Showing titles in Ecology

Professor Richard Fortey has been a devoted field mycologist all his life. He has rejoiced in the exuberant variety and profusion of mushrooms since reading as a boy of nuns driven mad by ergot (a fungus). Drawing on decades of experience doing science in the woods and fields, Fortey starts with the perfect ‘fungus day’ – eating ceps in Piedmont. He introduces brown rotters and the white, earthstars and death caps; fungal annuals and perennials, dung lovers and parasites, even fungi that move through the trees like mycelial monkeys.

In 1995, the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic mountains, bogs, moors, roaring burns, and frozen lochs could be a place where environmental conservation and Highland field sports would exist in harmony. The only problem was that due to centuries of abuse by human hands, the ancient Caledonian pinewoods were dying, and it would take radical measures to save them.

A place of exceptional diversity, rapid change and high energy, for the past 100 million years Europe has literally been at the crossroads of the world. By virtue of its geology and geography, evolution in Europe proceeds faster than elsewhere. The continent has absorbed wave after wave of immigrant species over the millennia, taking them in, transforming them and sometimes hybridising them. Flannery's exploration of the nature of Europe reveals a compelling intellectual drama, with a cast of heroic researchers whose discoveries have changed our understanding of life itself.

For most of human history nature was held to be sacred and our God or gods were believed to be present everywhere in nature. When people in the West began to separate God and nature in the 17th century, it was not just a profound breach with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom and experience: it was also the root of how we have come to plunder the natural world and to promote our individual selves in unhealthy and destructive ways. Karen Armstrong argues that if we want to avert the looming environmental catastrophe, it is not enough to change our behaviour.

Madagascar is a place of change. A biodiversity hotspot and the fourth largest island on the planet, it has been home to a spectacular parade of animals, from giant flightless birds and giant tortoises on the ground, to agile lemurs leaping through the treetops. Some species live on, many have vanished in the distant or recent past. Over vast stretches of time, Madagascar’s forests have expanded and contracted in response to shifting climates and the hand of people is clear in changes during the last 1,000 years or so.

The diversity of life on earth is astounding, with each species perfectly adapted to its environment. Sharks can navigate the ocean using electromagnetic fields; sloths use algae as camouflage; albatross can fly for hours without beating their wings; and orca pods each have unique cultures and languages. But every hour, three species disappear. Our incredible world is at risk. Megan McCubbin reveals the stories of the scientists, rangers and conservationists who are fighting to save these extraordinary creatures from extinction.

The book introduces us to an incredible, essential, and oft-overlooked kingdom of life - fungi - and all the potential it holds for our future, through the work and research being done by an unforgettable community of mushroom-mad citizen scientists and microbe devotees. This entertaining and mind-expanding journey will captivate listeners who are curious about the hidden worlds and networks that make up our planet.

Geography GCSE AQA (8035) specification audiobook is essential listening for students, teachers and examiners as it contains chapters on all the topics covered in the GCSE specification. The physical geography section covers the challenge of natural hazards including tectonic and extreme weather events. The physical and human causes and effects of climate change are discussed and exemplified. The living world and ecosystems including hot deserts, cold environments and tropical rainforests are examined.

Animal scientists have long considered domestic livestock to be too dumb to know how to eat right, but the lifetime research of animal behaviorist Fred Provenza and his colleagues has debunked this myth. Their work shows that when given a choice of natural foods, livestock have an astoundingly refined palate, nibbling through the day on as many as fifty kinds of grasses, forbs, and shrubs to meet their nutritional needs with remarkable precision.

In this joyous journey around the wild edges of Britain, Christopher Hart takes us through the life, ecology and history of the humble British hedge, showing us how this much-loved (but somewhat overlooked) feature is inextricably woven into our language, history and culture. Hedges – or hedgerows – have long been an integral part of the British landscape; a bastion of privacy for our gardens, a protective presence on winding country lanes and a vital hiding place for birds and beasts on farmland.

The most recent research tells us that seaweed is one possible solution for our future on the planet. It could feed human beings, reduce plastic pollution, absorb enough carbon to cool the atmosphere, reconstruct generative ecosystems, treat certain illnesses that are incurable today, replace land livestock farming that exhausts the environment, and give jobs to coastal populations. The seaweed revolution is a hope for tomorrow!

A journey into the weird, wonderful and truly astonishing lives of the small but mighty creatures who keep the world turning. Out of sight, underfoot, unseen beyond fleeting scuttles or darting flights, insects occupy a hidden world, yet are essential to sustaining life on earth. Insects influence our ecosystem like a ripple effect on water. They arrived when life first moved to dry land, they preceded – and survived – the dinosaurs, they outnumber the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches, and they will be here long after us.

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

Explore ecology in this accessible introduction to how the natural world works and how we have started to understand the environment, ecosystems and climate change. Using a bold approach, The Ecology Book explores and explains over 85 of the key ideas, movements and acts that have defined ecology and ecological thought.

Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of the staples of food energy, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have brought about an overwhelming expansion in the life chances of billions of people. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered humans to exploit each other. Reinterpreting a history previously seen from a Euro-and-anthropocentric viewpoint, Amrith relates in brilliant prose, and on the largest canvas, a magisterial, mind-altering epic - vibrant with stories, characters, vivid images and rich archival resources.

As globalisation spreads and as we destroy the ancient ecosystems, we encounter strange and dangerous infections that originate in animals but that can be transmitted to humans. Diseases that were contained are being set free, and the results are potentially catastrophic. In a journey that takes him from Southern China to the Congo, from Bangladesh to Australia, David Quammen tracks these infections to their source and asks what we can do to prevent some new pandemic spreading across the face of the earth.

In this classic work that continues to inspire its many fans, James Lovelock deftly explains his idea that life on Earth functions as a single organism. Written for the non-scientist, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence with which to support a new and radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that living matter is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the Earth's living matter - air, ocean, and land surfaces - forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life.

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.

Long before the phrase 'climate change' was a universal catchphrase, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was studying the impact of industrialization on the environment. Now in this fascinating cross-discipline work, the Prince of Wales calls upon his years of research and explores the way in which mankind must work to restore the delicate balance with nature that we've lost in the centuries since the industrial revolution began.

As our civilization careens towards a precipice of climate breakdown, ecological destruction and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. Our dominant worldview of disconnection, which tells us we are split between mind and body, separate from each other and at odds with the natural world, has passed its expiration date. Yet another world is possible. Award-winning author Jeremy Lent investigates humanity's age-old questions - who am I? why am I? how should I live? - from a fresh perspective.