Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 33
1
2 Q. Yes. What would you think I meant if I said evergreen
3 hydrophytic?
4 A. Hydrophytic?
5
6 Q. Yes?
7 A. It would be a wet evergreen forest.
8
9 Q. Yes?
10 A. Yes.
11
12 Q. A rainforest?
13 A. Rainforest, as I say, is a broad and popular term and
14 that would be one of the forest types that would be
15 included in it.
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17 Q. What the populous, Mr. Monbiot, would understand by the
18 word "rainforest" is a matter for his Lordship, as I think
19 you understood. You have read far more text books than I
20 ever have, but am I right in thinking that, on the whole,
21 writers of textbooks, whether ecologists or botanists,
22 distinguish four different categories of tropical forest,
23 broad categories, subdivided into submontane, premontane,
24 montane and so on and so forth. But from the point of view
25 of the type of vegetation, four types; tropical dry forest,
26 tropical moist forest, tropical wet forest and tropical
27 rainforest. Am I right?
28 A. It depends which sources you read. Some people will
29 make those divisions; other people will divide it along
30 wholly different lines. The rainforest science is a
31 relatively new one and the classification is still
32 comparatively new. So there is no single set of terms.
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34 Q. Have you heard it said, for instance, that a rainforest is
35 essentially a nonseasonal forest where rainfall is both
36 abundant and constant?
37 A. I am sure that is one definition of one type of forest
38 which certainly fits into that category. I would point out
39 to you that temperate rainforests in the west of the United
40 States would not fit into that category, but are widely
41 called by many scientists "rainforests".
42
43 Q. But we are talking about tropical or near-tropical
44 rainforests, are we not?
45 A. Yes.
46
47 Q. What about a definition which said that must have a minimum
48 of 80" of rainfall in a year?
49 A. Well, this is another definition but, as I say, there
50 are almost as many definitions as there are types of
51 rainforest and you cannot set hard and fast rules,
52 especially with a term which is not generally regarded as a
53 scientific one.
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55 Q. If scientific textbooks use those terms, as I have
56 suggested they do; dry, moist, wet and rainforest, there
57 would be a purpose for that, would there not? It is a
58 useful thing in science to have precise definitions, is it
59 not?
60 A. Science technique is to try to classify and to put
