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Tropical Whites
As late as 1900, most whites regarded the tropics as \"the white man's grave,\" a realm of steamy fertility, moral dissolution, and disease. So how did the tropical beach resort-white sand, blue waters, and towering palms-become the iconic vacation landscape?Tropical Whitesexplores the dramatic shift in attitudes toward and popularization of the tropical tourist \"Southland\" in the Americas: Florida, Southern California, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Catherine Cocks examines the history and development of tropical tourism from the late nineteenth century through the early 1940s, when the tropics constituted ideal winter resorts for vacationers from the temperate zones. Combining history, geography, and anthropology, this provocative book explains not only the transformation of widely held ideas about the relationship between the environment and human bodies but also how this shift in thinking underscored emerging concepts of modern identity and popular attitudes toward race, sexuality, nature, and their interconnections. Cocks argues that tourism, far from simply perverting pristine local cultures and selling superficial misunderstandings of them, served as one of the central means of popularizing the anthropological understanding of culture, new at the time. Together with the rise of germ theory, the emergence of the tropical horticulture industry, changes in passport laws, travel writing, and the circulation of promotional materials, national governments and the tourist industry changed public perception of the tropics from a region of decay and degradation, filled with dangerous health risks, to one where the modern traveler could encounter exotic cultures and a rejuvenating environment.
eBook
At loggerheads? : agricultural expansion, poverty reduction, and environment in the tropical forests
Despite the vast number of books and reports on tropical deforestation, there's confusion about the causes of forest loss and forest poverty, and the effectiveness of policy responses. At Loggerheads seeks to describe ways to reconciles pressures for agricultural expansion in the tropics with the urgent needs for both forest conservation and poverty alleviation. It diagnoses the causes and impacts of forest loss and the reasons for the association of forests and poverty. It looks at how policies - modulated by local conditions - act simultaneously on deforestation and poverty, creating tradeoffs or complementarities, depending on the situation. The report brings to the surface problems that impede adoption of favourable policies, describing institutional and technological innovations that might help overcome these impediments.
eBook
Biological Control of Tropical Weeds Using Arthropods
Weeds are a major constraint to agricultural production, particularly in the developing world. Cost-efficient biological control is a self-sustaining way to reduce this problem, and produces fewer non-target effects than chemical methods, which can cause serious damage to the environment. This book covers the origin, distribution, and ecology of twenty model invasive weed species, which occur in habitats from tropical to temperate to aquatic. Sustainable biological control of each weed using one or more arthropods is discussed. The aim is to provide ecological management models for use across the tropical world, and to assist in the assessment of potential risks to native and economic plants. This is a valuable resource for scientists and policy makers concerned with the biological control of invasive tropical plants.
eBook
On the Spirality of the Asymmetric Rain Field of Tropical Cyclones Under Vertical Wind Shear
The downshear‐left enhancement of tropical cyclone rainfall has been demonstrated previously, but the radial dependence of this effect was not analyzed in detail. This study quantifies the progressive upwind shift of the wavenumber‐1 maximum rain position with radius relative to the vertical wind shear direction. This shift is visualized as a distinctive upwind spiral of the maximum. It is shown that this spiral pattern is generally observed across various storm intensities, shear strength, and ocean basins. Detailed examination revealed that the maximum downwind deflection angle of the wavenumber‐1 rain maximum relative to the shear direction is smaller for tropical storms than hurricanes, but insensitive to hurricane intensity. It is proposed that the spirality is produced by a continuous decline in angular advection of air parcels with radius. The stability of the deflection angle in hurricanes may be accounted for by a corresponding increase in vertical ascent under strengthening angular flow. Plain Language Summary Tropical cyclones (TCs) can produce torrential rainfall that generates floods, causing significant socio‐economic losses. Understanding the spatial structure of the TC rain field is crucial for improving disaster preparedness. The TC rain field can be thought of as the combination of a symmetric and an asymmetric part. By using a technique called Fourier decomposition, we can break down the asymmetric part into individual wavenumber components. The first component, wavenumber‐1 (WN‐1), is dominant and tends to be larger in the downshear quadrants under vertical wind shear. Using 21 years of global WN‐1 rain fields, we produced composite images aligned with the shear direction. We discovered that the positions at which the WN‐1 maximum occurs progressively shift upwind with increasing distance from the TC center, forming a spiral. We provided the first quantification of the observed spirals and showed that this is a general pattern that exists across different TC intensities, shear strength, and ocean basins. We also identified detailed changes in the pattern with storm intensity and introduced simple models as a first attempt to comprehend these changes. The findings can improve weather forecasts and risk predictions, making us better prepared for hazards associated with TC rainfall. Key Points There exists a general and progressive upwind shift in the wavenumber‐1 maximum with radius in global shear‐relative rainfall composites Maximum downwind deflection of the wavenumber‐1 maxima rises with storm intensity up to Category 1 on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale Linearity between the angular velocity and the vertical velocity of the storm may stabilize the downwind deflection beyond Category 1
Journal Article
Toucans and other birds
Simple text and color photographs describe toucans and several other birds that live in the rain forest.
Book
The ornaments of life : coevolution and conservation in the tropics
The average kilometer of tropical rainforest is teeming with life; it contains thousands of species of plants and animals. As The Ornaments of Life reveals, many of the most colorful and eye-catching rainforest inhabitants—toucans, monkeys, leaf-nosed bats, and hummingbirds to name a few—are an important component of the infrastructure that supports life in the forest. These fruit-and-nectar eating birds and mammals pollinate the flowers and disperse the seeds of hundreds of tropical plants, and unlike temperate communities, much of this greenery relies exclusively on animals for reproduction.
Synthesizing recent research by ecologists and evolutionary biologists, Theodore H. Fleming and W. John Kress demonstrate the tremendous functional and evolutionary importance of these tropical pollinators and frugivores. They shed light on how these mutually symbiotic relationships evolved and lay out the current conservation status of these essential species. In order to illustrate the striking beauty of these \"ornaments\" of the rainforest, the authors have included a series of breathtaking color plates and full-color graphs and diagrams.
eBook