Product Description

This book provides readers with a popular modular organization and an easy-to-read writing style that explains the basics of ecology. The authors have updated the Fifth Edition to reflect the current emphasis on the physical environment, global environmental change, and adaptation/evolution. As a result, there are new chapters, a new structure, and new topics found in the table of contents. These changes provide readers with an understanding of the principles governing the relationships between plants, animals, and other living organisms within their environment, and give them skills to critically evaluating public issues related to ecology. Abundant real-life examples illustrate and clarify the book's emphasis on understanding ecological patterns within an evolutionary framework.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2149697 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 682 pages

About the Author

Robert L. Smith holds a B.S. in Animal Science, an M.S. in Wildlife Biology along with a Ph.D. in Wildlife Biology from Cornell University. Currently, he is a professor of Ecology at West Virginia University. He has spent over 30 years teaching Ecology and conducting field research throughout the world.

His teaching responsibilities have involved mostly undergraduate courses in general ecology and graduate courses in population ecology and wildlife management. His research has included forest-fire related problems in southern West Virginia, vegetational development and succession on abandoned and reclaimed surface mines, the relation between forest vegetational structure and the forest bird community, and forest habitat assessment and habitat evaluation procedures based on vegetational structure.

Smith has served as a consultant to congressional committees, workshops on environmental education and energy and environmental problems, the National Landmarks program of the U.S. Department of Interior, National Research Council Task Forces on wildlife and fisheries issues and ecological classification systems for implementing environmental quality evaluation procedures. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews as well as the author of three ecology texts: Ecology and Field Biology, Elements of Ecology and Ecology of Man: An Ecosystem Approach, Harper and Row, New York.

Customer Reviews

Complete for a basic knowledge of ecology
I bought the book (used but in very good condition) to study for my exam of principles of ecology.
The author explains simply the basic concept of ecology, populations, communities and individuals.
For Italian student, given the fact that the book is American, it lacks a few "ecological" terminology used in Italy, but not the actual concepts. So if you need a particular term just look in the dictionary ;)