Undoubtedly the most successful author in achieving these ends and producing a really effective introduction to the environmental sciences is G. Tyler Miller, who has recently published the fifth edition of his excellent textbook, Environmental Science.

Just what makes this student classic so successful? Many of the usual components are here – attractive colour photographs, good, clear graphics (further improved in this edition), highly topical text (the ozone hole is documented up to 1993 and the climatic effects of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption are discussed). But one of the most attractive features for me is the way that our own species is seen as an integral part of global ecology right from the start. Not only does this put us in our rightful (if unenviable) place as a major component in the global system, it also helps the student to make the vital connection between esoteric theory and mundane practice, between the future of the planet and the recycled Pepsi can. True, there is a very strong North American flavour in this particular text and it is distinctly centred upon the temperate, developed world, but this does not detract from its universal value. G. Tyler Miller’s Sustaining the Earth: An Integrated Approach is essentially an abbreviated version of the same text that lacks the colour production.

If Miller can stimulate the student’s appetite for things environmental, there is bound to be a need for more detailed sources of information about various aspects of the Earth. The oceans, for example, are vital to the wellbeing of the planet, a controlling influence on global climate, a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide, a source of food, and a means of waste disposal. Yet we hear precious little about their ecology and conservation in comparison with, say, the rainforests.

Carol Lalli and Timothy Parsons, in their Biological Oceanography: An Introduction have given us a most accessible and attractive way of redressing this. The book is, as it claims, an introductory work, but it is most effective in taking readers to a point where they can appreciate fully the importance of ecological concepts, such as energy transfer efficiency in the management of fisheries. When you consider the six trophic levels of the open ocean, for example, eating tuna seems about as ecologically efficient as harvesting lions from the Serengeti. If only more politicians would read this book …

Another neglected ecological system is something that even environmentalists tread underfoot. The soil is a complex and influential ecological system that owes its neglect simply to its ubiquity. The physical, chemical and biological complexity of soil makes it a minefield for introductory texts and in Soil Ecology Ken Kilham treads his way warily, and largely successfully. Parts of the chemistry – as in the potential for reduction and oxidation – and the biochemistry of, for example, decomposition, may prove heavy going for some environmental students. But overall, the outcome is a well-integrated book.

Those seeking a practical approach, rather than a theoretical one, should certainly turn to David RoweIl’s Soil Science: Methods and Applications. In many ways this builds upon Kilham’s text and expands on its theoretical basis by explaining the operation of analytical techniques. The admirable clarity of RoweIl’s advice on data analysis and the use of statistics will make this manual most appropriate for undergraduates and secondary school pupils.

One way that ecologists deal with complex integrated systems such as the oceans and the soil is by constructing simplified models. A name that has long been associated with the systems and modelling approach to ecology is Howard T. Odum and a revised edition of his introductory text, Ecological and General Systems, is now available. Many of the models used in modern ecological and environmental research, for example, in the study of the carbon cycle or in climate change prediction, are so complex that they are apt to bewilder those who approach them casually. Odum provides a step-by-step introduction to model building that really can be followed if you are willing to work through it with patience and care. This book can take the students right through to computer-simulation modelling, as long as they are willing to begin at Chapter 1 and work systematically. It represents the ultimate in the process of integration.

Taking the alternative approach to integration and looking analytically at the individual components of ecosystems, we encounter that eminently trendy concept, biodiversity. The sheer number of living species and the uncertainty about which environmental factors determine diversity at any location are now hot topics for research and speculation. This is reflected in the textbook market.

Michael Huston’s Biological Diversity is, I think, one of the most satisfactory and certainly one of the most readable books to emerge on the scene. Perhaps its greatest advantage over texts such as that edited by Robert Ricklefs and Dolf Schluter (Species Diversity in Ecological Communities) is that it is a single-author work, so it has a higher degree of internal consistency and structure. This makes it far more effective as an undergraduate text, though the latter collection of essays supplies case studies and ideas that may cause the more advanced student and researcher to question the framework of current thinking on the causes of biodiversity.

Is any attempt to draw up principles in this field a little premature? We may sometimes be a little too selective with the facts we present when trying to integrate and simplify, and this is a great danger when trying to explain biodiversity.

