Download or read book Understanding Imperiled Earth written by Todd J. Braje and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique introduction to how understanding archaeology can support modern-day sustainability efforts, from restoring forested land to developing fire management strategies An essential and hopeful book for climate-conscious readers The world faces an uncertain future with the rise of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, overfishing, and other threats. Understanding Imperiled Earth meets this uncertainty head-on, presenting archaeology and history as critical guides to addressing the modern environmental crisis. Anthropologist Todd J. Braje draws connections between deep history and today's hot-button environmental news stories to reveal how the study of the ancient past can help build a more sustainable future. The book covers a diverse array of interconnected issues, including: how modern humans have altered the natural world conservation work of Indigenous communities extinction of megafauna like dire wolves and woolly rhinoceros the risk of deforestation highlighted by Notre Dame's destruction the extinction crisis reflected by endangered bird species in Hawai'i fish scarcity driving demand and price, like the single blue-fin tuna fish that sold for three million dollars importance of "action archaeology" Braje examines how historical roots offer a necessary baseline for a healthier Earth, because understanding how the planet used to be is fundamental to creating effective restoration efforts moving forward through urban forests, sustainable food webs, and more. Understanding Imperiled Earth offers an illuminating, hopeful, and actionable approach to some of the world's most urgent problems.
Download or read book Imperiled The Encyclopedia of Conservation written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 2100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity's ecological footprint is expanding at an alarming page. With climate change, increases in human population and consumption levels, and other anthropogenic factors, nearly half the known species on Earth could soon be gone. The near collapse of entire ecosystems has already occurred. We are facing a huge sustainability issue. This Encyclopedia, in 3 volumes, proposes a global synthesis detailing the world's imperiled species and ecosystems. It documents rarity and endangerment, the major drivers of loss, areas of conservation importance, and implementation strategies to save and restore imperiled species and ecosystems. It is a first of its kind coverage of Earth's imperiled species and ecosystems in one comprehensive encyclopedia. Comprehensive - First of its kind coverage of Earth's imperiled species and ecosystems in one source, including recommendations for sustainability and conservation Global appeal - Includes global and regional applications with an emphasis on the integration of biology, geography, and land-use Reader-friendly - Top notch scientific articles written in easy-to-understand language and including strong visual graphics
Download or read book Half Earth Our Planet s Fight for Life written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An audacious and concrete proposal…Half-Earth completes the 86-year-old Wilson’s valedictory trilogy on the human animal and our place on the planet." —Jedediah Purdy, New Republic In his most urgent book to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and world-renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson states that in order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet. In this "visionary blueprint for saving the planet" (Stephen Greenblatt), Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. Identifying actual regions of the planet that can still be reclaimed—such as the California redwood forest, the Amazon River basin, and grasslands of the Serengeti, among others—Wilson puts aside the prevailing pessimism of our times and "speaks with a humane eloquence which calls to us all" (Oliver Sacks).
Download or read book Our Traumatized Planet written by Mark Q. Sutton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-11 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Traumatized Planet explores the state of the environment and some of the major issues faced today and asks what we can learn and apply from contemporary traditional peoples, ancient societies, and our own successes and failures. Providing straightforward information on some of the serious environmental issues we face so that non-scientists can understand them, this book explores what is at stake so that we can choose to make a difference. Combining the latest data from environmental, anthropological, and archaeological science allows for fresh perspectives and an empirical approach to describing these problems that eliminates hopeful denial, speculation, wishful thinking, and downright lies. Using archaeological data, the authors provide examples of success and failures in the past that could be used to make decisions about the future. They also highlight examples of how traditional peoples, past and present, have dealt with these same issues. Seeing the current crisis through the eyes of two experienced anthropologists broadens our understanding and allows us to set contemporary issues in the context of the past and traditional knowledge. However, this is not a book of easy solutions from the past to solve our future; rather, it is an impassioned plea to people today to read and understand what state the planet is in and encourage them to find the will to change. This book is for students of archaeology, anthropology, and environmental science and all those wanting to, in a clear and readable way, understand the fate of our planet.
