Download or read book Root Feeders written by Scott N. Johnson and published by CABI. This book was released on 2008 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Root feeders have been classified as agricultural pests but can be used as biological control agents against invasive species and can affect community dynamics of plants, soil micro-organisms and populations of above ground organisms. This book presents a review of knowledge on root herbivores and illustrates their importance within ecosystems.
Download or read book The Disseminated Self written by Jean Paul Matot and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-14 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Disseminated Self: Ecosystem Perspective and Metapsychology explores attitudes to climate change and ecological disaster from a psychoanalytic perspective. The author examines the concept of Self, how this can be broad enough to encompass our world as well as just our own bodies and why in some cases this still does not allow us to recognize and act on the threat to the self of climate disaster. Drawing on the work of Freud and Winnicott, and examining the place of destructiveness in psychoanalysis and in everyday life, this books offers a fresh perspective on the climate change debate. This book broadens psychoanalytic thinking in order to address both individual and societal issues facing the ecosystem disaster. It also develops a complementary psychoanalytic perspective in considering the psychotherapeutic process, with emphasis on the mobilizing and integrative effects of topic translations in mental functioning. Finally, it explores heuristic perspectives for multidisciplinary, comprehensive approaches to human phenomena. Translated into English for the first time, The Disseminated Self uniquely draws on the French psychoanalytic traditions, and will be of great interest to the English-speaking psychoanalytic world, as well as any with an interest in climate change and the relationship between Man and the environment.
Download or read book Social Work Practice written by Bloomsbury Publishing and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1996-03-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pardeck demonstrates that the ecological approach to social work practice stresses effective intervention, and that effective intervention occurs through not only working with individuals, but also with the familial, social, and cultural factors that impact their social functioning. The power of the ecological approach, through focusing on multiple factors for assessment and intervention, is that it integrates empirically based theories from various fields including social work, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Pardeck provides an orientation to the role of social work practitioners within the human services. He differentiates the unique contributions of social work and explains them in terms of the needs and goals of an ecological approach to practice. An ecological approach to practice stresses that effective social work intervention occurs through not only working with individuals, but also with the familial, social, and cultural factors that impact their social functioning. The power of the ecological approach, through focusing on multiple factors for assessment and intervention, is that it integrates empirically based theories from various fields including social work, psychology, and anthropology. The book represents an effort to define the goals, commitments, and approaches that have emerged out of the history of social work and to relate them to similar concepts and values that are central to an ecological approach to practice. Three pervasive and unifying themes run through the book. One is the constant commitment to goals of facilitating human development. Pardeck suggests this is a central ethic that defines and distinguishes an ecological approach to social work practice. The second theme is an affirmation of the basic utility of a systems approach in conceptualizing and intervening in human needs, concerns, and problems. The ecological perspective views human beings as social organisms engaged in patterns of relationships that nurture or inhibit this basic humanity. The third theme is an interactionist view of the importance of person-environment fit as a central dynamic in human functioning. The traditional intra-psychic aspects of human behavior have tended to obscure the immense importance of both nurturing and potentially damaging forces at work in the social environment. This volume will be of considerable interest to social work educators and practitioners as well as their research libraries.
Download or read book Insect Ecology written by Timothy D. Schowalter and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2006-02-27 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Timothy Schowalter has succeeded in creating a unique, updated treatment of insect ecology. This revised and expanded text looks at how insects adapt to environmental conditions while maintaining the ability to substantially alter their environment. It covers a range of topics- from individual insects that respond to local changes in the environment and affect resource distribution, to entire insect communities that have the capacity to modify ecosystem conditions.Insect Ecology, Second Edition, synthesizes the latest research in the field and has been produced in full color throughout. It is ideal for students in both entomology and ecology-focused programs.NEW TO THIS EDITION:* New topics such as elemental defense by plants, chaotic models, molecular methods to measure disperson, food web relationships, and more* Expanded sections on plant defenses, insect learning, evolutionary tradeoffs, conservation biology and more* Includes more than 350 new references* More than 40 new full-color figures
Download or read book The Ecosystem Approach in Ocean Planning and Governance written by David Langlet and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Applying much needed legal and social sciences perspectives, the book provides in depth analyses of lessons learned and remaining challenges associated with making the Ecosystem Approach fully relevant and operational in various fields of marine governance.
Download or read book Artificial Intelligence for a Better Future written by Bernd Carsten Stahl and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book proposes a novel approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics. AI offers many advantages: better and faster medical diagnoses, improved business processes and efficiency, and the automation of boring work. But undesirable and ethically problematic consequences are possible too: biases and discrimination, breaches of privacy and security, and societal distortions such as unemployment, economic exploitation and weakened democratic processes. There is even a prospect, ultimately, of super-intelligent machines replacing humans. The key question, then, is: how can we benefit from AI while addressing its ethical problems? This book presents an innovative answer to the question by presenting a different perspective on AI and its ethical consequences. Instead of looking at individual AI techniques, applications or ethical issues, we can understand AI as a system of ecosystems, consisting of numerous interdependent technologies, applications and stakeholders. Developing this idea, the book explores how AI ecosystems can be shaped to foster human flourishing. Drawing on rich empirical insights and detailed conceptual analysis, it suggests practical measures to ensure that AI is used to make the world a better place.
Download or read book Sustainable Urban Environments written by Ellen M. van Bueren and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The urban environment – buildings, cities and infrastructure – represents one of the most important contributors to climate change, while at the same time holding the key to a more sustainable way of living. The transformation from traditional to sustainable systems requires interdisciplinary knowledge of the re-design, construction, operation and maintenance of the built environment. Sustainable Urban Environments: An Ecosystem Approach presents fundamental knowledge of the built environment. Approaching the topic from an ecosystems perspective, it shows the reader how to combine diverse practical elements into sustainable solutions for future buildings and cities. You’ll learn to connect problems and solutions at different spatial scales, from urban ecology to material, water and energy use, from urban transport to livability and health. The authors introduce and explore a variety of governance tools that support the transformation process, and show how they can help overcome institutional barriers. The book concludes with an account of promising perspectives for achieving a sustainable built environment in industrialized countries. Offering a unique overview and understanding of the most pressing challenges in the built environment, Sustainable Urban Environments helps the reader grasp opportunities for integration of knowledge and technologies in the design, construction and management of the built environment. Students and practitioners who are eager to look beyond their own fields of interest will appreciate this book because of its depth and breadth of coverage.
Download or read book Understanding Complex Ecosystem Dynamics written by William S. Yackinous and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Complex Ecosystem Dynamics: A Systems and Engineering Perspective takes a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on complex system dynamics, beginning with a discussion of relevant systems and engineering skills and practices, including an explanation of the systems approach and its major elements. From this perspective, the author formulates an ecosystem dynamics functionality-based framework to guide ecological investigations. Next, because complex system theory (across many subject matter areas) is crucial to the work of this book, relevant network theory, nonlinear dynamics theory, cellular automata theory, and roughness (fractal) theory is covered in some detail. This material serves as an important resource as the book proceeds. In the context of all of the foregoing discussion and investigation, a view of the characteristics of ecological network dynamics is constructed. This view, in turn, is the basis for the central hypothesis of the book, i.e., ecological networks are ever-changing networks with propagation dynamics that are punctuated, local-to-global, and perhaps most importantly fractal. To analyze and fully test this hypothesis, an innovative ecological network dynamics model is defined, designed, and developed. The modeling approach, which seeks to emulate features of real-world ecological networks, does not make a priori assumptions about ecological network dynamics, but rather lets the dynamics develop as the model simulation runs. Model analysis results corroborate the central hypothesis. Additional important insights and principles are suggested by the model analysis results and by the other supporting investigations of this book – and can serve as a basis for going-forward complex system dynamics research, not only for ecological systems but for complex systems in general. - Provides a fresh interdisciplinary perspective, offers a broad integrated development, and contains many new ideas - Clearly explains the elements of the systems approach and applies them throughout the book - Takes on the challenging and open issues of complex system network dynamics - Develops and utilizes a new, innovative ecosystem dynamics modeling approach - Contains over 135 graphic illustrations to help the reader visualize and understand important concepts
Download or read book The Ecosystem Approach in International Environmental Law written by Vito De Lucia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ecosystem approach, broadly understood as a legal and governance strategy for integrated environmental and biodiversity management, has been adopted within a wide variety of international environmental legal regimes and provides a narrative, a policy approach and in some cases legally binding obligations for States to implement what has been called a ‘new paradigm’ of environmental management. In this last respect, the ecosystem approach is also often considered to offer an opportunity to move beyond the outdated anthropocentric framework underpinning much of international environmental law, thus helping re-think law in the Anthropocene. Against this background, this book addresses the question of whether the ecosystem approach represents a paradigm shift in international environmental law and governance, or whether it is in conceptual and operative continuity with legal modernity. This central question is explored through a combined genealogical and biopolitical framework, which reveals how the ecosystem approach is the result of multiple contingencies and contestations, and of the interplay of divergent and sometimes irreconcilable ideological projects. The ecosystem approach, this books shows, does not have a univocal identity, and must be understood as both signalling the potential for a decisive shift in the philosophical orientation of law and the operationalisation of a biopolitical framework of control that is in continuity with, and even intensifies, the eco-destructive tendencies of legal modernity. It is, however, in revealing this disjunction that the book opens up the possibility of moving beyond the already tired assessment of environmental law through the binary of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism.
Download or read book The Ecosystem Approach written by David Waltner-Toews and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is sustainable development a workable solution for today's environmental problems? Is it scientifically defensible? Best known for applying ecological theory to the engineering problems of everyday life, the late scholar James J. Kay was a leader in the study of social and ecological complexity and the thermodynamics of ecosystems. Drawing from his immensely important work, as well as the research of his students and colleagues, The Ecosystem Approach is a guide to the aspects of complex systems theories relevant to social-ecological management. Advancing a methodology that is rooted in good theory and practice, this book features case studies conducted in the Arctic and Africa, in Canada and Kathmandu, and in the Peruvian Amazon, Chesapeake Bay, and Chennai, India. Applying a systems approach to concrete environmental issues, this volume is geared toward scientists, engineers, and sustainable development scholars and practitioners who are attuned to the ideas of the Resilience Alliance-an international group of scientists who take a more holistic view of ecology and environmental problem-solving. Chapters cover the origins and rebirth of the ecosystem approach in ecology; the bridging of science and values; the challenge of governance in complex systems; systemic and participatory approaches to management; and the place for cultural diversity in the quest for global sustainability.
Download or read book Ecosystem Collapse and Recovery written by Adrian C. Newton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how ecosystems can collapse as a result of human activity, and the ecological processes underlying their subsequent recovery.
Download or read book Family and Environment written by L. Gail Melson and published by Minneapolis, Minn. : Burgess Publishing Company. This book was released on 1980 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecohealth Research in Practice written by Dominique F. Charron and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-11-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about doing innovative research to achieve sustainable and equitable change in people’s health and well-being through improved interactions with the environment. It presents experiences from the field of ecosystem approaches to health (or ecohealth research) and some insights and lessons learned. It builds on previous literature, notably Forget (1997), Forget and Lebel (2001), Lebel (2003), and Waltner-Toews et al. (2008). Through case-studies and other contributions by researchers supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the book presents evidence of real changes in conditions of people, their health, and the ecosystems that support them. These changes were derived from applications of an ecosystem approach to health in developing regions of the world. The book also illustrates the resulting body of applied, participatory, and action research that improved health and environmental management in developing countries and, in many cases, influenced policies and practices.
Download or read book Ecological Stability written by and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term ''stability, '' in its ecological context, has been applied to populations, communities, and, most recently, to ecosystems with such an array of meanings that it has almost become a panchreston. This review of selected literature points out the problems inherent in relying on either static measures (e.g., species diversity, connectivity, or energy balance) as a measure of complexity to arbitrarily rank the relative stabilities of ecosystems, or the dynamic approach of analyzing the mathematical stability of linear or nonlinear models. The research direction emphasized is that of development of new measures of ecosystem complexity based on ecosystem level characteristics (e.g., nutrient retention, or ecosystem metabolism) and relating these measures of complexity to an a priori defined ecosystem stability.
Download or read book Ecological Systems written by Rik Leemans and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earth is home to an estimated 8 million animal species, 600,000 fungi, 300,000 plants, and an undetermined number of microbial species. Of these animal, fungal, and plant species, an estimated 75% have yet to be identified. Moreover, the interactions between these species and their physical environment are known to an even lesser degree. At the same time, the earth’s biota faces the prospect of climate change, which may manifest slowly or extremely rapidly, as well as a human population set to grow by two billion by 2045 from the current seven billion. Given these major ecological changes, we cannot wait for a complete biota data set before assessing, planning, and acting to preserve the ecological balance of the earth. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the scientific and engineering basis of the systems ecology of the earth in 15 detailed, peer-reviewed entries written for a broad audience of undergraduate and graduate students as well as practicing professionals in government, academia, and industry. The methodology presented aims at identifying key interactions and environmental effects, and enabling a systems-level understanding even with our present state of factual knowledge.
Download or read book Ecosystem Change and Public Health written by Joan L. Aron and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2001-06-15 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognized as an outstanding educational product by the 2001 NASA Earth Science Enterprise Education Product Peer Review "The purpose of this textbook on global ecosystem change and human health is twofold:(1) to raise awareness of changes in human health related to global ecosystem change and (2) to expand the scope of the traditional curriculum in environmental health to include the interactions of major environmental forces and public health on a global scale."—from the Introduction Ecosystem Change and Public Health focuses on how human health is affected by global ecosystem changes. It is the first textbook devoted to this emerging field, offering a global perspective on research methods and emphasizing empirical investigations of health outcomes in combination with integrated assessment for policy development. The book covers such topics as global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, water resources management, and ecology and infectious disease. Case studies of cholera, malaria, the effects of water resources, and global climate change and air pollution illustrate the analysis and methodology. The book also includes a resource center describing places to start searches on the World Wide Web, guidelines for finding and evaluating information, suggested study projects, and strategies for encouraging communication among course participants.
Download or read book Introduction to Ecological Psychology written by Julia J. C. Blau and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-29 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction to Ecological Psychology is a highly accessible book that offers an overview of the fundamental theoretical foundations of Ecological Psychology. The authors, Julia J.C. Blau and Jeffrey B. Wagman, provide a broad coverage of the topic, including discussion of perception-action as well as development, cognition, social interaction, and application to real world problems. Concepts are presented in the book using a conversational writing style and everyday examples that introduce novice readers to the problems of perception and action and demonstrate the application of the ecological approach theories to broader philosophical questions. Blau and Wagman explain how ecological psychology might be pertinent to both classic and newer issues in psychology. The authors move beyond the traditional scope of the discipline to effectively illustrate concepts of dynamics, evolution, self-organization, and physical intelligence in ecological psychology. This book is an essential guide to the basics for students and professionals in ecological psychology, sensation and perception, cognition, and development. It is also indispensable reading for anyone interested in ecological and developmental studies.