Maintaining the biodiversity that still remains to us is the major task facing the conservationist. Some aspects of this problem are amenable to scientific analysis, such as those concerned with population genetics and the minimum numbers of individuals that are needed to retain adequate genetic diversity in a relict population, and how habitat fragmentation affects the diversity of a habitat. But there are also ethical and religious questions that must be faced. Gary Meffe and Ronald Carroll’s Principles of Conservation Biology attempts to combine these two areas, first establishing an ethical and then a scientific base for conservation, leading to a set of management principles. Here is a logical structure, but the illustration of the principles by an extensive series of case studies ranging from black-footed ferrets to turtles quickly demonstrates how far we are from having a firm, unified basis for theoretical conservation ecology. Like so many conservation books, this one is almost entirely Amerocentric in its choice of illustration. In this case, it does reduce its value and applicability in a European context.

Talking of value, where does economics come into all this? Can biodiversity and conservation pay? Can we put a price tag on it? There is nothing like an economic incentive for sharpening the political will. The conservation-minded publishing house Earthscan has recognised this, bringing out three books in this area. Two are concerned with the economics of biodiversity and the third with the economic consequences of global climate change. Economics is currently proving very attractive to undergraduate students in the environmental field and all three of these books will no doubt contribute to the wider debate.

Approaching from a primarily biological training, I found the books by Samuel Frankhauser, Valuing Climate Change: The Economics of the Greenhouse, and by Edward Barbier and colleagues, Paradise Lost?, easier to follow than David Pearce and Dominic Moran’s The Economic Value of Biodiversity. The latter seems to jump into unfamiliar (to me) economic concepts with less sensitivity towards my ignorance than the other two. The general conclusion, however, comes through loud and clear: whether we are losing climatic stability, the forests of Madagascar or the Atlantic herring, we are also losing money. That should cause political pain where it hurts.

Integrating the environmental picture may still be a headache as factual material continues to accrete, but there is certainly no cause for complaint regarding the overall quality of the current selection of books available to the undergraduate.

Environmental Science: Working with the Earth (fifth edition) by G. Tyler Miller Jr, Wadsworth Publishing, pp 560, £19.95

Sustaining the Earth: An Integrated Approach by G. Tyler Miller Jr, Wadsworth Publishing, pp 360, £24

Biological Oceanography by Carol M. Lalli and Timothy R. Parsons, Pergamon Press, pp 301, £59 (This title has been transferred to Butterworth-Heinemann)

Soil Ecology by Ken Kilham, Cambridge University Press, pp 242, £40/$64.95 hbk, £14.95/$24.95 pbk

Soil Science: Methods and Applications by David L. Rowell, Longman Scientific and Technical, pp 350, £19.99

Ecological and General Systems by Howard T. Odum, University of Colorado Press, pp 644, £35.50

Biological Diversity: The Coexistence of Species on Changing Landscapes by Michael A. Huston, Cambridge University Press, pp 681, £60

Species Diversity in Ecological Communities: Historical and Geographical Perspectives edited by Robert E. Ricklefs and Dolf Schluter, University of Chicago Press, pp 414, £25.95/$14.95 pbk

Principles of Conservation Biology by Gary K. Meffe and C. Ronald Carroll, Sinauer Associates Inc, pp 600, £29.95

Valuing Climate Change: The Economics of the Greenhouse by Samuel Frankhauser, Earthscan, pp 180, £14.95 pbk

Paradise Lost? by Edward B. Barbier, Joanne C. Burgess and Carl Folke, Earthscan, pp 267, £14.94 pbk

The Economic Value of Biodiversity by David Pearce and Dominic Moran, Earthscan, pp 172, £12.95

Why, I ask myself as I patiently absorb yet another television wildlife
documentary about the Ngorongoro Crater, are animals so much more interesting
than plants? Is it their mobility and violent behaviour? In days when the
moving image has assumed so great an importance, the sad fact is that plants
just don’t do anything – or at least don’t grow quickly enough to be entertaining.
The very word ‘vegetable’ smacks of inactivity. But is this perception correct,
or is it just another vicious and unfounded rumour spread abroad by zoologists?
If we are to believe Arthur Galston, there is certainly a lot more going
on under the plant’s epidermis than meets the eye.

The trouble is that plants do things without fuss or flamboyance. Take
photosynthesis, for example, without which there would be neither wart hog
nor wildebeest in the Serengeti. It is a complex process, which gives power
to the natural world and pain to many students; they will undoubtedly welcome
Galston’s lucid explanatory text and the high-quality colour diagrams that
one inevitably associates with a Scientific American production. If clear,
uncluttered text and figures are the prime requisites of a textbook, then
this book must rank among the best on the botanical market. From photon
to food, the most vital photochemical process in the natural world is laid
out simply and admirably in these pages.

