Биология
Различные книги в жанре БиологияSustainable Water
Water scarcity, urban population growth, and deteriorating infrastructure are impacting water security around the globe. Struggling with the most significant drought in its recorded history, California faces all of these challenges to secure reliable water supplies for the future. The unfolding story of California water includes warnings and solutions for any region seeking to manage water among the pressures of a dynamic society and environment.<BR /><BR /> Written by leading policy makers, lawyers, economists, hydrologists, ecologists, engineers, and planners, <I>Sustainable Water </I>reaches across disciplines to address problems and solutions for the sustainable use of water in urban areas. The solutions and ideas put forward in this book integrate water management strategies to increase resilience in a changing world.<BR /><BR />Contributors: John T. Andrew, Carolina Balazs, Celeste Cantú, Juliet Christian-Smith, Matthew Deitch, Caitlin Dyckman, Howard Foster, Julian Fulton, Peter Gleick, Brian E. Gray, Ellen Hanak, Maurice Hall, Michael Hanemann, Sasha Harris-Lovett, Matthew Heberger, G. Mathias Kondolf, Jay Lund, Damian Park, Kristen Podolak, John Radke, Isha Ray, David Sedlak, Fraser Shilling, Daniel Wendell, Robert Wilkinson, Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, Sarah Yarnell
The Biology and Ecology of Giant Kelp Forests
The largest seaweed, giant kelp (<I>Macrocystis</I>) is the fastest growing and most prolific of all plants found on earth. Growing from the seafloor and extending along the ocean surface in lush canopies, giant kelp provides an extensive vertical habitat in a largely two-dimensional seascape. It is the foundation for one of the most species-rich, productive, and widely distributed ecological communities in the world.<BR /><BR /> Schiel and Foster’s scholarly review and synthesis take the reader from Darwin’s early observations to contemporary research, providing a historical perspective for the modern understanding of giant kelp evolution, biogeography, biology, and physiology.<BR /><BR /> The authors furnish a comprehensive discussion of kelp species and forest ecology worldwide, with considerations of human uses and abuses, management and conservation, and the current and likely future impacts of global change.<BR /><BR /> This volume promises to be the definitive treatise and reference on giant kelp and its forests for many years, and it will appeal to marine scientists and others who want a better appreciation and understanding of these wondrous forests of the sea.
Proactive Strategies for Protecting Species
Now forty years old, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) remains a landmark act in conservation and one of the world’s most comprehensive laws designed to prevent species extinctions and support recovery efforts for imperiled species. A controversial law and often subject to political attack, the ESA is successful overall but not without difficulties. Those who enforce the ESA, for example, struggle to achieve viable recovery goals for many species.<BR /><BR /> At the forefront of challenges is a reactive framework that sometimes leads to perverse incentives and legal battles that strain support and resources. Further, few species have been delisted. <I>Proactive Strategies for Protecting Species</I> explores the perspectives, opportunities, and challenges around designing and implementing pre-listing programs and approaches to species conservation.<BR /><BR /> This volume brings together conservation biologists, economists, private and government stakeholders, and others to create a legal, scientific, sociological, financial, and technological foundation for designing solutions that incentivize conservation action for hundreds of at-risk species—prior to their potential listing under the ESA.<BR /><BR /> This forward-thinking, innovative volume provides a roadmap for designing species conservation programs on the ground so they are effective and take place upstream of regulation, which will contribute to a reduction in lawsuits and other expenses that arise after a species is listed. <I>Proactive Strategies for Species Protection</I> is a guidebook for anyone anywhere interested in designing programs that incentivize environmental stewardship and species conservation.
The Unending Hunger
Based on ethnographic fieldwork from Santa Barbara, California, this book sheds light on the ways that food insecurity prevails in women’s experiences of migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States. As women grapple with the pervasive conditions of poverty that hinder efforts at getting enough to eat, they find few options for alleviating the various forms of suffering that accompany food insecurity. Examining how constraints on eating and feeding translate to the uneven distribution of life chances across borders and how «food security» comes to dominate national policy in the United States, this book argues for understanding women’s relations to these processes as inherently biopolitical.
Ecology of Freshwater and Estuarine Wetlands
This second edition of this important and authoritative survey provides students and researchers with up-to-date and accessible information about the ecology of freshwater and estuarine wetlands.<BR /><BR /> Prominent scholars help students understand both general concepts of different wetland types as well as complex topics related to these dynamic physical environments. Careful syntheses review wetland soils, hydrology, and geomorphology; abiotic constraints for wetland plants and animals; microbial ecology and biogeochemistry; development of wetland plant communities; wetland animal ecology; and carbon dynamics and ecosystem processes. In addition, contributors document wetland regulation, policy, and assessment in the US and provide a clear roadmap for adaptive management and restoration of wetlands. New material also includes an expanded review of the consequences for wetlands in a changing global environment.<BR /><BR /> Ideally suited for wetlands ecology courses, <I>Ecology of Freshwater and Estuarine Wetlands, Second Edition</I>, includes updated content, enhanced images (many in color), and innovative pedagogical elements that guide students and interested readers through the current state of our wetlands.
