Showing titles in Ecology

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.

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.

Today many of us live indoor lives, disconnected from the natural world as never before. And yet nature remains deeply ingrained in our language, culture and consciousness. So what happens, asks acclaimed journalist Lucy Jones, as we lose our bond with the natural world-might we also be losing part of ourselves? Delicately observed and rigorously researched, Losing Eden is an enthralling journey through this new research, exploring how and why connecting with the living world can so drastically affect our health.

We need land for so many of humanity's growing needs, such as food, renewable energy, carbon storage and housing. Traditionally, we've stolen it from nature, but this has led to a mounting toll of extinction and pollution that is now punishing us. So, as there's no land left to take, how do we get more from the same, or preferably less. In Land Smart, Tom Heap tours the British countryside meeting the farmers, scientists, conservationists and even warehouse managers who are solving the most pressing challenges facing our countryside and the world.

In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. This discovery vastly expanded America's known human history but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens presented to the continent's evolutionary richness. Distinguished scholar Dan Flores's ambitious history chronicles the epoch in which humans and animals have coexisted in the "wild new world" of North America.

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.

Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing 21st-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.

As ecologists Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe show, rewilding is a new and progressive approach to conservation, blending radical scientific insights with practical innovations to revive ecological processes, benefiting people as well as nature. With its sense of hope and purpose, rewilding is breathing new life into the conservation movement and enabling a growing number of people to enjoy thrilling wildlife experiences previously accessible only in remote wilderness reserves.

Noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months, and two days chronicling his near-isolation in the small cabin he built in the woods near Walden Pond on land owned by his mentor, the father of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Immersing himself in nature and solitude, Thoreau sought to develop a greater understanding of society amidst a life of self-reliance and simplicity. Originally published in 1854, Walden remains one of the most celebrated works in American literature.

No one has done more to transform our understanding of trees than the world-renowned scientist Suzanne Simard. Raised in the forests of British Columbia, where her family has lived for generations, Professor Simard did not set out to be a scientist. She was working in the forest service when she first discovered how trees communicate underground through an immense web of fungi, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that nurture their kin and sustain the forest.

Ants have been walking the Earth since the age of the dinosaurs. Today there are one million ants for every one of us. The closer you get to ants, the more human they look: they build megacities, grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and even make vaccines. They also have a darker side: they wage war, enslave rivals and rebel against their oppressors. From fearsome army ants, who stage 12-hour hunting raids where they devour thousands, to gentle leafcutters gardening in their peaceful underground kingdoms, every ant is engineered by nature to fulfil a role.

Meadowland gives a unique and intimate account of an English meadow’s life from January to December, together with its biography. In exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn, and includes the biographies of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren, the skylark brood and the curlew pair, among others.

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices.

Meteorites, methane, mega-volcanoes and now human beings; the old forces of nature that transformed Earth many millions of years ago are joined by another: us. Our actions have driven Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. For the first time in our home planet's 4.5-billion year history a single species is dictating Earth's future. To some the Anthropocene symbolises a future of superlative control of our environment. To others it is the height of hubris, the illusion of our mastery over nature.

We are in the midst of an extinction event: the sixth mass extinction on Earth and one entirely caused by mankind. All species become extinct sooner or later, but we have accelerated that natural process several hundredfold, and now, it is happening right in front of our eyes. Extinction has a terrifying finality to it. And many species have already been lost to us forever; there is little we can do about that. What we can do, however, is reflect, remember, and ultimately acknowledge the unvarnished truth.

Botany For Dummies gives you a thorough overview of the fundamentals of botany, but in simple terms that anyone can understand. Great for supplementing your botany coursework or brushing up before an exam, this book covers plant evolution, the structure and function of plant cells, and plant identification. Plus, you'll learn about how plants of different types are changing and adapting in response to changing climates. This new edition goes into more detail on fungi—not technically plants, but no one is holding that against them.

In this book, Emma Farrell explains how to take your connection and relationship with nature to a deeper level and access plant spirit healing through meditation with plants. Exploring the nature of plant consciousness and how plants perceive, she details how to achieve a calm mind, cleanse your energy field, and connect with your heart in preparation for meditating with plants and trees, showing how the plants can support us not only in the cleansing process, but also in teaching us how to sense what is in our energy field.

People talk a lot about the problems with intensive farming. But the problem isn't the adjective. It's the noun. Around the world, farming has been wiping out vast habitats, depleting freshwater, polluting oceans, and accelerating global heating, while leaving millions undernourished and unfed. Increasingly, there are signs that the system itself is beginning to flicker. But, as George Monbiot shows us in this brilliant, bracingly original new book, there is another way.

It dawned on me one day that most of the scare stories in the media today are based on things that are either invisible, like CO2 and radiation, or very remote, like polar bears and coral reefs. Thus, the average person cannot observe and verify the truth of these claims for themselves. They must rely on activists, the media, politicians, and scientists - all of whom have a huge financial and/or political interest in the subject - to tell them the truth.

Caradonna's unique and concise history broadens our understanding of what "sustainability" means, revealing how it progressed from a relatively marginal concept to an ideal that shapes everything from individual lifestyles, government and corporate strategies, and even national and international policy. For anyone seeking understand the history of those striving to make the world a better place to live, here's a place to start.