A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY125 start with H start with H
As environmental awareness grows around the world, people are learning that a diversity of species and the habitat to support them is necessary to maintain the ecological health of the earth. At the same time, however, the pressure to develop wildlife habitat for human settlement and economic gain also grows, causing frequent clashes between the forces of development and of conservation.
This pioneering study focuses on a new tool for resolving the land-use conflict—the creation of habitat conservation plans (HCPs). Timothy Beatley explores the development and early results of this provision of the United States' federal Endangered Species Act, which allows development of some habitat and a certain "take" of a protected species in return for the conservation of sufficient habitat to ensure its survival and long-term recovery.
Beatley looks specifically at nine HCPs in California, Nevada, Texas, and Florida, states where biological diversity and increasing populations have triggered many conflicts. Some of the HCPs include the San Bruno Mountain HCP near San Francisco, the North Key Largo HCP in the Florida Keys, the Clark County HCP near Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Balcones Canyonlands HCP near Austin, Texas. This first comprehensive overview of habitat conservation planning in the United States will be important reading for everyone involved in land-use debates.
- synthesizes a large body of information from the scientific literature
- considers key theoretical principles for examining and predicting effects
- examines the range of effects that can arise
- explores ways of mitigating impacts
- reviews approaches to studying the problem
- discusses knowledge gaps and future areas for research and management
More than one hundred species of kingfishers brighten every continent but Antarctica. Not all are fishing birds. They range in size from the African dwarf kingfisher to the laughing kookaburra of Australia. This first book to feature North America’s belted kingfisher is a lyrical story of observation, revelation, and curiosity in the presence of flowing waters.
The kingfisher—also known as the halcyon bird—is linked to the mythic origin of halcyon days, a state of happiness that Marina Richie hopes to find outside her back door in Missoula, Montana. Epiphanies and a citizen science discovery punctuate days tracking a bird that outwits at every turn. The female is more colorful than the male (unusual and puzzling) and the birds’ earthen nest holes are difficult to locate.
While the heart of the drama takes place on Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, the author’s adventures in search of kingfisher kin on the lower Rio Grande, in South Africa, and in London illuminate her relationships with the birds of Montana. In the quiet of winter, she explores tribal stories of the kingfisher as messenger and helper, pivotal qualities for her quest. For all who love birds or simply seek solace in nature, Halcyon Journey is an inviting introduction to the mythic and mysterious belted kingfisher.
The Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring that nature in the city is more than infrastructure—that it also promotes well-being and creates an emotional connection to the earth among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook begins by introducing key ideas, literature, and theory about biophilic urbanism. Chapters highlight urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities. The final part concludes with lessons on how to advance an agenda for urban biophilia and an extensive list of resources.
As the most comprehensive reference on the emerging field of biophilic urbanism, the Handbook is essential reading for students and practitioners looking to place nature at the core of their planning and design ideas and encourage what preeminent biologist E.O. Wilson described as "the innate emotional connection of humans to all living things."
Quantitative research techniques have become increasingly important in ecology and conservation biology, but the sheer breadth of methods that must be understood—from population modeling and probabilistic thinking to modern statistics, simulation, and data science—and a lack of computational or mathematics training have hindered quantitative literacy in these fields. In this book, ecologist Justin Kitzes addresses those challenges for students and practicing scientists alike.
Requiring only basic algebra and the ability to use a spreadsheet, Handbook of Quantitative Ecology is designed to provide a practical, intuitive, and integrated introduction to widely used quantitative methods. Kitzes builds each chapter around a specific ecological problem and arrives, step by step, at a general principle through the process of solving that problem. Grouped into five broad categories—difference equations, probability, matrix models, likelihood statistics, and other numerical methods—the book introduces basic concepts, starting with exponential and logistic growth, and helps readers to understand the field’s more advanced subjects, such as bootstrapping, stochastic optimization, and cellular automata. Complete with online solutions to all numerical problems, Kitzes’s Handbook of Quantitative Ecology is an ideal coursebook for both undergraduate and graduate students of ecology, as well as a useful and necessary resource for mathematically out-of-practice scientists.
Many of the essays touch on death and the dying, and nothing escapes description and fascination whether profound or seemingly less so: the death of a dear friend or two fledgling cardinals blown from a nest in the back yard and now covered with “periwinkle at the corner of the yard.” During a walk down a country lane, the names of flowers, birds, and bugs fill the page. Even in a meadow buzzing with life, there are reminders of our mortality and brief light too soon gone—and they remind us to read, think, and live with gusto and love.
Working with the premise that there are much meaning and value in the "repelling beauty" of mining landscapes, Richard Francaviglia identifies the visual clues that indicate an area has been mined and tells us how to read them, showing the interconnections among all of America's major mining districts. With a style as bold as the landscape he reads and with photographs to match, he interprets the major forces that have shaped the architecture, design, and topography of mining areas. Covering many different types of mining and mining locations, he concludes that mining landscapes have come to symbolize the turmoil between what our society elects to view as two opposing forces: culture and nature.
Introduction by Rick Bass
“A kind of homemade book—imperfect like a handmade thing, a prize. It’s a galloping, spontaneous book, on occasion within whooping distance of that greatest and sweetest of country books, Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Notebook.” —Edward Hoagland, New York Times Book Review
“His subjects are trees and brush, hired help, fences, soil, armadillos and other wildlife, flood and drought, local history, sheep and goats . . . and they come to us reshaped and reenlivened by his agreeably individual (and sometimes cranky) notions.” —New Yorker
“If Goodbye to a River was in some sense Graves’s Odyssey, this book is his [version of Hesiod’s] Works and Days. It is partly a book about work, partly a book about nature, but mostly a book about belonging. In the end John Graves has learned to belong to his patch of land so thoroughly that at moments he can sense in himself a unity with medieval peasants and Sumerian farmers, working with their fields by the Tigris.” —Larry McMurtry, Washington Post Book World
“Hard Scrabble is hard pastoral of the kind we have learned to recognize in Wordsworth, Frost, Hemingway, and Faulkner. It celebrates life in accommodation with a piece of the ‘given’ creation, a recalcitrant four hundred or so acres of Texas cedar brake, old field, and creek bottom, which will require of any genuine resident all the character he can muster.” —Southwest Review
Hardy Cypripedium presents the fifty species and one hundred hybrids of the slipper orchid through more than three hundred photos. It also provides plant descriptions, ecology, distribution, and cultivation methods. Sections on history, morphology, and conservation round out the guide. Professional and amateur growers, as well as fans of orchids of all types, will find a wealth of useful information in this beautiful book.
Once described as the “fastest, hairiest, most lascivious, and most melancholy” of mammals, the hare was also believed to never close its eyes, occasionally grow horns, and have the ability to change its sex. More than just a speedy, but lazy, character in popular children’s fables, the hare is remarkable for its actual behavior and the intriguing myths that have developed around it. Here, Simon Carnell examines how this animal has been described, symbolized, visually depicted, and sought for its fur, flesh, and exceptional speed.
Carnell tracks the hare from ancient Egypt, where a hieroglyph of a hare stood for the concept of existence itself, to Crucifixion scenes, Buddhist lore, and Algonquin creation myths, to the serial works of Joseph Beuys, and even to an art installation in a Dutch brothel. The hare shows up in both surprising and expected places—it was the principal subject of the first hunting treatise, it appears in the first signed and dated picture of a single animal, and it was credited in early medicine with the most curative properties of any animal.
Combining recent natural history with an extensive and richly illustrated focus on visual art, Hare is highly accessible and packed with details about a historically fascinating animal.
Originally published in the June 11, 1984, New Yorker, this lengthy essay is a sharp-edged inquiry into the generational institutions of our national life. With the same iconoclastic spirit and multilayered prose that he interwove in his classic Within the Context of No Context, George Trow tells the story of upstate New York’s Black Rock Forest—a thirty-eight-hundred-acre site overlooking the Hudson River—through the lives of the men who were connected to it and through the larger histories of Harvard University, U.S. conservation policies, and physics and biology.
