That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how. The basic science goes like this: Microscopic cells called “mycelium”--the fruit of which are mushrooms--recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil. What Stamets has discovered is that we can capitalize on mycelium’s digestive power and target it to decompose toxic wastes and pollutants (mycoremediation), catch and reduce silt from streambeds and pathogens from agricultural watersheds (mycofiltration), control insect populations (mycopesticides), and generally enhance the health of our forests and gardens (mycoforestry and myco-gardening).  In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find chapters detailing each of these four exciting branches of what Stamets has coined “mycorestoration,” as well as chapters on the medicinal and nutritional properties of mushrooms, inoculation methods, log and stump culture, and species selection for various environmental purposes. Heavily referenced and beautifully illustrated, this book is destined to be a classic reference for bemushroomed generations to come.

    Volume I lays out the vision of the forest garden and explains the basic ecological principles that make it work. In Volume II, Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier move on to practical considerations: concrete ways to design, establish, and maintain your own forest garden. Along the way they present case studies and examples, as well as tables, illustrations, and a uniquely valuable -plant matrix- that lists hundreds of the best edible and useful species.Taken together, the two volumes of Edible Forest Gardens offer an advanced course in ecological gardening--one that will forever change the way you look at plants and your environment.

    From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.

    But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts.M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.

    Finalist for the 2006 Pen Center USA Western award in creative nonfiction.

    Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.

    For LaDuke, only the power to define what is sacred—and access it—will enable Native American communities to remember who they are and fashion their future.Using a wealth of Native American research and hundreds of interviews with indigenous scholars and activists, LaDuke examines the connections between sacred objects and the sacred bodies of her people—past, present and future—focusing more closely on the conditions under which traditional beliefs can best be practiced. Describing the plentiful gaps between mainstream and indigenous thinking, she probes the paradoxes that abound for the native people of the Americas. How, for instance, can the indigenous imperative to honor the Great Salt Mother be carried out when mining threatens not only access to Nevada’s Great Salt Lake but the health of the lake water itself? While Congress has belatedly moved to protect most Native American religious expression, it has failed to protect the places and natural resources integral to the ceremonies.Federal laws have achieved neither repatriation of Native remains nor protection of sacred sites, and may have even less power to confront the more insidious aspects of cultural theft, such as the parading of costumed mascots. But what of political marginalization? How can the government fund gene mapping while governmental neglect causes extreme poverty, thus blocking access to basic healthcare for most tribal members? Calling as ever on her lyrical sensibility and caustic wit, moving from the popular to the politic, from the sacred to the profane, LaDuke uses these essays not just to indict the current situation, but to point out a way forward for Native Americans and their allies.

    It has always placed an emphasis on gardening, but since then it has expanded to include many other aspects, from community design to energy use. It can be seen as an overall framework that puts a diversity of green ideas into perspective. Its aims are low work, high output, and genuine sustainability.

    As she walks the land, swims the seas, and climbs the mountains, nurturing all of creation, she comes across Man, Frog, and Mosquito. They each give her thanks for nature's bounty, yet can't help but give her advice about making their lives better. Everybody’s got an opinion, it seems, and Earth Mother is amused when it becomes clear that the circle of life is not without a healthy dose of cosmic humor. Leo and Diane Dillon lend their formidable talents to Ellen Jackson's original folktale about the unexpected and sometimes humorous ways that life is interconnected.

    Naturalist Ellen Meloy tracks a band of these majestic creatures through backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels across the Southwest. Alone in the wilderness, Meloy chronicles her communion with the bighorns and laments the growing severance of man from nature, a severance that she feels has left us spiritually hungry. Wry, quirky and perceptive, Eating Stone is a brillant and wholly original tribute to the natural world.

    Callahan, whose popular Good House Book helped environmentally-minded readers create an earth-friendly home, have returned with a photo-packed, amazingly complete, start-to-finish guide to "green" housebuilding.This absolutely groundbreaking manual doesn't just talk about eco-friendly building techniques, but actually shows every step! More than 1,200 close-up photographs, along with in-depth descriptions, follow the real construction of an alternative house from site selection to the addition of final-touch interior details. Co-authors Clarke Snell and Timothy Callahan (a professional builder and contractor) provide thorough discussions of the fundamental concepts of construction, substitutes for conventional approaches, and planning a home that's not only comfortable and beautiful, but environmentally responsible. Then, they roll up their sleeves and get to work assembling a guest house that incorporates four different alternative building methods: straw bale, cob, cordwood, and modified stick frame. The images show every move: how the site is cleared, the basic structure put together, the cob wall sculpted, the bales and cordwood stacked, a living roof created, and more. Most important, the manual conveys real-world challenges and processes, and offers dozens of sidebars with invaluable advice. It's head and shoulders above all others in the field.

