Download or read book Natural Diversity of the Cape Peninsula written by Stephan Wolfart and published by Struik Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of photographs of the Cape Peninsula - the little finger of land extending south from Table Mountain to the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southwestern tip - lends eyes to inhabitants and visitors alike. Each chapter explores one of seven different types of habitat that co-exist in this small area, including the diverse mountain fynbos for which the Cape is justly famous.
Download or read book The Ecology of Fynbos written by Richard M. Cowling and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa's Cape Floristic Region includes approximately 8,500 plant species. Most of this biodiversity is concentrated in fynbos, a fire-prone shrubland occurring on the sandy, infertile soils which predominate in this region.This book reviews a decade of rigorous research into the biogeography, ecology and management of fynbos, carried out under the auspices of the Fynbos Biome Project.
Download or read book Species Diversity in Ecological Communities written by Robert E. Ricklefs and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering work, Species Diversity in Ecological Communities looks at biodiversity in its broadest geographical and historical contexts. For many decades, ecologists have studied only small areas over short time spans in the belief that diversity is regulated by local ecological interactions. However, to understand fully how communities come to have the diversity they do, and to properly address urgent conservation problems, scientists must consider global patterns of species richness and the historical events that shape both regional and local communities. The authors use new theoretical developments, analyses, and case studies to explore the large-scale mechanisms that generate and maintain diversity. Case studies of various regions and organisms consider how local and regional processes interact to determine patterns of species richness. The contributors emphasize the fact that ecological processes acting quickly on a local scale do not erase the effects of regional and historical events that occur more slowly and less frequently. This book compels scientists to rethink the foundations of community ecology and sets the stage for further research using comparative, experimental, geographical, and historical data.
Download or read book Biological Invasions in South Africa written by Brian W. van Wilgen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 972 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access volume presents a comprehensive account of all aspects of biological invasions in South Africa, where research has been conducted over more than three decades, and where bold initiatives have been implemented in attempts to control invasions and to reduce their ecological, economic and social effects. It covers a broad range of themes, including history, policy development and implementation, the status of invasions of animals and plants in terrestrial, marine and freshwater environments, the development of a robust ecological theory around biological invasions, the effectiveness of management interventions, and scenarios for the future. The South African situation stands out because of the remarkable diversity of the country, and the wide range of problems encountered in its varied ecosystems, which has resulted in a disproportionate investment into both research and management. The South African experience holds many lessons for other parts of the world, and this book should be of immense value to researchers, students, managers, and policy-makers who deal with biological invasions and ecosystem management and conservation in most other regions.
Download or read book Vegetation of Southern Africa written by R. M. Cowling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive illustrated guide to plant science and ecology of southern African vegetation.
Download or read book Landscape Disturbance and Biodiversity in Mediterranean Type Ecosystems written by Philip W. Rundel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human impact on natural landscapes through urbanization and agricultural expansion are becoming more and more dramatic and are the cause of serious environmental problems. This volume examines the effect of landscape disturbance on plant and animal diversity in the five mediterranean-climate regions of the world. It begins with three introductory chapters broadly reviewing the issues of landscape degradation. Further contributions describe regional land use conflicts in each of the five regions. Landscape disturbance and plant diversity, and landscape disturbance and animal diversity are treated in separate chapters. Four contributions deal with demography and ecophysiology in vegetation succession following disturbance. The volume closes with a consideration of the future addressing aspects of environmental politics.
Download or read book Cape Plants written by Peter Goldblatt and published by Missouri Botanical Garden Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nature s Services written by Gretchen Cara Daily and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life itself as well as the entire human economy depends on goods and services provided by earth's natural systems. The processes of cleansing, recycling, and renewal, along with goods such as seafood, forage, and timber, are worth many trillions of dollars annually, and nothing could live without them. Yet growing human impacts on the environment are profoundly disrupting the functioning of natural systems and imperiling the delivery of these services.Nature's Services brings together world-renowned scientists from a variety of disciplines to examine the character and value of ecosystem services, the damage that has been done to them, and the consequent implications for human society. Contributors including Paul R. Ehrlich, Donald Kennedy, Pamela A. Matson, Robert Costanza, Gary Paul Nabhan, Jane Lubchenco, Sandra Postel, and Norman Myers present a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value. Chapters consider: major services including climate regulation, soil fertility, pollination, and pest control philosophical and economic issues of valuation case studies of specific ecosystems and services implication of recent findings and steps that must be taken to address the most pressing concerns Nature's Services represents one of the first efforts by scientists to provide an overview of the many benefits and services that nature offers to people and the extent to which we are all vitally dependent on those services. The book enhances our understanding of the value of the natural systems that surround us and can play an essential role in encouraging greater efforts to protect the earth's basic life-support systems before it is too late.
Download or read book Mediterranean Type Ecosystems written by F.J. Kruger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of ecological convergence underlies the biogeographers' maps of world biome-types. It also determines the degree to which ecological principles, derived from research on particular populations, communities or ecosystems, are generally valid, and hence also to what extent resource management principles are general. To quote Di Castri and Mooney (1973): "In effect, in order to assess the transfer of technology, it is essential to know to what extent information acquired from studying one particular ecosystem is applicable to another ecosystem of the same type but situated in a different location. " The five relatively small, isolated, mediterranean-climate zones of the earth, each with its distinct fauna and flora, have provided the ideal testing grounds for this theory. A heritage of precisely focused ecosystems research has resulted, beginning with the international comparative analyses conducted by Specht (l969a, b) but with antecedents in earlier studies in South Australia (Specht and Rayson 1957, Specht 1973). Cody and Mooney (1978) reviewed the information available at the time for the four zones excepting Australia and concluded that the arrays of strategy-types to be found among the different biotas were so similar that they could be explained only in terms of the convergence hypothesis; nevertheless, evident differences in community organization and dynamics, especially phenol ogy, required closer study of resource availability and resource-use patterns to better explain relations between form and function overall, and to assess the degree of convergence at higher levels of organization than the population.
Download or read book Closing the Knowledge Implementation Gap in Conservation Science written by Catarina C. Ferreira and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-03 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to synthesize the state of the art on biodiversity knowledge exchange practices to understand where and how improvements can be made to close the knowledge-implementation gap in conservation science and advance this interdisciplinary topic. Bringing together the most prominent scholars and practitioners in the field, the book looks into the various sources used to produce biodiversity knowledge - from natural and social sciences to Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Citizen Science - as well as knowledge mobilization approaches to highlight the key ingredients that render successful conservation action at a global scale. By doing so, the book identified major current challenges and opportunities in the field, for different sectors that generate, mobilize, and use biodiversity knowledge (like academia, boundary organizations, practitioners, and policy-makers), to further develop cross-sectorial knowledge mobilization strategies and enhance evidence-informed decision-making processes globally.
Download or read book Cape Action Plan for the Environment written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plant Invasions written by Anna Traveset and published by CABI. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many books on aspects of plant invasions, but none that focus on the key role of species interactions in mediating invasions. This book reviews exciting new findings and explores how new methods and tools are shedding new light on crucial processes in plant invasions. This book will be of interest to academics and students of ecology, researchers engaged in developing management solutions, scientific managers of natural ecosystems, and policy-makers.
Download or read book Fynbos Fynmense written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Urbanization Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Challenges and Opportunities written by Thomas Elmqvist and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-09-21 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urbanization is a global phenomenon and the book emphasizes that this is not just a social-technological process. It is also a social-ecological process where cities are places for nature, and where cities also are dependent on, and have impacts on, the biosphere at different scales from local to global. The book is a global assessment and delivers four main conclusions: Urban areas are expanding faster than urban populations. Half the increase in urban land across the world over the next 20 years will occur in Asia, with the most extensive change expected to take place in India and China Urban areas modify their local and regional climate through the urban heat island effect and by altering precipitation patterns, which together will have significant impacts on net primary production, ecosystem health, and biodiversity Urban expansion will heavily draw on natural resources, including water, on a global scale, and will often consume prime agricultural land, with knock-on effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services elsewhere Future urban expansion will often occur in areas where the capacity for formal governance is restricted, which will constrain the protection of biodiversity and management of ecosystem services
Download or read book Ecology and Biogeography of Mediterranean Ecosystems in Chile California and Australia written by Mary T. Kalin Arroyo and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediterranean-type ecosystems have provided ecologists with some of the most scientifically-rewarding opportunities to formulate and evaluate hypotheses about large and small-scale ecological phenomena. Comparison of mediterranean-type climate ecosystems in different parts of the world has not only permitted a strong test for ecological convergence, but also critical understanding of key ecophysiological and population processes.
Download or read book Fynbos written by Nicky Allsopp and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa's fynbos region has intrigued biologists for centuries. It has achieved iconic status as a locus of megadiversity and therefore a place to study the ecological underpinnings of massive evolutionary radiations. Researchers have made great advances over the past two decades in unravelling the complexities of fynbos ecology and evolution, and the region has contributed significant insights into the adaptive radiations of large lineages, conservation science, pollination biology, invasive plant biology, and palaeoanthropology. Lessons from the fynbos offer much of value for understanding the origin, maintenance, and conservation of diversity anywhere in the world. This book provides the first synthesis of the field for 20 years, bringing together the latest ecological and evolutionary research on the South African global biodiversity hotspots of the Greater Cape Floristic Region - the iconic fynbos and succulent karoo. It explores the historical and modern physical and biological environment of this region, the circumstances and processes which have fostered its remarkable biodiversity, and the role this diversity has played in the emergence of modern humans. It also discusses the challenges of contemporary management and conservation of the region's biodiversity in the face of accelerating global change.
Download or read book Analytical Biogeography written by A.A. Myers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biogeography may be defined simply as the study of the geographical distribution of organisms, but this simple defmition hides the great complexity of the subject. Biogeography transcends classical subject areas and involves a range of scientific disciplines that includes geogra phy, geology and biology. Not surprisingly, therefore, it means rather different things to different people. Historically, the study of biogeogra phy has been concentrated into compartments at separate points along a spatio-temporal gradient. At one end of the gradient, ecological biogeography is concerned with ecological processes occurring over short temporal and small spatial scales, whilst at the other end, historical biogeography is concerned with evolutionary processes over millions of years on a large, often global scale. Between these end points lies a third major compartment concerned with the profound effects of Pleistocene glaciations and how these have affected the distribution of recent organisms. Within each of these compartments along the scale gradient, a large number of theories, hypotheses and models have been proposed in an attempt to explain the present and past biotic distribution patterns. To a large extent, these compartments of the subject have been non-interactive, which is understandable from the different interests and backgrounds of the various researchers. Nevertheless, the distribu tions of organisms across the globe cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the full spectrum of ecological and historical processes. There are no degrees in biogeography and today' s biogeographers are primarily born out of some other discipline.
