Download or read book Forests of Ash written by Tom Griffiths and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of the giant eucalypt, the Mountain Ash, which grows in the north and east of Melbourne. A single tree can reach a height of 120 feet in 20 years, making it the worlds tallest hardwood.
Download or read book Australian Environmental History written by Stephen Dovers and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three overview essays explore the broad nature of Australian landscapes, the ways in which we have used and abused them, our attitudes toward them, and the ways we have perceived them. Seven case studies then explore the history of human-environment interactions in more detail across a variety of scales of time (decades, centuries, millennia) and space (sectors, regions, districts). There are analyses of small districts, large regions and natural resource sectors, from the Great Barrier Reef and the Brigalow domain, through the high country to the arid centre. In the Conclusion, Bill Gammage argues that the critical question facing us is not the current catch-phrase 'sustainable development', but sustainable damage - how much can our environment take?
Download or read book An Environmental History of Australian Rainforests until 1939 written by Warwick Frost and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-10 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive environmental history of how Australia’s rainforests developed, the influence of Aborigines and pioneers, farmers and loggers, and of efforts to protect rainforests, to help us better understand current issues and debates surrounding their conservation and use. While interest in rainforests and the movement for their conservation are often mistakenly portrayed as features of the last few decades, the debate over human usage of rainforests stretches well back into the nineteenth century. In the modern world, rainforests are generally considered the most attractive of the ecosystems, being seen as lush, vibrant, immense, mysterious, spiritual and romantic. Rainforests hold a special place; both providing a direct link to Gondwanaland and the dinosaurs and today being the home of endangered species and highly rich in biodiversity. They are also a critical part of Australia’s heritage. Indeed, large areas of Australian rainforests are now covered by World Heritage Listing. However, they also represent a dissonant heritage. What exactly constitutes rainforest, how it should be managed and used, and how much should be protected are all issues which remain hotly contested. Debates around rainforests are particularly dominated by the contradiction of competing views and uses – seeing rainforests either as untapped resources for agriculture and forestry versus valuing and preserving them as attractive and sublime natural wonders. Australia fits into this global story as a prime example but is also of interest for its aspects that are exceptional, including the intensity of clearing at certain periods and for its place in the early development of national parks. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Environmental History, Australian History and Comparative History.
Download or read book Environmental History and Policy written by Stephen Dovers and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This broad-ranging book delves into past efforts and current policies relating to the better management of the Australian environment. Covering environmental change, community efforts, public policy, law, and cultural adaptation, the book presents cautionary and encouraging views on the capacity of Australians to adapt to and live with the Australian environment.
Download or read book Harvest of the Suburbs written by Andrea Gaynor and published by ISBS. This book was released on 2006 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drawing on sources ranging from gardening books and magazines to statistics and oral history, Harvest of the suburbs challenges some widespread myths about food production in Australian cities, and traces the reasons for its enduring popularity. It describes changing attitudes and techniques, and explores the relationship between food production and a range of contemporary ideas relating to work, social organisation, gender roles, health and the body, and nature. In doing so, it provides new insights into the tension between the quest for independence and the desire for interdependence in suburban Australia." --book cover.
Download or read book Environmental History and Ecology of Moreton Bay written by Daryl McPhee and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The south-east Queensland region is currently experiencing the most rapid urbanisation in Australia. This growth in human population, industry and infrastructure puts pressure on the unique and diverse natural environment of Moreton Bay. Much loved by locals and holiday-goers, Moreton Bay is also an important biogeographic region because its coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves and saltmarshes provide a supportive environment for both tropical and temperate species. The bay supports a large number of species of global conservation significance, including marine turtles, dugongs, dolphins, whales and migratory shorebirds, which use the area for feeding or breeding. Environmental History and Ecology of Moreton Bay provides an interdisciplinary examination of Moreton Bay, increasing understanding of existing and emerging pressures on the region and how these may be mitigated and managed. With chapters on the bay's human uses by Aboriginal peoples and later settlers, its geology, water quality, marine habitats and animal communities, and commercial and recreational fisheries, this book will be of value to students in the marine sciences, environmental consultants, policy-makers and recreational fishers.
