Showing titles in Ecology

This Isn’t Fine is a surprisingly funny and accessible ride through a world on the brink of collapse—and what we can do to survive it. Diving headfirst into finance and energy, culture and ecology, Taylor Ahlstrom transforms the complex systems and histories that underpin our society into relatable narratives, all while mythbusting popular delusions on everything from free-market capitalism to electric cars.

Jungle tells the remarkable story of the world's tropical forests, from the arrival of the first plants millions of years ago to the role of tropical forests in the evolution of the world's atmosphere, the dinosaurs, the first mammals and even our own species and ancestors. Highlighting provocative new evidence garnered from cutting-edge research, Dr Roberts shows, for example, that our view of humans as 'savannah specialists' is wildly wrong, and that the 'Anthropocene' began not with the Industrial Revolution, but potentially as early as 6,000 years ago in the tropics.

Michael Pollan investiga tres drogas de origen vegetal, el opio, la cafeína y la mescalina, para mostrar la arbitrariedad de nuestro juicio respecto a estas sustancias, profundamente condicionado por el estigma social.

Reflecting on family, identity and nature, Belonging is a personal memoir about what it is to have and make a home. It is a love letter to nature, especially the northern landscapes of Scotland and the Scots pinewoods of Abernethy—home to standing dead trees known as snags, which support the overall health of the forest. Belonging is a book about how we are held in thrall to elements of our past. It speaks to the importance of attention and reflection, and will encourage us all to look and observe and ask questions of ourselves.

Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid is the first major audiobook by a biologist to focus on the fascinating story of how the natural world is adjusting, adapting and sometimes measurably evolving in response to climate change. Lyrical and thought-provoking, this audiobook broadens the climate focus from humans to the wider lattice of life.

Michael McCarthy, one of Britain's leading writers on the environment, proposes this joy as a defence of a natural world which is ever more threatened and which, he argues, is inadequately served by the two defences put forward hitherto: sustainable development and the recognition of ecosystem services. Drawing on a wealth of memorable experiences from a lifetime of watching and thinking about wildlife and natural landscapes, McCarthy presents a new way of looking at the world.

When biologist Hanna Bjørgaas spots a fairy cup lichen in Antarctica, she is surprised to recognize it from her own backyard in Oslo. When she returns home, she embarks on a journey into urban nature, visiting city parks, cemeteries, and concrete rooftops to investigate the species that live in urban spaces. Along the way, she meets corvids, songbirds, ants, pigeons, bats, sparrows, fungi, and linden trees—and the experts who study their surprising abilities to survive, and thrive, in the city.

Building on Falconer’s two acclaimed essays, "Signs and Wonders" and the Walkley Award-winning "The Opposite of Glamour", Signs and Wonders is a pioneering examination of how we are changing our culture, language and imaginations along with our climate. Is a mammoth emerging from the permafrost beautiful or terrifying? How is our imagination affected when something that used to be ordinary – like a car windscreen smeared with insects – becomes unimaginable?

For centuries, people have been returning to the same tired nature-versus-nurture debate, trying to determine what we learn and what we inherit. In Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, biologist Marlene Zuk goes beyond the binary and instead focuses on interaction, or the way that genes and environment work together. Driving her investigation is a simple but essential question: How does behavior evolve?

Humanity has become profoundly disconnected from the web of life on Earth as well as from nature as a whole. In this practical guide, Elizabeth E. Meacham details her field-tested method of shamanic ecotherapy practices to resolve this centuries-long trend toward disconnection. Through these practices, you will learn how to reconnect to Earth's systems and help restore health and balance to people and the planet.

In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the "Hockey Stick", a chart showing global temperature data over the past 1,000 years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that temperature had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human activity since the industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and warming the planet.

COVID-19, monkeypox, bird flu, SARS, HIV, AIDS, Ebola; we are living in the Age of Pandemics – one that we have created. As the climate crisis reaches a fever pitch and ecological destruction continues unabated, we are just beginning to reckon with the effects of environmental collapse on our global health. Fevered Planet exposes how the way we farm, what we eat, the places we travel to and the scientific experiments we conduct create the perfect conditions for deadly new diseases to emerge and spread faster and further than ever.

Brigit Strawbridge Howard was shocked the day she realized she knew more about the French Revolution than she did about her native trees. And birds. And wildflowers. And bees. The thought stopped her — quite literally — in her tracks. But that day was also the start of a journey, one filled with silver birches and hairy-footed flower bees, skylarks, and rosebay willow herb, and the joy that comes with deepening one’s relationship with place.

Once, farmers knew how to make a living hedge and fed their flocks on tree-branch hay. Rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts, and of straight, strong, flexible rods for bridges, walls, and baskets. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. This created the healthiest, most sustainable, and most diverse woodlands that we have ever known. In this journey from the English fens to Spain, Japan, and California, William Bryant Logan rediscovers what was once an everyday ecology.

Eye of the Albatross takes us soaring to locales where whales, sea turtles, penguins, and shearwaters flourish in their own quotidian rhythms. Carl Safina’s guide and inspiration is an albatross he calls Amelia, whose life and far-flung flights he describes in fascinating detail. Interwoven with recollections of whalers and famous explorers, Eye of the Albatross probes the unmistakable environmental impact of the encounters between man and marine life.

Plastic pollution is the environmental scourge of our age, but how can you make a difference? This accessible guide, written by the campaigner at the forefront of the antiplastic movement, will help you make the small changes that make a big difference, from buying a reusable coffee cup to running a cleanup at your local park or beach.

La situation critique dans laquelle se trouve la planète n'est plus à démontrer. Des effondrements sont déjà en cours tandis que d'autres s'amorcent, faisant grandir la possibilité d'un emballement global qui signifierait la fin du monde tel que nous le connaissons. Le choix de notre génération est cornélien : soit nous attendons de subir de plein fouet la violence des cataclysmes à venir, soit, pour en éviter certains, nous prenons un virage si serré qu'il déclencherait notre propre fin-du-monde-industriel.

How can we begin to talk about what is happening to the world? We are facing a global emergency. Temperatures are rising. Mass species extinction has begun. The time for denial is over. It is time to act. Letters to the Earth is the beginning of a new story. It is an invitation to act and an opportunity to extend the invitation. These letters are the result of a callout from Culture Declares Emergency to the public to write a response to climate and ecological emergency.

This is a memoir of a woman who took solo journeys to conduct an explorative, observational research study in India with elephants, horses, goats, and dogs using specific Animal Energy Therapy techniques such as sound, touch and smell. In her story telling style, the author speaks about several individual animals that she worked with and closely observed during a length of time. Her interests lie in the integration of Animal Energy Therapy and the affects of individualized therapy for each, with regards to behavioral anxieties and traumas.

"Nous savons que l'Humanité fait face au plus grand défi de son histoire. Nous savons que les écosystèmes dont nous dépendons menacent de s'écrouler. Nous savons qu'il y a urgence. Le doute n'est plus d'actualité. Chaque jour, au coin de la rue ou à l'autre bout de la planète, un nouveau front s'ouvre. Partout, des femmes et des hommes ont décidé de se lever pour sauver ce qui peut encore l'être, ou pour poser les bases d'un nouveau monde."