The men: banker James Stillman; his son, Ernest Stillman, a medical doctor who inherited the land that would become the Black Rock Forest in 1928 and who wanted to make it healthy and useful; the legendary Gifford Pinchot, appointed chief forester of the U.S. in 1898; and Richard Thornton Fisher, for many years the head of the Harvard Forest and the man who suggested to Ernest Stillman that he turn his inherited land into another demonstration forest. Harvard University: a more financially focused, less collegial environment than the one that had accepted the gift of the forest in 1949, now looking to shed responsibility for the forest without shedding the money its sale would bring. The challenge: How to manage, how to value, a wilderness area of great biological diversity.
In his brilliantly elastic fashion, Trow maneuvers images, symbols, ambiguities, ethics, journalistic wordplay, advertising tricks, and corporate doublespeak to create an intensely perceptive analysis of the cultural, political, and scientific communities. His richly developed story of the Harvard Black Rock Forest is ultimately a symbolic tale that bears upon some of the most significant institutions, professions, and legacies in contemporary American life.
A publisher’s note reveals the fate of the forest.
2024 Longlist OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Bocas Lit Fest
This collection ponders the personal and political implications for Haitians at home and abroad resulting from the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 was a debilitating event that followed decades of political, social, and financial issues. Leaving over 250,000 people dead, 300,000 injured, and 1.5 million people homeless, the earthquake has had lasting repercussions on a struggling nation. As the post-earthquake political situation unfolded, Myriam Chancy worked to illuminate on-the-ground concerns, from the vulnerable position of Haitian women to the failures of international aid. Originally presented at invited campus talks, published as columns for a newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago, and circulated in other ways, her essays and creative responses preserve the reactions and urgencies of the years following the disaster.
In Harvesting Haiti, Chancy examines the structures that have resulted in Haiti's post-earthquake conditions and reflects at key points after the earthquake on its effects on vulnerable communities. Her essays make clear the importance of sustaining and supporting the dignity of Haitian lives and of creating a better, contextualized understanding of the issues that mark Haitians’ historical and present realities, from gender parity to the vexed relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
This is the first comprehensive treatment of a major order of arachnids featuring more than 6,000 species worldwide, familiar in North America as daddy-longlegs but known scientifically as the Opiliones, or harvestmen. The 25 authors provide a much-needed synthesis of what is currently known about these relatives of spiders, focusing on basic conceptual issues in systematics and evolutionary ecology, making comparisons with other well-studied arachnid groups, such as spiders and scorpions.
Broad in scope, the volume is aimed at raising relevant questions from a diversity of fields, indicating areas in which additional research is needed. The authors focus on both the unique attributes of harvestmen biology, as well as on biological studies conducted with harvestmen species that contribute to the understanding of behavior and evolutionary biology in general. By providing a broad taxonomic and ecological background for understanding this major arachnid group, the book should give field biologists worldwide the means to identify specimens and provide an invaluable reference for understanding harvestmen diversity and biology.
Even though race influenced how Americans envisioned, represented, and shaped the American West, discussions of its history devalue the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities. In this lyrical history of marginalized peoples in Idaho, Robert T. Hayashi views the West from a different perspective by detailing the ways in which they shaped the western landscape and its meaning.
As an easterner, researcher, angler, and third-generation Japanese American traveling across the contemporary Idaho landscape—where his grandfather died during internment during World War II—Hayashi reconstructs a landscape that lured emigrants of all races at the same time its ruling forces were developing cultured processes that excluded nonwhites. Throughout each convincing and compelling chapter, he searches for the stories of dispossessed minorities as patiently as he searches for trout.
Using a wide range of materials that include memoirs, oral interviews, poetry, legal cases, letters, government documents, and even road signs, Hayashi illustrates how Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian, all-white, and democratic West affected the Gem State’s Nez Perce, Chinese, Shoshone, Mormon, and particularly Japanese residents. Starting at the site of the Corps of Discovery’s journey into Idaho, he details the ideological, aesthetic, and material manifestations of these intertwined notions of race and place. As he ?y-?shes Idaho’s fabled rivers and visits its historical sites and museums, Hayashi reads the contemporary landscape in light of this evolution.
As his own story unfolds, Mark Browning analyzes angling literature from the Bible to Norman Maclean, always bringing his inquiry back to the same source: the enigma of this sport.
Haunted by Waters is an exploration of the apparent compulsion of those who fish not only to read about the sport, but to write about it as well. Mark Browning's personal account as a fly fisherman and his perspective as a critic make him uniquely qualified to navigate these waters.
Headless Males Make Great Lovers and Other Unusual Natural Histories celebrates the extraordinary world of animals with essays on curious creatures and their amazing behaviors. In five thematic chapters, Marty Crump—a tropical field biologist well known for her work with the reproductive behavior of amphibians—examines the bizarre conduct of animals as they mate, parent, feed, defend themselves, and communicate. Crump's enthusiasm for the unusual behaviors she describes-from sex change and free love in sponges to aphrodisiac concoctions in bats-is visible on every page, thanks to her skilled storytelling, which makes even sea slugs, dung beetles, ticks, and tapeworms fascinating and appealing. Steeped in biology, Headless Males Make Great Lovers points out that diverse and unrelated animals often share seemingly bizarre behaviors—evidence, Crump argues, that these natural histories, though outwardly weird, are successful ways of living.
Illustrated throughout, and filled with vignettes of personal and scientific interest, Headless Males Make Great Lovers will enchant the general reader with its tales of blood-squirting horned lizards and intestine-ejecting sea cucumbers—all in the service of a greater appreciation of the diversity of the natural histories of animals.
From their primal seepages in the Appalachian highlands or along the broad Chunnenuggee Hills, Alabama’s rivers carve through the rocky uplands and down the Fall Line rapids, then ease across the coastal plain to their eventual confluence with the Gulf of Mexico.
In Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors’ methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle. This, Carlisle shows, is the true regenerative agriculture – not merely a set of technical tricks for storing CO2 in the ground, but a holistic approach that values diversity in both plants and people.
Cultivating this kind of regenerative farming will require reckoning with our nation’s agricultural history—a history marked by discrimination and displacement. And it will ultimately require dismantling power structures that have blocked many farmers of color from owning land or building wealth.
The task is great, but so is its promise. By coming together to restore these farmlands, we can not only heal our planet, we can heal our communities and ourselves.
During the early 1990s, the ability of dangerous diseases to pass between animals and humans was brought once more to the public consciousness. These concerns continue to raise questions about how livestock diseases have been managed over time and in different social, economic, and political circumstances. Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine brings together case studies from the Americas, western Europe, and the European and Japanese colonies to illustrate how the rapid growth of the international trade in animals through the nineteenth century engendered the spread of infectious diseases, sometimes with devastating consequences for indigenous pastoral societies. At different times and across much of the globe, livestock epidemics have challenged social order and provoked state interventions, often opposed by farmers and herders. The intensification of agriculture has transformed environments, with consequences for animal and human health.
But the last two centuries have also witnessed major changes in the way societies have conceptualized diseases and sought to control them. From the late nineteenth century, advances in veterinary technologies afforded veterinary scientists a new professional status and allowed them to wield greater political influence. While older methods have remained important to strategies of control and prevention, as demonstrated during the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain in 2001, the rise of germ theories and the discovery of vaccines against some infections made it possible to move beyond the blunt tools of animal culls and restrictive quarantines of the past. Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine offers a new and exciting comparative approach to the complex interrelationships of microbes, markets, and medicine in the global economy.
A Healthy Nature Handbook captures hard-earned ecological wisdom from this community in engaging and highly readable chapters, each including illustrated restoration sequences. Restoration leaders cover large-scale seeding approaches, native seed production, wetland and grassland bird habitat restoration, monitoring, and community building.
Contributions from local artists bring the region’s beauty to life with vibrant watercolors, oil paintings, and sketches. A Healthy Nature Handbook is packed with successful approaches to restoring nature and is a testament to both the Chicago region’s surprising natural wealth and the stewards that are committed to its lasting health.
"You can’t step in the same river twice—although I once believed I could. I believed that the pieces of my life I had chosen, those I held close to my heart, would, once chosen and held, remain the same."—from the book
How does one recover from disaster? That question is at the heart of Marybeth Holleman’s lyrical, elegiac response to the repercussions of the Exxon Valdez oil spill that devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. Twining together the destruction of an ecosystem and the disintegration of her marriage, Holleman explores the resiliency of nature—both wild and human—and the ways in which that resiliency is tested. Like the oil that remains pooled beneath rocks years after the tanker spill, the emotional wounds of the past lie just below the surface. Recovery and restoration from the pain wrought by human hands does not come easily.
If much of nature writing is about the heart’s search for an unspoiled, perfect landscape, The Heart of the Sound is about what happens when the return-to-paradise fantasy is over and paradise is lost. In language rich with passion and hard-won insight, Holleman creates a captivating picture of a woman who found her Eden in the sweeping fjords of Alaska only to lose it to ecological tragedy. But somewhere within that loss, she finds herself.
As proud grasslanders know, the prairie is biologically fulfilling, unique, and increasingly rare: biologists from the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy agree that a healthy prairie remains one of the most ecologically diverse and dynamic ecosystems on this planet—as well as one of the rarest left on earth. This landscape that once inspired rapturous exclamations from travelers headed west on horseback now mostly exists in fragments exiled from each other by cropland, cities, and interstate highways.
Historically, tallgrass prairie stretched from Canada to Texas, from central Kansas to Indiana. Now the last major expanse of tallgrass occurs in the Flint Hills, a verdant landscape extending in a north-south strip across eastern Kansas and into northern Oklahoma’s Osage County. In these essays, Gary Lantz brings the beautiful diversity of the prairie home to all of us.
In Heatstroke, the renowned paleoecologist shows how global warming is fundamentally changing the natural world and its creatures. While melting ice may have helped produce the pizzly, climate change is more likely to wipe out species than to create them. Plants and animals that have followed the same rhythms for millennia are suddenly being confronted with a world they’re unprepared for—and adaptation usually isn’t an option.
This is not the first time climate change has dramatically transformed Earth. Barnosky draws connections between the coming centuries and the end of the last ice age, when mass extinctions swept the planet. The differences now are that climate change is faster and hotter than past changes, and for the first time humanity is driving it. Which means this time we can work to stop it.
No one knows exactly what nature will come to look like in this new age of global warming. But Heatstroke gives us a haunting portrait of what we stand to lose and the vitality of what can be saved.
Employing copious illustrations and intensive research, Heavy Ground traces the interwoven roles of politics and engineering in explaining how the St. Francis Dam came to be built and the reasons for its collapse. Hundley and Jackson also detail the terror and heartbreak brought by the flood, legal claims against the City of Los Angeles, efforts to restore the Santa Clara Valley, political factors influencing investigations of the failure, and the effect of the disaster on congressional approval of the future Hoover Dam. Underlying it all is a consideration of how the dam—and the disaster—were inextricably intertwined with the life and career of William Mulholland. Ultimately, this thoughtful and nuanced account of the dam’s failure reveals how individual and bureaucratic conceit fed Los Angeles’s desire to control vital water supplies in the booming metropolis of Southern California.
Following the hedgehog as it spreads through Europe and Asia to the foot of Africa, Hugh Warwick describes its evolution, behavior, habitat, and diet, as well as its current endangered status. He also looks at the animal’s appeal, accessibility, and status as a pet in many countries, considering its appearance in advertising, films, children’s books, and games. Casting new light on the ancestors of Sonic and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Hedgehog is a fascinating look at these prickly, admirable animals.
Although John Wesley Powell and party are usually given credit for the first river descent through the Grand Canyon, the ghost of James White has haunted those claims. White was a Colorado prospector, who, almost two years before Powell's journey, washed up on a makeshift raft at Callville, Nevada. His claim to have entered the Colorado above the San Juan River with another man (soon drowned) as they fled from Indians was widely disseminated and believed for a time, but Powell and his successors on the river publically discounted it. Colorado River runners and historians have since debated whether White's passage through Grand Canyon even could have happened.
Hell or High Water is the first full account of White's story and how it became distorted and he disparaged over time. It is also a fascinating detective story, recounting how White's granddaughter, Eilean Adams, over decades and with the assistance of a couple of notable Colorado River historians who believed he could have done what he claimed, gradually uncovered the record of James White's adventure and put together a plausible narrative of how and why he ended up floating helplessly down a turbulent river, entrenched in massive cliffs, with nothing but a driftwood raft to carry him through.
In Helpers at Birds' Nests, renowned naturalist and ornithologist Alexander Skutch provides vivid, detailed accounts of a remarkable aspect of bird behavior—he aid that one bird gives another who is neither its mate nor its dependent young and who may even belong to a different species.
In graceful, clear prose, Skutch makes accessible to amateur bird-watchers examples of cooperation in species as far-flung as the little rifleman of New Zealand, the Laysan albatross in the mid Pacific, and the neotropical birds of Skutch's own Valley of El General in Costa Rica.
Skutch describes the cooperative behavior of more than fifty families of birds. Each family is introduced by a brief sketch of its distribution and outstanding features, followed by intimate, nontechnical accounts of the helpful behaviors that have been most carefully studied. Skutch considers the significance of helpful birds and discusses the theoretical aspects of cooperative breeding, its evolution, kin selection, altruism, and demography.
First discovered by the author more than half a century ago, cooperative breeding has become increasingly studied by professional ornithologists. In this expanded edition, noted behaviorist Stephen Emlen credits Skutch's passionate observations of birds with promoting scientific interest in avian behavior. Emlen offers readers a summary of the advances made in the field during the past ten years and places Skutch's work in the context of contemporary ornithological research.
The Herbarium Handbook has been an important reference for herbarium collections care and management since it was first published in 1989. Based on standard herbarium practices and personal experience from experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the book also draws on examples from partners and collaborators around the world, making it accessible and adaptable for all herbarium practitioners. The book covers everything from creating herbarium collections to preparing and caring for specimens, managing a herbarium building, and public engagement and outreach. It is the essential reference for anyone working in this field.
A feast for the eyes and the table, this user-friendly resource traverses the realms of both the garden and the kitchen, addressing the cultivation, storage, and preparation of more than sixty herbs. Practical growing tips, fascinating histories, nutritional information, and classic recipes appear alongside botanical illustrations drawn from the Royal Horticultural Society’s cherished collection. With both familiar varieties and novel options, Herbs for the Gourmet Gardener will inspire you to create a world of new shapes, colors, and tastes.
In this collection of essays, historian and renowned fire expert Stephen J. Pyne offers his reflections on national and global wildland fire management. Pyne distills the long saga of fire on Earth and its role in underwriting an Anthropocene that might equally be called a Pyrocene.
Presented through a mixture of journalism, history, and literary imagination, Here and There moves the discussion of fire beyond the usual formations of science and policy within a national narrative to one of thoughtful interpretation, analysis, and commentary. Centered on the unique complexities of fire management in a global world, Here and There offers a punctuation point to our understanding of wildfire.
Included in this volume:
- How fire policy has changed within the United States
- How policy in the United States differs from that in other countries
- The history of one of the most famous fire paintings of all time
- Suggested next steps for the future of fire research
In layered stories of her life and travels, Leslie turns her daily walks into revelations of deeper meaning. From Maryland to Iowa to Tasmania, we follow a fierce and keenly observant walker through places of exquisite beauty and complexity. Her daily walks inspire Leslie to accept the invitation of the beckoning trees where she finds herself colliding with the urban coyote, the peculiar banana slug, and the manzanita. She also notes both ridiculous and poignant aspects of human ecosystems in pursuit of what it means to live a life of creativity and creation from scientist-activists battling to save environments to the tragic realities of ordinary life.
In this finely crafted eco-memoir, each place provides Leslie with exactly the scaffolding needed to survive, with nature serving as the tonic. Here is Where I Walk provides a vivid answer to how we can find our place, not only in nature but within ourselves and the world we walk.
Melanie Holmes tells the story of Johnston's journey from a nature-loving Boy Scout to a committed geologist. Blending science with personal detail, Holmes follows Johnston through his encounters with Aleutian volcanoes, his work helping the Portuguese government assess the geothermal power of the Azores, and his dream job as a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Interviews and personal writings reveal what a friend called “the most unjaded person I ever met,” an imperfect but kind and intelligent young scientist passionately in love with his life and work and determined to make a difference.
Melanie Holmes tells the story of Johnston's journey from a nature-loving Boy Scout to a committed geologist. Blending science with personal detail, Holmes follows Johnston through his encounters with Aleutian volcanoes, his work helping the Portuguese government assess the geothermal power of the Azores, and his dream job as a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Interviews and personal writings reveal what a friend called “the most unjaded person I ever met,” an imperfect but kind and intelligent young scientist passionately in love with his life and work and determined to make a difference.
This book is packed with gorgeous full-page close-up photos of prairie plants and animals, interspersed with a dozen short essays that include both ecology and natural history tidbits and enthralling and gently humorous anecdotes about Helzer’s experience staring into a tiny bit of prairie for one year. Helzer writes eloquently about the conservation value of prairies and uses his photos and stories to reinforce a conservation ethic among his readers.
We are now living in an environmental emergency. As climate change, habitat loss, and other threats have placed almost one-fifth of all species on Earth at risk of extinction in the coming decades, a deeper understanding of biodiversity has never been more important. Biodiversity encompasses the rich variety of all life on Earth—the building blocks of life that provide invaluable sources of food, medicine, clothing, building materials, and more.
Marking the arrival of a bold new voice in popular science, The Hidden Universe shows readers what’s at stake in the fight to protect and restore biodiversity, but also what can and should be done now to protect our planet and ourselves for the future. As director of science at one of the world’s largest research organizations in plant and fungal sciences, Brazilian-born scientist Alexandre Antonelli is ideally suited to reveal the wonders of biodiversity at a genetic, species, and ecosystem level—what biodiversity is, how it works, and why it is the most important tool in our battle against climate change. Antonelli offers recommendations for large-scale political changes, as well as smaller, practical steps that readers can implement in their own lives and homes. With Antonelli as our guide, The Hidden Universe helps us imagine a future where biodiversity is not just preserved but cherished.
When he started taking paying passengers by boat through the rapids of the Colorado River's canyons, Norman Nevills invented whitewater tourism and the commercial river business. For twelve years, from 1938 until his death in a plane crash in 1949, he safely took, without a single life lost, friends, explorers, and customers down the Colorado, Green, San Juan, Salmon, and Snake Rivers in boats he designed. National media found him and his adventures irresistible and turned him into the personification of river running. Logging seven trips through the Grand Canyon when no one else had completed more than two, he was called the Fast Water Man. Boatmen he trained went on to found their own competing operations. Always controversial, Nevills had important critics and enemies as well as friends and supporters, but no one can dispute his tremendous impact on the history of western rivers and recreation.
Nevills's complete extant journals of those river expeditions are published for the first time in High, Wide, and Handsome. They contain vivid stories and images of still untamed-by-dams rivers and canyons in the Colorado River system and elsewhere, of wild rides in wooden boats, and of the few intrepid pioneers of adventure tourism who paid Nevills so they could experience it all. They have been transcribed and edited by river historian Roy Webb, author of If We Had a Boat: Green River Explorers, Adventurers, and Runners and Call of the
Colorado.
For more than a century, the world has recognized the extraordinary biological diversity of the forests of Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains. As international attention has focused on forest conservation, farmers, foresters, biologists, and the Tanzanian state have realized that only complex negotiations will save these treasured, but rapidly disappearing, landscapes.
Highland Sanctuary unravels the complex interactions among agriculture, herding, forestry, the colonial state, and the landscape itself. In his examination of the region’s history of ecological transformation, Christopher Conte demonstrates how these forces have combined to create an ever-changing mosaic of forest and field. His study illuminates the debate over conservation, arguing that contingency and chance, the stuff of human history, have shaped forests in ways that rival the power of nature. In Highland Sanctuary, the forest becomes part of human history, rather than something outside of it.
Highland Sanctuary cuts through a legacy of contention and ill will to inform contemporary conservation initiatives. Professor Conte explains how ecological changes take divergent paths in similar environments, in this case on mountains that harbor unique flora and fauna, and how these mountain environments achieve international importance as centers of biodiversity.
Think of the Highlands as the “backyard” and “backstop” of the Philadelphia–New York–Hartford metroplex. A backyard that spans over three million acres across Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut, the Highlands serves as recreational open space for the metroplex’s burgeoning human population. As backstop, Highlands’ watersheds provide a ready source of high-quality drinking water for over fifteen million people.
The Highlands is the first book to examine the natural and cultural landscape of this four-state region, showing how it’s distinctive and why its conservation is vital. Each chapter is written by a different leading researcher and specialist in that field, and introduces readers to another aspect of the Highlands: its geological foundations, its aquifers and watersheds, its forest ecology, its past iron industry.
In the 1800s, the Highlands were mined, cutover, and then largely abandoned. Given time, the forests regenerated, the land healed, and the waters cleared. Increasingly, however, the Highlands are under assault again—polluted runoff contaminating lakes and streams, invasive species choking out the local flora and fauna, exurban sprawl blighting the rural landscape, and climate change threatening the integrity of its ecosystems.
The Highlands makes a compelling case for land use planning and resource management strategies that could help ensure a sustainable future for the region, strategies that could in turn be applied to other landscapes threatened by urbanization across the country. The Highlands are a valuable resource. And now, so is The Highlands.
The highpoints of the fifty states range from Alaska’s 20,310-foot-high Mount McKinley to 345 feet at Lakewood Park in Florida. Some highpoints, such as Mount Mitchell in North Carolina and New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, can be reached by car on a sightseeing drive. Others, including Colorado’s Mount Elbert or Mount Marcy in New York, are accessible as wilderness day hikes. Still others, such as Mount Rainier in Washington or Gannett Peak in Wyoming, are strenuous and risky mountaineering challenges that should be attempted only by experienced climbers. Whatever your level of skill and interest, these varied highpoints offer a diverse range of experiences.
The third edition of this classic guide updates route descriptions and maps, changes to private property ownership and public lands requirements, lists of guides and outfitters, and essential online resources. As with the two popular previous editions, Highpoints of the United States is arranged alphabetically by state, each site description accompanied with a map, photographs, information on trailhead, main and alternative routes, elevation gain, conditions, historical and natural history notes, and lists of potential guides or outfitters. Appendices include a list of highpoints by region and by elevation, useful resources, and a personal log for the unashamed “peak-bagger.”
Whether you’re an armchair hiker or a seasoned climber, interested only in your state’s highest point or all fifty, this book will be an invaluable companion and reference.
These are only five of the forty hiking trails described in Hikes Around Philadelphia. All are within an hour and a half's drive of the city. Ranging from 1.0 to 12.6 miles in length, they will take you through dense forests or wide-open meadows, past early farmsteads or a ringing boulder field from the last ice age. You can break your hike with a visit to a restored home or leave civilization behind on an isolated mountain ridge. Some of the trails are gravel or paved, or are canal towpaths, and are quite suitable for young children, older adults, or wheelchair hikers. Others are longer and more challenging, including rugged sections of the Appalachian Trail and the Horseshoe Trail.
For each hike Boyd Newman and Linda Newman provide a detailed write-up, a trail map showing the hike route on a USGS survey map, and directions to the trailhead. They also include information on distance, elevation, probable time, surface, interesting features, facililities, disability access, whether hunting is allowed in the vicinity, and availability to public transportation. This format allows you to browse through the book and easily locate the particular hike that appeals to you today.
In a concise introduction, the authors not only explain how to get the most out of the book but also give some hints on hiking safety and appropriate clothing and equipment.
This handy reference offers:
*a detailed write-up of each hike
*easy-to-read trail maps
*directions to the trail heads
*information that are accessible by public transportation
*details about handicap accessibility
*lots of other pointers that make planned or last-minute hikes fun and easy for everyone
Beginners will find detailed descriptions of easy hikes on well-maintained trails. Challenging routes to seldom-visited cirques and summits are suggested for the expert.
Maps, photos, and line drawings accompany the trail descriptions. Data tables list distances and hiking times. The geology, native plants, human history, and contemporary issues are discussed to aid in understanding these wonderful mountains.
breathtaking and rugged national parks. The second edition of this compellingly readable
and useful book is completely updated, giving outdoor enthusiasts the most current
information they need to explore this world-renowned wilderness.
Included here are facts on more than 125 official trails recognized by the Park Service.
Each one has its own setting, purpose, style, and theme, and author Kenneth Wise
describes them in rich and vivid detail. For every route, he includes a set of driving directions
to the trailhead, major points of interest, a schedule of distances to each one, a
comprehensive outline of the trail’s course, specifics about where it begins and ends, references
to the U.S. Geological Survey’s quadrangle maps, and, when available, historical
anecdotes relating to the trail. His colorful descriptions of the area’s awe-inspiring beauty
are sure to captivate even armchair travelers.