Download or read book Australia New Zealand and the Pacific written by Donald S. Garden and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-08-19 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating study of the environmental history of Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the Pacific, from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day. Of interest to students and academics alike, this book provides a much-needed synthesis of the recent literature on the environmental history of Australia and Oceania. Part of ABC-CLIO's Nature and Human Societies series, this book maps out the key trends in the region's environmental history, charting the creation of the Australian continent from the ancient land mass of Gondwanaland to the arrival of humans. Especially fascinating are the chapters highlighting how successive waves of human migration created environmental havoc throughout the region, leading to the collapse of the Easter Island civilization and the spread of nonindigenous flora and fauna. From the controversies over the reasons why creatures such as the marsupial lion and the giant kangaroo became extinct to such contemporary problems as deforestation and global warming, this book contains sobering lessons for us all.
Download or read book Ecology and Empire written by Tom Griffiths and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecology and Empire forged a historical partnership of great power -- and one which, particularly in the last 500 years, radically changed human and natural history across the globe. This book scrutinizes European expansion from the perspectives of the so-called colonized peripheries, the settler societies. It begins with Australia as a prism through which to consider the relations between settlers and their lands, but moves well beyond this to a range of lands of empire. It uses their distinctive ecologies and histories to shed new light on both the imperial and the settler environmental experience. Ecology and Empire also explores the way in which the science of ecology itself was an artifact of empire, drawing together the fields of imperial history and the history of science.
Download or read book Gariwerd written by Benjamin Wilkie and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People have been visiting and living in the Victorian Grampians, also known as Gariwerd, for thousands of generations. They have both witnessed and caused vast environmental transformations in and around the ranges. Gariwerd: An Environmental History of the Grampians explores the geological and ecological significance of the mountains and combines research from across disciplines to tell the story of how humans and the environment have interacted, and how the ways people have thought about the environments of the ranges have changed through time. In this new account, historian Benjamin Wilkie examines how Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali people and their ancestors lived in and around the mountains, how they managed the land and natural resources, and what kinds of archaeological evidence they have left behind over the past 20 000 years. He explores the history of European colonisation in the area from the middle of the 19th century and considers the effects of this on both the first people of Gariwerd and the environments of the ranges and their surrounding plains in western Victoria. The book covers the rise of science, industry and tourism in the mountains, and traces the eventual declaration of the Grampians National Park in 1984. Finally, it examines more recent debates about the past, present and future of the park, including over its significant Indigenous history and heritage.
Download or read book History of the Australian Environment Movement written by Drew Hutton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-04-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a history of the value of the Australian environment and the struggles to protect it.
Download or read book Wetlands in a Dry Land written by Emily O'Gorman and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world’s wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and only in the past few decades have wetlands been widely recognized as worth preserving. Emily O’Gorman asks, What has counted as a wetland, for whom, and with what consequences? Using the Murray-Darling Basin—a massive river system in eastern Australia that includes over 30,000 wetland areas—as a case study and drawing on archival research and original interviews, O’Gorman examines how people and animals have shaped wetlands from the late nineteenth century to today. She illuminates deeper dynamics by relating how Aboriginal peoples acted then and now as custodians of the landscape, despite the policies of the Australian government; how the movements of water birds affected farmers; and how mosquitoes have defied efforts to fully understand, let alone control, them. Situating the region’s history within global environmental humanities conversations, O’Gorman argues that we need to understand wetlands as socioecological landscapes in order to create new kinds of relationships with and futures for these places.
Download or read book Flood Country written by Emily O'Gorman and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Floods in the Murray-Darling Basin are crucial sources of water for people, animals and plants in this often dry region of inland eastern Australia. Even so, floods have often been experienced as natural disasters, which have led to major engineering schemes. Flood Country explores the contested and complex history of this region, examining the different ways in which floods have been understood and managed and some of the long-term consequences for people, rivers and ecologies. The book examines many tensions, ranging from early exchanges between Aboriginal people and settlers about the dangers of floods, through to long running disputes between graziers and irrigators over damming floodwater, and conflicts between residents and colonial governments over whose responsibility it was to protect townships from floods. Flood Country brings the Murray-Darling Basin's flood history into conversation with contemporary national debates about climate change and competing access to water for livelihoods, industries and ecosystems. It provides an important new historical perspective on this significant region of Australia, exploring how people, rivers and floods have re-made each other.