Is this enough, however, to bring to botany its deserved public acclaim
and enthusiasm? Here we come up against an unwritten law of biology, that
the nearer an organism is to our own species the more interesting it becomes
to us. The reason for this is that it is easier to anthropomorphise, and
it is quite difficult to anthropomorphise a plant. Walt Disney has worked
wonders with deer, ducks and Dalmatians, but there’s not a lot you can do
with an animated dahlia.

Or is there? Galston places particular emphasis on precisely those aspects
of plant life that might arouse our empathy. The plant needs to seek out
sources of energy, water and chemical elements and it is capable of accomplishing
these by means of localised growth and movement. It can detect gravity,
deter grazers and cope with stress, although admittedly its stresses are
rather different from ours, including drought, frost, overheating and high
salinity.

Some of the other problems plants must face, however, are remarkably
similar to our own, such as the response to injury. When a plant is damaged
either by a predator taking a bite or some lumbering lagomorph treading
on it, it releases ethylene, which stimulates cell division and hence wound
repair. But it may also emit volatile messenger chemicals, the jasmonates,
that warn other plants, including its own and other species, of danger –
and may cause them all to begin to produce chemical grazing deterrents.
A clumsy rabbit could cause a botanical panic in a meadow.

Then there is the question of competition, for only the robust and forceful,
or the cunning and covert, can hope to survive in a world that is green
in shoot and cladode. Survival league tables are long established in the
plant kingdom and no ethical line is drawn at the use of chemical weapons.
In the Sonoran Desert that stretches from Arizona to California, for example,
the brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) drops its deadly leaves to poison the
soil as a method of deterring any rival plant from invading its living space.

The more you read of Galston’s book, the more apparent it becomes that
plants are really just like us. Even if we cannot fully appreciate the way
they trap and convert solar energy, we can at least admire the way they
fight.

Peter Moore is reader in ecology at King’s College London.

During open-heart surgery, the coronary arteries are closed for up to
12 minutes to allow the surgeon to work. Although the body is cooled to
slow the metabolic rate, the interruption in blood supply still causes ischaemia,
which may damage parts of the heart muscle. At the Hatter Institute for
Cardiovascular Studies at University College Hospital, London, researchers
have been able to precondition hearts to be better prepared for ischaemia.

In a group of 10 patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery, Wilfred
Pugsley and his colleagues stopped cardiac blood flow for three minutes
and then restored it for two. After repeating this cycle twice, they closed
off the blood vessels to the heart and carried out the bypass. After the
operation they took samples of cardiac muscle to measure the concentration
of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the major source of energy in cells. Compared
with samples taken from 10 patients who had undergone conventional bypass
surgery, the cells from preconditioned hearts contained 30 per cent more
ATP. ‘This could reduce cell damage by 50 to 75 per cent,’ says Derek Yellon,
professor of cellular cardiology and head of the team.

Understanding how the heart protects itself could radically influence
the treatment of people suffering angina and heart attacks. Originally,
it was thought that repeated reductions of blood flow, which is responsible
for the pain of angina, would cause cumulative damage. Now, researchers
think it may stimulate protective mechanisms within the heart.

‘We need to discover how this built-in protection mechanism works,’
says Yellon.

The effects of ischaemic preconditioning are not restricted to the short
term. Yellon’s team has found another, delayed effect, which occurs after
24 hours. Because the initial protection acts within minutes of cutting
off the blood flow, much research has focused on adenosine. This chemical
is formed during ischaemia as the three phosphate groups on ATP molecules
are stripped away one by one, releasing energy to the cell each time. Adenosine
protects heart cells from damage when oxygen is in short supply, and chemicals
which block adenosine and its receptors leave cells highly vulnerable.

Yellon believes adenosine released from cells triggers the expression
of the proteins that cells are known to produce after suffering sublethal
stress caused by excessive heat or ischaemia. Yellon’s team found these
heat-shock proteins in cardiac cells from patients who had undergone surgery
in the previous 24 hours (Circulation Vol 88, p 1264). The proteins protect
the internal structures of cells, allowing them to withstand more severe
stress. ‘We should soon understand what is involved in this preconditioning,
and be in a position to use drugs to mimic the heart’s own defence mechanisms,’
says Yellon.

