Contact:Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala, 541-482-4459 x302; 541-621-7223 (cell)

Ashland, Oregon- One of the nation’s premier review journals for scholarly publications, Choice, announced its annual publication awards for the nation’s top academic publications. Listed among the winning authors is Ashland-based forest ecologist, Dominick DellaSala, primary author and editor of “Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.”

Choice has been the premier review journal for scholarly publications for more than 45 years and is the leading North American source for reviews of new scholarly books and electronic resources. Choice’s annual “Outstanding Academic Titles” is widely recognized in the academic community for “its sweeping coverage of the most significant scholarly titles published each year.”

The full “Outstanding Academic Titles, 2011” list will appear in the January 2012 issue, featuring 629 exceptional titles spanning 54 disciplines. These exceptional works are truly the “best of the best.”

According to DellaSala, “My idea for doing a book on rainforests started in the early 90s when I was a fledgling biologist, studying the impacts of logging on wolves, deer, and songbirds in the magnificent Tongass rainforest of Alaska. Since then, I’ve been traveling the globe and working with other scientists to raise awareness about the plight of these endangered rainforests.”

Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World, published by Island Press, was prepared with over 30 rainforest scientists around the globe. It is the first global synthesis of these rainforests and the only Island Press publication to receive the Choice award of Academic Excellence in 2011.

In 2011, DellaSala was a keynote speaker at conferences and forest celebrations from Alaska to New Zealand, in recognition of the U.N. declared International Year of Forests. His main message is one of hope – “While rainforests around the globe are at a crisis, there is growing awareness that these forests cleanse the air we breathe, purify our drinking water, and allow us to connect with nature.”

The main findings of the rainforest book are:

• Temperate and boreal rainforests (northern latitude forests such as those in Canada) make up about 2.5% of the world’s total forests, covering almost 250 million acres globally.
• In contrast to tropical rainforests, which lie along the equatorial belt, these rainforests are unevenly distributed in both the northern and southern hemispheres from ~35 to 69 degrees latitude.
• They are largely but not exclusively found along coastlines in ten regions:
  • Pacific Coast of North America (redwoods to Alaska)
  • Inland northwest British Columbia and portions of Idaho and Montana
  • Eastern Canada (portions of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, E. Quebec)
  • Chile & Argentina (Valdivia rainforests)
  • Europe (Norway, British Isles, Ireland, Swiss Alps, Bohemia)
  • Western Eurasian Caucasus (Georgia, Turkey, Iran)
  • Russian Far East and Inland Southern Siberia
  • Japan and Korea
  • Australasia (Australian mainland, Tasmania, New Zealand)
  • South Africa (Knysna-Tsitsikamma rainforests)
• These rainforests are rarer and at least as endangered as the world’s highly regarded tropical rainforests. Several are Critically Endangered, including California’s Coastal Redwoods (less than 4% remain intact) and rainforests in Japan & Korea, and Europe (almost all have been logged over centuries).