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Author: Mark Denny
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400873959
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532
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Book Description
An in-depth exploration of how biomechanics and ecology work together Plants and animals interact with each other and their surroundings, and these interactions—with all their complexity and contingency—control where species can survive and reproduce. In this comprehensive and groundbreaking introduction to the emerging field of ecological mechanics, Mark Denny explains how the principles of physics and engineering can be used to understand the intricacies of these remarkable relationships. Denny opens with a brief review of basic physics before introducing the fundamentals of diffusion, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and heat transfer, taking care to explain each in the context of living organisms. Why are corals of different shapes on different parts of a reef? How can geckos climb sheer walls? Why can birds and fish migrate farther than mammals? How do desert plants stay cool? The answers to these and a host of similar questions illustrate the principles of heat, mass, and momentum transport and set the stage for the book's central topic—the application of these principles in ecology. Denny shows how variations in the environment—in both space and time—affect the performance of plants and animals. He introduces spectral analysis, a mathematical tool for quantifying the patterns in which environments vary, and uses it to analyze such subjects as the spread of invasive species. Synthesizing the book’s materials, the final chapters use ecological mechanics to predict the occurrence and consequences of extreme ecological events, explain the emergence of patterns in the distribution and abundance of organisms, and empower readers to explore further. Ecological Mechanics offers new insights into the physical workings of organisms and their environment.
Author: Mark Denny
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400873959
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532
Get Book Here
Book Description
An in-depth exploration of how biomechanics and ecology work together Plants and animals interact with each other and their surroundings, and these interactions—with all their complexity and contingency—control where species can survive and reproduce. In this comprehensive and groundbreaking introduction to the emerging field of ecological mechanics, Mark Denny explains how the principles of physics and engineering can be used to understand the intricacies of these remarkable relationships. Denny opens with a brief review of basic physics before introducing the fundamentals of diffusion, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and heat transfer, taking care to explain each in the context of living organisms. Why are corals of different shapes on different parts of a reef? How can geckos climb sheer walls? Why can birds and fish migrate farther than mammals? How do desert plants stay cool? The answers to these and a host of similar questions illustrate the principles of heat, mass, and momentum transport and set the stage for the book's central topic—the application of these principles in ecology. Denny shows how variations in the environment—in both space and time—affect the performance of plants and animals. He introduces spectral analysis, a mathematical tool for quantifying the patterns in which environments vary, and uses it to analyze such subjects as the spread of invasive species. Synthesizing the book’s materials, the final chapters use ecological mechanics to predict the occurrence and consequences of extreme ecological events, explain the emergence of patterns in the distribution and abundance of organisms, and empower readers to explore further. Ecological Mechanics offers new insights into the physical workings of organisms and their environment.
Author: Stephen A. Wainwright
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691218099
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
This book deals with an interface between mechanical engineering and biology. Available for the first time in paperback, it reviews biological structural materials and systems and their mechanically important features and demonstrates that function at any particular level of biological integration is permitted and controlled by structure at lower levels of integration. Five chapters discuss the properties of materials in general and those of biomaterials in particular. The authors examine the design of skeletal elements and discuss animal and plant systems in terms of mechanical design. In a concluding chapter they investigate organisms in their environments and the insights gained from study of the mechanical aspects of their lives.
Author: Mark Denny
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691163154
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 531
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Book Description
An in-depth exploration of how biomechanics and ecology work together Plants and animals interact with each other and their surroundings, and these interactions—with all their complexity and contingency—control where species can survive and reproduce. In this comprehensive and groundbreaking introduction to the emerging field of ecological mechanics, Mark Denny explains how the principles of physics and engineering can be used to understand the intricacies of these remarkable relationships. Denny opens with a brief review of basic physics before introducing the fundamentals of diffusion, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and heat transfer, taking care to explain each in the context of living organisms. Why are corals of different shapes on different parts of a reef? How can geckos climb sheer walls? Why can birds and fish migrate farther than mammals? How do desert plants stay cool? The answers to these and a host of similar questions illustrate the principles of heat, mass, and momentum transport and set the stage for the book's central topic—the application of these principles in ecology. Denny shows how variations in the environment—in both space and time—affect the performance of plants and animals. He introduces spectral analysis, a mathematical tool for quantifying the patterns in which environments vary, and uses it to analyze such subjects as the spread of invasive species. Synthesizing the book’s materials, the final chapters use ecological mechanics to predict the occurrence and consequences of extreme ecological events, explain the emergence of patterns in the distribution and abundance of organisms, and empower readers to explore further. Ecological Mechanics offers new insights into the physical workings of organisms and their environment.
Author: David G. Raffaelli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139486144
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
What can ecological science contribute to the sustainable management and conservation of the natural systems that underpin human well-being? Bridging the natural, physical and social sciences, this book shows how ecosystem ecology can inform the ecosystem services approach to environmental management. The authors recognise that ecosystems are rich in linkages between biophysical and social elements that generate powerful intrinsic dynamics. Unlike traditional reductionist approaches, the holistic perspective adopted here is able to explain the increasing range of scientific studies that have highlighted unexpected consequences of human activity, such as the lack of recovery of cod populations on the Grand Banks despite nearly two decades of fishery closures, or the degradation of Australia's fertile land through salt intrusion. Written primarily for researchers and graduate students in ecology and environmental management, it provides an accessible discussion of some of the most important aspects of ecosystem ecology and the potential relationships between them.
