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Alaska's Changing Boreal Forest

F. Stuart Chapin, Mark W. Oswood, Keith van Cleve, Leslie A. Viereck, and David L. Verbyla (eds)

The boreal forest is the northern-most woodland biome, whose natural history is rooted in the influence of low temperature and high-latitude. Alaska's boreal forest is now warming ... More

The boreal forest is the northern-most woodland biome, whose natural history is rooted in the influence of low temperature and high-latitude. Alaska's boreal forest is now warming as rapidly as the rest of Earth, providing an unprecedented look at how this cold-adapted, fire-prone forest adjusts to change. This volume synthesizes current understanding of the ecology of Alaska's boreal forests and describes their unique features in the context of circumpolar and global patterns. It tells how fire and climate contributed to the biome's current dynamics. As climate warms and permafrost (permanently frozen ground) thaws, the boreal forest may be on the cusp of a major change in state. The editors have gathered a remarkable set of contributors to discuss this swift environmental and biotic transformation. Their chapters cover the properties of the forest, the changes it is undergoing, and the challenges these alterations present to boreal forest managers. In the first section, the reader can absorb the geographic and historical context for understanding the boreal forest. The book then delves into the dynamics of plant and animal communities inhabiting this forest, and the biogeochemical processes that link these organisms. In the last section the authors explore landscape phenomena that operate at larger temporal and spatial scales and integrates the processes described in earlier sections. Much of the research on which this book is based results from the Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research Program. Here is a synthesis of the substantial literature on Alaska's boreal forest that should be accessible to professional ecologists, students, and the interested public. Less

Biodiversity in Drylands: Toward a Unified Framework

Moshe Shachak, Stewart T. A. Pickett, James R. Gosz, and Avi Perevolotski

Biodiversity in Drylands, the first internationally based synthesis volume in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Series, unifies the concepts of species and ... More

Biodiversity in Drylands, the first internationally based synthesis volume in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Series, unifies the concepts of species and landscape diversity with respect to deserts. Within this framework, the book treats several emerging themes, among them: · how animal biodiversity can be supported in deserts · diversity's relation to habitat structure, environmental variability, and species interactions · the relation between spatial scale and diversity · how to use a landscape simulation model to understand diversity · microbial contributions to biodiversity in deserts · species diversity and ecosystem processes · resource partitioning and biodiversity in fractal environments · effects of grazing on biodiversity · reconciliation ecology and the future of conservation management In the face of global change, integration is crucial for dealing with the problem of sustaining biodiversity. This book promises to be a vital resource for students, researchers, and managers interested in integrative species, resource, and landscape diversities. Less

Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities

Chad Broughton

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders owed much of their unexpected popularity in the 2016 primaries to their respective stances on trade and immigration policy. Political elites and ... More

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders owed much of their unexpected popularity in the 2016 primaries to their respective stances on trade and immigration policy. Political elites and policy experts were bewildered by combative talk of building a wall and the ubiquity of anti-TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) sloganeering in what many saw as a bizarre election cycle. They have scrambled to explain both Trump's victory and the new political fault lines that have emerged in both major political parties, largely around trade and immigration. In struggling industrial towns and cities, the rise of Trump and Sanders was less of a surprise. These places have long weathered globalization's storm. Many feel left behind and sold short. They are anxious, and they're demanding answers. Galesburg, Illinois, is one such city. Less

Climate Variability and the Global Harvest: Impacts of El Niño and Other Oscillations on Agro-Ecosystems

Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel

The Earth's climate is constantly changing. Some of the changes are progressive, while others fluctuate at various time scales. The El Niño-la Niña cycle is one such fluctuation ... More

The Earth's climate is constantly changing. Some of the changes are progressive, while others fluctuate at various time scales. The El Niño-la Niña cycle is one such fluctuation that recurs every few years and has far-reaching impacts. It generally appears at least once per decade, but this may vary with our changing climate. The exact frequency, sequence, duration and intensity of El Niño's manifestations, as well as its effects and geographic distributions, are highly variable. The El Niño-la Niña cycle is particularly challenging to study due to its many interlinked phenomena that occur in various locations around the globe. These worldwide teleconnections are precisely what makes studying El Niño-la Niña so important. Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel describe the current efforts to develop and apply a global-to-regional approach to climate-risk management. They explain how atmospheric and social scientists are cooperating with agricultural practitioners in various regions around the world to determine how farmers may benefit most from new climate predictions. Specifically, the emerging ability to predict the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle offers the potential to transform agricultural planning worldwide. Biophysical scientists are only now beginning to recognize the large-scale, globally distributed impacts of ENSO on the probabilities of seasonal precipitation and temperature regimes. Meanwhile, social scientists have been researching how to disseminate forecasts more effectively within rural communities. Consequently, as the quality of climatic predictions have improved, the dissemination and presentation of forecasts have become more effective as well. This book explores the growing understanding of the interconnectedness of climate predictions and productive agriculture for sustainable development, as well as methods and models used to study this relationship. Less