Basically, there will be a lottery with tickets costing not more than
£1 each. Originally, the annual turnover was expected to be £1.5
billion, but estimates from the Department of National Heritage, under whose
aegis the lottery falls, raised the figure to £2 billion, while market
researchers suggested that the turnover could be as high as £4.5
billion.

No breakdown of the cash raised has been announced but, in the debate
in the House of Lords, a peer suggested without contradiction 50 per cent
for cash prizes, 12 per cent on a lottery tax and 23 per cent to ‘good causes’.
The latter will be split five ways between the arts, the heritage, sports,
charities and a Millennium Fund. With a turnover of £2 billion, good
causes would receive £460 million all told, £92 million going
to each category. Bodies, such as the Arts or Sports Councils would invite
proposals and distribute the money. Sadly, it seems that science, engineering
or medical science will gain little through the lottery.

So much for the bare bones. Will it be a success? When Premium Savings
Bonds – later to become known as Ernie bonds – were introduced in 1958,
they were widely criticised. The suggestion was that they would ‘rot the
moral foundations of society’. The gambling was only on the interest accruing
and not on the capital invested in the bonds, and any protests have long
since died down.

Research has shown that the lottery will be financed primarily by those
in C₂, D and E socioeconomic groups. These groups have one-third
less than average participation in sport, and only half the average participation
in the arts. Conversely, socioeconomic groups A, B and C₁ have
one-third more participation than the average in sport, and twice the average
participation in the arts.

The lottery has to be put alongside the existing football pools. The
money raised by the latter, about £850 million a year, has a very
different breakdown from that of the lottery. Some 28.5 per cent goes on
prizes, 32 per cent on expenses, 37.5 per cent on the pools tax and 2 per
cent on the promoters’ profits. About a quarter of the expenses is put
back into the sport of football. The government has tried to maintain that
the pools and the lottery are different animals; the former a skilled operation,
the latter a matter of pure luck. Football pool punters, however, tend to
treat the pools as a form of lottery. It is hard to substantiate any forecasting
method that has been systematically successful, principally because a solo
winning line (of eight 1-1 draws) appears so infrequently. Even if optimum
use is made of the information available, the probability of obtaining a
major prize remains slight.

Whether investing in a football pool or the National Lottery, the financial
expectation is negative; very much so in the case of the football pools,
less so in the case of the lottery. The proposed total prize returns to
punters in the lottery are not too dissimilar from those of lotteries held
in various overseas countries, although the odds of a prize (and its size)
vary greatly, with the split of the money available for prizes varying a
great deal among lotteries.

Why do people invest in such gambling? Skill has to be put aside, leaving
two options. The first is social gambling, taking in bingo halls or casinos.
The money wagered is discretionary money, written off by the gambler when
it is placed. The second represents the pursuit of the dream. The lottery
(or the pools) offers most punters the only chance they will ever have to
become a millionaire. Many people derive pleasure from the dream, even though
the million-pound cheque never arrives on their doormat. This is the vein
of economic irrationality which the National Lottery aims to tap. Such economic
behaviour specifies the key features of a lottery with few extraordinary
large prizes (to reinforce the dream) and many small ones (to encourage
overestimation of the probability that the dream is realisable).

Back in 1949, George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: ‘The Lottery, with
its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes was the one public event to which
the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some
millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only
reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne,
their intellectual stimulant.’ Orwell’s prophecy may yet come true.

The debates in Parliament showed concern as to whether the proceeds
of the lottery would be additional to the normal government grants for the
arts, heritage, sports and the like. David Mellor, when Secretary of State
for National Heritage, said: ‘I must emphasise that the lottery proceeds
will be additional funding. The government does not intend that the money
provided from the lottery should substitute for existing expenditure programmes.’
(Hansard, 6 March 1992). The current national heritage minister, Peter Brooke,
said proceeds ‘would not be brought within the government control total’
which does not have quite the same meaning. Experience in other countries
suggests that when lottery proceeds are good, less state money is given
to education, science and so on, the lottery becoming a funding substitute.

