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With its control of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and tea, cotton, and indigo production in India, Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dominated the global economy of tropical agriculture. InColonizing Nature, Beth Fowkes Tobin shows how dominion over \"the tropics\" as both a region and an idea became central to the way in which Britons imagined their role in the world. Tobin examines georgic poetry, landscape portraiture, natural history writing, and botanical prints produced by Britons in the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and India to uncover how each played a crucial role in developing the belief that the tropics were simultaneously paradisiacal and in need of British intervention and management. Her study examines how slave garden portraits denied the horticultural expertise of the slaves, how the East India Company hired such artists as William Hodges to paint and thereby Anglicize the landscape and gardens of British-controlled India, and how writers from Captain James Cook to Sir James E. Smith depicted tropical lands and plants. Just as mastery of tropical nature, and especially its potential for agricultural productivity, became key concepts in the formation of British imperial identity,Colonizing Naturesuggests that intellectual and visual mastery of the tropics-through the creation of art and literature-accompanied material appropriations of land, labor, and natural resources. Tobin convincingly argues that the depictions of tropical plants, gardens, and landscapes that circulated in the British imagination provide a key to understanding the forces that shaped the British Empire.

The author goes on to explore a startling shift at midcentury in the perception of the tropical forest--from the \"jungle,\" a place that endangers human life, to the \"rain forest,\" a place that is itself endangered.

The contrast between the temperate and the tropical is one of the most enduring themes in the history of the Western geographical imagination. Caught between the demands of experience and representation, documentation and fantasy, travelers in the tropics have often treated tropical nature as a foil to the temperate, to all that is civilized, modest, and enlightened. Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire explores images of the tropical world—maps, paintings, botanical drawings, photographs, diagrams, and texts—produced by European and American travelers over the past three centuries. Bringing together a group of distinguished contributors from disciplines across the arts and humanities, this volume contains eleven beautifully illustrated essays—arranged in three sections devoted to voyages, mappings, and sites—that consider the ways that tropical places were encountered, experienced, and represented in visual form. Covering a wide range of tropical sites in the Pacific, South Asia, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, the book will appeal to a broad readership: scholars of postcolonial studies, art history, literature, imperial history, history of science, geography, and anthropology.

In recent decades the rate and geographic extent of land-use and land-cover change has increased throughout the world's humid tropical forests. The pan-tropical geography of forest change is a challenge to assess, and improved estimates of the human footprint in the tropics are critical to understanding potential changes in biodiversity. We combined recently published and new satellite observations, along with images from Google Earth and a literature review, to estimate the contemporary global extent of deforestation, selective logging, and secondary regrowth in humid tropical forests. Roughly 1.4% of the biome was deforested between 2000 and 2005. As of 2005, about half of the humid tropical forest biome contained 50% or less tree cover. Although not directly comparable to deforestation, geographic estimates of selective logging indicate that at least 20% of the humid tropical forest biome was undergoing some level of timber harvesting between 2000 and 2005. Forest recovery estimates are even less certain, but a compilation of available reports suggests that at least 1.2% of the humid tropical forest biome was in some stage of long-term secondary regrowth in 2000. Nearly 70% of the regrowth reports indicate forest regeneration in hilly, upland, and mountainous environments considered marginal for large-scale agriculture and ranching. Our estimates of the human footprint are conservative because they do not resolve very small-scale deforestation, low-intensity logging, and unreported secondary regrowth, nor do they incorporate other impacts on tropical forest ecosystems, such as fire and hunting. Our results highlight the enormous geographic extent of forest change throughout the humid tropics and the considerable limitations of the science and technology available for such a synthesis.

