466 BOOK REVIEWS

Peatlands andenvironmental changeD. CHARMANPublisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Chichester 2002 (301 pp)£60.00/¤99.00 (HB) £24.95/¤41.20 (PB) ISBN 0 471 96990 7(HB) 0 471 84410 8 (PB)

It is nearly three decades since the Moore and Bellamy (1973)publication on Peatlands, which laid the foundations for ageneration of peatland researchers. The science has advancedconsiderably since the early 1970s, with a wealth of journalarticles published since the mid-1990s, and so this new volumeis certainly timely, and perhaps, in view of the time that haselapsed since Gore’s (1983a) compendium on mires, it issomewhat overdue.

The book is wide ranging in its content and is convenientlydivided for readers into four parts. Part 1 (Introduction) focusesfirst on terminology and then on peat landforms and structure.Part 2 (Peatland Processes) contains three chapters that deal,respectively, with peatland hydrology and ecology, origins andpeat initiation, and peat accumulation. The four chapters inPart 3 (Changes in Peatlands) consider palaeoenvironmentalevidence (the peatland archive), autogenic change, allogenicchange, and peatland–environment feedbacks. Finally, thetwo chapters in Part 4 (Resource Management) deal with‘values, exploitation and human impact’, and with conservationmanagement and restoration.

Peatland studies are traced from the late-nineteenth toearly-twentieth century work of Blytt and Sernander on peatstratigraphy in Scandinavia, to some of the latest research ofthe twentieth century. The text is very well referenced; theauthor cites a wide range of literature, including a fair number ofpublications that focus on mires outside the northwest Europeanheartland of peatland palaeoenvironmental research. Althoughit does not have the systematic spatial coverage of Gore (1983b),the inclusion of examples from the tropics, the Americas andAustralasia, in addition to those from northwest Europe, iswelcome. Citations in most fields are up-to-date, although morerecent (post-1998) and perhaps rather more promising workhas been carried out on the organic geochemistry of peatlandsthan is indicated in Chapter 6. Throughout, the text is illustratedprofusely with maps, diagrams and tables.

Originally envisaged as a co-authored publication betweenDan Charman and Barry Warner, the latter’s contribution andinfluence is acknowledged fulsomely in the Preface in whichit is stated that he made additions to the first two chapters.This might explain why parts of those chapters are writtenin the first person plural, and other parts in the singular,but does not explain why most other chapters in the bookalso use ‘we’ and ‘our’: indeed, at times it is not clear as towhom the ‘we’ or ‘our’ refer: the two original authors, peatscientists, peatland conservationists, the author and readers, orhumankind more generally. This personal writing might betterhave been avoided, not least because avid student readers maythen ape the style but with even greater licence!

Dan Charman’s forte is the use of analyses of mire-dwellingtestate amoebae to infer past climates, and so it is perhapsno surprise to find that topic well covered. Indeed, it hasa greater list of index entries than for pollen analysis—themost widely used palaeoenvironmental indicator from mires.However, overall the content is well balanced, with a good mixof topics and examples, illustrating a wide range of techniquesfor palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and also highlighting

contemporary concerns over peatland conservation. Readersof JQS should note, however, that the focus is overwhelminglyon peatlands of the Holocene. The mires of past temperatestages receive scant attention; for the Pleistocene, only peat ofthe Late-glacial event is referred to in Chapter 6—the peatlandarchive. Fortunately, the inevitable section on contemporary‘global warming’ (in Chapter 11) is preceded by a discussion(in Chapter 9) on carbon cycling that does take account ofthe carbon cycle within and before past interglacials. Providedthat readers make the connection between these sections, thismight help to put the current focus on the role of mires inglobal carbon cycling in a deeper time perspective.

There is an interesting observation in Chapter 1 on thecurrency of the term ‘mire’: I had understood it to be an Alice-in-Wonderland term—that it can mean whatever one wants itto mean: fen, bog, marsh, cutover bog, etc.—but the author(s)claim(s) on p. 4 that in ‘Europe and Russia [sic], there is ‘‘atendency to differentiate actively accumulating mires from themore generic peatland term, which applies to all peatlandregardless of whether or not the system is accumulatingpeat’’ ’. This is potentially contradicted in table 1.1, on thesame page, which states that mire is often used synonymouslywith peatlands. (Perhaps this tendency to differentiate is weak,and so I can safely continue to use mire as an all-embracingterm, without too much fear of being misunderstood!)

This text is a welcome addition to the peatland bookshelf andwill be of particular relevance for university course-modulesthat deal with ‘wetlands’ or with Holocene environmentalchange, but will also be suitable for use in teaching masterscourses in conservation and management and in recentenvironmental change. For those institutions that run moduleson mires or on peatland environments, it could naturallybecome the set text. It will also be required reading for anyoneembarking on research into Holocene peatland environments,past or present.

References

Gore AJP. 1983a. Ecosystems of the World, Vol. 4A, Mires: Swamp,Bog, Fen and Moor. General Studies. Elsevier: Amsterdam.

Gore AJP. 1983b. Ecosystems of the World, Vol. 4B, Mires: Swamp,Bog, Fen and Moor. Regional Studies. Elsevier: Amsterdam.

Moore PD, Bellamy D. 1973. Peatlands. Elek: London.

FRANK CHAMBERSCentre for Environmental Change and Quaternary Research

GEMRU, University of GloucestershireCheltenham GL50 4AZ

England

Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com).

DOI: 10.1002/jqs.741

Origin and evolution of tropicalrain forestsR. J. MORLEYPublisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Chichester 2000 (362 pp)£115.00/¤178.30 ISBN 0-471-98326-8

Although our understanding of the detailed evolution andhistory of tropical rain forests is relatively incomplete and

Copyright 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 18(5) 465–470 (2003)