Product Description

This field guide includes all the flora and fauna you're most likely to see in the forests of eastern North America. With 53 full-color plates and 80 color photos illustrating trees, birds, mammals, wildflowers, mushrooms, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies, moths, beetles, and other insects.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78528 in Books
• Brand: Liberty Mountain
• Published on: 1998-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780395928950
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Library Journal
This latest edition to the "Peterson Field Guide" series seeks to train the reader to recognize patterns that define a woodland. Calling his book a "field guide to ecology," Kricher introduces basic ecological concepts and describes notable field marks that define a particular environment. Twenty-seven types of forest communities east of the Rockies are described in terms of their characteristic indicator species. Illustrative plates, many of which are in color, accompany these descriptions. Seasonal processes within the forest are also discussed. This book, when used in conjunction with appropriate field guides, is an excellent introduction for the amateur naturalist who wants to see the forest as a whole. Recommended. Laurie Bartolini, Lincoln Lib., Springfield, Ill.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
John Kricher is a professor of Biology at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. He also wrote a Neotrophical Companion and several books in the Peterson Field Guide Series.

Gordon Morrison is a well-known naturalist whose work has been praised by Roger Tory Peterson as "Marvelous, beautiful, excellent . . . Morrison"s work is so inspiring that I wish such clear material was available when I was slowly learning ecology. . . . We owe a debt of gratitude to Gordon for his interpretive skills as an artist. He is a superb teacher who uses visual methods." Robert Bateman likened his work to that of Albrecht Durer and Andrew Wyeth. Gordon Morrison lives in North Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Roger Tory Peterson, one of the world"s greatest naturalists, received every major award for ornithology, natural science, and conservation, as well as numerous honorary degrees, medals, and citations, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Peterson Identification System has been called the greatest invention since binoculars, and the Peterson Field Guides® are credited with helping to set the stage for the environmental movement.

Customer Reviews

A Great Buy, Very Interesting
This is a great field guide that covers many aspects of forests East of the Great Plains. Although it covers many common species of both animal and plant, it is not overly helpful for positively identifying individual species; and if one wants that, you are better off with a more specific field guide (i.e., Eastern Birds). It does, however, detail the workings of a forest and accompanies this fascinating text with 53 color plates, 80 color photos and many black and white drawings. In the first few chapters, it demonstrates the different forest types through indicator species; and it details the process of Old Field succesion, and the animals and plants that come and go as the process progresses. In the last chapters adaptation, and seasonal patterns are covered. I would highly reccommend this field guide for any one who would like to know how a forest works.

Introducing the Eastern Forest
The purpose of this guide is not to assist one in identifying species of flora and fauna found in the Eastern Forest--such a tome would be monumental in size--but rather to instill in the reader an understanding of the forest's general dynamics. The book is divided into eight sections; they are:

1) How to use this book
2) Forest field marks
3) Eastern forest communities
4) Disturbance and pioneer plants
5) Adaptation
6) Paterns of spring
7) Nature in summer
8) Autumn and winter

This book is an excellent beginning point for those who want to develope a better understanding of forest ecology. I highly recommend it.

How things really work
Though this guide and its companion Western forest edition have been in print for over a decade, I only stumbled on it last year. It concisely provides the missing links between other field guides to plants, fungi, insects, spiders, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, tracks, fossils ... you get the drift. As a hiker, bird-watcher or -feeder, observer, photographer or amateur naturalist, the first step is usually simple identification of species. (With summer warblers, of course, the first step is actually seeing the bird in question.) In the same way that traditional field guides provide portable I.D. info, the ECOLOGY version helps you understand the change you see as you hike down out of a Beech-Maple forest into an Oak-Hickory stand, or the subtle differences when a Northern Riverine Forest segues into a Northern Swamp. By no means comprehensive (remember this fits in your pocket), this book, like the science of ecology itself, is composed of seemingly endless delightful digressions. Where do galls come from? How do dragonflies mate? Have you ever bothered to learn frog calls? What can the vegetation in an old field tell you about history? This volume (and by my inference the Western companion) are an excellent and fascinating addition to any field guide collection.