Secure the Soul
"I’m not perfect," Mateo confessed. «Nobody is. But I try.» <I>Secure the Soul</I> shuttles between the life of Mateo, a born-again ex-gang member in Guatemala and the gang prevention programs that work so hard to keep him alive. Along the way, this poignantly written ethnography uncovers the Christian underpinnings of Central American security. In the streets of Guatemala City—amid angry lynch mobs, overcrowded prisons, and paramilitary death squads—millions of dollars empower church missions, faith-based programs, and seemingly secular security projects to prevent gang violence through the practice of Christian piety. With Guatemala increasingly defined by both God and gangs, <I>Secure the Soul </I>details an emerging strategy of geopolitical significance: regional security by way of good Christian living.
Foundations of Wildlife Diseases
Foundations of Wildlife Diseases is a comprehensive overview of the basic principles that govern the study of wildlife diseases. The authors integrate theoretical foundations with a thorough examination of the factors that can affect the health and fitness of animals. They include specific information on a wide array of infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, arthropods, fungi, protista, and helminths, as well as immunity to these agents. Also provided is a foundation for the study of noninfectious diseases, cancers, and prion diseases that affect wildlife. Supporting students, faculty, and researchers in areas related to wildlife management, biology, and veterinary sciences, this volume fills an important gap in wildlife disease resources, focusing on mammalian and avian wildlife while also considering reptiles and amphibians.Foundations of Wildlife Diseases provides students with a structure for thinking about and understanding infective agents and their interactions with wildlife. Each chapter includes an outline, select definitions and concepts, an overview and summary, and literature cited.
Phylogeography of California
Phylogeography of California examines the evolution of a variety of taxa—ancient and recent, native and migratory—to elucidate evolutionary events both major and minor that shaped the distribution, radiation, and speciation of the biota of California. The book also interprets evolutionary history in a geological context and reviews new and emerging phylogeographic patterns. Focusing on a region that is defined by physical and political boundaries, Kristina A. Schierenbeck provides a phylogeographic survey of California’s diverse flora and fauna according to their major organismal groups. Life history and ecological characteristics, which play prominent roles in the various outcomes for respective clades, are also considered throughout the work. Supporting scholars and researchers who study evolutionary diversification, the book analyzes research that helps assess one of the major challenges in phylogeographic studies: understanding changes in population structures shaped by geological and geographical processes. California is one of only twenty-five acknowledged biological hotspots worldwide, and the phylogeographic history of the state can be extrapolated to study other regions in western North America. Further consideration is given to implications for conservation, recommendations concerning the biogeographic provinces that roughly define the state of California, and predictions related to climate change.
Marine Historical Ecology in Conservation
This pioneering volume provides a blueprint for managing the challenges of ocean conservation using marine historical ecology—an interdisciplinary area of study that is helping society to gain a more in-depth understanding of past human-environmental interactions in coastal and marine ecosystems and of the ecological and social outcomes associated with these interactions.<BR /><BR /> Developed by groundbreaking practitioners in the field, <I>Marine Historical Ecology</I><I> in Conservation</I> highlights the innovative ways that historical ecology can be applied to improve conservation and management efforts in the oceans.<BR /><BR /> The book focuses on four key challenges that confront marine conservation: (1) recovering endangered species, (2) conserving fisheries, (3) restoring ecosystems, and (4) engaging the public. Chapters emphasize real-world conservation scenarios appropriate for students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners in marine science, conservation biology, natural resource management, paleoecology, and marine and coastal archaeology.<BR /><BR /> By focusing on success stories and applied solutions, this volume delivers the required up-to-date science and tools needed for restoration and protection of ocean and coastal ecosystems.
Toxic Injustice
The pesticide dibromochloropropane, known as DBCP, was developed by the chemical companies Dow and Shell in the 1950s to target wormlike, soil-dwelling creatures called nematodes. Despite signs that the chemical was dangerous, it was widely used in U.S. agriculture and on Chiquita and Dole banana plantations in Central America. In the late 1970s, DBCP was linked to male sterility, but an uneven regulatory process left many workers—especially on Dole’s banana farms—exposed for years after health risks were known.<BR /><BR /> Susanna Rankin Bohme tells an intriguing, multilayered history that spans fifty years, highlighting the transnational reach of corporations and social justice movements. <I>Toxic Injustice</I> links health inequalities and worker struggles as it charts how people excluded from workplace and legal protections have found ways to challenge power structures and seek justice from states and transnational corporations alike.