How Climates Make Woods
Influences on Climates
Global Lakes, Mountains, Air Masses
Climatic Life Zones
Tropical, Lower Austral or lower Sonoran, Upper Austral or Upper Sonoran, Transition, Canadian, Hudsonian, Arctic-Alpine
Telling about Climate from Nature's Signs
Tree rings, plant spacing
The Fascination of microclimates
What shade dose to plants, Shade and wildlife coloration, The roles of wind and fog
2. Seeing the Tales of Weather
What wind dose
Steady winds, Storm winds, How trees ride out storms, How forests renew themselves after storms
Tree's build-in defenses against cold
Leaf-Shedding trees, Evergreens
The fearsome trio: sleet, ice, and snow
Ice damage to tree cells, How snow protects trees from wind, Snow damage to tree limbs, Snow's boon to small animals: concealment from enemies
The blessing of gentle rain
How much rain a forest needs
Stika spruce forests of western Washington, Southern swamp forests, Red-wood forests
Ruinous torrential rains
3. Knowing the Story in the Soil
Soil compared to human skin
Soil in the making
How tiny lichens crack great rocks, The contribution of decaying mosses and ferns, The soil-building liverwort, The time required for soil-building, What humans dose for soil
Climate's effect on soil and plants
Results of irregular rainfall, results of regular rainfall
How animals enrich the soil
The disaster of soil Erosion
The denuding of tree roots, the drowning of trees with silt, how gullies are formed
What makes soil resist erosion
Organic material and mulches, The difference that trees make
Effects of land, ice, and snow movements
Shifting sand and dunes, landslides and earthquakes, Glaciers, Snowslides
4. Effects of fire and Rebirth
Benefit of controlled fires
Forest fire damage
Effects of ground and crown fires, The great Tillamook Fire of 1933
Being prepared for forest fires
Danger signs, Safety signs
How trees and forests survive
Complications in tree recovery caused by fungus or insects, How dead trees and quick-growing weeds nourish new tree growth, Poor conditions for forest renewal, Good conditions for forest renewal, Nurse trees (aspens, birches, and jack pines)
5. How Animals and Man Fashion the Woodlands
Mammals as builders and destroyers
Erosion caused by overgrazing, Good and bad results of beaver work, Damage to trees by beats, wildcats, and deer
Nature's good Samaritans, the birds
Insect eaters, seed planters, fertilizers of flowers and soil
Harmful insects
Bark beetles, Leaf eaters, Insect population control by birds, mammals, and insects, Tree galls: harmful or not?
What plants do to each others?
Harmful fungi (bracket fungus and chestnut tree blight), Plant parasites (mistletoes and dodder vines)
Man's wasteful practices
Gold dredging, Surface strip mining, Hydraulic mining, Ruthless logging
New lumbering ways that save the woods
Reforestation, weeding out diseased plants
Plants that feed wildlife
6. Appreciating Nature's Survival Scheme
Citizens of plant communities
Climax, secondary, and nurse trees, Climax shrubs, vines, and adventitious shrubs or bushes, Climax and adventitious herbs, ferns, and grasses
Examples of plant succession
California's redwoods forest, secondary plant succession
7. Reading Signposts in Evergreen Forests
Why today's conifers hobnob with deciduous trees
Coniferous forests east of the Rockies
The northern spruce-fir forest, The Great Lakes and central New England coniferous forests, Acadian-Appalachian coniferous and mixed coniferous hardwood forests, Eastern and Midwestern mixed deciduous and coniferous forests, Southern and southeastern pine and oak-pine woods, Dominant pines of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains
Coniferous forests of the West
Subalpine forests, Middle-altitude Rocky Mountains forests, Intermountain pinyon-juniper woodlands, Middle Sierra and Southern Cascade forests, Pacific coastal coniferous forests
8. Understanding the Leaf-dropping Forests
Deciduous forests east of the Rockies
Fall foliage color displays, Typical eastern deciduous woodland, Cove-type Appalachian hardwood forests, Wood-lots of eastern and Midwestern farms
Main central states deciduous groves and forests, Southern swamps and the tropical forest, Southern river-bottom forests, Northeastern and Midwestern streamside woodlands
Deciduous forests of the West
Streamside woodlands, The trembling aspens, Semidesert oak woodlands of Oregon, California, Arizona, and New Mexico, The chaparral, Yucca forests of the deserts, The saguaro and cholla cactus woodland
Suggested References
Index
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