A further problem is ‘substitutability’, with the possibility of decline
in the turnover of football pools, or in money given to charities generally.
Charitable giving in Britain is about £3.25 billion a year. Some
of the individual’s discretionary money which currently goes direct to a
wide range of charities will be switched to the lottery. Results from market
research carried out by the National Opinion Poll for the National Council
for Voluntary Organisations suggested that, if the ‘good causes’ element
is played up in a lottery media campaign, the voluntary sector could lose
7 per cent, or £230 million a year, in donation income. This has
to be set against an expected lottery income for charities of £92
million a year, a net loss of £138 million.

The wide spread of projects in the good cause allocation means that
there will be minimal identification of the lottery to individual aspirations.
Most successful lotteries have had clear objectives – an opera house, a
hospital, Olympic stadiums and so on – that are tangible and national totems.
Overall, it seems that the National Lottery will please few and irritate
many. The few are the millionaires who will be generated from the process,
and perhaps some of the good-cause recipients. The money spent in general
will buy tickets for little or no return. Charities could see their overall
income cut, and the discerning will see other ways of giving to charity
that are more tax efficient. The overall certain winner will, once again,
be the Treasury.

Peter Moore is professor of statistics at the London Business School
and a former president of the Royal Statistical Society.

Only 30 years ago New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ could confidently proclaim that global
cycles of elements such as carbon were far too vast to be affected by the
activities of humanity. Now the story has changed, and with it the text
books. Many new texts are entering the market place with the underlying
theme of global ecology as their unifying banner.

The term ‘biosphere’ has found its way into common parlance as part
of the new environmentalist jargon and has proved useful, although it remains
ill-defined. In The Biosphere, Ian Bradbury takes the biosphere to mean
a combination of the sum of living organisms on Earth, together with their
physical setting – a kind of global ecosystem approach. His emphasis, however,
is strongly on the living organisms. Much of his book concentrates on providing
information on basic cell chemistry, genetics and evolution, together with
an outline of classification and a discussion of the way in which ecosystems
work (primary production, energy flow, mineral cycling and so on). Given
the global scale of the title, there is surprisingly little emphasis on
ecosystem processes on a global scale, but the account will certainly be
of use to those who are in need of basic information who do not have a biological
background.

One of the main causes of concern in studies of the global environment
is the pace of change. Most books concerned with the subject feel the need
to set the present situation into a historic context. Bradbury, for example,
slips in a closing section to his book in which he traces the course of
development of life on Earth. Antoinette Mannion, on the other hand, makes
the chronology of change the central thread of Global Environment Change
and this does provide a consistent and logical flow to the development of
her theme. She also chooses to begin her story in the Quaternary, that is
at the commencement of the last 2 million years or so of the Earth’s history.
Again, this is logical for it is the period of time during which the fluctuations
of the glaciations made their profound mark on climatic changes. It is also
the period during which our own species emerged. This is a book packed with
detail and will be widely used in university courses on environmental science.
About half of it is given over to the historical development of environmental
problems and the other half to the current state of affairs.

Fuller accounts of the long-term evolution of the biosphere and its
changes within the Quaternary period can be found in John Tallis’s Plant
Community History and by Hazel and Paul Delcourt’s Quaternary Ecology. More
detailed discussion of modern environmental topics, on the other hand, such
as climatic change, clearance of forests and biodiversity, are to be found
in the collection of essays, entitled The Fragile Environment. I recommend
this, and it is now available in paperback.

On a similar theme, but containing a much more extensive series of both
general accounts of environmental problems and specific case studies, is
The Earth in Transition edited by George Woodwell. This provides a wealth
of information about diverse topics such as the deforestation of Brazilian
Amazonia, risks to deep-sea communities and the future of the atmosphere.
It provides a good source of information for more advanced undergraduates
researching the literature of current environmental problems. The one disadvantage
is that the papers in the book date back to a conference held in 1986, though
some have since been updated.

The rate of development in the environmental sciences is becoming a
major headache for publishers, as information, techniques of measurement
and changes in the state of the Earth seem to be outpacing the evolution
of the literature. One vital source of information that all interested libraries
(schools as well as higher education establishments) should regard as a
priority is the United Nations Environmental Programme Environmental Data
Report. The third edition for 1991 to 1992 has now been published and contains
up to the moment information on pollution, energy sources, the climate,
global resources and human health, all in a digested and well presented
form.

