The High Frontier: Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy
About this book
Loaded with aerial plants and the millions of creatures dependent upon them, tropical tree crowns are the last and greatest ecological frontier. Hundreds of species - earthworms, frogs, flowers, shrubs - never descend to earth during their lifetimes. Eight out of ten remain unnamed and unclassified by science.In The High Frontier, Mark W. Moffett does for the tropical rainforest canopy what Jacques Cousteau did thirty years ago for undersea life. Donning rock climbing gear to join researchers working 150 feet and more above the ground, Moffett photographed strangler trees in Borneo, giant squirrels in India, and canopy bears in Colombia. He entered the terrifying world of arboreal spiders and ants, photographing them under extreme magnification. His coverage of this new science is unparalleled in any other field.Described as a "world-roving zoologist" by National Geographic magazine for his work on five continents, Moffett has documented virtually every major active canopy research site. The immediacy of his writing and the intelligence of his photography make the canopy's fantastic architecture and unearthly inhabitants accessible to the general reader. In the tradition of the great nineteenth-century explorers, he captures the struggles of the individual scientists and the passions that enable them to brave perilous situations in pursuit of their work. The High Frontier is a modern classic of scientific discovery.