Download or read book Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago written by Richard Stephen Felger and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The desert islands of the Gulf of California are among the world's best-preserved archipelagos. The diverse and unique flora, from the cardón forests of Cholludo to the agave-dominated slopes of San Esteban remain much as they were centuries ago, when the Comcaac (Seri people) were the only human presence in the region. Almost 400 plant species exist here, with each island manifesting a unique composition of vegetation and flora. For thousands of years, climatic and biological forces have sculpted a set of unparalleled desert worlds. Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago is the first in-depth coverage of the plants on islands in the Gulf of California found in between the coasts of Baja California and Sonora. The work is the culmination of decades of study by botanist Richard Felger and recent investigations by Benjamin Wilder, in collaboration with Sr. Humberto Romero-Morales, one of the most knowledgeable Seris concerning the region's flora. Their collective effort weaves together careful and accurate botanical science with the rich cultural and stunning physical setting of this island realm. The researchers surveyed, collected, and studied thousands of plants—seen here in meticulous illustrations and stunning color photographs—providing the most precise species accounts of the islands ever made. To access remote parts of the islands the authors worked directly with the Comcaac, an indigenous community who have lived off marine and terrestrial life in this coastal desert region for centuries. Invaluable information regarding indigenous names and distributions are an intrinsic part of this work. The flora descriptions are extraordinarily detailed and painstakingly crafted for field biologists. Conservationists, students, and others who are interested in learning about the natural wealth of the Gulf of California, desert regions, or islands in general are sure to be captivated by this rich and fascinating volume.
Download or read book Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago written by Richard Stephen Felger and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The desert islands of the Gulf of California are among the world's best-preserved archipelagos. The diverse and unique flora, from the cardón forests of Cholludo to the agave-dominated slopes of San Esteban remain much as they were centuries ago, when the Comcaac (Seri people) were the only human presence in the region. Almost 400 plant species exist here, with each island manifesting a unique composition of vegetation and flora. For thousands of years, climatic and biological forces have sculpted a set of unparalleled desert worlds. Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago is the first in-depth coverage of the plants on islands in the Gulf of California found in between the coasts of Baja California and Sonora. The work is the culmination of decades of study by botanist Richard Felger and recent investigations by Benjamin Wilder, in collaboration with Sr. Humberto Romero-Morales, one of the most knowledgeable Seris concerning the region's flora. Their collective effort weaves together careful and accurate botanical science with the rich cultural and stunning physical setting of this island realm. The researchers surveyed, collected, and studied thousands of plants—seen here in meticulous illustrations and stunning color photographs—providing the most precise species accounts of the islands ever made. To access remote parts of the islands the authors worked directly with the Comcaac, an indigenous community who have lived off marine and terrestrial life in this coastal desert region for centuries. Invaluable information regarding indigenous names and distributions are an intrinsic part of this work. The flora descriptions are extraordinarily detailed and painstakingly crafted for field biologists. Conservationists, students, and others who are interested in learning about the natural wealth of the Gulf of California, desert regions, or islands in general are sure to be captivated by this rich and fascinating volume.