The human aspect of global change is, of course, one of the main reasons
why environmental science is rising to such prominence. The task of feeding
the world is a challenge that has moved and inspired the current generation,
and Lucile Newman’s collection of essays, Hunger in History, will provide
students with a fascinating glance at the problems of famine in the past.
The evidence collected here goes right back into prehistoric, even pre-agricultural
time and some surprising facts emerge. Early agriculturalists, for example,
judging by their skeletons, were less well nourished than the hunter-gatherer
cultures that preceded them and were more prone to bone diseases, tuberculosis
and gut parasites. But ‘back to nature’ is hardly an adequate answer to
modern problems of world food supply. The solution to the world’s hunger
problems, the book claims, will require a threefold increase in food production
over the next 60 years.

Global environmental change and world agricultural development, however,
may well be set on a collision course if the predicted greenhouse effect
proves as profound in its effects as many fear. Martin Parry has faced this
problem with commendable brevity and clarity in his short textbook Climatic
Change and World Agriculture. It is an authoritative account of the outcome
of the 1990 Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change and seeks to answer
in simple language and diagrams the obvious questions that students and
others inevitably ask. How fast will the greenhouse effect operate? (Answer
between 0.2 and 0.4 °C temperature rise a decade during the next 100
years). To what extent will the rise be concentrated in certain parts of
the globe? How will this affect patterns of types of world vegetation? How
are crops affected? What will happen to domestic animals and their productivity?
What are the implications for global food supply? Of all the books now emerging
on the crest of the environmentalist wave, this one comes closest to meeting
the questions currently being asked by the person in the street.

Peter Moore is reader in ecology in the Biosphere Sciences Division
of King’s College London.

* * *

The Biosphere by Ian K. Bradbury, Belhaven Press, pp 203, £39
hbk/ £13.95 pbk

Global Environmental Change by AM Mannion, Longman, pp 404, £14.99
pbk

Plant Community History by JH Tallis, Chapman & Hall, pp 398, £49

Quaternary Ecology: A Palaeo-ecological Perspective by Hazel R. and
Paul A. Delcourt, Chapman & Hall, pp 242, £30 hbk/ £14.95
pbk

The Fragile Environment edited by Laurie Friday and Ronald Laskey, Cambridge
University Press, pp 198, £9.95 pbk

The Earth in Transition edited by George M. Woodwell, Cambridge University
Press, pp 530, £30/ $49.50

UNEP Environmental Data Report (3rd edition) prepared by MARC London,
Basil Blackwell, pp 408, £50 pbk

Hunger in History edited by Lucile F. Newman, Basil Blackwell, pp 429,
£45

Climate Change and World Agriculture by Martin Parry, Earthscan, pp
157, £9.95 pbk

Doctors are still unsure of the exact causes of sudden infant death
syndrome, also known as cot death. While some researchers seek possible
causes, others are looking at ways to detect those babies most at risk.
Failure to develop adequate control of breathing has been implicated as
one of the causes. The new test could have a role in screening infants to
allow early detection of some of the babies at risk.

How often and deeply we breathe is determined largely by how much oxygen
and carbon dioxide there is in our blood. Receptors in the wall of the carotid
arteries, which carry blood to the head, monitor the levels of these gases.
These carotid chemoreceptors send signals to the brain if oxygen level falls
or carbon dioxide rises, which in turn increases respiratory effort. Mark
Hanson of the University of Reading says ‘these receptors give the first
line of defence of the newborn against a fall in oxygen’.

The test involves measuring the baby’s breathing using a technique known
as inductance plethysmography. This allows the changes in volume of the
baby’s thorax and abdomen to be accurately monitored with each breath.

A microcomputer controls valves that alter the amount of oxygen fed
through a tube in the sleeping baby’s nose. On alternate breaths the baby
receives either normal air, containing 21 per cent oxygen, or air with a
slightly reduced amount of oxygen – about 16 per cent.

The same computer then monitors the effect that this changing supply
of oxygen has on each breath that the baby takes. If the chemoreceptors
are functioning correctly, then when the baby receives air with less oxygen
it will breathe more deeply compared to when it receives normal air.

Initial trials have been carried out in the Netherlands at the University
of Limburg, Maastricht. The project, sponsored by the Foundation for the
Study of Infant Deaths, is now continuing in the Special Care Baby Unit
at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading. Two doctors, John Smyth and
Bridget Williams, have applied the test to about 100 infants.

‘We have found that normal babies respond to this test and we are currently
investigating the babies from groups known to be at a very high risk of
sudden infant death syndrome,’ says Williams. The babies at risk include
the brothers and sisters of babies that have died suddenly, babies who have
had a ‘near miss’ from cot death and premature babies who suffer from chronic
lung disease from the time that they spent in an incubator. If these groups
of babies show a reduced breathing response it will show that the test can
be used to screen babies at risk.

