The Kluane Project: comprehensive boreal forest research

Krebs, C.J., Boutin, S. & Boonstra, R. (eds) (2001) Ecosystem dynamics of the boreal forest: the Kluane project. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, xxiii + 511 pp., figs, line drawings, tables, index, CD-ROM, Hardback: price £75.00, ISBN 0-19-513393-5. It is best to make it clear from the beginning that this book is probably not for someone just generally interested to know more about the ecology of the boreal forest. We are not talking here about a textbook, but about a detailed report and a comprehensive summary of a large multidisciplinary research project that was carried out over ten years in the boreal forest of Yukon, British Columbia, Canada. Because of the scientific and technical depth and detail of the text, the most obvious audience for the book would be researchers of boreal forest ecology and forest managers directly engaged in boreal management issues. The great value of the book is that it builds a coherent picture of a large, well-planned and well-executed multidisciplinary research project and its main findings, some of which are novel and truly astonishing. This holistic view would not have emerged if the research results had been dispersed in various scientific journals. The scale, detail and scope of the documented research are impressive. A multidisciplinary team of researchers has spent years in the field and laboratory to advance the understanding of the structure and functioning of this northern ecosystem. In general, the book is a manifestation of the power of well-designed, long-term multidisciplinary research carried out at the same sites. The approach of the whole project is one of theory and hypothesis testing through manipulative treatments of the system. The central question asked is whether the boreal forest ecosystem is a top-down system, driven by predator trophic interactions, or a bottom-up system driven by autotrophic producers, i.e. the plant community. The focus is on the factors that regulate the fluctuating population of snowshoe hares, a keystone species in the ecosystem. By combining the data from different subprojects from the same ecosystem, and using modelling, it has been possible to obtain a much more comprehensive picture of the ecosystem structure and dynamics than what would have been possible if the individual projects had been dispersed over a larger area. The book also vividly documents the difficulties common to all researchers that have been engaged in carrying out large-scale experimental field work in harsh conditions: things do not always go as you planned at your desk and surprises tend to happen all the time. The approach and documentation of the research can be expressed in two words: detailed and comprehensive. This is both a strength and a weakness of the book. The number of pages surpasses 500, despite a rather small font size. The graphics are basic, apparently in many cases directly adopted or modified from journal articles. There are no photographs; instead the book is accompanied by a CD containing photos, animations and additional material. Although the text is generally well written, the length and report-like layout of the book makes it less appealing. You really have to be interested in the topics to go through all the detail. To reduce the length and to make the book more easily approachable, an alternative approach would have been to put the material & methods details in the CD and concentrate more on the big picture and most interesting results. However, the adopted line of writing is logical, but requires that a reader is interested in research methodology and has some familiarity with browsing through scientific research articles. The focus of the book is heavily on the trophic interactions of the animal community. Although the fire history of the study areas was examined, it remains open what the effects on the hare cycle and the whole ecological community structure would be of, for example, changing the fire regime. Unfortunately, it was not possible to continue monitoring in the Kluane project to get answers to such pressing questions. The research results presented in this book are of great interest when considering the effects of forest management and climate change on the biodiversity of the boreal forest. These findings and concerns are superbly summarized by Charles Krebs in the final chapter of the book. I can recommend this book for anyone interested in getting a deeper understanding of structure and functioning of the boreal forest ecosystems and the kind of science needed to better understand these systems. The lessons learned during the research and documented in the book, are indispensable for anyone planning to carry out a similar multidisciplinary research project in the boreal forest.

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