Dangerous Harvest: Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes

Michael K. Steinberg, Joseph J. Hobbs, and Kent Mathewson (eds)

The global drug trade and its associated violence, corruption, and human suffering create global problems that include political and military conflicts, ethnic minority human ... More

The global drug trade and its associated violence, corruption, and human suffering create global problems that include political and military conflicts, ethnic minority human rights violations, and stresses on economic development. Drug production and eradication affects the stability of many states, shaping and sometimes distorting their foreign policies. External demand for drugs has transformed many indigenous cultures from using local agricultural activity to being enmeshed in complex global problems. Dangerous Harvest presents a global overview of indigenous peoples' relations with drugs. It presents case studies from various cultural landscapes that are involved in drug plant production, trade, and use, and examines historical uses of illicit plant substances. It continues with coverage of eradication efforts, and the environmental impact of drug plant production. In its final chapter, it synthesizes the major points made and forecasts future directions of crop substitution programs, international eradication efforts, and changes in indigenous landscapes. The book helps unveil the farmer, not to glamorize those who grow drug plants but to show the deep historical, cultural, and economic ties between farmer and crop. Less

Earth: A Tenant's Manual

Frank H. T. Rhodes

This book provides a sweeping, accessible, and deeply informed guide to the home we all share, showing us how we might best preserve the Earth's livability for ourselves and future generations. The ... More

This book provides a sweeping, accessible, and deeply informed guide to the home we all share, showing us how we might best preserve the Earth's livability for ourselves and future generations. The book begins by setting the scene for our active planet and explaining how its location and composition determine how the Earth works and why it teems with life. It emphasizes the changes that are of concern to us today, from earthquakes to climate change and the clashes over the energy resources needed for the Earth's exploding population. It concludes with an extended exploration of humanity's prospects on a complex, protean, and ultimately finite world. It is not a question of whether the planet is sustainable; the challenge facing life on Earth—and the life of the Earth—is whether an expanding and high-consumption species like ours is sustainable. Only new resources, new priorities, new policies and, most of all, new knowledge, can reverse the damage that humanity is doing to our home—and ourselves. A sustainable human future, the book concludes, will require a sense of responsible stewardship, for we are not owners of this planet; we are tenants. Surveying the systems, large and small, that govern Earth's processes and influence its changes, the book addresses the negative consequences of human activities for the health of its regulatory systems but offers practical suggestions as to how we might effect repairs, or at least limit further damage to our home.Less

Ecology of the Shortgrass Steppe: A Long-Term Perspective

W. K. Lauenroth and I. C. Burke

Ecology of the Shortgrass Steppe: A Long-Term Perspective summarizes and synthesizes more than sixty years of research that has been conducted throughout the shortgrass region in ... More

Ecology of the Shortgrass Steppe: A Long-Term Perspective summarizes and synthesizes more than sixty years of research that has been conducted throughout the shortgrass region in North America. The shortgrass steppe was an important focus of the International Biological Program's Grassland Biome project, which ran from the late 1960s until the mid-1970s. The work conducted by the Grassland Biome project was preceded by almost forty years of research by U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers-primarily from the Agricultural Research Service-and was followed by the Shortgrass Steppe Long-Term Ecological Research project. This volume is an enormously rich source of data and insight into the structure and function of a semiarid grassland. Less

Ecology, Engineering, and Management: Reconciling Ecosystem Rehabilitation and Service Reliability

Michel J. G. van Eeten and Emery Roe

Ecology, Engineering, and the Paradox of Management is the first book that addresses and reconciles what many take to be the core paradox facing environmental decision-makers and ... More

Ecology, Engineering, and the Paradox of Management is the first book that addresses and reconciles what many take to be the core paradox facing environmental decision-makers and stakeholders: How do they restore the environment while at the same time provide ever more services reliably from that environment, including clean air, water and energy for more and more people? The book provides a conceptual framework, empirical case analyses, and organizational proposals to resolve the paradox, be it in the US, Europe, or elsewhere. Thus, Ecology, Engineering, and the Paradox of Management has multiple audiences. First are the key professions involved in the protection and improvement of ecosystems and in the provision and delivery of services from those ecosystems. These include ecologists (and other natural scientists such as conservation biologists, climatologists, forest scientists, and toxicologists), engineers (as well as hydrologists, environmental engineers, civil engineers, and line operators), modeling and gaming experts, managers, planners, and power, agriculture, and recreation communities. Another audience includes university researchers in ecology, conservation biology, engineering, the policy sciences, and resource management. Those interested in interdisciplinary approaches in these fields will also find the book especially helpful. Finally, those interested in the Everglades, the Columbia River Basin, San Francisco Bay-Delta, and the Green Heart of western Netherlands will find new insights here, as the book provides a detailed examination of the paradox in each of these cases. Less