Download or read book The Nature of Desert Nature written by Gary Paul Nabhan and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this refreshing collection, one of our best writers on desert places, Gary Paul Nabhan, challenges traditional notions of the desert. Beautiful, reflective, and at times humorous, Nabhan’s extended essay also called “The Nature of Desert Nature” reveals the complexity of what a desert is and can be. He passionately writes about what it is like to visit a desert and what living in a desert looks like when viewed through a new frame, turning age-old notions of the desert on their heads. Nabhan invites a prism of voices—friends, colleagues, and advisors from his more than four decades of study of deserts—to bring their own perspectives. Scientists, artists, desert contemplatives, poets, and writers bring the desert into view and investigate why these places compel us to walk through their sands and beneath their cacti and acacia. We observe the spines and spears, stings and songs of the desert anew. Unexpected. Surprising. Enchanting. Like the desert itself, each essay offers renewed vocabulary and thoughtful perceptions. The desert inspires wonder. Attending to history, culture, science, and spirit, The Nature of Desert Nature celebrates the bounty and the significance of desert places. Contributors Thomas M. Antonio Homero Aridjis James Aronson Tessa Bielecki Alberto Búrquez Montijo Francisco Cantú Douglas Christie Paul Dayton Alison Hawthorne Deming Father David Denny Exequiel Ezcurra Thomas Lowe Fleischner Jack Loeffler Ellen McMahon Rubén Martínez Curt Meine Alberto Mellado Moreno Paul Mirocha Gary Paul Nabhan Ray Perotti Larry Stevens Stephen Trimble Octaviana V. Trujillo Benjamin T. Wilder Andy Wilkinson Ofelia Zepeda
Download or read book A Desert Feast written by Carolyn Niethammer and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southwest Book of the Year Award Winner Pubwest Book Design Award Winner Drawing on thousands of years of foodways, Tucson cuisine blends the influences of Indigenous, Mexican, mission-era Mediterranean, and ranch-style cowboy food traditions. This book offers a food pilgrimage, where stories and recipes demonstrate why the desert city of Tucson became American’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy. Both family supper tables and the city’s trendiest restaurants feature native desert plants and innovative dishes incorporating ancient agricultural staples. Award-winning writer Carolyn Niethammer deliciously shows how the Sonoran Desert’s first farmers grew tasty crops that continue to influence Tucson menus and how the arrival of Roman Catholic missionaries, Spanish soldiers, and Chinese farmers influenced what Tucsonans ate. White Sonora wheat, tepary beans, and criollo cattle steaks make Tucson’s cuisine unique. In A Desert Feast, you’ll see pictures of kids learning to grow food at school, and you’ll meet the farmers, small-scale food entrepreneurs, and chefs who are dedicated to growing and using heritage foods. It’s fair to say, “Tucson tastes like nowhere else.”
Download or read book Shells on a Desert Shore written by Cathy Moser Marlett and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mexico’s western Sonoran Desert along the Gulf of California is a place made extraordinary by the desert solitude, the dynamic sea, and the people who live there—the Seris. Central to the lives of these people are the sea and its shores. Shells on a Desert Shore describes the Seri knowledge of mollusks and includes names, folklore, history, uses, and much more. Cathy Moser Marlett’s research of several decades, conducted in the Seri language, builds on work begun in 1951 by her parents, Edward and Becky Moser. The language, spoken by fewer than a thousand people today, is considered endangered. Marlett presents what she has learned from Seri consultants over recent decades and also draws from her own childhood experiences while living in a Seri village. The information from the people who had lived as hunter-gatherers provides a window into a lifestyle no longer recalled from personal experience by most Seris today—and perhaps a window into the lives of other peoples who made the Gulf’s shores their home. The book offers a wealth of information about Seri history, as well as species accounts of more than 150 mollusks from the Seri area on the central Gulf coast. Chapters describe how the people ate mollusks or used them medicinally, how the mollusks were named, and how their shells were used. The author provides several hundred detailed drawings and photographs, many of them archival. Shells on a Desert Shore is a fresh, original presentation of a significant part of the Seri way of life. Unique because it is written from the perspective of a participant in the Seri culture, the book will stand as a definitive, irreplaceable work in ethnography, a time capsule of the Seri people and their connection to the sea.
Download or read book Vegetation Ecology of Socotra written by Gary Brown and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the unique flora of the Socotra Archipelago with its high degree of endemism has received much attention recently, little information is available on the vegetation and related ecological aspects. Based on their extensive field experience of the region, the authors have assimilated a vast amount of knowledge to produce this book, which gives a detailed insight into the plant ecology of Socotra, designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2008. The book is divided into seven chapters. After a brief introduction and overviews of important abiotic features, various aspects of the vascular flora are presented in Chapter 4, together with accounts of the bryophyte and lichen flora. Ecology and adaptive strategies of the plants are dealt with in Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 gives a concise description of the main vegetation units. Finally, important management issues of the vegetation are discussed, an essential topic to ensure preservation of the natural heritage of the archipelago.
