The High Frontier: Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy - Softcover

Mark Moffett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674390393 ISBN 13: 9780674390393

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Loaded with aerial plants and the millions of creatures dependent upon them, tropical tree crowns are the last and greatest ecological frontier. Hundreds of species - earthworms, frogs, flowers, shrubs - never descend to earth during their lifetimes. Eight out of ten remain unnamed and unclassified by science.
In The High Frontier, Mark W. Moffett does for the tropical rainforest canopy what Jacques Cousteau did thirty years ago for undersea life. Donning rock climbing gear to join researchers working 150 feet and more above the ground, Moffett photographed strangler trees in Borneo, giant squirrels in India, and canopy bears in Colombia. He entered the terrifying world of arboreal spiders and ants, photographing them under extreme magnification. His coverage of this new science is unparalleled in any other field.
Described as a "world-roving zoologist" by National Geographic magazine for his work on five continents, Moffett has documented virtually every major active canopy research site. The immediacy of his writing and the intelligence of his photography make the canopy's fantastic architecture and unearthly inhabitants accessible to the general reader. In the tradition of the great nineteenth-century explorers, he captures the struggles of the individual scientists and the passions that enable them to brave perilous situations in pursuit of their work. The High Frontier is a modern classic of scientific discovery.

About this title

About the Author:

Edward O. Wilson is Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University. In addition to two Pulitzer Prizes (one of which he shares with Bert Hölldobler), Wilson has won many scientific awards, including the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Review:

Scientists have only just begun to explore the biology of the tropical rainforest canopy. In The High Frontier, Mark W. Moffett provides an elegantly written account of the ecology of this aerial continent. The book is packed full with his stunning--and often unusual--photographs of canopy architecture, animals and plants, taken while accompanying tree-climbing researchers working at study sites worldwide. (Nature)

Mark Moffett's book is a magnificent exploration of the most biodiverse environment known--the rainforest canopy--supported by the finest colour photographs I have ever seen. Almost a decade has passed since I wrote The Enchanted Canopy...Moffett charts the explosion of new discoveries since then and the emergence of a new breed of arboreal naturalists...The High Frontier comprises a series of insightful encounters with scientists working in a wide range of disciplines to uncover the secrets of the canopy...The book really comes to life in the examples of how many animals and plants interact. Good journalistic narrative is at all times underpinned with first-hand knowledge and the authority of excellent research...Moffett's book is a visual feast. Some of his photographs are breathtaking...This remarkable book will be another stepping stone on the way to taking canopy science seriously. As Cousteau once predicted research stations under the sea, so I envisage, in the not-too-distant future, permanent research stations in the canopy to study the ocean of life a mere 100 feet above our heads. (Andrew Mitchell Times Higher Education Supplement)

Moffett presents his personal vision of tropical rain-forest canopy biology, a science in its infancy; it is a product of Moffett's trips to five continents, where he interviewed and worked alongside scores of the tree-climbing biologists who are exploring this unique and rapidly vanishing terrain. The result is a stunning mixture of adventure, nature photography and hard scientific inquiry that ranks with the best work of Jacques Cousteau. (Robert Crawford Boston Globe)

Moffett's own research has often been financed by The National Geographic, and a single glance at this beautiful, large-format book shows why. He is a superb photographer, able to capture, while dangling from a rope or balanced on a branch, vignettes of life at the top...[Moffett] says that he hopes people will see, from his book, that these environments are so rich, so valuable, that they will be moved to protect them. I only hope that this is true. (Jonathan Beard New Scientist)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0674390393
• ISBN 13: 9780674390393
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192