ABSTRACT
Tropical dry forests (TDFs) are considered among the most endangered ecosystems worldwide, and are even more endangered than tropical rainforests. When evaluated at a continental level, degradation and deforestation processes for TDFs in the Americas are no exception to this rule. With almost 60% of their total extent currently extinct, and the remaining forests experiencing high levels of forest fragmentation, new efforts are urgently required for understanding land use/cover change processes. Kalácska et al. (2005d) clearly presented an argument to increase efforts that aimed at understanding drivers of change and ecological processes in TDFs. The authors compared papers on TDFs with papers on rainforest ecosystems that were published between 1945 and 2005, and identied a ratio of 1 TDF paper for every 300 rainforest ecosystem papers published. This startling number underscores our limited understanding of this endangered ecosystem and
CONTENTS
1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................1 1.2 Tropi-Dry’s Study Areas ...............................................................................2