Download or read book Natural Landmarks of Arizona written by David Yetman and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural Landmarks of Arizona celebrates the vast geological past of Arizona’s natural monuments through the eyes of a celebrated storyteller who has called Arizona home for most of his life. David Yetman shows us how Arizona’s most iconic landmarks were formed millions of years ago and sheds light on the more recent histories of these landmarks as well. These peaks and ranges offer striking intrusions into the Arizona horizon, giving our southwestern state some of the most memorable views, hikes, climbs, and bike rides anywhere in the world. They orient us, they locate us, and they are steadfast through generations. Whether you have climbed these peaks many times, enjoy seeing them from your car window, or simply want to learn more about southwestern geology and history, reading Natural Landmarks of Arizona is a fascinating way to learn about the ancient and recent history of beloved places such as Cathedral Rock, Granite Dells, Kitt Peak, and many others. With Yetman as your guide, you can tuck this book into your glove box and hit the road with profound new knowledge about the towering natural monuments that define our beautiful Arizona landscapes.
Download or read book Picturing Sabino written by David Wentworth Lazaroff and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sabino Canyon, a desert canyon in the American Southwest near Tucson, Arizona, is enjoyed yearly by thousands of city residents as well as visitors from around the world. Picturing Sabino tells the story of the canyon’s transformation from a barely known oasis, miles from a small nineteenth-century town, into an immensely popular recreation area on the edge of a modern metropolis. Covering a century of change, from 1885 to 1985, this work rejoices in the canyon’s natural beauty and also relates the ups and downs of its protection and enjoyment. The story is vividly told through numerous historical photographs, lively anecdotes, and an engaging text, informed by decades of research by David Wentworth Lazaroff. Along the way the reader makes the acquaintance of ordinary picnickers as well as influential citizens who helped to reshape the canyon, while witnessing the canyon’s evolving relationship with its growing urban neighbor. The book will fascinate readers who are already familiar with Sabino Canyon, as well as anyone with an interest in local or regional history, or in historical photography.
Download or read book Mexico s Valleys of Cuicatl n and Tehuac n written by David Yetman and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexico's Valleys of Cuicatlán and Tehuacán provides an accessible overview of an extraordinary region of Central Mexico. Through firsthand experience and engaging prose, the authors provide a synthesis of the environment, plants, and peoples of the valleys, showing their importance and influence as Mesoamerican arteries for environmental and cultural interchange through Mexico.
Download or read book Marking the Land written by William A Lovis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.
Download or read book The Saguaro Cactus written by David Yetman and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The saguaro, with its great size and characteristic shape—its arms stretching heavenward, its silhouette often resembling a human—has become the emblem of the Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona and northwestern Mexico. The largest and tallest cactus in the United States, it is both familiar and an object of fascination and curiosity. This book offers a complete natural history of this enduring and iconic desert plant. Gathering everything from the saguaro’s role in Sonoran Desert ecology to its adaptations to the desert climate and its sacred place in Indigenous culture, this book shares precolonial through current scientific findings. The saguaro is charismatic and readily accessible but also decidedly different from other desert flora. The essays in this book bear witness to our ongoing fascination with the great cactus and the plant’s unusual characteristics, covering the saguaro’s: history of discovery, place in the cactus family, ecology, anatomy and physiology, genetics, and ethnobotany. The Saguaro Cactus offers testimony to the cactus’s prominence as a symbol, the perceptions it inspires, its role in human society, and its importance in desert ecology.
