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Author: Stuart Pimm
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 9780071420594
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
Take a globe-circling tour of our endangered planet with conservation biologist Stuart Pimmwho is taking stock and keeping score. We use 50 percent of the world's freshwater supply. We consume 42 percent of the world's plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants 100 times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such numbers should make it clear that the human impact on our planet has been, and continues to be, extreme and detrimental. Yet even after decades of awareness of our environmental peril, there remains passionate disagreement over what the problems are and how they should be remedied. Much of the impasse stems from the fact that the problems are difficult to quantify. How do we assess the impact of habitat loss on various species, when we haven't even counted them all? And just what factors go into that 42 percent of biomass we are hungrily consuming? It is only through an understanding of the numbers that we will be able to break that impasse and come to agreement. Working on the front lines of conservation biology, Stuart Pimm is one of the pioneers whose work has put the "science" in environmental science. In this book, he appoints himself "investment banker of the global, biological accounts," checking the numbers gathered by tireless scientists in work that is always painstaking and often heartbreaking. Pimm explains the numerical results in lucid prose. With wit, passion, and candor, he reveals the importance of understanding where those numbers come from and what they mean. To do so, he takes the reader on a globe-circling tour of our beautiful, but weary, planet. With Pimm as our indomitable guide, we travel from the volcanic mountains and rainforests of Hawaii to the boreal forests of Siberia. We see a blue whale off the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the blue oceans are slowly turning to barren deserts. We go birdwatching high up in the leafy canopy of the Amazon, from which we can see the hundreds of smoke plumes busily working at deforestation. At times, the view looks rather grim. But Pimm is no Cassandra; he never preaches or scolds. Ever optimistic, this book presents a world filled with mysterious beauty, the infinite variety of nature, and an urgent hope that through an understanding of our planet's environmental past and present, we will be inspired to save it from future extinction. "[T]his book is unashamedly optimistic. It is a celebration of our spectacular and fascinating world. I have made no attempt to restrain my joy as I encounter its natural history and its peoples. By the time you read the Epilogue you will know that our world is not doomed, it is not fatally wounded, but neither is it healthy. It needs attention. . . ." Stuart Pimm, from the Prologue
Author: Stuart Pimm
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 9780071420594
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Get Book Here
Book Description
Take a globe-circling tour of our endangered planet with conservation biologist Stuart Pimmwho is taking stock and keeping score. We use 50 percent of the world's freshwater supply. We consume 42 percent of the world's plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants 100 times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such numbers should make it clear that the human impact on our planet has been, and continues to be, extreme and detrimental. Yet even after decades of awareness of our environmental peril, there remains passionate disagreement over what the problems are and how they should be remedied. Much of the impasse stems from the fact that the problems are difficult to quantify. How do we assess the impact of habitat loss on various species, when we haven't even counted them all? And just what factors go into that 42 percent of biomass we are hungrily consuming? It is only through an understanding of the numbers that we will be able to break that impasse and come to agreement. Working on the front lines of conservation biology, Stuart Pimm is one of the pioneers whose work has put the "science" in environmental science. In this book, he appoints himself "investment banker of the global, biological accounts," checking the numbers gathered by tireless scientists in work that is always painstaking and often heartbreaking. Pimm explains the numerical results in lucid prose. With wit, passion, and candor, he reveals the importance of understanding where those numbers come from and what they mean. To do so, he takes the reader on a globe-circling tour of our beautiful, but weary, planet. With Pimm as our indomitable guide, we travel from the volcanic mountains and rainforests of Hawaii to the boreal forests of Siberia. We see a blue whale off the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the blue oceans are slowly turning to barren deserts. We go birdwatching high up in the leafy canopy of the Amazon, from which we can see the hundreds of smoke plumes busily working at deforestation. At times, the view looks rather grim. But Pimm is no Cassandra; he never preaches or scolds. Ever optimistic, this book presents a world filled with mysterious beauty, the infinite variety of nature, and an urgent hope that through an understanding of our planet's environmental past and present, we will be inspired to save it from future extinction. "[T]his book is unashamedly optimistic. It is a celebration of our spectacular and fascinating world. I have made no attempt to restrain my joy as I encounter its natural history and its peoples. By the time you read the Epilogue you will know that our world is not doomed, it is not fatally wounded, but neither is it healthy. It needs attention. . . ." Stuart Pimm, from the Prologue
Author: Stuart Leonard Pimm
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813535401