Organized by sections that roughly correspond to the seventeen major watersheds
in the Smokies, Wise starts in Tennessee and moves south into North Carolina, with
two major trails—the Lakeshore and the Appalachian—that traverse several watersheds
treated independently. Further enhancing the utility of this volume is the inclusion of the
Great Smoky Mountains’ official trail map as well as an informative introduction filled
with details about the geology, climate, vegetation, wildlife, human history, and environmental
concerns of the region.
A seasoned outdoorsman with more than thirty years of experience in the area and
codirector of the Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project at the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, Wise brings an exceptional depth of knowledge to this guide. Both experienced
hikers and novices will find this newly revised edition an invaluable resource for trekking in
the splendor of the Smokies.
This fourth volume in the series exploring religions and the environment investigates the role of the multifaceted Hindu tradition in the development of greater ecological awareness in India.
The twenty-two contributors ask how traditional concepts of nature in the classical texts might inspire or impede an eco-friendly attitude among modern Hindus, and they describe some grassroots approaches to environmental protection. They look to Gandhian principles of minimal consumption, self-reliance, simplicity, and sustainability. And they explore forests and sacred groves in text and tradition and review the political and religious controversies surrounding India’s sacred river systems.
The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”
Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BC, learned medicine and philosophy; traveled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favor of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly seventy works in the “Hippocratic Collection” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”
The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:
Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.
As Williams recounts, while Hippos are only found in Africa today, they actually originated in Asia. They are closer relatives to whales than to pigs or horses, as previously thought. And until the last Ice Age, you could find them as far north as Europe. Today the common hippo is confined to south, central, and east Africa, and its mysterious cousin, the Pygmy Hippo, is only found in the forests of Sierra Leone. From these natural confines, Williams explores how hippos have lived in much wider regions of the human imagination, from the hippo deity Taweret in Ancient Egypt to Obaysch, the first living hippo exhibited in the London Zoo in the nineteenth century, whom Charles Dickens called our “illustrious stranger.” A fascinating history of the hippo in natural and human history, this book also serves as a call for conservation efforts to protect this vulnerable animal.
First, there is a soft rustle in the underbrush, then a low-slung, utterly bizarre-looking insectivore dashes in front of Eladio Fernández. With a reflexive click of digital shutter, he's captured the reclusive (Solenodon paradoxus--a living fossil. A Dominican-based conservationist and photographer, Fernandez is documenting the efforts of a distinguished team of international scientists as they unravel the workings of evolution being played out on the island of Hispaniola.
A short flight from the Florida coast, Hispaniola offers unique opportunities, not just to photographers like Fernández, but to evolutionary biologists as well. At 40 million years, Hispaniola is far older than the Galápagos. Its considerable age, along with a diversity of habitats--from mountains and cloud forests to savannahs and tropical lowlands--makes this island one of the most spectacular, if poorly understood, troves of biota on the planet. The extraordinary richness of species, much of it endangered and yet to be described, is showcased here in nearly 400 spectacular photographs. The photos are accompanied by essays--in both English and Spanish--that make known the Hispaniolan fungi, plants, and animals by the experts who know them best.
Insights gained from Hispaniola's unique flora and fauna, from its rare orchids to its stunningly beautiful bird life, may enrich our understanding of other, more complex, living systems worldwide. What Fernández captures here so vividly is not just the amazing variety of living creatures that have erupted in evolutionary isolation, but the urgency of scientists racing to give that variety a name before it vanishes.
The Historical Ecology Handbook makes essential connections between past and future ecosystems, bringing together leading experts to offer a much-needed introduction to the field of historical ecology and its practical application by on-the-ground restorationists.
Chapters present individual techniques focusing on both culturally derived evidence and biological records, with each chapter offering essential background, tools, and resources needed for using the technique in a restoration effort. The book ends with four in-depth case studies that demonstrate how various combinations of techniques have been used in restoration projects.
The Historical Ecology Handbook is a unique and groundbreaking guide to determining historic reference conditions of a landscape. It offers an invaluable compendium of tools and techniques, and will be essential reading for anyone working in the field of ecological restoration.
Known as one of the most outstanding theologians of the twentieth century, Wolfhart Pannenberg is also considered a great interdisciplinary thinker. Now, essays and articles on science and theology that are central to understanding Pannenberg's theories have been collected into one volume.
Niels Henrik Gregersen, a former student of Pannenberg and now professor of systematic theology at Copenhagen University, has compiled the writings in four sections: Methodology, Creation and Nature's Historicity, Religion and Anthropology, and Meaning and Metaphysics. Included in this volume are:
•Translations of Pannenberg's principled argument for the consonance between science and religion, including contingency and laws of nature, field theories and space-time, and divine action•Translations of Pannenberg's theory of theology as a rational hypothetical science, including his discussions with leading British and American scholars such as A. N. Whitehead, John Cobb, and Langdon Gilkey
•Previously unpublished articles on the problems between science and theology in the course of modern history, explaining why chance may be more important for theology than design
•Translations of seminal articles that articulate Pannenberg's understanding of the role of religion in human nature
•One of the few theological articles on aggression as a psychological and social phenomenon
With this collection, the essays of this important contemporary theologian and his illuminating views are presented in one convenient volume.
Inductive zoology.
In History of Animals Aristotle analyzes “differences”—in parts, activities, modes of life, and character—across the animal kingdom, in preparation for establishing their causes, which are the concern of his other zoological works. Over 500 species of animals are considered: shellfish, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—including human beings.
In Books I–IV, Aristotle gives a comparative survey of internal and external body parts, including tissues and fluids, and of sense faculties and voice. Books V–VI study reproductive methods, breeding habits, and embryogenesis as well as some secondary sex differences. In Books VII–IX, Aristotle examines differences among animals in feeding; in habitat, hibernation, migration; in enmities and sociability; in disposition (including differences related to gender) and intelligence. Here too he describes the human reproductive system, conception, pregnancy, and obstetrics. Book X establishes the female’s contribution to generation.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of History of Animals is in three volumes. A full index to all ten books is included in Volume Three.
Related Volumes:
Aristotle’s biological corpus includes not only History of Animals, but also Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals, and significant parts of On the Soul and Parva Naturalia. Aristotle’s general methodology—“first we must grasp the differences, then try to discover the causes” (HA 1.6)—is applied to the study of plants by his younger co-worker and heir to his school, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants studies differences across the plant kingdom, while De Causis Plantarum studies their causes. In the later ancient world, both Pliny’s Natural History and Aelian’s On the Characteristics of Animals draw significantly on Aristotle’s biological work. The only work by a classical author at all comparable to Aristotle’s treatises on animals is Xenophon’s On Horses (included in Volume VII of the Loeb edition of Xenophon).
Inductive zoology.
In History of Animals Aristotle analyzes “differences”—in parts, activities, modes of life, and character—across the animal kingdom, in preparation for establishing their causes, which are the concern of his other zoological works. Over 500 species of animals are considered: shellfish, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—including human beings.
In Books I–IV, Aristotle gives a comparative survey of internal and external body parts, including tissues and fluids, and of sense faculties and voice. Books V–VI study reproductive methods, breeding habits, and embryogenesis as well as some secondary sex differences. In Books VII–IX, Aristotle examines differences among animals in feeding; in habitat, hibernation, migration; in enmities and sociability; in disposition (including differences related to gender) and intelligence. Here too he describes the human reproductive system, conception, pregnancy, and obstetrics. Book X establishes the female’s contribution to generation.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of History of Animals is in three volumes. A full index to all ten books is included in Volume Three.
Related Volumes:
Aristotle’s biological corpus includes not only History of Animals, but also Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals, and significant parts of On the Soul and Parva Naturalia. Aristotle’s general methodology—“first we must grasp the differences, then try to discover the causes” (HA 1.6)—is applied to the study of plants by his younger co-worker and heir to his school, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants studies differences across the plant kingdom, while De Causis Plantarum studies their causes. In the later ancient world, both Pliny’s Natural History and Aelian’s On the Characteristics of Animals draw significantly on Aristotle’s biological work. The only work by a classical author at all comparable to Aristotle’s treatises on animals is Xenophon’s On Horses (included in Volume VII of the Loeb edition of Xenophon).
Inductive zoology.
In History of Animals Aristotle analyzes “differences”—in parts, activities, modes of life, and character—across the animal kingdom, in preparation for establishing their causes, which are the concern of his other zoological works. Over 500 species of animals are considered: shellfish, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—including human beings.
In Books I–IV, Aristotle gives a comparative survey of internal and external body parts, including tissues and fluids, and of sense faculties and voice. Books V–VI study reproductive methods, breeding habits, and embryogenesis as well as some secondary sex differences. In Books VII–IX, Aristotle examines differences among animals in feeding; in habitat, hibernation, migration; in enmities and sociability; in disposition (including differences related to gender) and intelligence. Here too he describes the human reproductive system, conception, pregnancy, and obstetrics. Book X establishes the female’s contribution to generation.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of History of Animals is in three volumes. A full index to all ten books is included in Volume Three.
Related Volumes:
Aristotle’s biological corpus includes not only History of Animals, but also Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals, and significant parts of On the Soul and Parva Naturalia. Aristotle’s general methodology—“first we must grasp the differences, then try to discover the causes” (HA 1.6)—is applied to the study of plants by his younger co-worker and heir to his school, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants studies differences across the plant kingdom, while De Causis Plantarum studies their causes. In the later ancient world, both Pliny’s Natural History and Aelian’s On the Characteristics of Animals draw significantly on Aristotle’s biological work. The only work by a classical author at all comparable to Aristotle’s treatises on animals is Xenophon’s On Horses (included in Volume VII of the Loeb edition of Xenophon).
In the 1700s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau celebrated the Alps as the quintessence of the triumph of nature over the “horrors” of civilization. Now available in English, History of the Alps, 1500-1900: Environment, Development, and Society provides a precise history of one of the greatest mountain range systems in the world. Jon Mathieu’s work disproves a number of commonly held notions about the Alps, positioning them as neither an inversion of lowland society nor a world apart with respect to Europe. Mathieu’s broad historical portrait addresses both the economic and sociopolitical—exploring the relationship between population levels, development, and the Alpine environment, as well as the complex links between agrarian structure, society, and the development of modern civilization. More detailed analysis examines the relationship between various agrarian structures and shifting political configurations, several aspects of family history between the late Middle Ages and the turn of the twentieth century, and exploration of the Savoy, Grisons, and Carinthia regions.
As Laws reveals, gardening tools have coevolved with human society, and the story of these fifty individual tools presents an innovative history of humans and the garden over time. Laws takes us back to the Neolithic age, when the microlith, the first “all-in-one” tool was invented. Consisting of a small sharp stone blade that was set into a handle made of wood, bone, or antler, it was a small spade that could be used to dig, clip, and cut plant material. We find out that wheelbarrows originated in China in the second century BC, and their basic form has not changed much since. He also describes how early images of a pruning knife appear in Roman art, in the form of a scythe that could cut through herbs, vegetables, fruits, and nuts and was believed to be able to tell the gardener when and what to harvest.
Organized into five thematic chapters relating to different types of gardens: the flower garden, the kitchen garden, the orchard, the lawn, and ornamental gardens, the book includes a mix of horticulture and history, in addition to stories featuring well-known characters—we learn about Henry David Thoreau’s favorite hoe, for example. A History of the Garden in Fifty Tools will be a beautiful gift for any home gardener and a reassuring reminder that gardeners have always struggled with the same quandaries.
Naturalist and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore meditates on connection and separation in these twenty-one elegant, probing essays. Using the metaphor of holdfasts—the structures that attach seaweed to rocks with a grip strong enough to withstand winter gales—she examines our connections to our own bedrock.
“When people lock themselves in their houses at night and seal the windows shut to keep out storms, it is possible to forget, sometimes for years and years, that human beings are part of the natural world,” she writes. Holdfast passionately reclaims an awareness of the natural world, exploring the sense of belonging fostered by the communal howls of wolves; the inevitability of losing children to their own lives; the fear of bears and love of storms; the sublimity of life and longing in the creatures of the sea; her agonizing decision when facing her father’s bone-deep pain. As Moore travels philosophically and geographically—from Oregon’s shores to Alaska’s islands—she leaves no doubt of her virtuosity and range.
The new afterword is an important statement on the new responsibilities of nature writers as the world faces the consequences of climate change.
"[Borgmann] has offered a stunningly clear definition of information in Holding On to Reality. . . . He leaves room for little argument, unless one wants to pose the now vogue objection: I guess it depends on what you mean by nothing."—Paul Bennett, Wired
"A superb anecdotal analysis of information for a hype-addled age."—New Scientist
"This insightful and poetic reflection on the changing nature of information is a wonderful antidote to much of the current hype about the 'information revolution.' Borgmann reminds us that whatever the reality of our time, we need 'a balance of signs and things' in our lives."—Margaret Wertheim, LA Weekly
Holistic management is a systems-thinking approach for managing resources developed by Savory decades ago after observing the devastation of desertification in his native Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Properly managed livestock are key to restoring the world’s grassland soils, the major sink for atmospheric carbon, and minimizing the most damaging impacts on humans and the natural world. This book updates Savory's paradigm-changing vision for reversing desertification, stemming the loss of biodiversity, eliminating fundamental causes of human impoverishment throughout the world, and climate change. Reorganized chapters make it easier for readers to understand the framework for Holistic Management and the four key insights that underlie it. New color photographs showcase before-and-after examples of land restored by livestock.
This long-anticipated new edition is written for new generations of ranchers, farmers, eco- and social entrepreneurs, and development professionals working to address global environmental and social degradation. It offers new hope that a sustainable future for humankind and the world we depend on is within reach.
In this revised and expanded edition of Hollows, Peepers, and Highlanders, author George Constantz, a biologist and naturalist, writes about the beauty and nature of the Appalachian landscape. While the information is scientific in nature, Constantz's accessible descriptions of the adaptation of various organisms to their environment enable the reader to enjoy learning about the Appalachian ecosystem. The book is divided into three sections: "Stage and Theater," "The Players," and "Seasonal Act." Each section sets the scene and describes the events occurring in nature. "Stage and Theatre" is comprised of chapters that describe the origins of the Appalachia region. "The Players" is an interesting and in-depth look into the ecology of animals, such as the mating rituals of different species, and the evolutionary explanation for the adaptation of Appalachian wildlife. The last section, "Seasonal Act," makes note of the changes in Appalachian weather each season and its effect on the inhabitants.
In Hawaiian mythology, ancestors may occupy the physical forms of animals known as 'aumakua. Laysan albatross—known as moli—are among them. Smitten with these charismatic creatures, Osterlund set out to learn everything she could about moli. She eventually came to embrace them as her 'aumakua—not as dusty old myths on a museum bookshelf, but as breathing, breeding, boisterous realities.
Albatross sport many superlative qualities. They live long—sometimes longer than sixty years—and spend the majority of their time airborne, gliding across vast oceanic expanses. They are model mates and devoted parents, and are among the only animals known to take long-term same-sex partners. In nesting season, they rack up inconceivable mileage just to find supper for chicks waiting on the islands of the Hawaiian archipelago.
It is from the island of Kaua'i that Holy Moli takes flight. Osterlund relates a true tale of courage, celebration and grief—of patience, affection and resilience. This is the story of how albatross guided the author on her own long journey, retracing distances and decades, back to the origin of a binding bargain she struck when she was ten years old, shortly after her mother’s death.
Holy Moli is a natural history of the albatross, a moving memoir of grief, and a soaring tribute to ancestors. Within its pages are lyrics of wonder—for freedom, for beauty, and for the far-flung feathered creatures known to us as albatross.
People who flyfish know that a favorite river bend, a secluded spot in moving waters, can feel like home—a place you know intimately and intuitively. In prose that reads like the flowing current of a river, scholar and essayist George Handley blends nature writing, local history, theology, environmental history, and personal memoir in his new book Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River.
