Download or read book Ecology of a Changed World written by Trevor Price and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-26 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An increasing amount of usable space on our planet is crowded by humans. Whether we are using the space for permanent homes, vacation homes, travel accommodations, farming, public recreation, transportation, or office buildings, our chronic overuse of Earth's resources is pushing our ecosystem into uncharted territories. This has spurred many species extinctions, and we can expect the losses to continue to grow. Ecology of a Changed World outlines the importance of species conservation relative to human existence. The book breaks down ecological principles and explains six threats to biodiversity in terms anyone studying ecology, evolutionary biology, environmental science, or environmental justice will understand. Ecologist Trevor Price begins the book by breaking down population growth, food webs, species interaction, and other ecological principles. He draws on examples from agriculture, disease, fisheries, and societal growth throughout each chapter, offering insight into the relationships between demographic transitions, monetary exchanges, and ecosystems. Price focuses on six threats to biodiversity--climate change, overharvesting, pollution, habitat loss, invasive species, and disease--and offers the history, current status, and economic as well as environmental impacts of each of these. He ends the book with a rigorous review of the importance of species diversity, outlining the ways losses to our ecosystem will be a detriment to public health and global wealth. Taking readers through competition, predation, and parasitism, Ecology of a Changed World helpfully traces what has occurred on our planet throughout history, why these things happened, and how we can use this information to determine and shape our future.

Download or read book Ecology of a Changed World written by Trevor Price and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a rapidly changing world, six threats to biodiversity can be summarized by the acronym COPHID: Climate change, Overharvesting, Pollution, Habitat loss, Invasive species, and Disease. These threats have led to many extinctions and are on course to generate many more. Each threat can be traced back to the growth of the human population, increase in wealth, and in technology. This textbook is designed to provide the summary of what has happened and why, as well as ask how to predict what will happen under various scenarios. The ecological principles of species interactions-competition, predation and parasitism-are applied to food security and to human disease, demonstrating how simplification of communities threatens both wild species and humans. Dramatic changes in the environment have been brought about by removal of species (including collapse of coral reefs), by addition of species (such as predators destroying island faunas), by pollution (such as the formation of dead zones in the ocean), and by habitat conversion, with about 75% of the world's productive land being exploited for agriculture or forestry. Despite these issues, cause for optimism stems from the increase in wealth, increased education, and an associated decline in the fertility rate. This may eventually lead to a declining human population, as well as more value placed on an increasingly scarce commodity, wildlands"--

Download or read book Ecology of a Changed World written by Trevor Price and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecology of a Changed World outlines the importance of species conservation relative to human existence. Paired with a useful companion website with engaging practical applications, the book breaks down ecological principles and explains six threats to biodiversity in terms anyone studying ecology, evolutionary biology, environmental science, or environmental justice will understand.

Download or read book Marine Ecology in a Changing World written by Andres Hugo Arias and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from an impressive group of Argentinean and German oceanographers, this book examines classical ecological issues relating to marine ecosystems in the context of climate change. It paints a picture of marine ecology at the crossroads of global warming. The book examines the fundamentals of marine ecology: ecosystem stability, wat

Download or read book The Ecology Book written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn about species, environments, ecosystems and biodiversity in The Ecology Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Ecology in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Ecology Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Ecology, with: - More than 90 of the greatest ideas in ecology - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The Ecology Book is a captivating introduction to what’s happening on our planet with the environment and climate change, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you’ll discover more than 90 of the greatest ideas when it comes to understanding the living world and how it works, through exciting text and bold graphics. Your Ecological Questions, Simply Explained How do species interact with each other and their environment? How do ecosystems change? What is biodiversity and can we afford to damage it? This fresh new guide looks at our influence on the planet as it grows, and answers these profound questions. If you thought it was difficult to learn about this field of science, The Ecology Book presents the information in a clear layout. Learn the key theories, movements, and events in biology, geology, geography, and environmentalism from the ideas of classical thinkers in this comprehensive guide. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Ecology Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

Download or read book Terrestrial Ecosystems in a Changing World written by Josep G. Canadell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-01-10 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the impacts of global change on terrestrial ecosystems. Emphasis is placed on impacts of atmospheric, climate and land use change, and the book discusses the future challenges and the scientific frameworks to address them. Finally, the book explores fundamental new research developments and the need for stronger integration of natural and human dimensions in addressing the challenge of global change.

Download or read book Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire written by Corey Ross and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire provides the first wide-ranging environmental history of the heyday of European imperialism, from the late nineteenth century to the end of the colonial era. It focuses on the ecological dimensions of the explosive growth of tropical commodity production, global trade, and modern resource management strategies that still visibly shape our world today, and how they were related to broader social, cultural, and political developments in Europe's colonies. Covering the overseas empires of all the major European powers, Corey Ross argues that tropical environments were not merely a stage on which conquest and subjugation took place, but were an essential part of the colonial project, profoundly shaping the imperial enterprise even as they were shaped by it. The story he tells is not only about the complexities of human experience, but also about people's relationship with the ecosystems in which they were themselves embedded: the soil, water, plants, and animals that were likewise a part of Europe's empire. Although it shows that imperial conquest rarely represented the signal ecological trauma that some accounts suggest, it nonetheless demonstrates that modern imperialism marked a decisive and largely negative milestone for the natural environment. By relating the expansion of modern empire, global trade, and mass consumption to the momentous ecological shifts that they entailed, this book provides a historical perspective on the vital nexus of social, political, and environmental issues that we face in the twenty-first-century world.

