Showing titles in Ecology

Biodiversity, the diversity of life, is not only fascinating and beautiful, it is the engine of all the world's natural cycles, and the source of many of the resources on which humanity depends. Concern about biodiversity conservation is, therefore, not merely the preoccupation of a few enthusiastic naturalists—it is the lifeline business of everybody.

Love in the Age of Ecological Apolcalypse addresses an array of relationships in the Last Emergency and how one's relationship with oneself may enrich or impede interactions with all other beings. Drawing upon her deep experience as a life coach, Baker writes of the specific need to understand our key relationships in a society in collapse, and how to navigate through differing levels of acceptance of collapse, trauma, and grief.

Madagascar is a place of change. A biodiversity hotspot and the fourth largest island on the planet, it has been home to a spectacular parade of animals, from giant flightless birds and giant tortoises on the ground, to agile lemurs leaping through the treetops. Some species live on, many have vanished in the distant or recent past. Over vast stretches of time, Madagascar’s forests have expanded and contracted in response to shifting climates and the hand of people is clear in changes during the last 1,000 years or so.

Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of books.

Gene Logsdon's The Man Who Created Paradise is a message of hope at a time when the very concept of earth stewardship is under attack. The fable, inspired by a true story, tells how Wally Spero looked at one of the bleakest places in America -- a raw and barren strip-mined landscape -- and saw in it his escape from the drudgery of his factory job. He bought an old bulldozer and used the machine to carve patiently, acre by acre, a beautiful little farm out of a seemingly worthless wasteland.

Otros mundos devuelve a la vida dieciséis ecosistemas de un pasado inimaginablemente remoto y nos muestra continentes en movimiento, arrecifes de cristal, hongos de tres metros de altura, pingüinos gigantes, reptiles emplumados y muchas otras criaturas asombrosas de un atractivo casi mitológico. A medida que viajamos hacia atrás en el tiempo, redescubrimos nuestro propio hogar de formas irreconocibles, y nos sobrecogen los ecosistemas que se transforman y los devastadores escenarios que han causado el fin de incontables especies.

An iconoclast and best-selling author of both nonfiction and fiction, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lifetime observing, thinking, and writing about the cultures of animals such as lions, wolves, dogs, deer, and humans. In this engrossing book, she provides a plainspoken, big-picture look at the commonality of life on our planet, from the littlest microbes to the largest lizards.

In Meetings with Moths ecologist Katty Baird roams Scotland seeking out, documenting and observing moths. Green Longhorns, Pimpinel Pugs and Peacock Moths are just some of the species that catch her attention as she climbs into holes, ventures behind waterfalls and wanders forests with her boundless curiosity. But you needn’t travel far and wide to see beautiful moths. Katty shows that you can easily enjoy discovering moths and caterpillars without specialist knowledge by creating your own light trap or simply looking more closely at your immediate landscape.

With humility and willingness to apply nature’s experience to our human-constructed world, DeFries demonstrates, we can withstand uncertain and perilous times. Exploring the lessons that life on Earth can teach us about coping with complexity, What Would Nature Do? offers timely options for civilization to reorganize for a safe and prosperous future.

The Arctic century is upon us. A great jockeying for power and influence has erupted among nations in the high north. At stake are trillions of dollars in profit or loss, US security, geopolitical influence and the fate of a fragile environment as well as the region's traditional people. As the ice melts and oil companies venture north, the polar regions may become the next Panama Canal, the next Arabian Peninsula-places on earth that remain relatively unknown in one century and become pivotal in the next.

In Getting to Green, Frederic C. Rich argues that meaningful progress on urgent environmental issues can be made only on a bipartisan basis. Rich reminds us of American conservation's conservative roots and of the bipartisan political consensus that had Republican congressmen voting for, and Richard Nixon signing, the most important environmental legislation of the 1970s.

For millennia, trees have offered renewal and inspiration. They have provided for humanity on every level, from spiritual sanctuary to the raw material for our homes, books, and food. In this beautiful and revealing book, National Geographic illuminates exactly how trees influence the life of planet Earth—from our personal lives to the weather cycle. Essays tell the stories of the world's most remarkable trees, from Tane Mahura in New Zealand, the ancient Maori "lord of the forest," to Pando, a single aspen spreading over 100 acres: Earth's largest living thing.

In August 2018 a 15-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day. Her actions ended up sparking a global movement for action against the climate crisis, inspiring millions of pupils to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

Raging wildfires have devastated vast areas of California and Australia in recent years, and predictions are that we will see more of the same in coming years as a result of climate change. But this is nothing new. Andrew C. Scott tells the whole story of fire's impact on our planet's atmosphere, climate, vegetation, ecology, and the evolution of plant and animal life. It has caused mass extinctions, and it has propelled the spread of flowering plants. The exciting evidence we can now draw on has been preserved in fossilized charcoal, found in rocks hundreds of millions of years old....

In Birdland, journalist and lifelong twitcher Jon Gower explores our intimate connection with the bird life around us. From the symphonic song of the wren to the clack of a puffin’s beak and from epic migrations to sunset murmurations, birds are commonplace miracles. No wonder they have inspired our artists, writers and songwriters. Whether rare or abundant, Jon Gower visits some of the best places in Britain to watch birds, searching for some species he has always wanted to see such as wryneck, dotterel and barred warbler.

This book looks at the weird and wonderful world of parasites, the most abundant form of life on Earth. Parasites come in all forms and sizes and inhabit every free-living organism. Parasitism is now, and always has been, a way to survive under changing environmental conditions. From arctic oceans to tropical forests, Scott Gardner, Judy Diamond, and Gabor Racz investigate how parasites survive and evolve, and how they influence and provide stability to ecosystems.

On 7 February 2009, Roger Wood was the police officer in charge of Kinglake, at the epicentre of the worst ever bushfire disaster in Australia's history, Black Saturday. As the firestorm engulfed the community, he risked his life again and again to try to save people. When he phoned home to warn his wife what was coming, she screamed that the fire had already hit their property. Then the line went dead.

Our precious archipelago is ravaged by climate change, bereft of natural ecosystems and lies at the mercy of global warming, flooding, drought and catastrophic biodiversity loss. But could restoring species that once helped protect our islands help turn this crisis around? From familiar yet imperilled honeybees and ancient oak woods to returning natives like beavers and boars, Britain’s cornerstone species may hold the key to recovering our biodiversity on land and in our seas.

After the death of his brother and the sudden end of his marriage, and after his ex-wife moved to another state leaving him alone with their two young children, Dan Glick embarked on single fatherhood in an unusual way: he took his kids on a journey around the world. The idea was to go see some of the world's rare life forms before they disappeared from the planet, and to do it before the kids themselves would grow up and chart their own paths.

By turns epic and intimate, Telling Our Way to the Sea is both a staggering revelation of unraveling ecosystems and a profound meditation on our changing relationships with nature - and with one another. When the biologists Aaron Hirsh and Veronica Volny, along with their friend Graham Burnett, a historian of science, lead twelve college students to a remote fishing village on the Sea of Cortez, they come upon a bay of dazzling beauty and richness.