The Emerald Planet: How plants changed Earth's history

David Beerling

Global warming is contentious and difficult to measure, even among the majority of scientists who agree that it is taking place. Will temperatures rise by 2ºC or 8ºC over the next ... More

Global warming is contentious and difficult to measure, even among the majority of scientists who agree that it is taking place. Will temperatures rise by 2ºC or 8ºC over the next hundred years? Will sea levels rise by 2 or 30 feet? The only way that we can accurately answer questions like these is by looking into the distant past, for a comparison with the world long before the rise of mankind. We may currently believe that atmospheric shifts, like global warming, result from our impact on the planet, but the earth's atmosphere has been dramatically shifting since its creation. This book reveals the crucial role that plants have played in determining atmospheric change - and hence the conditions on the planet we know today. Along the way a number of fascinating puzzles arise: Why did plants evolve leaves? When and how did forests once grow on Antarctica? How did prehistoric insects manage to grow so large? The answers show the extraordinary amount plants can tell us about the history of the planet -- something that has often been overlooked amongst the preoccuputations with dinosaur bones and animal fossils. David Beerling's surprising conclusions are teased out from various lines of scientific enquiry, with evidence being brought to bear from fossil plants and animals, computer models of the atmosphere, and experimental studies. Intimately bound up with the narrative describing the dynamic evolution of climate and life through Earth's history, we find Victorian fossil hunters, intrepid polar explorers and pioneering chemists, alongside wallowing hippos, belching volcanoes, and restless landmasses. Less

Environment and Empire

William Beinart and Lotte Hughes

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate human societies together over a wider area than ... More

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate human societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it underpinned the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia; it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it. Imperialism was inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established sugar plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming and displaced indigenous peoples. Colonial cities, many of which became great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. Environmental history deals with the reciprocal interaction between people and other elements in the natural world, and this book illustrates the diverse environmental themes in the history of empire. Initially concentrating on the material factors that shaped empire and environmental change, Environment and Empire discusses the way in which British consumers and manufacturers sucked in resources that were gathered, hunted, fished, mined, and farmed. Yet it is also clear that British settler and colonial states sought to regulate the use of natural resources as well as commodify them. Conservation aimed to preserve resources by exclusion, as in wildlife parks and forests, and to guarantee efficient use of soil and water. Exploring these linked themes of exploitation and conservation, this study concludes with a focus on political reassertions by colonised peoples over natural resources. In a post-imperial age, they have found a new voice, reformulating ideas about nature, landscape, and heritage and challenging, at a local and global level, views of who has the right to regulate nature. Less

Flame and Fortune in the American West: Urban Development, Environmental Change, and the Great Oakland Hills Fire

Gregory L. Simon

This book investigates the ongoing politics, folly, and avarice shaping the production of increasingly widespread yet dangerous suburban and exurban landscapes. The 1991 Oakland Hills Tunnel Fire is ... More

This book investigates the ongoing politics, folly, and avarice shaping the production of increasingly widespread yet dangerous suburban and exurban landscapes. The 1991 Oakland Hills Tunnel Fire is used as a starting point to better understand these complex social-environmental processes. The Tunnel Fire is the most destructive fire—in terms of structures lost—in California history. More than 3,000 residential structures burned and 25 lives were lost. Although this fire occurred in Oakland and Berkeley, others like it sear through landscapes in California and the American West that have experienced urban growth and development within areas historically prone to fire. The book blends environmental history, political ecology, and science studies to closely examine the Tunnel Fire within a broader historical and spatial context of regional economic development and natural-resource management, such as the widespread planting of eucalyptus trees as an exotic lure for homeowners and the creation of hillside neighborhoods for tax revenue—decisions that produced communities with increased vulnerability to fire. The book demonstrates how in Oakland a drive for affluence led to a state of vulnerability for rich and poor alike that has only been exacerbated by the rebuilding of neighborhoods after the fire. Despite these troubling trends, the text illustrates how many popular and scientific debates on fire limit the scope and efficacy of policy responses. These risky yet profitable developments (what the book refers to as the Incendiary), as well as proposed strategies for challenging them, are discussed in the context of urbanizing areas around the American West and hold global applicability within hazard-prone areas.Less

Geographic Variation in Behavior: Perspectives on Evolutionary Mechanisms

Susan A. Foster and John A. Endler (eds)

Studies of animal behavior often assume that all members of a species exhibit the same behavior. Geographic Variation in Behavior shows that, on the contrary, there is ... More