Handley’s meditations on the local Provo River watershed present the argument that a sense of place requires more than a strong sense of history and belonging, it requires awareness and commitment. Handley traces a history of settlement along the Provo that has profoundly transformed the landscape and yet neglected its Native American and environmental legacies. As a descendent of one of the first pioneers to irrigate the area, and as a witness to the loss of orchards, open space, and an eroded environmental ethic, Handley weaves his own personal and family history into the landscape to argue for sustainable belonging. In avoiding the exclusionist and environmentally harmful attitudes that come with the territorial claims to a homeland, the flyfishing term, “home waters,” is offered as an alternative, a kind of belonging that is informed by deference to others, to the mysteries of deep time, and to a fragile dependence on water. While it has sometimes been mistakenly assumed that the Mormon faith is inimical to good environmental stewardship, Handley explores the faith’s openness to science, its recognition of the holiness of the creation, and its call for an ethical engagement with nature. A metaphysical approach to the physical world is offered as an antidote to the suicidal impulses of modern society and our persistent ambivalence about the facts of our biology and earthly condition. Home Waters contributes a perspective from within the Mormon religious experience to the tradition of such Western writers as Wallace Stegner, Terry Tempest Williams, Steven Trimble, and Amy Irvine.
Winner of the Mormon Letters Award for Memoir.
Horses have been part of the American West since the first Spanish explorers brought their European-bred steeds onto the new continent. Soon thereafter, some of these animals, lost or abandoned by their owners or captured by indigenous peoples, became the foundation of the great herds of mustangs (from the Spanish mesteño, stray) that still roam the West. These feral horses are inextricably intertwined with the culture, economy, and mythology of the West. The current situation of the mustangs as vigorous competitors for the scanty resources of the West’s drought-parched rangelands has put them at the center of passionate controversies about their purpose, place, and future on the open range. Photographer/oral historian Paula Morin has interviewed sixty-two people who know these horses best: ranchers, horse breeders and trainers, Native Americans, veterinarians, wild horse advocates, mustangers, range scientists, cowboy poets, western historians, wildlife experts, animal behaviorists, and agents of the federal Bureau of Land Management. The result is the most comprehensive, impartial examination yet of the history and impact of wild mustangs in the Great Basin. Morin elicits from her interviewees a range of expertise, insight, and candid opinion about the nature of horses, ranching, and the western environment. Honest Horses brings us the voices of authentic westerners, people who live intimately with horses and the land, who share their experiences and love of the mustangs, and who understand how precariously all life exists in Great Basin.
Hope Is an Imperative brings together in a single volume Professor Orr’s most important works. These include classics such as “What Is Education For?,” one of the most widely reprinted essays in the environmental literature, “The Campus and the Biosphere,” which helped launch the green campus movement,and “Loving Children: A Design Problem,” which renowned theologian and philosopher Thomas Berry called “the most remarkable essay I’ve read in my whole life.”
The book features thirty-three essays, along with an introductory section that considers the evolution of environmentalism, section introductions that place the essays into a larger context, and a foreword by physicist and author Fritjof Capra.
Hope Is an Imperative is a comprehensive collection of works by one of the most important thinkers and writers of our time. It offers a complete introduction to the writings of David Orr for readers new to the field, and represents a welcome compendium of key essays for longtime fans. The book is a must-have volume for every environmentalist’s bookshelf.
Both Ehrlich and Tobias argue that we are on the verge of environmental catastrophe, as the human population continues to grow without restraint and without significant attempts to deal with overconsumption and the vast depletion of resources and climate problems it creates. Though their views are sympathetic, they differ in their approach and in some key moral stances, giving rise to a heated and engaging dialogue that opens up dozens of new avenues of exploration. They both believe that the impact of a human society on its environment is the direct result of its population size, and through their dialogue they break down the complex social problems that are wrapped up in this idea and attempts to overcome it, hitting firmly upon many controversial topics such as circumcision, religion, reproduction, abortion, animal rights, diet, and gun control. For Ehrlich and Tobias, ethics involve not only how we treat other people directly, but how we treat them and other organisms indirectly through our effects on the environment. University of California, Berkeley professor John Harte joins the duo for part of the conversation, and his substantial expertise on energy and climate change adds a crucial perspective to the discussion of the impact of population on global warming.
This engaging and timely book invites readers into an intimate conversation with some of the most eminent voices in science as they offer a powerful and approachable argument that the ethical and scientific issues involved in solving our environmental crisis are deeply intertwined, while offering us an optimistic way forward. Hope on Earth is indeed a conversation we should all be having.
At a time of widespread environmental pessimism, Hope's Horizon goes on an inspirational offensive. In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, author Chip Ward tells of his travels among a new generation of activists who are moving beyond defensive environmental struggles and advocating pioneering, proactive strategies for healing the land.
Chip Ward's three-year odyssey took him behind the scenes of efforts to reconnect fragmented habitats and "re-wild" the North American continent; the campaign to drain Lake Powell and restore Glen Canyon to its natural state; and the struggle to keep nuclear waste off Western Shoshone ancestral lands and, ultimately, to abolish all nuclear power and weapons. These movements, and the practical visionaries leading them, challenge readers with a new paradigm in which land is used in a spirit of collaboration with natural systems rather than domination of them. Broad in its sweep, Hope's Horizon uses its topical subjects as springboards for exploring how we can redefine our place in the world while restoring damaged habitats, replenishing lost diversity, and abandoning harmful technologies.
Lively, literate, and free of the grimness that characterizes so much environmental writing, Hope's Horizon will change the way readers see the world. It makes complicated concepts and issues accessible, and wild ideas compelling. And while the book's starting point is a hard-nosed indictment of humanity's failed stewardship of the earth, the stories that follow tell of catalytic optimism and ecological wisdom in the face of self-destructive habit and blind pride.
Best known for Our Southern Highlanders (1913) and Camping and Woodcraft (1916), Horace Kephart’s keen interest in exploring and documenting the great outdoors would lead him not only to settle in Bryson City, North Carolina, but also to become the most significant writer about the Great Smoky Mountains in the early twentieth century.
Edited by Mae Miller Claxton and George Frizzell, Horace Kephart: Writings extends past Kephart’s two well-read works of the early 1900s and dives into his correspondence with friends across the globe, articles and columns in national magazines, unpublished manuscripts, journal entries, and fiction in order to shed some deserved light on Kephart’s classic image as a storyteller and practical guide to the Smokies. The book is divided into thematic subsections that call attention to the variety in Kephart’s writings, its nine chapters featuring Kephart’s works on camping and woodcraft, guns, southern Appalachian culture, fiction, the Cherokee, scouting, and the park and Appalachian trail. Each chapter is accompanied by an introductory essay by a notable Appalachian scholar providing context and background to the included works.
Written for scholars interested in Appalachian culture and history, followers of the modern outdoor movement, students enamored of the Great Smoky Mountains, and general readers alike, Horace Kephart: Writings gathers a plethora of little-known and rarely seen material that illustrates the diversity and richness found in Kephart’s work.
The remarkable relationship between people and horses has been evoked in art from the beginning of the bond between them. In this beautifully illustrated book, Catherine Johns explores the horse in art from the ancient world to the modern era.
In early human history, horses were among the wild creatures hunted for meat; they were domesticated comparatively late, around 4000 B.C. As people developed from hunter-gatherers to farmers, the horse offered the potential for a revolution in power and transport—the ability to move farther and faster transformed society. Johns tells the story of the horse and highlights the key roles this animal has played in human warfare, travel, ceremony, hunting, racing, and in myth and symbolism.
The themes are presented in stunning four-color illustrations of British Museum objects that trace our perceptions of the horse through time and space, and convey the wide variety of images that have been created of this magnificent creature: in colossal and life-sized sculpture, in paintings, and in minuscule form on coins, gems, and jewelry; and from the world of ancient Greece and Rome to the arts of India, Africa, China, and Japan.
Horses appear in stone and metal, ceramic, wood, bone, ivory, and textiles. From the Horse of Selene and a gold model chariot from the Oxus treasure to Persian miniatures and prints by Duerer, Stubbs, and Hokusai, this book will inform, entertain, and delight horse lovers and all readers interested in this inspiring animal and its profound contribution to human culture.
The Arabs created one of the world's finest breeds of saddle horses, the Arabian, and they have long possessed an immense store of knowledge regarding the care, training, and breeding of this splendid horse. In the nineteenth century, General Melchior Joseph Eugene Daumas had access to their knowledge even though, as he pointed out, "it requires a great deal of patience and tact for a Christian to obtain from the Mohammedans even the most insignificant of details . . ." General Daumas was, because of his unique relationship with the Arabs, probably the first European to produce a comprehensive study of Arabian horses. And to add even greater value to The Horses of the Sahara, he was able to secure for the ninth edition, here translated, extended commentaries on all aspects of Arabian horsemanship by the Emir Abd-el-Kadar, one of the most important nineteenth-century Arab leaders and certainly one of the foremost authorities on the subject.
