"Forests in Peril: Tracking Deciduous Trees from Ice-Age Refuges into the Greenhouse World" by Hazel R. Delcourt.

Forests in Peril; Tracking Deciduous Trees from Ice-Age Refuges into the Greenhouse World by Hazel R. Delcourt.

$22.95 paper. The McDonald & Woodward Publishing Co., 2003.

Reports of academic research are seldom presented as a personal adventure and almost never in language understandable to those outside the particular academic discipline. By describing her field studies as a personal journey to discover the history of the eastern deciduous forest from ancient time to the present, Delcourt makes the challenges and rewards of scientific investigation come alive to all who read this book.

She takes the reader on her journey, beginning as a plant geographer, then a "historian of trees" and paleoecologist and now an "ecofuturist" who believes "reading landscapes of the past gives ... insights to help us predict, and perhaps manage, landscapes of the future."

With a minimum of jargon, Delcourt describes the methods used to collect and interpret data in the field and to build on the previous research of others in order to tell the story of the eastern forests over thousands of years. Delcourt's skill in the disciplines of research and her ability to envision the meanings of her findings for the future are in the best traditions of scientists such as Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold.