Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

On New Year’s Day 2012, Amy-Jane Beer’s beloved friend Kate set out with a group of others to kayak the River Rawthey in Cumbria. Kate never came home, and her death left her devoted family and friends bereft and unmoored. Returning to visit the Rawthey years later, Amy realises how much she misses the connection to the natural world she always felt when on or close to rivers, and so begins a new phase of exploration.

Humanity can make short work of the oceans' creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller's sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It's a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail.

Trees clean air and water; hoverflies and bees pollinate our crops; the kingfisher inspired the construction of high-speed trains. In Tapestries of Life, best-selling author Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains how closely we are all connected with the natural world, highlighting our indelible link with nature’s finely knit system and our everyday lives.

The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the 10th longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles, it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Haunted by the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the most densely fortified frontier on Earth. In his 80th year, Colin Thubron takes a dramatic journey from the Amur's secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles.

Wyl Menmuir’s The Draw of the Sea is a beautifully written and deeply moving portrait of the Cornish Coast and the people who make their livings there, examining the ephemeral but universal pull the sea holds over the human imagination.

A sweeping, interdisciplinary history of the world's third-largest river, a potent symbol across South Asia and the Hindu diaspora. Weaving together geography, environmental politics, and religious history, Sen offers a remarkable portrait of one of the world's largest and most densely populated river basins.

In The Sea Inside, Philip Hoare sets out to rediscover the sea, its islands, birds and beasts. He begins on the south coast where he grew up, a place of almost monastic escape. From there he travels to the other side of the world - the Azores, Sri Lanka, New Zealand - in search of encounters with animals and people. Navigating between human and natural history, he asks what these stories mean for us now.

Liminal, transformative and increasingly elusive – far from a simple cloud of water droplets, fog is a state of mind. As mist drifted through a copse of trees, turning a familiar place strange and otherworldly, Laura Pashby snapped a photograph and an obsession began. Pashby hunts for fog, walks and swims in it, explores its often pivotal role in literature, mythology and history, as well as its environmental significance. There has been a 50 per cent drop in 'fog events' in the past fifty years, fog is drifting away without us noticing and the ecological impact could be calamitous.

Through a series of personal journeys, Dan Richards explores the appeal of far-flung outposts in mountains, tundra, forests, oceans and deserts. Following a route from the Cairngorms of Scotland to the fire-watch lookouts of Washington State; from Iceland's 'Houses of Joy' to the Utah desert; frozen ghost towns in Svalbard to shrines in Japan; Roald Dahl's writing hut to a lighthouse in the North Atlantic, Richards explores landscapes which have inspired writers, artists and musicians....

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of Northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,000 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

From seals' frisky behavior to red squirrels making their last stand in the battle against the greys, here are the mammals of Britain as you've never seen them before. Join Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall on an overnight stakeout in search of the elusive pine marten. Follow them down mines inhabited by greater horseshoe bats, cavers, ravers and teenagers smoking unusual substances. Meet water voles thriving in the East End of Glasgow—despite the lack of water—and observe the brilliance of wild boar in your back garden.

The sea has captivated people ever since humans first set sail on it; its beauty, its force, the mysteries it holds. For the few who make their living from it, trying to understand it, to second guess its ever-changing moods, creates an addiction to salt water that keeps us coming back. My Fishing Life documents the reality of that life. This book lifts the lid on what it's like to be one of the country's very few female fishermen, and also do justice to an iconic industry that, while it feeds and impacts almost all of us, remains one of our most mysterious and misunderstood.

The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints, invasion forces and furtive gun-runners, writers, musicians and fishermen. The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea—from the narrow North Channel through St George’s Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into wide Atlantic—have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms.

The ocean covers seventy per cent of the surface of our planet, and two thirds of this lie beyond national borders. Owned by all nations and no nation simultaneously, these waters are home to some of the richest and most biodiverse environments on the planet. But they are also home to atrocities beyond most of our imaginations. Here, out of sight and often out of mind, industry and economic progress rule and lax enforcement and apathy are the status quo, underscored by a battle to control, profit from, protect, or obliterate the world's largest, wildest commons.

For over two decades, Lara Maiklem has been scouring the banks of the tidal Thames looking for objects – lost or discarded – that tell forgotten stories. In this charming sequel to the bestselling Mudlarking, Lara widens her search beyond the river and reflects on life lived post-pandemic, reminding us that it’s possible to draw meaning in the most unlikely of places.

Edith Widder grew up determined to become a marine biologist. But after complications from a surgery during college caused her to go temporarily blind, she became fascinated by light as well as the power of optimism. Below the Edge of Darkness explores the depths of the planet's oceans as Widder seeks to understand bioluminescence, one of the most important and widely used forms of communication in nature.

A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of swift and dangerous oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a planet teetering on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the story of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant explores the past and the future of our ever-hotter, more flammable world.

First, a dream of escaping the city...and then a century-old cottage to match the dream. Moving to a small village in the heart of the Irish countryside was the start of a new life for Philip Judge - the beginning of life in sight of Yellow Mountain. Philip describes the season-by-season charms and frustrations that he, his beloved and, eventually, his two growing boys experience as they adapt to life in the countryside.

Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.