The doctors are also planning to monitor the breathing response of normal
babies from a very early age through the period of greatest incidence of
cot death, from 10 to 14 weeks. A reduced breathing response during this
period would provide evidence that respiratory failure could be one of the
causes of cot death.

There is no shortage of books that cry out about the problems of our
age, but they vary considerably in their approach. Easily top of the pile
is Ian Simmons’s Changing Face of the Earth. The subtitle, ‘Culture, environment,
history’, aptly describes its emphasis on the development of human culture
as the instrument that has been most influential in moulding the global
environment. I happen to love flow charts, and this book is rich in them.
They tell you about the complexity of interactions and enable you to think
more clearly about processes and their results.

Simmons traces each step in the progressive development of society,
from the food webs of the prehistoric Aleuts to the flow of energy through
the British economy. And he documents the inevitable outcome of these changes
upon the environment. Changing Face of the Earth is a powerful book without
being emotional, an intellectual book without being dry.

Equally attractive, visually, is Resource Conservation and Management
by Tyler Miller. But the book is written at a lower level, is more chatty
and has a very strong Northern American flavour.

Maintenance of the Biosphere is a collection of papers from an environmental
conference. Nicholas Polunin and John Burnett have edited these together,
but this book lacks the unity of the other two, more general texts. Some
of its chapters are surprisingly superficial, but others address such fascinating
topics as the global carrying capacity for human beings. The salutary outcome
of this debate is that our present global population of 5 billion is already
more than twice the estimated long-term carrying capacity of 2 billion.

Books about specific habitats may be more mundane than these abstruse,
cosmic tomes that debate the future of our planet, but they make up for
this by a firm grounding in field data. The new edition of D. S. McLusky’s
The Estuarine Ecosystem is a splendid example, rich in information about
such solid and familiar subjects as the decomposition of Spartina litter
and the response of the amphipod Corophium to chromium pollution.

One welcome change of attitude in modern ecology is the recognition
that artificial habitats are worthy of ecological study – hence Joy Tivy’s
Agricultural Ecology. What is pleasing about this book is her global coverage,
with particular emphasis on tropical agriculture including pastoral systems
and irrigation problems in dry lands. This should be compulsory reading
for all applied ecology and conservation students.

Tivy has a chapter on agricultural soils, and the biological aspects
of soil also form the basis for a new book in the Blackie Tertiary Level
Biology series, Soil Biology by Martin Wood. This is a good introductory
text, clearly written and illustrated, and particularly strong in the area
of soil microbiology.

The agricultural ecosystem is by no means the only artificial habitat
attracting the attention of ecologists. Even more extreme as a habitat for
wildlife is the city, and this is the subject of Oliver Gilbert’s The Ecology
of Urban Habitats. Here is an area where so little research has been done
and yet where so many people are available to do the work. The amateur naturalist
and the school group can easily contribute to valuable scientific research
by studying the changing flora and fauna of canals, woodland fragments,
churchyards and allotments. We badly need to know how different management
practices change their potential for wildlife.

Gilbert’s book is a thorough and detailed review, but with a distinctly
British emphasis. As a source of baseline information and ideas for project
work, it should prove useful in schools as well as in universities. Although
it may seem a humble subject in comparison with the problems of global environmental
change, the study of urban habitats has lessons for us all. If the future
of the Earth and its wildlife is to be secured, the process must begin in
our own back gardens.

Changing Face of the Earth by I. G. Simmons, Basil Blackwell, pp 487,
Pounds sterling 45 hbk, Pounds sterling 14.95 pbk.

Resource Conservation and Management by G. Tyler Miller Jr, Wadsworth,
distributed in Britain by Thomson Publishing Services, pp 546, Pounds sterling
30.

Maintenance of the Biosphere edited by Nicholas Polunin and John H.
Burnett, Edinburgh University Press, pp 216, Pounds sterling 25.

The Estuarine Ecosystem by D. S. McLusky (2nd edition), Blackie, pp
215, Pounds sterling 27 hbk, Pounds sterling 12.95 pbk.

Agricultural Ecology by Joy Tivy, Longman, pp 288, Pounds sterling 11.95
pbk.