The Horses of the Sahara will be of interest not only to equestrians but also to historians and other scholars interested in the customs of the North African desert tribes and in the complex backgrounds of European–North African relations. General Daumas took part in the conquest of Algeria by France, so distinguishing himself that he was named Director of the Bureau of Algerian Affairs in the French Ministry of War. During the campaigns and the occupation that followed, he studied and attempted to understand the native peoples, with an objectivity and sympathy unusual among the colonialists of the period. His book provides fascinating sidelights on many aspects of Arab life, including customs, superstitions, religion, and family life.
Sheila M. Ohlendorf was uniquely suited to translate The Horses of the Sahara. An excellent rider herself, thoroughly experienced with the animals and the techniques being discussed, she also spoke fluent French, having received her B.A. degree in languages from Texas Western University (now the University of Texas at El Paso). As curator of the Hall of the Horsemen, the large collection at the University of Texas at Austin, she had access to a wide variety of supplementary authorities, which enriched both her translation and the notes that accompany the book.
Arline Zatz has writtenthe first guidebook to everything equine in the Garden State: Horsing Around in New Jersey. This accessible, easy-to-use volume is essential reading for the novice who yearns to go horseback riding but doesn't know how or where to begin; for the experienced equestrian seeking new trails and campsites; for anyone wishing to attend an equestrian event; and for those seeking a job in the equestrian field, which already employs nearly 6,000 New Jerseyans. The industry generates more than 650 million dollars in annual revenue. Millions of people attend equine events in New Jersey each year. The U.S. Equestrian team makes its home there, and New Jersey's state animal is the horse.
Zatz tells readers--including those with disabilities--where they can take lessons, rent a horse, and prepare for riding. She includes safety and first aid tips. Horse history and breeds common to New Jersey are discussed, as are health concerns, including diseases, preventative medicine, and emergency care. The book showcases New Jersey's eighty-five equestrian trails and covers information on where to obtain riding permits and their accompanying rules and regulations. There is advice for both new horse owners and renters, including recommendations on tack and clothing, stable management, and horse adoption.
The book acquaints readers with year-round equine entertainment opportunities, and offers dozens of suggestions on where to watch or participate in sports on horseback. Zatz lists equine education programs for all ages, and outlines numerous employment opportunities within the equine industry. The book concludes with a glossary of common horse industry terminology, a listing of national equine associations and breed registries, equipment sources, and equine publications for further reading.
Hertsgaard has spent the last two decades reporting on climate change for media outlets including The New Yorker, NPR, Time, Vanity Fair, and The Nation, where he is the environment correspondent. His lecture focused on political movements and how environmental advocates can provoke change in public attitudes and on Capitol Hill. Hertsgaard sees 2011’s Occupy movement as a sign of real hope and discussed what climate activists can learn from Occupy’s tactics.
This E-ssential is an edited version of Hertsgaard’s talk and the subsequent question and answer session. While some material has been cut and some language modified for clarity, the intention was to retain the substance of the original discussion.
Our penchant for keeping houseplants is an ancient practice dating back to the Pharaohs. House Plants explores the stories behind the plants we bring home and how they were transformed from wild plants into members of our households.
A billion-dollar global industry, house plants provide interaction with nature and contribute to our health, happiness, and well-being. They also support their own miniature ecosystems and are part of the home biome.
Featuring many superb illustrations, House Plants explores both their botanical history and cultural impact, from song (Gracie Fields’s “Biggest Aspidistra in the World”), literature (Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying), and cinema (Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors) to fashion, technology, contemporary design, and painting.
From stories of red-tailed hawks making their homes on the ledges of Manhattan skyscrapers to their role in protecting California's vineyards from flocks of grape-loving starlings, How Fast Can a Falcon Dive? explores how these avian predators interact with people and with their environment.
The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich is the first book to examine the Third Reich's environmental policies and to offer an in-depth exploration of the intersections between brown ideologies and green practices.
Environmentalists and conservationists in Germany welcomed the rise of the Nazi regime with open arms and hoped that it would bring about legal and institutional changes. However, environmentalists soon realized that the rhetorical attention they received from the regime did not always translate into action. By the late 1930s, nature and the environment had become less pressing concerns as Nazi Germany prepared for and executed a global conflagration.
Based on prodigious archival research, and written by some of the most important scholars in the field of twentieth-century German history, How Green Were the Nazis? examines the overlap between Nazi ideology and conservationist agendas. This landmark book underscores the fact that the “green” policies of the Nazis were more than a mere episode or aberration in environmental history.
Contributors: Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc, Thomas Zeller, Charles Closmann, Michael Imort, Thomas Lekan, Frank Uekötter, Gesine Gerhard, Thomas Rohkrämer, Mark Bassin, and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn.
With this invocation, María Meléndez beckons us on a journey—an exotic expedition through life’s mysteries in search of the finer strands of experience. In a Latina voice laced with a naturalist’s sense of wonder, she weaves bold images reflecting a world threaded by unseen wounds, now laid before us with an unflinching love of life and an exquisite precision of language. Adopting multiple guises—field researcher, laboring mother, grief-stricken lover—Meléndez casts aside stereotypes and expectations to forge a new language steeped in life and landscape. Whether meditating on a controlled prairie burn or contemplating the turquoise cheek of a fathead minnow, she weaves words and memories into a rich tapestry that resonates with sensual detail and magnifies her sense of maternal wildness, urging us to “Love as much as you / can, don’t throw your heart / away to just one god.” In her paean to the Aztec deity Tonacacihuatl, mother of the gods, Meléndez muses that “How many spirits she’s twin to, and how long she’ll last in this world, / are secrets stashed in the rattle / of corn ears, in the coils / of venomous snakes.”
Through stunning images and stark realism, her poems embrace motherhood and vocation, love and grief, land and life, to bring new meaning to the natural world and how we experience it.
Exploring ways of conceiving the complexity and multiplicity of humans’ many interactive relationships with the environment, the contributors provide in-depth case studies of the interweaving of culture and nature in socio-historical processes. The case studies focus on the origin of environmental movements, the politicization of environmental issues in city politics, the development of a local energy production system, and the convergence of forest management practices toward a dominant scheme. They are supported by explorations of big-picture issues: recurring themes in studies of social and environmental dynamics, the difficulties of deliberative democracy, and the potential gains for socio-ecological research offered by developmental systems theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of intentionality.
How Nature Speaks includes a helpful primer, “On Thinking Dynamically about the Human Ecological Condition,” which explains the basic principles of complexity and nonlinear thinking.
Contributors. Chuck Dyke, Yrjö Haila, Ari Jokinen, Ville Lähde, Markus Laine, Iordanis Marcoulatos, John O’Neill, Susan Oyama, Taru Peltola, Lasse Peltonen, John Shotter, Peter Taylor
What do we mean when we say that a diet is nutritious? Why is it that some animals can get all the energy they need from eating leaves while others would perish on such a diet? Why don’t mountain gorillas eat fruit all day like chimpanzees do? Answers to these questions about food and feeding are among the many tasty morsels that emerge from this authoritative book. Informed by the latest scientific tools and millions of hours of field and laboratory work on species across the primate order and around the globe, this volume is an exhaustive synthesis of our understanding of what, why, and how primates eat what they eat. State-of-the-art information presented at physiological, behavioral, ecological, and evolutionary scales will serve as a road map for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners as they work toward a holistic understanding of life as a primate and the urgent conservation consequences of diet and food availability in a changing world.
Using an evolutionary framework, How the Earth Turned Green addresses questions such as: Should all green organisms be considered plants? Why do these organisms look the way they do? How are they related to one another and to other chlorophyll-free organisms? How do they reproduce? How have they changed and diversified over time? And how has the presence of green organisms changed the Earth’s ecosystems? More engaging than a traditional textbook and displaying an astonishing breadth, How the Earth Turned Green will both delight and enlighten embryonic botanists and any student interested in the evolutionary history of plants.
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