Download or read book Bringing the Biosphere Home written by Mitchell Thomashow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-10-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for understanding the ecological and existential aspects of global environmental change. This book shows how to make global environmental problems more tangible, so that they become an integral part of everyday awareness. At its core is a simple assumption: that the best way to learn to perceive the biosphere is to pay close attention to our immediate surroundings. Through local natural history observations, imagination and memory, and spiritual contemplation, we develop a place-based environmental view that can be expanded to encompass the biosphere. Interweaving global change science, personal narrative, and commentary on a wide range of scientific and literary works, the book explores both the ecological and existential aspects of urgent issues such as the loss of biodiversity and global climate change. Written in a warm, engaging style, Bringing the Biosphere Home considers the perceptual connections between the local and global, how the ecological news of the community is of interest to the world, and how the global movement of people, species, and weather systems affects the local community. It shows how global environmental change can become the province of numerous educational initiatives—from the classroom to the Internet, from community forums to international conferences, from the backyard to the biosphere. It explains important scientific concepts in clear, nontechnical language and provides dozens of ideas for learning how to practice biospheric perception.

Download or read book The New Ecology written by Oswald J. Schmitz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our species has transitioned from being one among millions on Earth to the species that is single-handedly transforming the entire planet to suit its own needs. In order to meet the daunting challenges of environmental sustainability in this epoch of human domination--known as the Anthropocene--ecologists have begun to think differently about the interdependencies between humans and the natural world. This concise and accessible book provides the best available introduction to what this new ecology is all about--and why it matters more than ever before. Oswald Schmitz describes how the science of ecology is evolving to provide a better understanding of how human agency is shaping the natural world, often in never-before-seen ways. The new ecology emphasizes the importance of conserving species diversity, because it can offer a portfolio of options to keep our ecosystems resilient in the face of environmental change. It envisions humans taking on new roles as thoughtful stewards of the environment to ensure that ecosystems have the enduring capacity to supply the environmental services on which our economic well-being--and our very existence--depend. It offers the ecological know-how to maintain and enhance our planet's environmental performance and ecosystem production for the benefit of current and future generations. Informative and engaging, The New Ecology shows how today's ecology can provide the insights we need to appreciate the crucial role we play in this era of unprecedented global environmental transition. -- Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Observation and Ecology written by Rafe Sagarin and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The need to understand and address large-scale environmental problems that are difficult to study in controlled environments—issues ranging from climate change to overfishing to invasive species—is driving the field of ecology in new and important directions. Observation and Ecology documents that transformation, exploring how scientists and researchers are expanding their methodological toolbox to incorporate an array of new and reexamined observational approaches—from traditional ecological knowledge to animal-borne sensors to genomic and remote-sensing technologies—to track, study, and understand current environmental problems and their implications. The authors paint a clear picture of what observational approaches to ecology are and where they fit in the context of ecological science. They consider the full range of observational abilities we have available to us and explore the challenges and practical difficulties of using a primarily observational approach to achieve scientific understanding. They also show how observations can be a bridge from ecological science to education, environmental policy, and resource management. Observations in ecology can play a key role in understanding our changing planet and the consequences of human activities on ecological processes. This book will serve as an important resource for future scientists and conservation leaders who are seeking a more holistic and applicable approach to ecological science.

Download or read book The Ecology of Childhood written by Barbara Bennett Woodhouse and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How globalization is undermining sustainable social environments for children This book uses the ecological model of child development together with ethnographic and comparative studies of two small villages, in Italy and the United States, as its framework for examining the well-being of children in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Global forces, far from being distant and abstract, are revealed as wreaking havoc in children’s environments even in economically advanced countries. Falling birth rates, deteriorating labor conditions, fraying safety nets, rising rates of child poverty, and a surge in racism and populism in Europe and the United States are explored in the petri dish of the village. Globalism’s discontents—unrestrained capitalism and technological change, rising inequality, mass migration, and the juggernaut of climate change—are rapidly destabilizing and degrading the social and physical environments necessary to our collective survival and well-being. This crisis demands a radical restructuring of our macrosystemic value systems. Woodhouse proposes an ecogenerist theory that asks whether our policies and politics foster environments in which children and families can flourish. It proposes, as a benchmark, the family-supportive human-rights principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The book closes by highlighting ways in which individuals can engage at the local and regional levels in creating more just and sustainable worlds that are truly fit for children.

