Tropical Forests, People and Food: Biocultural Interactions and Applications to Development (Man and the Biosphere Series)

For as long as they have inhabited topical forests, people have used, managed and transformed natural resources in their quest for food. The future of tropical forests and their human inhabitants will continue to depend on the ways - wise or otherwise - in which food is procured and produced. In this book, scientists from disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences have focused on the biocultural interactions between tropical forest food resources and the communities they sustain. The volume's 74 chapters are organized into six major sections dealing with - evolution and history of tropical forests in relation to food availability, food production and nutritional value of wild and semi-cultivated species, adaptive aspects of food consumption and energy expenditure, feeding strategies in relation to environmental variation, and cultural factors in food choices and management alternatives for the rational use of topical forests in years to come. Each section begins with a background chapter, and attempts to integrate the individual chapters in terms of overall themes and salient problems. The book's interdisciplinary approach makes it a useful resource of ideas and data upon which natural and social scientists can draw for discussion and analysis. It should also assist managers, planners, development agencies and concerned individuals in making decisions about the future of topical forests and the people who live in them.