This review suggests that the ecology and patchy global distribution of seasonally dry tropical forest (SDTF) has distinctively structured the evolutionary history and biogeography of woody plant groups that are confined to it. SDTFs have few widespread woody plant species causing high β-diversity between separate areas of forests. These separate areas contain geologically old, monophyletic clades of endemic plant species that often have geographically structured intraspecific genetic variation. These patterns of diversity, endemism, and phylogeny indicate a stable, dispersal-limited SDTF system. SDTF species tend to belong to larger clades confined to this vegetation, exemplifying phylogenetic niche conservatism, and we argue that this is evidence that the SDTF is a metacommunity (biome) for woody plant clades. That phylogenetic, population genetic, biogeographic, and community ecological patterns differ in woody plants from tropical rain forests and savannas suggests a hypothesis that broad ecological settings strongly influence plant diversification in the tropics.

BackgroundEnvironmental contamination by mercury is and will continue to be a serious risk for human health. Pollution of the terrestrial environment is particularly important as it is a place of human life and food production. This publication presents a review of the literature on issues related to mercury pollution of the terrestrial environment: soil and plants and their transformations.ResultsDifferent forms of atmospheric Hg may be deposited on surfaces by way of wet and dry processes. These forms may be sequestered within terrestrial compartments or emitted back into the atmosphere, and the relative importance of these processes is dependent on the form of Hg, the surface chemistry, and the environmental conditions. On the land surface, Hg deposition mainly occurs in the oxidized form (Hg2+), and its transformations are associated primarily with the oxidation–reduction potential of the environment and the biological and chemical processes of methylation. The deposition of Hg pollutants on the ground with low vegetation is as 3–5 times lower than that in forests. The estimation of Hg emissions from soil and plants, which occur mainly in the Hg0 form, is very difficult. Generally, the largest amounts of Hg are emitted from tropical regions, followed by the temperate zone, and the lowest levels are from the polar regions. Areas with vegetation can be ranked according to the size of the emissions as follows: forests > other areas (tundra, savannas, and chaparral) > agricultural areas > grassland ecosystems; areas of land devoid of vegetation emit more Hg than those with plants. In areas with high pollution, such as areas near Hg mines, the Hg content in soil and plants is much higher than in other areas.ConclusionsMercury is recognized as a toxic, persistent, and mobile contaminant; it does not degrade in the environment and becomes mobile because of the volatility of the element and several of its compounds. Atmospheric contamination by mercury continues to be one of the most important environmental problems in the modern world. The general conclusions were drawn from a review of the literature and presented in this paper.

Background Mycetoma, a chronic infection of the skin and underlying structures, affects those with a close relationship to the land, often in resource-poor areas of the world. Whether caused by any one of a variety of fungus or bacteria, mycetoma causes significant disability and mortality. Acknowledged as a neglected tropical disease (NTD) by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2016, mycetoma is susceptible to being misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and mismanaged. In an effort to shift the balance in favor of recognition and effective treatment, sound epidemiological understanding is required. Methods and findings In this paper, a literature review of case reports and series (332 papers in total) is presented as three maps. We identified 19,494 cases dating from 1876 to 2019, with cases contracted in 102 countries. The first map shows where mycetoma has ever been reported, the second shows how many cases have been reported, and the third shows the ratio of eumycetoma (fungal) to actinomycetoma (bacterial). Most cases are found in Mexico, India, and Sudan, where mycetoma is studied rigorously. We identified emergence of new geographical loci, including the United States, Venezuela, Italy, China, and Australia. Notably, mycetoma is reported far outside the tropics. In the Americas, bacterial forms dominate, whereas, in Africa and Asia, the picture is more varied. Conclusions With better understanding of the epidemiology of mycetoma, more can be done to direct education, preventive measures, and treatment to at-risk areas, enabling a reduction in disease burden.

Insecure land tenure plagues many developing and tropical regions, often where conservation concerns are highest. Conservation organizations have long focused on protected areas as tenure interventions, but are now thinking more comprehensively about whether and how to incorporate other land tenure strategies into their work, and how to more soundly ground such interventions on evidence of both conservation and human benefits. Through a review of the literature on land tenure security as it relates to conservation practice, predominantly in the tropics, we aim to help conservation practitioners consider and incorporate more appropriate land tenure security interventions into conservation strategies. We present a framework that identifies three common ways in which land tenure security can impact human and conservation outcomes, and suggest practical ways to distill tenure and tenure security issues for a given location. We conclude with steps for considering tenure security issues in the context of conservation projects and identify areas for future research.

