Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control.In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is.In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers.Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris.Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

    This book revises our own relationship with nature, allowing us to observe it and also to participate in it with reverence and a sense of wonder.

    Text and pictures document the life cycle of this amazing tree of the African savannah, and portrays the animals and people it helps to support.

    Winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order 1992, Named New Options Best Political BookEconomist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb, Jr., demonstrate how conventional economics and a growth-oriented industrial economy have led us to the brink of environmental disaster, and show the possibility of a different future.Named as one of the Top 50 Sustainability Books by University of Cambridges Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Greenleaf Publishing.

    This is Coyote's country--a landscape of the imagination, where nothing is as it appears.

    Mushrooms and Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe (A Pan original)

    2 maps.

    a welcome addition to ecofeminist literature... " --Feminist for Animal Rights"Rape of the Wild is a very moving, passionately written expose of men's subjugation and exploitation of the natural environment and of women." --Forest History SocietyThis visionary and inspiring book is a cogent analysis of man's use and misuse of his environment and an impassioned plea for a feminist ecological revolution.

    They describe for each the diversity of its flora and fauna, threats of industrial exploitation or commercial development, and legal status as a protected area. With practical information and a sense of urgency, The Big Outside is both a guide and an inspiration for all those interested in seeing and preserving what's left of wild America. Illustrations.

    It shows how human tampering affects an ecosystem, and how the Pacific Northwest could become a model for sustainable forestry worldwide.

    Over a period of twenty years, the authors have sought to understand how people perceive nature and what types of natural environments they prefer, what psychological benefits they seem to derive from wilderness experiences, and why backyard gardens are especially important to some people. The book examines the satisfactions and advantages that various natural settings bring to us. While many readers may have little doubt that the natural environment makes a difference to them, they may be suprised to discover the pervasiveness of its impact on people of diverse ages and cultural heritages. Beyond the awe-inspiring mountains and waterfalls, many comparatively simple natural settings foster tranquility and well-being. The book explores questions such as: Is the effect of nature on people as powerful as it intuitively seems to be? What makes natural settings so compelling? How do settings restore bodily health? Are some natural patterns more effective than others? Are there ways to design, manage, and interpret natural environments so as to enhance their beneficial influences? A wide audience will find this analysis of our natural environment compelling and insightful.

    It is designed so that it can be read on its own or studied as part of the Open University third-level course, S330 Oceanography. The book begins by describing the characteristics of waves and tides, and their behaviour in shallow water. After outlining the sources of sediment supply to the oceans, some theoretical aspects of sediment movement and deposition by currents are considered. After looking at wave action in the littoral zone, the interplay of tidal currents, river flow and wave action in estuaries and deltas are explored. The final chapter provides an overview of shelf processes. This is a vital book for all oceanography undergraduate students worldwide. Easy to use question and answer formatFull colour illustrations throughout35-40% revised and extended from 1st edition

    Now in its 20th year, Greenpeace has grown into an international network of more than three million members.

    Her analysis of how human communities are related to their environment opens a perspective that goes beyond overt changes in the landscape. Merchant brings to light the dense network of links between the human realm of economic regimes, social structure, and gender relations, as they are conditioned by a dominant worldview, and the ecological realm of plant and animal life. Thus we see how the integration of the Indians with their natural world was shattered by Europeans who engaged in exhaustive methods of hunting, trapping, and logging for the market and in widespread subsistence farming. The resulting colonial ecological revolution was to hold sway until roughly the time of American independence, when the onset of industrialization and increasing urbanization brought about the capitalist ecological revolution. By the late nineteenth century, Merchant argues, New England had become a society that viewed the whole ecosphere as an arena for human domination. One can see in New England a mirror of the world, she says. What took place there between 1600 and 1850 was a greatly accelerated recapitulation of the evolutionary ecological changes that had occurred in Europe over a span of 2,500 years.

    Summaries of the animals, plants, topographical features, and Indian tribes encountered are included at the end of each chapter devoted to the particular leg of the journey. A distinguished biologist, Paul Russell Cutright will be remembered for this landmark contribution to our understanding of the world that the expedition observed and recorded.

    User-friendly dichotomous keys are supported by details of diagnostic features and biology of each species. Now enhanced with 32 pages of colour, this much acclaimed guide is invaluable to students of marine biology at any level. Questions such as how does the species reproduce? What is its life-cycle? How does it feed? are answered in the notes accompanying each species to give a fascinating insight into the diversity and complexity of life on the shore. The text is supported by an extensive glossary of scientific terms and a comprehensive bibliography is included to aid further study. The third edition builds on the excellent reviews of earlier editions and will continue to appeal to a wide readership, including students, teachers and naturalists.

    In this unclassifiable memoir and meditation Charles Bowden powerfully conveys a desert civilization carrening over the edge--and decaying at its center.

    You get indispensable guidance on every aspect of the profession from leading experts, from an introduction to practices to specific air, water, and waste treatment and handling methods. Inside this book you'll find stepwise guidance to help you provide services from project management to value engineering, plus help with every aspect of air, water, and waste management. With hundreds of useful tables and charts, and convenient access to all the day-to-day technical, professional, and regulatory information you need, Standard Handbook of Environmental Engineering is an essential referenceNyour one-stop source for professional guidance.