Showing titles in Ecology

Down to the Wire is a sober and eloquent assessment of climate destabilization and an urgent call to action. David Orr describes how political negligence, an economy based on the insatiable consumption of trivial goods, and a disdain for the well-being of future generations have brought us to the tipping point that biologist Edward O. Wilson calls "[T]he bottleneck".

Learn new eco-friendly, sustainable living ideas from Terri Paajanen, who has been successfully practicing green living on her five acres for the past seven years. Guilt Free & Green offers planet-positive alternatives, and not just the obvious ones. This inspiring how-to audiobook teaches you with easy-to-remember ideas that actually are practical and with money-saving ideas that make you want to live green and stay there.

The Earth is alive, and we are utterly and totally dependent upon its remaining vitality and self-regulation if we have any hope of surviving as a species. Current approaches to doing the right or useful ecological actions are necessary but not sufficient. We need more than window dressing and superficial action. We have to get deeper into causes of how we got to where we are. The audiobook focuses on that deeper understanding and the transformation needed to really address the ills that affect Gaia.

How can you truly belong to a place? What does being at home mean in a society that has always celebrated the search for greener pastures? And can a newcomer ever acquire the deep understanding of the land that comes from being part of a culture that has lived there for centuries? When Daniel Coleman came to Hamilton to take a position at McMaster University, he began to ask himself these kinds of questions, and Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place is his answer.

There are more than 180 exotic species in the Great Lakes. Some, such as the Asian tapeworm, have had little or no impact so far. But a handful of others - sea lamprey, alewife, spiny water flea, rusty crayfish, and more - have conducted an all-out assault on the Great Lakes and are winning the battle. Here, William Rapai focuses on the impact of these invasives. Rapai begins with a brief biological and geological history of the Great Lakes. He examines new policies and the tradeoffs that must be weighed, and ends with an inspired call for action.

Gene Logsdon's The Man Who Created Paradise is a message of hope at a time when the very concept of earth stewardship is under attack. The fable, inspired by a true story, tells how Wally Spero looked at one of the bleakest places in America -- a raw and barren strip-mined landscape -- and saw in it his escape from the drudgery of his factory job. He bought an old bulldozer and used the machine to carve patiently, acre by acre, a beautiful little farm out of a seemingly worthless wasteland.

For over a quarter century, biologist Mark J. Rauzon has worked in the field of island restoration, traveling throughout the American Insular Pacific to eradicate invasive plants and animals introduced by humans. The region spans from Hawai'i to Samoa to Guam, and their neighbors - small, obscure, tropical islands that are hundreds if not thousands of nautical miles from each other. These little-known US possessions and territories include various islands and atolls: Jarvis, Howland, Baker, the Northern Marianas, Wake, Palmyra, Johnston, and Rose Atoll, among others.

La Ruota di Medicina degli indiani d'America è la Ruota della Natura e racchiude in sé l'intera cultura e le tradizioni dei nativi americani: è la simbolica testimonianza della loro spiritualità, del rapporto vivo e vero che essi intrattengono da sempre con la natura. La Ruota di medicina ci fa scoprire che la natura non è un oggetto al nostro servizio, ma un sistema complesso e vivente che continuamente si trasforma, i cui equilibri dipendono anche da noi e dal nostro comportamento quotidiano nei suoi confronti.

A century of industrial development is the briefest of moments in the half billion years of the Earth's evolution. And yet our current era has brought greater changes to the Earth than any period in human history. The biosphere, the globe's life-giving envelope of air and climate, has been changed irreparably. In A World to Live In, the distinguished ecologist George Woodwell shows that the biosphere is now a global human protectorate and that its integrity of structure and function are tied closely to the human future.

In Getting to Green, Frederic C. Rich argues that meaningful progress on urgent environmental issues can be made only on a bipartisan basis. Rich reminds us of American conservation's conservative roots and of the bipartisan political consensus that had Republican congressmen voting for, and Richard Nixon signing, the most important environmental legislation of the 1970s.

In a bid to create the perfect sustainable food production system, aquaponics was born. This system has been adopted worldwide and used extensively. However, many people tend to take up this food production technique without having basic knowledge of what it entails. As a result, their systems flop and fail to perform to their expectations. This has prompted educational campaigns geared toward familiarizing the community with the practice.

