The craft and intricacy of mapping

Abstract

book reviews ISSN 1948-6596 The craft and intricacy of mapping Plant and Vegetation Mapping. Franco Pedrotti, 2013, Springer. 294 pp. £90 (hardback). ISBN: 978-3-642-30235-0. ; http://www.springer.com This is, on the translator’s own admission, primarily an account of geobotanical mapping from Italy, pub- lished in English because the tradition there provides ‘so much already’ and deliv- ers an abundance of mate- rial and a kind of synthesis unavailable elsewhere. In fact, as the author makes clear in his preface, this is effectively a textbook written for undergradu- ates at the University of Camerino where he has established himself over many years as a lead au- thority in this subject, within Italy and to wider acclaim. But the book is still a welcome addition to the literature and its translator, the North American Elgene Box, has acquitted himself well in making it accessible to biogeographers and oth- ers. Less persuasive is the apparent claim, from the book’s title and the chapter headings, that this is a balanced overview of plant, as well as vegeta- tion, mapping. Actually, half of the book is de- voted to vegetation mapping, and of particular kinds, because this is primarily a book informed and enriched by the European phytosociological tradition. And on that score, it provides a wealth of examples of how its forms of data, analytical results and concepts have been made spatially explicit in maps of various kinds. There is an occa- sional assumption of the superiority of phytosoci- ology as a descriptive technique and a carto- graphic basis, but more pervasive is a technical terminology that a reader from outside this tradi- tion (for example, the Anglo-American readership) might find initially off-putting. For the most part, however, the author and translator define these terms clearly. An annoying exception is the con- stant use of the term ‘phytocoenosis’ for what most of us would recognise as an actual ‘stand’ of vegetation; and the term ‘Maps of Plant Ecology’ is a rare infelicity of translation. This phytosociological commitment pro- vides a pervasive thread throughout the discus- sion of the process and products of vegetation mapping. However, this is still a valuable review of the territorial extent, topographic basis, typolo- gies and scale of maps and the challenges of gen- eralisation and depicting boundaries and mosaics of various kinds; also of the confidence limits that impressive, colourful maps may cause us to ne- glect. All of these are practical and interpretive questions which any cartographer or user of vege- tation maps faces. Following on from that, the discussion of the various kinds of vegetation maps—maps based on dominance, on actual plant vegetation types, on successional series of vegetation types, on potential vegetation types and on vegetation processes—unfolds clearly and informatively. There is a great richness, throughout all this, of examples of vegetation maps of many different kinds, and not all from Italy, though they tend to have originated from the author’s network of phy- tosociological and cartographic collaborators else- where. There is a wealth of illustrations, many in colour; so many that they are often some distance from the relevant references in the text. Some of the black-and-white figures are fuzzy and one col- our map has an unhelpful black-and-white legend. The further variety included in a separate section of ‘Examples of Vegetation Maps’ is organ- ised under the headings of different landscapes and habitats—mountains, volcanoes, islands, dis- turbed environments, urban centres, and so on— and would have perhaps been better included as an appendix. In a sense, they are case studies, again mostly from Italy, though their accompany- ing texts are essentially descriptive. The small chapter on ‘Geobotanical Mapping in Italy’, com- prising a brief history but mostly a catalogue of publications, many of them included elsewhere in the book and listed among the references, should more obviously be an appendix. All of this material makes the first section of frontiers of biogeography 5.3, 2013 — © 2013 the authors; journal compilation © 2013 The International Biogeography Society