Download or read book A World of Rivers written by Ellen Wohl and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from being the serene, natural streams of yore, modern rivers have been diverted, dammed, dumped in, and dried up, all in efforts to harness their power for human needs. But these rivers have also undergone environmental change. The old adage says you can’t step in the same river twice, and Ellen Wohl would agree—natural and synthetic change are so rapid on the world’s great waterways that rivers are transforming and disappearing right before our eyes. A World of Rivers explores the confluence of human and environmental change on ten of the great rivers of the world. Ranging from the Murray-Darling in Australia and the Yellow River in China to Central Europe’s Danube and the United States’ Mississippi, the book journeys down the most important rivers in all corners of the globe. Wohl shows us how pollution, such as in the Ganges and in the Ob of Siberia, has affected biodiversity in the water. But rivers are also resilient, and Wohl stresses the importance of conservation and restoration to help reverse the effects of human carelessness and hubris. What all these diverse rivers share is a critical role in shaping surrounding landscapes and biological communities, and Wohl’s book ultimately makes a strong case for the need to steward positive change in the world’s great rivers.

Download or read book Ecology in Action written by Fred Singer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrates process and content of core areas of ecology using an engaging narrative, fascinating case studies, and stunning images throughout.

Download or read book Global Ecology written by Vaclav Smil and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The magnitude and rapidity of global environmental change threatens the perpetuation of life on Earth. Many aspects of this crisis are familiar to us - the destruction of tropical rainforests, the hole in the Antarctic ozone, desertification, soil erosion - yet we avoid the underlying challenge of a rapidly deteriorating ecological system and the breadth and complexity of responses demanded. Integrating an analysis of both social and environmental needs, the book explores the premises and problems of different paths towards global management. With its emphasis on flexible response, Global Ecology furthers our understanding of biospheric change and of our abilities and weaknesses in managing the transition to a sustainable society.

Download or read book Ecology of Climate Change written by Eric Post and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-11 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rising temperatures are affecting organisms in all of Earth's biomes, but the complexity of ecological responses to climate change has hampered the development of a conceptually unified treatment of them. In a remarkably comprehensive synthesis, this book presents past, ongoing, and future ecological responses to climate change in the context of two simplifying hypotheses, facilitation and interference, arguing that biotic interactions may be the primary driver of ecological responses to climate change across all levels of biological organization. Eric Post's synthesis and analyses of ecological consequences of climate change extend from the Late Pleistocene to the present, and through the next century of projected warming. His investigation is grounded in classic themes of enduring interest in ecology, but developed around novel conceptual and mathematical models of observed and predicted dynamics. Using stability theory as a recurring theme, Post argues that the magnitude of climatic variability may be just as important as the magnitude and direction of change in determining whether populations, communities, and species persist. He urges a more refined consideration of species interactions, emphasizing important distinctions between lateral and vertical interactions and their disparate roles in shaping responses of populations, communities, and ecosystems to climate change.

Download or read book Integral Ecology for a More Sustainable World written by Dennis O'Hara and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laudato Si’ insists on a revolutionary human response to the public challenges of our time concerning the ecological crisis. The volume takes up the revolutionary spirit of Pope Francis and speaks to the economic, technological, political, educational, and religious changes needed to overcome the fragile relationships between humans and Earth. This volume identifies various systemic factors that have produced the anthropogenic ecological crisis that threatens the planet and uses the ethical vision of Laudato Si’ to promote practical responses that foster fundamental changes in humanity’s relationships with Earth and each other. The essays address not only the immediate behavioral changes needed in individual human lives, but also the deeper, societal changes required if human communities are to live sustainable lives within Earth’s integral ecology. Thus, this volume intentionally focuses on a plurality of cultural contexts and proposes solutions to problems encountered in a variety of global contexts. Accordingly, the contributors to this volume are scholars from a breadth of interdisciplinary and cultural backgrounds, each exploring an ethical theme from the encyclical and proposing systemic changes to address deeply entrenched injustices. Collectively, their essays examine the social, political, economic, gender, scientific, technological, educational, and spiritual challenges of our time as these relate to the ecological crisis.

Download or read book A Citizen s Guide to Ecology written by Lawrence B. Slobodkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earth is continuously changing and evolving yet it is unclear how environmental changes will affect us in years to come. What changes are inevitable? What changes, if any, are beneficial? And what can we do as citizens of this planet to protect it and our future generations? Larry Slobodkin, one of the leading pioneers of modern ecology, offers compelling answers to these questions in A Citizen's Guide to Ecology. He provides many insights into ecology and the processes that keep the world functioning. This important guide introduces observations that underlie arguments about all aspects of the natural environment--including both global and local issues. To clarify difficult concepts, Slobodkin uses lake, ocean, and terrestrial ecosystems to explain ecological energy flows and relationships on a global scale. The book presents a clear and current understanding of the ecological world, and how individual citizens can participate in practical decisions on ecological issues. It tackles such issues as global warming, ecology and health, organic farming, species extinction and adaptation, and endangered species. An excellent introduction and overview, A Citizen's Guide to Ecology helps us to understand what steps we as humans can take to keep our planet habitable for generations to come. "This beautifully written book brings together careful observation, personal reflection, and theoretical understanding to explain the major environmental problems that confront us. Dr. Slobodkin's superb and sweeping work invites us to contemplate a great many facts and a few large values to motivate a clear and compelling response to losses of biodiversity, the problem of invasive species, global warming, and other environmental concerns."--Mark Sagoff, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland