Fragile Dominion
Author: Simon Levin
Publisher:
Published: 1999-06-03
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →How the science of complexity can help save the natural world from collapse.
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Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons
G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology
Author: Nancy G. Slack
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2010-01-01
Total Pages: 477
ISBN-13: 0300161387
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Slack enjoyed full access to Hutchinson's archives and conducted extensive interviews both with Hutchinson himself and with his students, colleagues, and friends. She evaluates his contributions to theoretical ecology, limnology (the study of fresh-water ecosystems), biogeochemistry, population ecology, and the creation of the new fields of systems ecology and radiation ecology, and she discusses his profound influence as a mentor. The book also looks into his personal life, which included three very different wives, a refugee baby under his care during World War II, friendships with such contemporaries as Rebecca West, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson, and a host of colleagues and friends on four continents. Filled with information available nowhere else, this book draws a vibrant portrait of a giant in the discipline of twentieth-century ecology who was also a man of remarkable personal appeal. --Book Jacket.
Invasive and Introduced Plants and Animals
Author: Ian D. Rotherham
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-12-06
Total Pages: 392
ISBN-13: 1134061951
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →There have been many well-publicized cases of invasive species of plants and animals, often introduced unintentionally but sometimes on purpose, causing widespread ecological havoc. Examples of such alien invasions include pernicious weeds such as Japanese knotweed, an introduced garden ornamental which can grow through concrete, the water hyacinth which has choked tropical waterways, and many introduced animals which have out-competed and displaced local fauna. This book addresses the broader context of invasive and exotic species, in terms of the perceived threats and environmental concerns which surround alien species and ecological invasions. As a result of unprecedented scales of environmental change, combined with rapid globalisation, the mixing of cultures and diversity, and fears over biosecurity and bioterrorism, the known impacts of particular invasions have been catastrophic. However, as several chapters show, reactions to some exotic species, and the justifications for interventions in certain situations, including biological control by introduced natural enemies, rest uncomfortably with social reactions to ethnic cleansing and persecution perpetrated across the globe. The role of democracy in deciding and determining environmental policy is another emerging issue. In an increasingly multicultural society this raises huge questions of ethics and choice. At the same time, in order to redress major ecological losses, the science of reintroduction of native species has also come to the fore, and is widely accepted by many in nature conservation. However, with questions of where and when, and with what species or even species analogues, reintroductions are acceptable, the topic is hotly debated. Again, it is shown that many decisions are based on values and perceptions rather than objective science. Including a wide range of case studies from around the world, his book raises critical issues to stimulate a much wider debate.
Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France
Author: Jennifer Saltzstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-05-30
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 019754780X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France offers a new perspective on how medieval song expressed relationships between people and their environments. Informed by environmental history and harnessing musicological and ecocritical approaches, author Jennifer Saltzstein draws connections between the nature imagery that pervades songs written by the trouvères of northern France to the physical terrain and climate of the lands on which their authors lived. In doing so, she analyzes the different ways in which composers' lived environments related to their songs and categorizes their use of nature imagery as realistic, aspirational, or nostalgic. Demonstrating a cycle of mutual impact between nature and culture, Saltzstein argues that trouvère songs influenced the ways particular groups of medieval people defined their identities, encouraging them to view themselves as belonging to specific landscapes. The book offers close readings of love songs, pastourelles, motets, and rondets from the likes of Gace Brulé, Adam de la Halle, Guillaume de Machaut, and many others. Saltzstein shows how their music-text relationships illuminate the ways in which song helped to foster identities tied to specific landscapes among the knightly classes, the clergy, aristocratic women, and peasants. By connecting social types to topographies, trouvère songs and the manuscripts in which they were preserved presented models of identity for later generations of songwriters, performers, listeners, patrons, and readers to emulate, thereby projecting into the future specific ways of being on the land. Written in the long thirteenth century during the last major era of climate change, trouvère songs, as Saltzstein demonstrates, shape our understanding of how identity formation has rested on relationships between nature, culture, and change.
The Chessboard and the Web
Author: Anne-Marie Slaughter
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-01-01
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 0300215649
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- I: The World of the Web -- ONE. Of Great Powers and Globalization -- TWO. Networks Everywhere -- THREE. Seeing in Stereo -- II: Strategies of Connection -- FOUR. Resilience Networks -- FIVE. Task Networks -- SIX. Scale Networks -- III: Power, Leadership, and Grand Strategy -- SEVEN. Network Power -- EIGHT. A Different Way to Lead -- NINE. A Grand Strategy -- CONCLUSION: The Rise of Webcraft -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Illustration Credits -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
Water for Food Water for Life
Author: David Molden
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-07-23
Total Pages: 688
ISBN-13: 113654853X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Managing water resources is one of the most pressing challenges of our times - fundamental to how we feed 2 billion more people in coming decades, eliminate poverty, and reverse ecosystem degradation. This Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, involving more than 700 leading specialists, evaluates current thinking on water and its interplay with agriculture to help chart the way forward. It offers actions for water management and water policy - to ensure more equitable and effective use. This assessment describes key water-food-environment trends that influence our lives today and uses scenarios to explore the consequences of a range of potential investments. It aims to inform investors and policymakers about water and food choices in light of such crucial influences as poverty, ecosystems, governance, and productivity. It covers rainfed agriculture, irrigation, groundwater, marginal-quality water, fisheries, livestock, rice, land, and river basins. Ample tables, graphs, and references make this an invaluable work for practitioners, academics, researchers, and policymakers in water management, agriculture, conservation, and development. Published with IWMI.
Price, Principle, and the Environment
Author: Mark Sagoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004-09-06
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9780521545969
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Mark Sagoff has written an engaging and provocative book about the contribution economics can make to environmental policy. Sagoff argues that economics can be helpful in designing institutions and processes through which people can settle environmental disputes. However, he contends that economic analysis fails completely when it attempts to attach value to environmental goods. It fails because preference-satisfaction has no relation to any good. Economic valuation lacks data because preferences cannot be observed. Willingness to pay is benchmarked on market price and thus may reflect producer cost not consumer benefit. Moreover, economists cannot second-guess market outcomes because they have no better information than market participants. Mark Sagoff's conclusion is that environmental policy turns on principles that are best identified and applied through political processes. Written with verve and fluency, this book will be eagerly sought out by students and professionals in environmental policy as well as informed general readers.
Integration of Nature and Technology for Smart Cities
Author: Anil Ahuja
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2016-03-17
Total Pages: 404
ISBN-13: 3319257153
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book is a resumption of the work “Integrated M/E Design: Building Systems Engineering” published by Anil Ahuja in 1997. Together with an international group of authors from the engineering, urban planning, and architecture fields, Mr. Ahuja discussed new trends and paradigms in the smart buildings and smart city sectors and extended the topic of the previous publication from the building to the entire city. A smart, sustainable building is not just about the building itself. There are things happening in the inside of the building and on the outside. A smart building connects the inside with the outside, provides efficiencies on both sides, synchronizes the outside infrastructure with its inside systems, and integrates nature and its occupants in its design. A smart building doesn’t just provide technology solutions. It is about constant exchange between the inside and the outside of the building, the contribution of the building to the quality of the entire neighborhood and the rest of the city, how the smart building can connect people in a sharing community, and how technology can be the key to make it happen.
Heroines and History
Author: Colin MacMillan Coates
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2002-01-01
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 9780802083302
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"This is a fascinating comparison of the histories of Ontario and Quebec as seen through the handling of their best-known heroines. Most Canadians are familiar with stories of Madeleine de Vercheres defending Montreal against the Iroquois in 1692 and of Laura Secord and her cow bravely crossing the American lines to warn the British during the War of 1812.