Download or read book Understanding Imperiled Earth written by Todd J. Braje and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique introduction to how understanding archaeology can support modern-day sustainability efforts, from restoring forested land to developing fire management strategies An essential and hopeful book for climate-conscious readers The world faces an uncertain future with the rise of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, overfishing, and other threats. Understanding Imperiled Earth meets this uncertainty head-on, presenting archaeology and history as critical guides to addressing the modern environmental crisis. Anthropologist Todd J. Braje draws connections between deep history and today's hot-button environmental news stories to reveal how the study of the ancient past can help build a more sustainable future. The book covers a diverse array of interconnected issues, including: how modern humans have altered the natural world conservation work of Indigenous communities extinction of megafauna like dire wolves and woolly rhinoceros the risk of deforestation highlighted by Notre Dame's destruction the extinction crisis reflected by endangered bird species in Hawai'i fish scarcity driving demand and price, like the single blue-fin tuna fish that sold for three million dollars importance of "action archaeology" Braje examines how historical roots offer a necessary baseline for a healthier Earth, because understanding how the planet used to be is fundamental to creating effective restoration efforts moving forward through urban forests, sustainable food webs, and more. Understanding Imperiled Earth offers an illuminating, hopeful, and actionable approach to some of the world's most urgent problems.
Download or read book Imperiled Ocean written by Laura Trethewey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a life raft in the Mediterranean, a teenager from Ghana wonders whether he will reach Europe alive. A young chef disappears from a cruise ship, leaving a mystery for his friends and family to solve. A water-squatting community battles eviction from a harbor in a Pacific Northwest town, raising the question of who owns the water. Imperiled Ocean is a deeply reported work of narrative journalism that follows people as they head out to sea. What they discover holds inspiring and dire implications for the life of the ocean, and for all of us back on land. As Imperiled Ocean unfolds, battles are fought, fortunes made, and lives are lost. Behind this human drama, the ocean is growing ever more unstable, threatening to upend life on land. We meet a biologist tracking sturgeon who is unable to stop the development and pollution destroying the fish’s habitat, he races to learn about the fish before it disappears. Sturgeon has survived more than 300 million years on earth and could hold important truths about how humanity might make itself amenable to a changing ocean. As a fisher and scientist, his ability to listen to the water becomes a parable for today. By eavesdropping on an imperiled world, he shows a way we can move forward to save the oceans we all share.
Download or read book Earth History and Palaeogeography written by Trond H. Torsvik and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a complete Phanerozoic story of palaeogeography, using new and detailed full-colour maps, to link surface and deep-Earth processes.
Download or read book The Cosmic Common Good written by Daniel P. Scheid and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Daniel Scheid draws on Catholic social thought as a foundation for a new type of interreligious ecological ethics, which he calls the cosmic common good. By placing this concept in dialogue with tenets from other spiritual traditions, such as Hindu dharmic ecology, Buddhist interdependence, and American Indian balance, Scheid constructs a theologically authentic moral framework that re-envisions humanity's role in the universe.
Download or read book The Bonds of Earth written by E.V. Thompson and published by Robert Hale. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caught between miners desperate for work and locals disapproving of change, the life of one young man caught in the cross-fires of a brewing storm is irrevocably altered In 1837, when rich deposits of copper ore are discovered, a huge influx of out-of-work miners flock to the area from Cornwall's far west, bringing with them problems alien to the hard-working but easy-going countrymen. Young Goran Trebartha, whose working life is divided between two farms, finds himself caught between the seemingly incompatible cultures; his problems grow with the arrival of a mine captain and his all-female family. Avarice and intrigue, the vicissitudes of farming life, and the sheer desperation of hungry miners all add to bewildering changes that will permanently change the course of Goran's life.
Download or read book Origins written by and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glorious panoramic photography by the author, a specialist in interpretive landscape, reveals the physical legacy of the Earth's distant past. This exceptional book celebrates the inevitability of global change and highlights our need as human beings to recognize and adjust to it. Color and b&w illustrations.