Soil Biology by M. Wood, Blackie, pp 154, Pounds sterling 23 hbk, Pounds
sterling 10.95 pbk.

The Ecology of Urban Habitats by O. L. Gilbert, Chapman and Hall, pp
369, Pounds sterling 35.

Peter Moore lectures in the department of biosphere sciences, King’s
College, London

OBSERVERS on the sidelines of the environmental field might well be
confused by some of the rules of the game. Those at the front of the ‘Save
the Biosphere’ team call vociferously for the conservation of the equatorial
forests. But others among their ranks cry out in horror at the planting
of trees in the uplands of Britain, particularly in northern Scotland. It
is the demand of this group that may furrow the brows of some onlookers.
In his book, Steve Tompkins sets out to clarify the case of the anti-forestry
lobby.

In any debate generating heat it is well to look at the qualifications
and possible vested interests of the speaker. In this case, the author’s
background as a forestry graduate and lifelong forester clearly equip him
to cast an informed eye on the current afforestation of our hills. You might
expect him to be proclaiming the case for planting trees, but his overall
message is essentially critical of British forestry strategies, both on
the part of the Forestry Commission and private foresters. His claim is
not that forestry is evil per se, but that its development into a megabuck
industry has eclipsed all other considerations in its inexorable expansion.

The timber exporting nations dominate the world markets for timber –
and set its price. In Britain the relatively low value of timber means that
wood production is economical only on land that is of little value for other
crops. Hence the move to plant forests on marginal and upland areas. These
regions consist of several types of habitat that we need to consider separately
if their respective value and the arguments for and against forestry are
to be judged fairly. Tompkins fails to address this question of the diversity
of habitats in detail and tends to apply some blanket reasoning to the problems
of blanket forestry.

One of the most interesting and scarce of the habitats affected is blanket
bog, the most famous being the flow country of Caithness and Sutherland.
No ecologist can deny the force of the conservation argument in this area
of Scotland, where we find the closest British equivalent to the tundra
landscape. No one disputes the biological interest and value of such sites,
though Tompkins should have faced squarely the point often brought up by
commercial foresters that many, perhaps most, of the British (and Norwegian)
blanket bogs have developed asa consequence of prehistoric forest clearance.

Landowners seeking financial gain are often swift to seize upon this
argument to justify plantation with sitka spruce and lodgepole pine. The
use of this argument is false, firstly because the original forest was a
mixture of birch, pine, alder, oak and hazel, not the even-aged monoculture
of exotics, and second because the ecological value of the blanket bog lies
in its rich assemblage of specialist species, both plants and animals, and
is quite independent of its ‘naturalness’. The fact that a landscape is
‘artificial’ is no excuse for destroying it.

Other upland habitats, such as sheepwalk and moorland, are equally the
products of prehistoric and historic human activity. They may not be as
impressive as the flow country, but you can argue for their preservation
from both the point of visual amenity and the needs of some spectacular
species, such as the golden eagle and the red kite, which require open country
in which to hunt and scavenge. However, Tompkins does not develop these
arguments well, concentrating rather upon the historic and economic reasons
for the current explosion in forestry.

What the book does contain is a wealth of information about the development
of forestry in Britain and especially the influence of economics in general
and tax laws in particular upon the growth of private and public afforestation
programmes. The author’s past involvement with the Forestry Commission provides
him with an insight into the philosophy behind the growth of this body and
its impact on the British landscape. He analyses the world of city and governmental
bureaucracy with perception, and a degree of asperity, and he demonstrates
ably the impact of this financial world upon the British countryside.

The ecological case against monoculture forestry emerges when he considers
the spread of pests, such as the spruce bark beetle. Tompkins uses these
examples to show that our uplands are far from ideal for commercial tree
growth. He mentions briefly the sad loss of our fragmented native lowland
hardwood forests that are rich in species but relatively poor when it comes
to the production of timber. Our native hardwoods produce timber at only
a third to a half the rate of conifers. They are expensive to buy assaplings
and, as young trees vulnerable to pests such as deer and squirrels.

So the real problem with Britain’s forestry from the naturalist’s point
of view is that we have the wrong trees growing in the wrong places. And
Tompkins’s conclusion is best summed up by a notice that the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds produced in opposition to the afforestation
of the flow country, ‘There is a place for forestry – but it is not here.’

Dr Peter Moore is reader in ecology in the division of biosphere sciences,
King’s College, London University.