An Account of the Vegetation of Northern Thailand PDF Download

Author: Thawatchai Santisuk
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Author: Simon Gardner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Author: Peter R. Kunstadter
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824881974
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 599

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Book Description
Farmers in the Forest, while using examples chiefly from northern Thailand, is concerned with complex problems found in all tropical countries. In these areas rapid population growth, increasing demands for food, and burgeoning international markets for forest products and other raw materials are associated with active competition for land and natural resources in upland areas. This book brings together studies by administrators, agronomists, anthropologists, forest ecologists, geographers and jurists, who describe a variety of swidden systems and their effect on soil, forest, society, and economy. They point to conflicts between traditional farming systems and modern legal and administrative constraints now being imposed, and they describe special and technological conditions that contribute to a marginal, stagnant upland economy, increasing socio-economic disparities with the lowlands, and the serious ecological consequences of these conditions. Several possible solutions are suggested to solve these problems.

Author: Dietrich Schmidt-Vogt
Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Gegenstand der Arbeit ist die Vegetation, die sich unter dem Einflu� des Schwendbaus (Swidden farming, Shifting Cultivation) der Bergv�lker im Hochland von Nord-Thailand entwickelt. Ziel der Studie ist die Untersuchung der Artenzusammensetzung, Struktur, Dynamik und Nutzung der Vegetation, vor allem der Sekund�rw�lder, auf Brachfl�chen von ethnischen Gruppen, die unterschiedliche Formen des Schwendbaus betreiben. Dazu wurden drei D�rfer als Fallstudien bearbeitet, die jeweils von Angeh�rigen der ethnischen Gruppen der Lawa, der Karen und der Akha bewohnt werden und sich in einer H�henlage um 1000 m im Bereich der unteren Montanwaldstufe befinden. Obwohl deutliche Unterschiede festgestellt werden konnten, erwiesen sich die meisten Sekund�rw�lder als �kologisch wie auch �konomisch wertvoll. �Die Synthese aus natur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen ist in der auf zweij�hriger Feldforschung basierenden Studie gut gelungen. Die Arbeit leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Diskussion um den Einflu� von Landnutzungssystemen auf die Vegetationsentwicklung tropischer Sekund�rw�lder.�Erdkunde "� a useful study [�] This book will be of interest to students of swidden agriculture as well as to those interested in tropical botany, biodiversity conservation, and land use/land-cover change. In the end, the book reinforces a new paradigm in the management of tropical biodiversirty that extends conservation to human-impacted lands." Geographical Journal .

Author: Thawatchai Santisuk
Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH
ISBN: 9783515051194
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Author: Malcolm Cairns
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 113652228X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 853

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This handbook of locally based agricultural practices brings together the best of science and farmer experimentation, vividly illustrating the enormous diversity of shifting cultivation systems as well as the power of human ingenuity. Environmentalists have tended to disparage shifting cultivation (sometimes called 'swidden cultivation' or 'slash-and-burn agriculture') as unsustainable due to its supposed role in deforestation and land degradation. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that such indigenous practices, as they have evolved over time, can be highly adaptive to land and ecology. In contrast, 'scientific' agricultural solutions imposed from outside can be far more damaging to the environment. Moreover, these external solutions often fail to recognize the extent to which an agricultural system supports a way of life along with a society's food needs. They do not recognize the degree to which the sustainability of a culture is intimately associated with the sustainability and continuity of its agricultural system. Unprecedented in ambition and scope, Voices from the Forest focuses on successful agricultural strategies of upland farmers. More than 100 scholars from 19 countries--including agricultural economists, ecologists, and anthropologists--collaborated in the analysis of different fallow management typologies, working in conjunction with hundreds of indigenous farmers of different cultures and a broad range of climates, crops, and soil conditions. By sharing this knowledge--and combining it with new scientific and technical advances--the authors hope to make indigenous practices and experience more widely accessible and better understood, not only by researchers and development practitioners, but by other communities of farmers around the world.

