The purpose of this book is to provide basic information about the chaparral community, an important but often poorly understood part of the natural heritage of California. We want others to come to appreciate the beauty, complexity, and resiliency of this quintessentially Californian ecological community. We hope that this book will convey some of the excitement and interest we have enjoyed as explorers in this intricate, fascinating environment. The plants and animals that thrive in this system, with its recurring “natural disasters,” can teach us how to understand this part of California's varied landscape. This understanding encompasses the plants and animals that make up the chaparral community, the climate that shaped it, and the role of fire, drought, and floods that are recurring parts of this system. We also hope to supply insight into the growing conflict between the dynamic interaction of natural processes and urbanization as cities press up against wild chaparral landscapes, and to provide suggestions for productive courses of action that could mitigate this conflict.
The book treats the physical features of chaparral environments first, then examines common species of plants and animals more closely, and finally addresses the interactions between chaparral and humans. We have written about the plants, animals, and natural processes that people are likely to notice. Chaparral is a subject of great interest to natural scientists, and a source of fascination to specialists and generalists alike. We hope that readers of this book will find chaparral sufficiently interesting to continue to make discoveries for themselves. The idea of a concise, general book about California chaparral came to each of the authors independently. We were both concerned that there was no such book to explain the chaparral community either to students or other interested people. We each needed such a book for college teaching, and also to explain to friends and family about the system we find so fascinating to study. An earlier book of this kind, The Elfin-Forest, by Francis M. Fultz, is a delightful, if dated, account of the subject, which was last published in 1927 and has long since been out of print. Both of us wrote a manuscript for a chaparral book without knowledge of the activities of the other. Two years ago the University of California Press informed us of our parallel efforts, and we decided to combine forces.
Both of us have worked in chaparral as research scientists and educators for more than 30 years, and both of us have often been asked, “What do you do out there in that brush anyway?” We have set out here to convey the fascination that has drawn us back again and again to chaparral. As college instructors we have used chaparral as a classroom subject for studying ecology and land management. Sterling Keeley has a primary background in plants, and Ronald Quinn in animals, but both of our interests have always been centered on ecological processes in chaparral, especially with respect to fire.
The order in which authors are listed is the result of a coin toss and implies nothing about relative importance of contributions. We have written the entire book together.
A book of this scope encompasses the ideas and work of many people who have devoted their lives to understanding and managing chaparral. The format of this volume does not allow us to recognize most of these people by name in the text. We have acted as reporters of their accomplishments and gratefully acknowledge their work, published and otherwise, which has permitted us to produce this book.