Download or read book Ethnobiology for the Future written by Gary Paul Nabhan and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book centers on a call to define/redefine the field of ethnobiology and the need for doing so. It points a major way forward for ethnobiology: toward engagement with people and communities that are saving ecosystems and lifestyles through reviving traditional agricultural items and techniques, and integrating them into the contemporary world"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Just Between Us written by Guillermo Nu–ez Noriega and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Just Between Us, set in the context of Mexico's cultural codes, challenges norms in thinking about men's identities, their pleasures, and their sense of belonging. Author Guillermo Nâuänez Noriega offers a groundbreaking study that contests patriarchal concepts limiting male relationships and masculinity"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Saints Statues and Stories written by James S. Griffith and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . . . we move to the town of Aconchi on the Río Sonora, where the mission church once contained a life-sized crucifix with a black corpus, known both as Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas . . . and El Cristo Negro de Aconchi . . . So describes well-known and beloved folklorist James S. Griffith as he takes us back through the decades to a town in northern Sonora where a statue is saved—and in so doing, a community is saved as well. In Saints, Statues, and Stories Griffith shares stories of nearly sixty years of traveling through Sonora. As we have come to expect through these journeys, “Big Jim”—as he is affectionately known by many—offers nothing less than the living traditions of Catholic communities. Themes of saints as agents of protection or community action are common throughout Sonora: a saint coming out of the church to protect the village, a statue having a say in where it resides and paying social calls to other communities, or a beloved image rescued from destruction and then revered on a private altar. A patron saint saves a village from outside attackers in one story—a story that has at least ten parallels in Sonora’s former mission communities. Details may vary, but the general narrative remains the same: when hostile nonbelievers attack the village, the patron saint of the church foils them. Griffith uncovers the meanings behind the devotional uses of religious art from a variety of perspectives—from artist to audience, preservationist to community member. The religious artworks transcend art objects, Griffith believes, and function as ways of communicating between this world and the next. Setting the stage with a brief geography, Griffith introduces us to roadside shrines, artists, fiestas, saints, and miracles. Full-color images add to the pleasure of this delightful journey through the churches and towns of Sonora.
Download or read book Stewardship of Future Drylands and Climate Change in the Global South written by Simone Lucatello and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume integrates a conceptual framework with participatory methodologies to understand the complexities of dryland socio-ecological systems, and to address challenges and opportunities for stewardship of future drylands and climate change in the global south. Through several case studies, the book offers a transdisciplinary and participatory approach to understand the complexity of socio-ecological systems, to co-produce accurate resource management plans for sustained stewardship, and to drive social learning and polycentric governance. This systemic framework permits the study of human-nature interrelationships through time and in particular contexts, with a focus on achieving progress in accordance with the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development. The book is divided into four main sections: 1) drylands and socio-ecological systems, 2) transdisciplinarity in drylands, 3) interculturality in drylands, and 4) the governance of drylands. Expert contributors address topics such as pastoralism and the characteristics of successful agricultural lands, the sustainable development goals and drylands, dryland modernization, and arid land governance with a focus on Mexico. The volume will be of interest to dryland researchers, sustainable development practitioners and policymakers.
Download or read book Baja California Missions written by David Burckhalter and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bathed in desert light and shadow, rising up from the earth in improbable, faraway places, stand eight original Spanish missions on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. Built of stone by Roman Catholic priests and indigenous laborers in the eighteenth century, these stunning missions dominate the landscape around them. Baja California Missions: In the Footsteps of the Padres is a beautiful and informative book about the eight monumental Spanish colonial churches, buildings seldom seen by those familiar with the missions of California, Arizona, and Sonora, Mexico. With gorgeous photographs of the architecture and religious art, and supported by a concise history that outlines the peninsula’s exploration and colonization by Roman Catholic priests, Baja California Missions excels as a book of photography and history. It promises adventure for readers at home, as well as for travelers ready to explore the churches in person. The eight Spanish colonial stone churches of Baja California endure as the only intact originals of 34 missions built by the padres during the peninsula’s colonization. Due to structural renovations and restorations of the artwork undertaken over the last 30 years, the renowned mission churches have become sources of pride to the citizens of Baja California. Travelers are invited to visit at any time, especially during patron saint day celebrations. As a guide, Baja California Missions is fully up to date, with directions for navigating Baja’s paved highways and desert and mountain roads. The mission sites are pinpointed on a topographic roadmap of the peninsula. A church floor plan is provided to accompany a walk-through tour for each church interior. The lovely eighteenth-century oil paintings and wooden statues that grace the church altars are also identified and described
Download or read book Galapagos written by Michael Hume Jackson and published by University of Calgary Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the natural history of the plants and animals found in the Galapagos Islands. A list of the dominant plants according to vegetation zone is included. Of particular note is the discussion of the problems of colonisation by founding populations, biological evolution, and ecology, and of the evolutionary processes bringing about species diversity.
