Review: British Columbia's Inland Rainforest: Ecology, Conservation, and Management

Abstract

Stevenson, Susan K., Armleder, Harold M., Arsenauly, Andre, Coxson, Darwyn, Delong, S. Craig and Jull, Michael. British Columbia's Inland Rainforest: Ecology, Conservation, and Management. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2011. 456 pp. ISBN: 9780774818506, paperback. US$ 41.95, illustrated. Also available in hardcover format ISBN 9780774818490.A fact-filled and extremely useful offering from silvicultural and ecosystem professionals, biologists, ecologists, systems scientists and others, British Columbia's Inland Rainforest provides a snapshot, a look at the present conditions of this unique ecosystem in light of past and future management choices. Included are 128 figures, color plates and illustrations, 20 tables, three appendices, a species index, glossary and various exposes that highlight features of the text, which itself includes more than 50 sections detailing everything from carbon stocks to soil horizons to forest edge effects on plant and animal life to native medicine and many others. The book grew from a project with scientific goals-to supplement a government forestry report with data so that managers and other stakeholders could make well-informed choices. The authors made a wonderful choice to expand their scope and offer the work to the public.British Columbia's inland rainforest is unique. There is no other place on the planet where a temperate rainforest exists so far from the coast, with much of its biome determined by continental rather than coastal geography. For example, many of the species in the inland rainforest migrated from elsewhere in continental North America during the end of the last glaciation, or from the coast via specific vectors. They continue to survive in a setting that includes thousand-year-old red cedar trees and lichen species (e.g. cyanolichen) that are not found elsewhere or nowhere else in such great diversity and abundance. Snowmelt during the summer promotes groundwater abundance and a humidity level unrivaled in a continental forest setting.Here, ancient red cedar and western hemlock make unique rotted-out settings for fungus, bryophyte, lichen, vascular plants, invertebrates and vertebrate animals, dens in hollowed out trees for martens and black bears. Yet in human terms, the same trees providing the substrate for such a rich ecology have also driven management choices that have led to their destruction.Historically, such immense trees with internal voids are called decadent and forest management has opted to harvest these old landscapes to allow planting of young plantation stands that replace them, often with changes to species for a standardized harvest regime. Ironically, the work is done in winter when the marshy rainforest soil has frozen and ice roads or other means of transport can be constructed. …