Download or read book Earth Then and Now written by Fred Pearce and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents more the three hundred photographs showing how the world has changed over the past century from industrialization, urbanization, natural disasters, war, and travel and tourism.
Download or read book Plagues Upon the Earth written by Kyle Harper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanitys path to control over infectious diseaseone where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependentand inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself."--
Download or read book Weird Earth written by Donald R. Prothero and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A breath of intellectual fresh air . . . [an] amusing look at how to dispel endemic pseudoscience and conspiracy theories through rational thinking.” —Publishers Weekly Aliens. Ley lines. Water dowsing. Conspiracies and myths captivate imaginations and promise mystery and magic. Whether it’s arguing about the moon landing hoax or a Frisbee-like Earth drifting through space, when held up to science and critical thinking, these ideas fall flat. In Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet, Donald R. Prothero demystifies these conspiracies and offers answers to some of humanity’s most outlandish questions. Applying his extensive scientific knowledge, Prothero corrects misinformation that con artists and quacks use to hoodwink others about geology—hollow earth, expanding earth, and bizarre earthquakes—and mystical and paranormal happenings—healing crystals, alien landings, and the gates of hell. By deconstructing wild claims such as prophesies of imminent natural disasters, Prothero provides a way for everyone to recognize dubious assertions. Prothero answers these claims with facts, offering historical and scientific context in a light-hearted manner that is accessible to everyone, no matter their background. With a careful layering of evidence in geology, archaeology, and biblical and historical records, Prothero’s Weird Earth examines each conspiracy and myth and leaves no question unanswered. Weird Earth is about the facts and the people who don’t believe them. Don Prothero describes the process of science—and the process of not accepting it. If you’re wondering if humans walked on the Moon, if you’ve wondered where the lost City of Atlantis went, or if you’re wondering what your cat will do before an earthquake, check out Weird Earth.” —Bill Nye
Download or read book The Address Book written by Deirdre Mask and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction | One of Time Magazines's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 | Longlisted for the 2020 Porchlight Business Book Awards "An entertaining quest to trace the origins and implications of the names of the roads on which we reside." —Sarah Vowell, The New York Times Book Review When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won’t get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class. In this wide-ranging and remarkable book, Deirdre Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., the wayfinding means of ancient Romans, and how Nazis haunt the streets of modern Germany. The flipside of having an address is not having one, and we also see what that means for millions of people today, including those who live in the slums of Kolkata and on the streets of London. Filled with fascinating people and histories, The Address Book illuminates the complex and sometimes hidden stories behind street names and their power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn’t—and why.
Download or read book Abundant Earth written by Eileen Crist and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls upon us to lower the global human population while working within a human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their habitats—normalizes and promotes humanity’s ongoing expansion, undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse of a biodiverse, living planet.
Download or read book Reading the Two Books of God written by Thomas W. Mann and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-09-29 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas W. Mann is a biblical scholar and retired parish minister and the author of numerous books and articles. He is particularly interested in how experiences in nature prompt theological reflection based in the Bible, shaping our sense of sacred time and place, and how the lectionary readings of the church year also provide a spiritual calendar for the seasons of our lives. The result is a conversation inspired by poets and writers like Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and John Muir, but also by philosophers and theologians ranging from Abraham Joshua Heschel to David Kelsey. Along the way, we enter “beach time” and take backpacking trips in the Sierras, but also join the “triumphal entry” parade on Palm Sunday and listen to the stable animals on Christmas Eve. We perceive the beauty of creation through the eyes of science as well as religion, sensually as well as intellectually. We celebrate our communion with all creatures, from fungus to forests, inspired with awe and reverence, and with a responsibility to care for the earth, so threatened by climate change.
Download or read book Grand Transitions written by Vaclav Smil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-12 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's leading experts on the history of energy, a rigorous examination of the transitions that structure our modern world--and the environmental reckoning that will mark its success or failure. What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization--in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics--which have transformed the way we live. Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments. Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition--environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming--will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.