Download or read book The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress written by Cameron Muir and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food and the global agricultural system has become one of the defining public concerns of the twenty-first century. Ecological disorder and inequity is at the heart of our food system. This thoughtful and confronting book tells the story of how the development of modern agriculture promised ecological and social stability but instead descended into dysfunction. Contributing to knowledge in environmental, cultural and agricultural histories, it explores how people have tried to live in the aftermath of ‘ecological imperialism’. The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress: An environmental history journeys to the dry inland plains of Australia where European ideas and agricultural technologies clashed with a volatile and taunting country that resisted attempts to subdue and transform it for the supply of global markets. Its wide-ranging narrative puts gritty local detail in its global context to tell the story of how cultural anxieties about civilisation, population, and race, shaped agriculture in the twentieth century. It ranges from isolated experiment farms to nutrition science at the League of Nations, from local landholders to high profile moral crusaders, including an Australian apricot grower who met Franklin D. Roosevelt and almost fed the world. This book will be useful to undergraduates and postgraduates on courses examining international comparisons of nineteenth and twentieth century agriculture, and courses studying colonial development and settler societies. It will also appeal to food concerned general readers.
Download or read book Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie written by Corey J. A. Bradshaw and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though separated by thousands of miles, the United States and Australia have much in common. Geographically both countries are expansive—the United States is the fourth largest in land mass and Australia the sixth—and both possess a vast amount of natural biodiversity. At the same time, both nations are on a crash course toward environmental destruction. Highly developed super consumers with enormous energy footprints and high rates of greenhouse-gas emissions, they are two of the biggest drivers of climate change per capita. As renowned ecologists Corey J. A. Bradshaw and Paul R. Ehrlich make clear in Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie, both of these countries must confront the urgent question of how to stem this devastation and turn back from the brink. In this book, Bradshaw and Ehrlich provide a spirited exploration of the ways in which the United States and Australia can learn from their shared problems and combine their most successful solutions in order to find and develop new resources, lower energy consumption and waste, and grapple with the dynamic effects of climate change. Peppering the book with humor, irreverence, and extensive scientific knowledge, the authors examine how residents of both countries have irrevocably altered their natural environments, detailing the most pressing ecological issues of our time, including the continuing resource depletion caused by overpopulation. They then turn their discussion to the politics behind the failures of environmental policies in both nations and offer a blueprint for what must be dramatically changed to prevent worsening the environmental crisis. Although focused on two nations, Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie clearly has global implications—the problems facing the United States and Australia are not theirs alone, and the solutions to come will benefit by being crafted in coalition. This book provides a vital opportunity to learn from both countries’ leading environmental thinkers and to heed their call for a way forward together.
Download or read book Disasters in Australia and New Zealand written by Scott McKinnon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disasters in Australia and New Zealand brings together a collection of essays on the history of disasters in both countries. Leading experts provide a timely interrogation of long-held assumptions about the impacts of bushfires, floods, cyclones and earthquakes, exploring the blurred line between nature and culture, asking what are the anthropogenic causes of ‘natural’ disasters? How have disasters been remembered or forgotten? And how have societies over generations responded to or understood disaster? As climate change escalates disaster risk in Australia, New Zealand and around the world, these questions have assumed greater urgency. This unique collection poses a challenge to learn from past experiences and to implement behavioural and policy change. Rich in oral history and archival research, Disasters in Australia and New Zealand offers practical and illuminating insights that will appeal to historians and disaster scholars across multiple disciplines.
Download or read book From Plesiosaurs to People written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most critical challenge imaginable faces Australians as the twenty-first century races to meet us: we must shift our economic systems to an ecologically sustainable basis or prepare for an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions. The regional, national and even global consequences of our present modes of production and consumption guarantee that if we do not rapidly refocus our goals, future welfare will decline as our environments degenerate. Economic, social, political and technological factors that frustrate the achievement of sustainability must be identified and disempowered. We need to understand the geological, climatic and biological processes that interacted to shape this land and its inhabitants before we can disentangle the factors that threaten our future from among those that make up our complex societies. Only with this understanding will we find Australia's unique identity, the real nature of the land that underpins and sustains us.
Download or read book Ecological Pioneers written by Martin Mulligan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-10-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whenever the history of ecological thought has been written the contributions of Australian thinkers have been omitted. Yet Australia as a continent of extreme, rare and complex environments has produced a startling group of ecological pioneers. Across a wide range of human endeavour, Australian thinkers and innovators - whether they have thought of themselves as environmentalists or not - have made some truly original contributions to ecological thought. Ecological Pioneers traces the emergence of ecological understandings in Australia. By constructing a social history with chapters focusing on different fields in the arts, sciences, politics and public life, the authors bring to life the work of significant individuals. Some of the ecological pioneers featured include Joseph Banks, Russell Drysdale, Judith Wright, Myles Dunphy, Philip Crosbie Morrison, Vincent Serventy, Francis Ratcliffe, the Gurindji and Yolngu peoples, Bill Mollison, Jack Mundey, Val Plumwood, Michael Leunig, and many more.