Although deforestation and forest degradation have long been considered the most significant threats to tropical biodiversity, across Southeast Asia (Northeast India, Indochina, Sundaland, Philippines) substantial areas of natural habitat have few wild animals (>1 kg), bar a few hunting-tolerant species. To document hunting impacts on vertebrate populations regionally, we conducted an extensive literature review, including papers in local journals and reports of governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Evidence from multiple sites indicated animal populations declined precipitously across the region since approximately 1980, and many species are now extirpated from substantial portions of their former ranges. Hunting is by far the greatest immediate threat to the survival of most of the region's endangered vertebrates. Causes of recent overhunting include improved access to forests and markets, improved hunting technology, and escalating demand for wild meat, wildlife-derived medicinal products, and wild animals as pets. Although hunters often take common species, such as pigs or rats, for their own consumption, they take rarer species opportunistically and sell surplus meat and commercially valuable products. There is also widespread targeted hunting of high-value species. Consequently, as currently practiced, hunting cannot be considered sustainable anywhere in the region, and in most places enforcement of protected-area and protected-species legislation is weak. The international community's focus on cross-border trade fails to address overexploitation of wildlife because hunting and the sale of wild meat is largely a local issue and most of the harvest is consumed in villages, rural towns, and nearby cities. In addition to improved enforcement, efforts to engage hunters and manage wildlife populations through sustainable hunting practices are urgently needed. Unless there is a step change in efforts to reduce wildlife exploitation to sustainable levels, the region will likely lose most of its iconic species, and many others besides, within the next few years. Aunque la deforestación y la degradación de los bosques han sido consideradas durante largo tiempo como las amenazas más significativas para la biodiversidad tropical, a lo largo del sureste asiático (noreste de India, Indochina, Sondalandia, Filipinas) hay áreas sustanciales de hábitat natural que tienen algunos animales silvestres (>1 kg), excluyendo a algunas especies tolerantes a la caza. Para documentar los impactos regionales de la caza sobre las poblaciones de vertebrados realizamos una revisión extensiva de la literatura, incluyendo artículos de revistas locales y reportes de agencias gubernamentales y no gubernamentales. La evidencia de los múltiples sitios indicó que las poblaciones animales declinaron precipitosamente en la región desde aproximadamente 1980 y que muchas especies ahora están extirpadas de porciones sustanciales de sus extensiones previas. La caza es por mucho la mayor amenaza inmediata para la supervivencia de la mayoría de los vertebrados en peligro de la región. Las causas del exceso reciente de caza incluyen el acceso mejorado a los bosques y a los mercados, tecnología mejorada de caza, productos medicinales derivados de la vida silvestre y los animales silvestres como mascotas. Aunque los cazadores generalmente toman a especies comunes, como los cerdos y las ratas, para su propio consumo, también toman especies raras de manera oportuna y venden la carne excedente y los productos de valor comercial. También existe una extensa caza enfocada en especies de alto valor. En consecuencia, como es practicada actualmente, la caza no puede considerarse sustentable en ningún lugar de la región y en la mayoría de las localidades la aplicación de la legislación de áreas y especies protegidas es débil. El enfoque de la comunidad internacional sobre el mercado transfronterizo falla en abordar la sobreexplotación de la vida silvestre porque la caza y la venta de la carne salvaje son en general un asunto local y la mayoría es consumida en las aldeas, pueblos rurales y ciudades cercanas. Además de una aplicación mejorada, los esfuerzos por involucrar a los cazadores y por manejar las poblaciones de vida silvestre por medio de prácticas de caza sustentable son una necesidad urgente. A menos que haya un cambio de paso en los esfuerzos por reducir la explotación de la vida silvestre a niveles sustentables, la región probablemente pierda la mayoría de sus especies icónicas, además de muchas otras, en el transcurso de los próximos años.