Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, Nemonte Nenquimo was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. Age 14, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. Eventually, her ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture. She listened. Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate-change activism.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the story of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant explores the past and the future of our ever-hotter, more flammable world.

Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most remarkably successful books ever written about the natural world. This classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. Carson's writing teems with stunning, memorable images - the newly formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky, the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans, giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface, and incredibly powerful tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in the Bay of Fundy.

The ocean has shaped and sustained life on Earth from the beginning of time. Its vast waters are alive with meaning, and connect every living thing on Earth. Deep Water is a hymn to the beauty, mystery and wonder of the ocean. Weaving together science, history and personal experience, it offers vital new ways of understanding not just humanity's relationship with the planet, but our past - and perhaps most importantly, our future.

For over two decades, Lara Maiklem has been scouring the banks of the tidal Thames looking for objects – lost or discarded – that tell forgotten stories. In this charming sequel to the bestselling Mudlarking, Lara widens her search beyond the river and reflects on life lived post-pandemic, reminding us that it’s possible to draw meaning in the most unlikely of places.

John Long, who for decades has been on the cutting edge of shark research, weaves a thrilling story of sharks' unparalleled reign. The Secret History of Sharks showcases the global search to discover sharks' largely unknown evolution, led by Long and dozens of other extraordinary scientists.

Shinrin-Yoku, or forest bathing, is the practice of spending time in the forest for better health, happiness and a sense of calm. A pillar of Japanese culture for decades, Shinrin-Yoku is a way to reconnect with nature, from walking mindfully in the woods, to a break in your local park, to walking barefoot on your lawn. Forest Medicine expert Dr Qing Li's research has proven that spending time around trees (even filling your home with house plants and vaporising essential tree oils) can reduce blood pressure, lower stress, boost energy, boost immune system and even help you to lose weight.

National Geographic Ocean unveils the power and significance of our planet's watery essence: the fundamental importance of the ocean in shaping Earth's climate and chemistry, as well as its vital role in supporting a multitude of life-forms, including our own human race. World-renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle guides listeners with her lyrical style and inspiring wisdom, describing the evolution, beauty, and impact of our ocean; the challenges it faces, such as climate change, plastic, and overfishing; and the myriad ways we can help protect it.

74-year-old Derbyshire man Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands, living alone in a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as 'the lonely loch'. He has no electricity or running water. He lives off the land, fishing for his supper, chopping wood, and even brewing his own tipple. For the first time, Ken shares the story of his life.

Chris and Chrissy Rouse, an experienced father-and-son scuba diving team, hoped to achieve widespread recognition for their outstanding but controversial diving skills. Obsessed and ambitious, they sought to solve the secrets of a mysterious, undocumented World War II German U-boat that lay under 230 feet of water, only a half day's mission from New York Harbor. In doing so they paid the ultimate price in their quest for fame.

Teeming with unsuspected life, an extraordinary, interconnected ecosystem deep below the waves has a huge effect on our daily lives, influencing climate and weather systems, with the potential for much more—good or bad, depending on how it is exploited. Currently, the fantastic creatures that live in the deep—many of them incandescent in a world without light—and its formations capture and trap vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere, and novel bacteria as yet undiscovered hold the promise of potent new medicines.

Part memoir, part homage to wilderness, Shearwater traces the author’s 50-year obsession with one of nature’s supreme travellers. In the finest tradition of nature writing, Roger Morgan-Grenville, author of Liquid Gold - described by Mary Colwell (Curlew Moon) as ‘a book that ignites joy and warmth’ - unpicks the science behind its incredible journey; and into the story of a year in the shearwater’s life, he threads the inspirational influence of his Hebridean grandmother who instilled in him a love of wild places and wild animals.

Peter Marshall was born in Orkney. His ancestors were farmers and farm labourers on the northern island of Sanday – where, in 1624, one of them was murdered by a witch. In an expansive and enthralling historical account, Marshall looks afresh at a small group of islands that has been treated as a mere footnote, remote and peripheral, and in doing so invites us to think differently about key events of British history.

In the years following the publication of Into Thin Air, much has changed on Mount Everest. Among all the books documenting the glorious adventures in mountains around the world, and the unique perils and challenges of Mount Everest, none details how the recent infusion of wealth into the mountains is reacting with the age-old lust for glory to draw crime to the highest places on the planet.

In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over millennia: Life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth? Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways.

Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell's cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his 15-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him. Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs? But once there, Aidan embraced the wild.

An intimate account of Alex Honnold's unprecedented, almost unimaginable feat: a 3,000-foot vertical climb up El Capitan in Yosemite, without a rope. One slip, one false move, one missed toehold and you're dead. On June 3rd 2017 veteran adventure journalist and professional climber Mark Synnott was in Yosemite to witness something that only a handful of people knew was about to occur: the most famous climber in the world, Alex Honnold, was going to attempt to summit one of the world's most challenging ascents, a route called Freerider on the notorious rock formation El Capitan.

Kim Stanley Robinson first ventured into the Sierra Nevada mountains during the summer of 1973. He returned from that encounter a changed man, awed by a landscape that made him feel as if he were simultaneously strolling through an art museum and scrambling on a jungle gym like an energized child. He has returned to the mountains throughout his life—more than a hundred trips—and has gathered a vast store of knowledge about them. The High Sierra is his lavish celebration of this exceptional place.

In 2018, lumps of frozen soil, collected from the bottom of the world's first deep ice core and lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When geologist Paul Bierman and his team first melted a piece of this unique material, they were shocked to find perfectly preserved leaves, twigs, and moss. That observation led them to a startling discovery: Greenland's ice sheet had melted naturally before, about 400,000 years ago.

In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.