This light-hearted collection of memoirs tells the compelling story of a company executive who walked away from global corporations and immersed himself in the world of non-profit; in this case, WWF, one of the world's largest conservation organizations. After years of working in the corporate sector, C.Y. Chong decided to pursue a new avenue of work. He joined WWF International as a finance manager and was soon promoted to director of finance; however, this book is about his non-financial experiences.

Capire l'oggi per creare il domani. Un percorso di trasformazione su tre livelli: spirituale, culturale e tecnico. L'Uomo si è ormai perso nella sua rincorsa feroce al progresso, tutti gli ambiti delle sue attività danno continui messaggi d'allarme. L'ecosistema terrestre e la vita dell'Uomo stesso non sono mai stati messi a rischio come in questi ultimi decenni di enorme sviluppo industriale ed economico.

In this fascinating book, Terry O'Connor explores a distinction that is deeply ingrained in much of the language that we use in zoology, human-animal studies, and archaeology - the difference between wild and domestic. For thousands of years, humans have categorized animals in simple terms, often according to the degree of control that we have over them, and have tended to see the long story of human-animal relations as one of increasing control and management for human benefit.

Notre planète va mal : réchauffement climatique, épuisement des ressources naturelles, pollutions des sols et de l'eau provoquées par les industries civiles et guerrières, disparité des richesses, malnutrition des hommes, taux d'extinction effarant des espèces vivantes, etc. La situation est-elle vraiment dramatique ? Que penser des thèses qui contestent ce pessimisme ?

A lively blend of memoir, natural history, and mindfulness, Zooburbia is an inspirational collection of stories of the wildlife with whom we coexist. In Zooburbia, urban naturalist Tai Moses explores the "extraordinary, unruly, half-wild realm where human and animal lives overlap."

El reino vegetal: un mundo enorme que abarca desde seres vivos microscópicos hasta los grandes árboles de cien metros de altura y más de cien toneladas. La clorofila: responsable de la fotosíntesis. Las primeras plantas aparecieron en el mar y eran algas unicelulares. Evolución. El paso de la tierra: los musgos y helechos, las coníferas, plantas con flores... Características y dispositivos especiales de cada uno. Al incinerar los cuerpos de diferentes seres vivos, comprobamos que sus cenizas se parecen mucho entre sí. El 95% de su composición está formada por: carbono, hidrógeno, oxígeno y nitrógeno. La vida es ahorrativa, prefiere utilizar sólo unos pocos elementos, que son, por otra parte, los más comunes del Universo. Además, tales elementos se reciclan constantemente: las plantas absorben el nitrógeno, los herbívoros incorporan dichas substancias a sus organismos, para posteriormente pasar a los carnívoros. El nitrógeno vuelve a la tierra en forma de excrementos. El C02 es absorbido por las plantas gracias a la fotosíntesis. Luego vuelve a la atmósfera a través de la respiración de animales y plantas y a través de microorganismos que al descomponer la materia orgánica devuelven el carbono al medio ambiente.

Beyond images of emaciated polar bears and drought-cracked lakes, there remains a major part of climate change's impact that the media has neglected: how our health will suffer from higher temperatures and extreme weather. From spiraling rates of asthma and allergies and spikes in heatstroke-related deaths to swarms of invasive insects carrying diseases like dengue or West Nile and increases in heart and lung disease and cancer, the effect of rising temperatures on human health will be far-reaching, and is more imminent than we think.

Beginning in his kayak in his home waters of eastern Long Island, Carl Safina's The View from Lazy Point takes us through the four seasons to the four points of the compass, from the high Arctic south to Antarctica, across the warm belly of the tropics from the Caribbean to the west Pacific, then home again.

Bill Belleville's enchanting Salvaging the Real Florida invites listeners to rediscover treasures hidden in plain sight. Join Belleville as he paddles a glowing lagoon, slogs through a swamp, explores a spring cave, dives a "literary" shipwreck, and pays a visit to the colorful historic district of an old riverboat town. Journey with him in search of the apple snail, the black bear, a rare cave-dwelling shrimp, and more. Everywhere he goes, Belleville finds beauty, intrigue, and, more often than not, a legacy in peril.