Author: Helmut Lieth
Publisher: Springer
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
The destruction of the tropical forests continues rapidly. We all know that this has global, ecological and economic consequences. The problem is of such magnitude that it can only be compared to warfare. The destruction of tropical forests is both detrimental to the global ecology as well as posing a serious threat to the people living in these areas. Furthermore, the overutilization of such a valuable resource poses a serious threat to the next generations. Besides the problem generated for the people in these regions, and for the earth in general, there is a moral obligation to preserve the vast biological diversity in the tropical forests. We have a commitment to all species on earth as well as man and, therefore, need to preserve as many as possible, if not all. This book discusses the problem from different angles: from forestry, ecology and nature conservation. The two main problem areas are: first the wise utilization of that portion of the forest which will be used - especially the introduction of planned forestry in such areas and second the development of a good plan for nature conservation in the tropics.

Author: Tim Forsyth
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800259
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
In this far-reaching examination of environmental problems and politics in northern Thailand, Tim Forsyth and Andrew Walker analyze deforestation, water supply, soil erosion, use of agrochemicals, and biodiversity in order to challenge popularly held notions of environmental crisis. They argue that such crises have been used to support political objectives of state expansion and control in the uplands. They have also been used to justify the alternative directions advocated by an array of NGOs. In official and alternative discourses of economic development, the peoples living in Thailand's hill country are typically cast as either guardians or destroyers of forest resources, often depending on their ethnicity. Political and historical factors have created a simplistic, misleading, and often scientifically inaccurate environmental narrative: Hmong farmers, for example, are thought to exhibit environmentally destructive practices, whereas the Karen are seen as linked to and protective of their ancestral home. Forsyth and Walker reveal a much more complex relationship of hill farmers to the land, to other ethnic groups, and to the state. They conclude that current explanations fail to address the real causes of environmental problems and unnecessarily restrict the livelihoods of local people. The authors' critical assessment of simplistic environmental narratives, as well as their suggestions for finding solutions, will be valuable in international policy discussions about environmental issues in rapidly developing countries. Moreover, their redefinition of northern Thailand's environmental problems, and their analysis of how political influences have reinforced inappropriate policies, demonstrate new ways of analyzing how environmental science and knowledge are important arenas for political control. This book makes valuable contributions to Thai studies and more generally to the fields of environmental science, ecology, geography, anthropology, and political science, as well as to policy making and resource management in the developing world.

Author: Stephen H. Bullock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521435147
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Review of tropical dry forest biogeography, palaeontology, ecology and ecosystem functions.

Author: Lindsay Falvey
Publisher: Kasetsart University
ISBN: 9745538167
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
The history, science, and social aspects of today’s Thai agriculture is traced from hunters and gatherers through agro-cities through State-religious Empires and immigrating Tai to produce a sustainable agriculture. The wet glutinous rice culture determined administrative structures in a pragmatic society which regularly produced a saleable surplus. Continuing today, these systems consolidated the importance of rice agriculture to national security and economic well-being, as Chinese and European influence benefited agribusiness and initiated the demand which would expand agriculture through population increase until accessible land was expended. As agriculture declined in relative financial importance, it continued to provide the benefits of employment, crisis resilience, self-sufficiency, rural social support, and cultural custody. Agricultural institutions evolved from a taxation and dispute resolution base to provide research, education, and technology transfer at levels below potential as they supported commercial agriculture funded by credit. Agribusiness expanded from the 1960s and small-holders were partly viewed as a past relic which agribusiness could modernise. Unique elements of Thai agriculture include: irrigation technologies; administrative structures based on water control; global leadership in many agricultural commodities; multinational agribusiness; negotiating approaches; potential for further increases from known technologies, and an open culture which has embraced new ideas. One of the world’s few major agricultural exporters, Thailand leads the world in rice, rubber, canned pineapple, and black tiger prawn production and export, the region in chicken meat export and several other commodities, and feeds more the four times its own population from less intensive agriculture than its neighbours. Poised to benefit from expansion in livestock demand, poverty reduction, and improved education, research, and legal and social systems, evident in the recent Asian financial crisis, will be considered with popular concern for socially sensitive alternatives for small-holder farmers to co-exist with commercial agriculture. Thailand will likely remain one of the world’s major agricultural countries in social, environmental and economic terms for the foreseeable future, as it addresses the continuing rural issues of poverty and inequity.