Author: Ahlam I. Shalaby
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351653172
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 1685
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Book Description
An ideal textbook for civil and environmental, mechanical, and chemical engineers taking the required Introduction to Fluid Mechanics course, Fluid Mechanics for Civil and Environmental Engineers offers clear guidance and builds a firm real-world foundation using practical examples and problem sets. Each chapter begins with a statement of objectives, and includes practical examples to relate the theory to real-world engineering design challenges. The author places special emphasis on topics that are included in the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, and make the book more accessible by highlighting keywords and important concepts, including Mathcad algorithms, and providing chapter summaries of important concepts and equations.
Author: Charles W. Fowler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191580031
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455
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Book Description
'Systemic management' describes a holistic, objective and universally applicable form of management, providing a framework for addressing environmental challenges such as global warming, emergent diseases, deforestation, overpopulation, the extinction crisis, pollution, over-fishing, and habitat destruction. Its goals are the consistently sustainable relationships between humans and ecosystems, between humans and other species, and between humans and the biosphere. This book presents a convincing argument that these goals, and the means to achieve them, can be inferred from empirical information. It describes how comparisons between humans and other species reveal patterns that can serve to guide management toward true sustainability i.e. ways that are empirically observed to work in natural systems. This objective approach has rarely been possible in conventional management because sustainability is invariably undermined by conflicting human values. 'Systemic management' is presented as a specialized process of pattern-based decision-making that avoids the inconsistency, subjectivity and error in current management practice. It clearly demonstrates how mimicking nature's empirical examples of sustainability can circumvent anthropocentric tendencies to overuse/misuse human values in management, and illustrates the science best suited for achieving sustainability through examples of research that address specific management questions.
Author: Rokochinskiy, Anatoliy
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1668482509
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 508
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Book Description
The wetlands of the Polish Polissya zone in previous centuries had a negative impact on the economic development of the region and were an obstacle to social transformation. Even in ancient times, humans were aware of the need for drainage measures, as evidenced by archaeological excavations and traces of preserved reclamation works dating back a thousand years. Unfortunately, little has survived testifying to the scale of hydro melioration until the second half of the 18th century. The Handbook of Research on Improving the Natural and Ecological Conditions of the Polesie Zone considers the results of many years of research and the production experience of leading scientists and specialists of the water management and melioration profile regarding natural, historical, social, economic, constructive, regime-technological, ecological, economic, and other aspects of land reclamation and development of the Polissya zone. Covering key topics such as water treatment, ecology, nature conservation, and environmental science, this premier reference source is ideal for industry professionals, researchers, academicians, practitioners, scholars, instructors, and students.
Author: Mathew A. Leibold
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691049165
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Metacommunity ecology links smaller-scale processes that have been the provenance of population and community ecology—such as birth-death processes, species interactions, selection, and stochasticity—with larger-scale issues such as dispersal and habitat heterogeneity. Until now, the field has focused on evaluating the relative importance of distinct processes, with niche-based environmental sorting on one side and neutral-based ecological drift and dispersal limitation on the other. This book moves beyond these artificial categorizations, showing how environmental sorting, dispersal, ecological drift, and other processes influence metacommunity structure simultaneously. Mathew Leibold and Jonathan Chase argue that the relative importance of these processes depends on the characteristics of the organisms, the strengths and types of their interactions, the degree of habitat heterogeneity, the rates of dispersal, and the scale at which the system is observed. Using this synthetic perspective, they explore metacommunity patterns in time and space, including patterns of coexistence, distribution, and diversity. Leibold and Chase demonstrate how these processes and patterns are altered by micro- and macroevolution, traits and phylogenetic relationships, and food web interactions. They then use this scale-explicit perspective to illustrate how metacommunity processes are essential for understanding macroecological and biogeographical patterns as well as ecosystem-level processes. Moving seamlessly across scales and subdisciplines, Metacommunity Ecology is an invaluable reference, one that offers a more integrated approach to ecological patterns and processes.
Author: J. Fagard
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080867359
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
This volume examines the development of timing in coordinated action from several different ontogenetic perspectives. Some chapters emphasize the qualitative changes in manifest motor behavior during the early growth years and examine the relation between temporal characteristics of pre- and perinatal movements and goal directed actions with qualitatively different rules of temporal organization. Other contributors stress the developmentally invariant timing characteristics of species-typical and perhaps genetically programmed motor patterns of nonhuman organisms.Also examined is the molecular machinery that generates circumscribed motor patterns with stable temporal characteristics, as well as the reversible influences of peripheral feedback on and the interactions among discrete pattern generators. Despite their basic theoretical differences, both formulations imply the same generic hypothesis: that the temporal characteristics of manifest movement or action are controlled by central agencies acting on the peripheral skeleto-muscular system in a hierarchic top-down mode.
Author: Andrew Dobson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691195323
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
Leading ecologists discuss some of the most compelling open questions in the field today Unsolved Problems in Ecology brings together many of the world's leading ecologists to discuss the most fundamental research questions confronting the field today. This diverse and thought-provoking collection of essays spans virtually all of the key subfields of the discipline, from behavioral and evolutionary ecology to population biology, community ecology, ecosystem ecology, disease ecology, and conservation biology. These essays are intended to stoke curiosity, challenge prevailing wisdom, and provoke new ways of thinking about ecology in light of new technologies and unprecedented environmental challenges brought on by climate and land-use change. Authoritative and accessible, Unsolved Problems in Ecology is ideal for graduate students in the early stages of their scientific careers and an essential resource for seasoned ecologists looking for exciting new directions to take their research. Sheds light on modern ecology's most important and compelling open questions Features thought-provoking contributions from more than two dozen world-class ecologists Covers behavior, evolution, communities, ecosystems, resource management, and more Discusses ways to raise the financial and intellectual profile of the discipline An invaluable resource for graduate students as well as seasoned ecologists