Studies of animal behavior often assume that all members of a species exhibit the same behavior. Geographic Variation in Behavior shows that, on the contrary, there is substantional variation within species across a wide range of taxa. Including work from pioneers in the field, this volume provides a balanced overview of research on behavioral characteristics that vary geographically. The authors explore the mechanisms by which behavioral differences evolve and examine related methodological issues. Taken together, the work collected here demonstrates that genetically based geographic variation may be far more widespread than previously suspected. The book also shows how variation in behavior can illuminate both behavioral evolution and general evolutionary patterns. Unique among books on behavior in its emphasis on geographic variation, this volume is a valuable new resource for students and researchers in animal behavior and evolutionary biology. Less

Global Catastrophic Risks

Martin J. Rees

Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic (eds)

A global catastrophic risk is one with the potential to wreak death and destruction on a global scale. In human history, wars and plagues have done so on more than one occasion, ... More

A global catastrophic risk is one with the potential to wreak death and destruction on a global scale. In human history, wars and plagues have done so on more than one occasion, and misguided ideologies and totalitarian regimes have darkened an entire era or a region. Advances in technology are adding dangers of a new kind. It could happen again. In Global Catastrophic Risks 25 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century, including asteroid impacts, gamma-ray bursts, Earth-based natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, global warming, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, and social collapse. The book also addresses over-arching issues - policy responses and methods for predicting and managing catastrophes. This is invaluable reading for anyone interested in the big issues of our time; for students focusing on science, society, technology, and public policy; and for academics, policy-makers, and professionals working in these acutely important fields. Less

Island Biogeography in the Sea of Cortés II

Ted J. Case, Martin L. Cody, and Exequiel Ezcurra

This updated and expanded A New Island Biogeography of the Sea of Cortés, first published nearly 20 years ago, integrates new and broader studies encompassing more taxa and more ... More

This updated and expanded A New Island Biogeography of the Sea of Cortés, first published nearly 20 years ago, integrates new and broader studies encompassing more taxa and more complete island coverage. The present synthesis provides a basis for further research and exploration in upcoming years of the biologically fascinating Sea of Cortés region. The Gulf region is increasingly being exploited, for its natural resources by way of marine fisheries, and for its stunning natural beauty by way of a burgeoning tourism industry. Further, the region's human population is increasing apace. It is appropriate, therefore, that this volume discusses these evolving circumstances, and the efforts of the Mexican government to regulate and manage them. The new Biogeography includes a section on the conservation issues in the Sea of Cortés, past accomplishments and conservation needs as yet outstanding. This book should be of strong interest to conservation biologists, ecologists, and evolutionary biologists more generally. Less

Mapping Environmental Sustainability: Reflecting on Systemic Practices for Participatory Research

Sue Oreszczyn and Andy Lane (eds)

Environmental sustainability involves the interaction of a number of complex adaptive systems that rely on an understanding of human relationships and perspectives that are widely contested. This ... More

Environmental sustainability involves the interaction of a number of complex adaptive systems that rely on an understanding of human relationships and perspectives that are widely contested. This book explains how visual mapping techniques, based on systems concepts and theories, can be used to facilitate, explore, and capture the different understandings of the relationships, perspectives, and boundaries involved in environmental sustainability to obtain a more complete comprehension of the concept and develop plans for action. Built on practical case studies that are used in conjunction with clear explanations of visual mapping techniques and theories, the book offers a practical guide for people working in or studying the field.Less

Monteverde: Ecology and Conservation of a Tropical Cloud Forest

Nalini M. Nadkarni and Nathaniel T. Wheelwright (eds)

The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has captured the worldwide attention of biologists, conservationists, and ecologists and has been the setting for extensive investigation over ... More

The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has captured the worldwide attention of biologists, conservationists, and ecologists and has been the setting for extensive investigation over the past 30 years. Roughly 40,000 ecotourists visit the Cloud Forest each year, and it is often considered the archetypal high-altitude rain forest. This volume brings together some of the most prominent researchers of the region to provide a broad introduction to the biology of the Monteverde, and cloud forests in general. Collecting and synthesizing vital information about the ecosystem and its biota, the book also examines the positive and negative effects of human activity on both the forest and the surrounding communities. Ecologists, tropical biologists, and natural historians will find this volume an indispensable resource, as will all those who are fascinated by the magnificent wonders of the tropical forests. Less

Reasonable Use: The People, the Environment, and the State, New England 1790-1930

John T. Cumbler

This book is a study of the impact of industrialization and urbanization on the environment of New England in general and the Connecticut River Valley in particular, and of the ... More

This book is a study of the impact of industrialization and urbanization on the environment of New England in general and the Connecticut River Valley in particular, and of the varied public responses the impact engendered. The narrative engages the reader with biographical vignettes woven into the larger narrative and crosses several historical fields by combining industrial, urban, environmental, legal, and political history. Less