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Humans use 50 percent of the world's freshwater supply and consume 42 percent of its plant growth. We are liquidating animals and plants one hundred times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Such numbers should make it clear that our impact on the planet has been, and continues to be, extreme and detrimental. Yet even after decades of awareness of our environmental peril, there remains passionate disagreement over what the problems are and how they should be remedied. Much of the impasse stems from the fact that the problems are difficult to quantify. How do we assess the impact of habitat loss on various species, when we haven't even counted them all? And just what factors go into that 42 percent of biomass we are hungrily consuming? It is only through an understanding of the numbers that we will be able to break that impasse and come to agreement on which environmental issues are most critical and how they might best be addressed. Working on the front lines of conservation biology, Stuart Pimm is one of the pioneers whose work has put the "science" in environmental science. In this book, he appoints himself "investment banker of the global, biological accounts," checking the environmental statistics gathered by tireless scientists in work that is always painstaking and often heartbreaking. With wit, passion, and candor, he reveals the importance of understanding where these numbers come from and what they mean. To do so, he takes the reader on a globe-circling tour of our beautiful, but weary, planet from the volcanic mountains and rainforests of Hawai'i to the boreal forests of Siberia. At times, the view looks rather grim. Yet Pimm, ever the optimist, presents a world filled with mysterious beauty, the infinite variety of nature, and an urgent hope that through an understanding of our planet's environmental past and present, we will be inspired to save it from future extinction.
Author: Stuart L. Pimm
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226668307
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
Why "the balance of nature"? Resilience. Temporal variability and the individual species. The effects of food-web structure. The variability of the environment. Nonlinear dynamics, strange attractors, and chaos. Extinctions. Species differences and community structure as explanations of why introductions fail. Patterns in species composition. Food-web structure and community persistence. Community assembly; or why are there so many kinds of communities? Small-scale experimental removals of species. Food webs and resistance. Changes in total density and species composition. The consequences of introductions and extinctions. Multispecies models and their limitations. Conclusions and caveats.
Author: Michael L. Rosenzweig
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198035454
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
As humanity presses down inexorably on the natural world, people debate the extent to which we can save the Earth's millions of different species without sacrificing human economic welfare. But is this argument wise? Must the human and natural worlds be adversaries? In this book, ecologist Michael Rosenzweig finds that ecological science actually rejects such polarization. Instead it suggests that, to be successful, conservation must discover how we can blend a rich natural world into the world of economic activity. This revolutionary, common ground between development and conservation is called reconciliation ecology: creating and maintaining species-friendly habitats in the very places where people live, work, or play. The book offers many inspiring examples of the good results already achieved. The Nature Conservancy, for instance, has a cooperative agreement with the Department of Defense, with more than 200 conservation projects taking place on more than 170 bases in 41 states. In places such as Elgin Air Force Base, the human uses-testing munitions, profitable timbering and recreation--continue, but populations of several threatened species on the base, such as the long-leaf pine and the red-cockaded woodpecker, have been greatly improved. The Safe Harbor strategy of the Fish & Wildlife Service encourages private landowners to improve their property for endangered species, thus overcoming the unintended negative aspects of the Endangered Species Act. And Golden Gate Park, which began as a system of sand dunes, has become, through human effort, a world of ponds and shrubs, waterfowl and trees. Rosenzweig shows that reconciliation ecology is the missing tool of conservation, the practical, scientifically based approach that, when added to the rest, will solve the problem of preserving Earth's species.
Author: Stuart L. Pimm
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226668321
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Food webs are diagrams depicting which species interact or in other words, who eats whom. An understanding of the structure and function of food webs is crucial for any study of how an ecosystem works, including attempts to predict which communities might be more vulnerable to disturbance and therefore in more immediate need of conservation. Although it was first published twenty years ago, Stuart Pimm's Food Webs remains the clearest introduction to the study of food webs. Reviewing various hypotheses in the light of theoretical and empirical evidence, Pimm shows that even the most complex food webs follow certain patterns and that those patterns are shaped by a limited number of biological processes, such as population dynamics and energy flow. Pimm provides a variety of mathematical tools for unravelling these patterns and processes, and demonstrates their application through concrete examples. For this edition, he has written a new foreword covering recent developments in the study of food webs and demonstrates their continuing importance to conservation biology.
Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679768114
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Eloquent, practical and wise, this book by one of the world’s most important scientists—and two time Pulitzer Prize winner—should be read and studied by anyone concerned with the fate of the natural world. It "makes one thing clear ... we know what we do, and we have a choice" (The New York Times Book Review). E.O. Wilson assesses the precarious state of our environment, examining the mass extinctions occurring in our time and the natural treasures we are about to lose forever. Yet, rather than eschewing doomsday prophesies, he spells out a specific plan to save our world while there is still time. His vision is a hopeful one, as economically sound as it is environmentally necessary.
Author: Eric Chivian
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 576
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Book Description
Edited and written by Harvard Medical School physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, Sustaining Life presents a comprehensive--and sobering--view of how human medicines, biomedical research, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and the production of food, both on land and in the oceans, depend on on the earth's disappearaing biodiversity. With a foreword by E.O. Wilson and a prologue by Kofi Annan, and more than 200 poignant color illustrations, Sustaining Life contributes essential perspective to the debate over how humans affect biodiversity and a compelling demonstration of the human health costs.
Author: Edward O., Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476747431
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
The remarkable story of how one of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world was destroyed, restored, and continues to evolve—with stunning, full-color photographs by two of the world’s best wildlife photographers. A Window on Eternity is a stunning book of splendid prose and gorgeous photography about one of the biologically richest places in Africa and perhaps in the world. Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique was nearly destroyed in a brutal civil war, then was reborn and is now evolv-ing back to its original state. Edward O. Wilson’s personal, luminous description of the wonders of Gorongosa is beautifully complemented by Piotr Naskrecki’s extraordinary photographs of the park’s exquisite natural beauty. A bonus DVD of Academy Award–winning director Jessica Yu’s documentary, The Guide, is also included with the book. Wilson takes readers to the summit of Mount Gorongosa, sacred to the local people and the park’s vital watershed. From the forests of the mountain he brings us to the deep gorges on the edge of the Rift Valley, previously unexplored by biologists, to search for new species and assess their ancient origins. He describes amazing animal encounters from huge colonies of agricultural termites to specialized raider ants that feed on them to giant spiders, a battle between an eagle and a black mamba, “conversations” with traumatized elephants that survived the slaughter of the park’s large animals, and more. He pleads for Gorongosa—and other wild places—to be allowed to exist and evolve in its timeless way uninterrupted into the future. As he examines the near destruction and rebirth of Gorongosa, Wilson analyzes the balance of nature, which, he observes, teeters on a razor’s edge. Loss of even a single species can have serious ramifications throughout an ecosystem, and yet we are carelessly destroying complex biodiverse ecosystems with unknown consequences. The wildlands in which these ecosystems flourish gave birth to humanity, and it is this natural world, still evolving, that may outlast us and become our legacy, our window on eternity.
Author: Zondervan,
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310863309
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
This book argues that it is possible for our study of the natural world to enhance our understanding of God and for our faith to inform and influence our study and application of science. Whether you are a student, someone employed in the sciences, or simply an interested layperson, Not Just Science will help you develop the crucial skills of critical thinking and reflection about key questions in Christian faith and natural science.The contributors provide a systematic approach to both raising and answering the key questions that emerge at the intersection of faith and various disciplines in the natural sciences. Among the questions addressed are the context, limits, benefits, and practice of science in light of Christian values. Questions of ethics as they relate to various applied sciences are also discussed. The end goal is an informed biblical worldview on both nature and our role in obeying God’s mandate to care for his creation.With an honest approach to critical questions, Not Just Science fills a gap in the discussion about the relationship between faith and reason. This is a most welcomed addition to these significant scholarly conversations. Ron Mahurin, PhD Vice President, Professional Development and Research Council for Christian Colleges & Universities
Author: Carl Safina
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 1429984260
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
Part odyssey, part pilgrimage, this epic personal narrative follows the author's exploration of coasts, islands, reefs, and the sea's abyssal depths. Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world's changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis.
