The Hidden Forest: The Biography of an Ecosystem

Rating:
Summary: Just a Pleasure
Review: I don't think I can add anything of much value to the editorial reviews, all of which are excellent and fairly describe this book. For all you who have ever walked in an old forest, gone hiking in a forest preserve, felt the immensity and wisdom that is offered there, this book brings that gloriously to life again. Luoma's description of his ride in the crane is worth the price alone. Sweeping over the forest canopy twenty-five stories in the air is not for the faint of heart. Only 209 pages of reading, it flies by in just a few days. And he brings the scientists who work on all this to our dens with such intimacy. These are people who work in the field, not huddled over their microscopes, mostly. Pick it up; you won't be sorry.

Rating:
Summary: knowledge made into pleasure reading
Review: Luoma knows how to take important scientific work in forest ecology, and turn it into a book that is a pleasure to read. If learning had been this much fun in school, think how well educated we would all be today! Seriously, I like to read well-written books, but I prefer them to be to tell me things I din't know. Hidden forests does. Another really good read out this season is Bullough's Pond, a treatment of ecological history and industrial revolution that I found fascinating, and it read like a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Highlighting the Hidden Forest: Luoma as Virgil to Our Dante
Review: Luoma takes the reader on an intimate, guided tour with some of the tenacious pioneers of forested ecosystems research and the mysterious processes whereby the woods become established, grow and change--in the case of the moist coastal uplands of western Oregon, processes that take centuries to complete all their steps. For those who like their science in the field, in the raw, and introduced by the human practitioners struggling (and loving) the dance of theory and experiment, this is a must-have. Ancient Forests rhetoric too frequently airbrushes over the hard scientific inquiry that helped reveal both the uniqueness of the Oregon forested ecosystems research site and yet suggests that some of these hidden processes, or ones similar, will be found to play crucial roles in other forest places as well. If Luoma doesn't beat me to it, I could do worse than spend the rest of my career writing a series for all the Long-Term Ecological Research stations that perform the valuable work of building baselines and foundations in ecology for every major ecological region. At least, this is the sort of book that makes a reader feel that way!