A book focused solely on Andean Cloud Forests (ACF) has never been published.  ACF are high biodiversity ecosystems in the Neotropics with a large proportion of endemic species, and are important for the hydrology of entire regions.  They provide water for large parts of the Amazon basin, for example.  Here I take advantage of my many years working in ACF in Ecuador, to edit this book that contains the following sections: (1) ACF over space and time, (2) Hydrology, (3) Light and the Carbon cycle, (4) Soil, litter, fungi and nutrient cycling, (5) Plants, (6) Animals, and (7) Human impacts and management.  Under this premise, international experts contributed chapters that consist of reviews of what is known about their topic, of what research they have done, and of what needs to be done in the future.  This work is suitable for graduate students, professors, scientists, and researcher-oriented managers.

Dr. Myster got his Ph. D from Rutgers University working with STA Pickett. His first full-time position was at the University of Puerto Rico where he worked in oldfields, pastures and landslides, and was a CO-PI on two of their LTER grants done in cooperation with the US Forest Service in Puerto Rico. While in Puerto Rico, he also began to work in Ecuador and Peru. That research continued when he got his second full-time position in Oklahoma and also to the present time. He has published 140+ articles in scientific journals and six books on his research in the Neotropics. In the future he will in Ecuador expand his research to include forests between Cloud forest and Amazon terra-firme forest, and in Peru focus on black-water flooded igapo forest. He puts all of his book royalties back into his research.