Técnicas de Forestación 1975.
Extracts from reports of 43 foresters, coordinated by Juan Jesus Molina Rodriguez, Monograph No. 9 of the Spanish National Institute for the Conservation of Nature, Ministry of Agriculture, Madrid. 209 p.
Reforestation in Spain is alive and well. Through the immense and systematic details of this book it appears, at age 35, to be flexible, adaptative, and inventive; well capable of expanding by nearly 100000 hectares a year. Unfortunately for the curious reader, the framework of organization, the planning and follow-up phases, do not enter the scope of this book. The focus is exclusively upon the execution of large-scale reforestation. But at the same time, that focus brings out the details with such clarity as to take the reader very close to the workings that create forest upon land of otherwise low usefulness.
Foresters are no longer free to be ignorant of such workings. Their orders of the day are for more parks and plantations as the public looks to them for more natural areas and more wood products. Parks and plantations are spreading by several million hectares a year, an increasingly important factor of land use.
That the present book should come out of Spain is in no way remarkable. History and climate have endowed Spain with a high proportion of lands once forested but now under fallow and rough grazing, long the despair of economists and sociologists alike. Since 1940, Spain's foresters have converted three million hectares of such land into forest, about six percent of the national territory. Given the variety of climate and soil, and the local autonomy of the forest services, an assortment of techniques has appeared to achieve the goals of erosion control, wood, water, amenity and employment. The present book is a highly selective and precise inventory of those techniques actually in use: defined, described, compared and evaluated.
The authorship of the book is both original and intriguing. The transmittal of information is almost direct from forty-three foresters introduced to the reader by a list of capsule biographies. They are foresters who direct operations and who, one feels, strive endlessly for a better way to place a tree seedling in the ground. Simple as the outcome may appear, it is an immensely complicated task matching the almost infinite variety of natural conditions and hazards against the resources of human ingenuity. The outcome sought is not just survival, but ever better growth and quality, pleasant to look at, easier to exploit; and all that with lower costs and less trouble. Surely here is enough to tax the imagination and inventiveness of foresters.
To cope with the complexities of the subject, the editors have fitted the mass of detail into twenty-eight chapters of somewhat Procrustean rigidity. Each chapter opens with the definition of one process and follows with six points of discussion of the same.
The points discussed are limitations of environment and purposes, equipment, procedures, measures of control, yields of work accomplished in relation to costs incurred, evaluation and occasionally a. history of the process. The discussion of the environment alone considers factors such as slope, soil depth, compaction, and so on, while under the list of purposes are the possible effects upon hydrology and the landscape. Thus one man with a mattock receives the same treatment as a six-man crew using specialized machinery costing many thousands of dollars. No doubt such details lie embedded in the minds of those who direct field operations, tagged and evaluated and ready for use as the occasion arises; to have brought them to light, to have organized and presented them in comprehensive and readable fashion was an admirable goal admirably carried out.
To illustrate, clarify and enliven the text, the authors have included sixteen drawings of tools and machinery, forty-nine photographs (thirty-two in color), and a map of Spain to indicate the climatic zones discussed. The bibliography has forty-nine titles and the glossary 135 definitions. Two tables compare the processes in parallel columns.
Despite the narrow purpose, the book conveys something of Spain's evolution in social problems and values. Once, reforestation drew heavily upon otherwise unused human and animal labour, but their increasing scarcity has forced the use of special machinery and thereby widened enormously the scope of reforestation. Whereas the amenity of a pleasing and well-adjusted landscape was hardly a consideration even ten years ago, the subject appears to be one of increasing concern. A future edition may have landscape as its dominant consideration. In spite of a likeness to an instantaneous; photograph, this book conveys both the vitality and the dynamism of effective reforestation.
Henry S. Kernan
South Worcester, New York
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Unasylva manuscript style Unasylva an international journal of forestry and forest industries, is published quarterly in English, French and Spanish editions. Language and writing style Manuscripts are accepted in English, French or Spanish. Well-organized and clearly written manuscripts not only help to communicate ideas and information to the reader, but they facilitate editing and translation. Manuscript preparation Manuscripts should be in duplicate, typewritten double-spaced on one side of the page only and with wide margins. About 250 words to a page will simplify word-count estimates. It should be possible for us to make clean, easily read photocopies from any manuscript, therefore please use a new typewriter ribbon. The first page should have in the upper right-hand corner the author's name and address, the date and the number of words in the main text, not including words in tables, figures, captions or titles. Subsequent pages should have only the author's name in the right-hand corner. Metric system All measurements should be in the metric system. Tables, figures, drawings Tables, figures and drawings of any kind should each be on a separate page and numbered to correspond to their points of reference in the text. They should never be pasted into the body of the text. They should be as clear and simple as possible. Only essential tables and figures should be included and all should be identified as to source. Photographs Unasylva uses black-and-white photographs. We prefer good quality black-and-white prints 18 × 24 cm (8 × 10 in) on glossy paper. If a diapositive colour-slide is of high quality we may be able to make a copy negative from it and a good quality black-and-white photograph, but we prefer not to have them. We will make every effort to return colour slides and black-and-white negatives but we cannot guarantee return. Black-and-white prints are not returned. Footnotes and references Footnotes and references should be listed on separate sheets at the end of the manuscript. Footnotes should be kept to an absolute minimum and we prefer none. References should be strictly relevant to the article and should also be kept to a minimum. For style of references please see examples in the magazine. Length Long articles are 3000 to 4000 words, and short articles are 750 to 2000 words. Republished articles Unasylva prefers original articles but does not rule out reprints, especially where there is the possibility of exchanging views and developments of basic importance in forestry and forest industries between readers in developed and developing regions of the world or where language considerations are involved. Queries in advance We welcome letters from writers suggesting ideas and subject matter for proposed articles. They usually result in articles of a higher quality and in a saving in writing and editing time. Who are the readers? Unasylva subscribers in some 135 countries fall into the following broad categories: - Government officials, in particular the executive level of national forest services, wildlife departments and national parks. This also includes delegates and missions attached to the United Nations and its specialized agencies and staff members of international organizations dealing with forestry, environment, forest industries and trade. - Forestry schools and institutes, both through their libraries and subscriptions to individual staff members. - Forest industry companies dealing with services for forestry, companies dealing in forest products. - Individual professional foresters, especially those concerned with international forestry. - Editors of professional and trade journals dealing with forestry, forest industries and environmental conservation. |
6 useful forestry titles from FAO
379 pages, 26 ill., clothbound. Lit. 8200.
305 pages, 19 ill. Lit. 4000.
A guide to the planning and execution of a forest inventory. English, French and Spanish editions.
121 pages. Lit. 1600.
A trilingual (English, French, Spanish) directory.
283 pages. Lit. 6500.
A manual on production and cost. English, French and Spanish editions.
90 pages, 36 ill. Lit. 2000.
185 pages, 30 ill., 3 maps. Lit. 4500.
Available from the Distribution and Sales Section, FAO, Via delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy. For orders and information on prices in local currencies apply to any of the FAO Sales Agents and Booksellers listed on the inside back cover.
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
