Ecology of Climate and Vegetation Zones of the Earth

By Siegmar-Walter Breckle und Mohammad Daud Rafiqpoor – Vegetation, soil and climate are the most important components of ecological systems. The book provides a concise synthesis of our current knowledge of the Earth’s ecology and thus provides the basis for understanding the broader contexts and relationships in a global perspective. The well- introduced book, with a rich setting of figures, maps, and photographic material, deals in the first part with the essential processes and interactions on the earth’s surface which lead to the formation of the vegetation eover with their distinctive zonation. In the second part, accor ding to certain criteria, the individual vegetation zones are described compara tively as large ecosystems (i.e. Zonobioms of the Biosphere). In a short and compact form, the main characteristics and structures as well as examples of ecosystem processes are discussed. The large ecosystems are at the same time also the basis and reference system for all anthropogenic changes that have altered the vegetation cover in the last millennia, but especially in the 20th century.