This volume is the result of research conducted by the former team-leader of Tropenbos-Colombia programme, Juan Saldarriaga. The research focuses on forest recovery after slash-and-burn agriculture in tropical rain forests of the Amazon Basin. It provides an integrated description of forest succession, and offers a basis for examining important ecological processes such as the rate of recovery of tropical forest vegetation, living and dead biomass accumulation, the global carbon budget, changes in tree species diversity and structure of the forest, and dry matter production in relation to photosynthetically active radiation in the different stages of forest succession.