Showing titles in Ecology

What will it take for us to preserve what remains of life on the planet? Is humanity itself at risk? These are the overarching questions Said Dawlabani asks in this book’s comprehensive development model.

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.

Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the book’s first publication, David Attenborough has revisited Life on Earth, completely updating and adding to the original text, taking account of modern scientific discoveries from around the globe....

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.

Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.

Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites listeners to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.

Into the Deep is your gateway into Earth's last unexplored frontier: the ocean. With 10 captivating chapters that unravel the deep sea's most astonishing, mysterious, and mind-bending phenomena, this book is crafted for curious minds of all ages. Whether you're a budding marine biologist, a lifelong ocean lover, or someone who marvels at the wonders of nature, this journey into the abyss will leave you awestruck.

From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America 20,000 years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were.

If fresh water is to be treasured, the Great Lakes are the mother lode. No bodies of water can compare to them. One of them, Superior, is the largest lake on earth, and the five lakes together contain a fifth of the world's supply of standing fresh water. Their surface area of 95,000 square miles is greater than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island combined. They are so vast that they dominate much of the geography, climate, and history of North America. In one way or another, they affect the lives of tens of millions.

A Luta pela Floresta, como a Noruega ajuda a proteger ― e a destruir ― o meio ambiente no Brasil (traduzido do original norueguês por Leonardo Pinto Silva) é um livro indispensável para se compreender e discutir a questão ecológica no Brasil. O livro conta os dois lados da presença...

As development and subsequent habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. But there is an important and simple step toward reversing this alarming trend: Everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity. Bringing Nature Home has sparked a national conversation about the link between healthy local ecosystems and human well-being, and this audio edition will help broaden the movement. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical recommendations, everyone can make a difference.

Despite efforts to sustain civilization, humanity faces existential threats from overpopulation, globalized trade and travel, urbanization, and global climate change. In A Darwinian Survival Guide, Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta offer a novel—and hopeful—perspective on how to meet these tremendous challenges by changing the discourse from sustainability to survival. Darwinian evolution, the world’s only theory of survival, is the means by which the biosphere has persisted and renewed itself following past environmental perturbations, and it has never failed, they explain.

Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built - and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes.

If you are at all interested in life on our planet, then you need to know about insects. They are the most successful group of animals ever to have lived on Earth. Making up three quarters of all animal species, insects conquered the planet long ago. They were among the very first animals to appear on land and were the first to take to the air. Their total biomass is at least 10 times that of all humans and our livestock combined.

El planeta está cambiando. Las poblaciones también. Algunas se expanden sin control. Otras se desmoronan en silencio. ¿Cómo entender lo que está ocurriendo? ¿Y qué podemos hacer al respecto?

Este segundo libro es una exploración apasionante de los ritmos invisibles que rigen la vida en la Tierra. A través de ejemplos reales, historias sorprendentes y explicaciones accesibles, descubrirás cómo las poblaciones suben, bajan, migran, se agrupan, se dispersan o incluso desaparecen. Aprenderás qué es el efecto Allee, qué ocurre cuando llega una especie invasora, cómo funcionan las redes tróficas y por qué los humanos no somos tan distintos del resto de las especies.

¿Por qué algunas especies se multiplican mientras otras desaparecen sin dejar rastro? ¿Qué fuerzas invisibles determinan el destino de una población? Este libro responde esas preguntas con claridad, sin tecnicismos, y con ejemplos reales que muestran cómo la vida se organiza, se adapta y a veces se rompe. Desde el crecimiento explosivo de los conejos hasta el freno invisible de los recursos, pasando por el papel del azar, los depredadores y la estrategia reproductiva, este libro ofrece una introducción rigurosa pero accesible a los mecanismos que hacen crecer o declinar a las poblaciones.

First published in 1949 and praised in the New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite", A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.