    For those who've wondered where sugar grows, what a chocolate tree looks like, or where jeans or bicycle tires come from, the answers are all here and are shared by friendly bees who guide the reader along their way. Inspired by England's Eden Project Botanic Garden, this ingenious, prize-winning volume is ideal for Earth Day celebrations in April.

    One of the world's preeminent nature photographers shows the beauty and evolutionary brilliance of animals and insects with a tenacious will to stay alive in an eat-or-be-eaten world.

    Disclaiming the conventional belief that living matter reacts passively in the face of threats to its existence, Lovelock argues that the earth's living matter - air, ocean, and land surfaces - forms a complex system which has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life. Now reissued with an updated preface which discusses how Lovelock's predictions have already begun to hold true, Gaia has dramatically altered the way scientists view evolution and the environment.

    These fascinating undersea worlds occupy more than three quarters of the globe, and their natural richness is the source of all life—yet they are still poorly understood. With engaging text and more than 400 photographs presented in a stunning oversize format, authors Laurent Ballesta and Pierre Descamp lead readers on a compelling voyage of discovery. Each page reveals a new marvel, from the exuberance of underwater forests to the delicate intimacy of octopuses and the extreme survival methods of creatures in the Antarctic. More than 25 essays from leading scientists highlight topics such as aquaculture and global warming—for in addition to celebrating earth's marine life, Planet Ocean helps readers understand the threats that weigh on the oceans and why we must protect the incredible diversity of plants and animals there. The World Conservation Union has partnered on the project to ensure an accurate, timely, and interesting presentation of this very important subject. Visually rewarding and excellently priced, Planet Ocean will inspire and inform as it entices us to explore the colorful world beneath the sea.

    Many farmers continued to milk cows by hand, pump water with windmills or gasoline engines, light their way with kerosene lamps and lanterns, heat with woodstoves, and plant and harvest with horses. And many had no indoor plumbing. After war’s end in 1945, change on the farm came rapidly. Electricity replaced lamps, lanterns, and gasoline engines. New tractors replaced horses. Hay balers made loose hay a memory. Grain combines replaced threshing machines. Not only was farm work transformed from 1945 to 1955, but so was life on farms and in rural communities. Threshing, silo filling, and corn shredding bees, where farmers gathered to help each other, became memories. Card games and neighborly visits were replaced by television. Young people left the land because mechanization required less labor. Large farms crowded out family farms. "Every Farm Tells a Story" is a first-person account of a small Wisconsin farm during and after World War II. This ""living history"" is a collection of true tales inspired by entries in Jerry Apps’s mother’s farm account books. The values recorded in the account books prompt recollections of his childhood and the traditional family farm values and ethics instilled in him by Ma and Pa. About the Author: A professor emeritus of agriculture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author Jerry Apps has written more than 35 books, many of them on rural history and country life. Recent titles include "When Chores Were Done" and "Humor from the Country." His writing has earned awards from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Library Association, and Barnes and Noble Booksellers, among others.

     "One of those rare, truly great books that can change the world."-John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution The renowned scientist who fundamentally changed the way we view primates and our relationship with the animal kingdom now turns her attention to an incredibly important and deeply personal issue-taking a stand for a more sustainable world. In this provocative and encouraging book, Jane Goodall sounds a clarion call to Western society, urging us to take a hard look at the food we produce and consume-and showing us how easy it is to create positive change.Offering her hopeful, but stirring vision, Goodall argues convincingly that each individual can make a difference. She offers simple strategies each of us can employ to foster a sustainable society. Brilliant, empowering, and irrepressibly optimistic, Harvest for Hope is one of the most crucial works of our age. If we follow Goodall's sound advice, we just might save ourselves before it's too late.

    Through Maloof’s engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it--and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree’s survival.Never really at home in a laboratory, Maloof took to the woods early in her career. Her enthusiasm for firsthand observation in the wild spills over into her writing, whether the subject is the composition of forest air, the eagle’s preference for nesting in loblolly pines, the growth rings of the bald cypress, or the gray squirrel’s fondness for weevil-infested acorns. With a storyteller’s instinct for intriguing particulars, Maloof expands our notions about what a tree “is” through her many asides--about the six species of leafhoppers who eat only sycamore leaves or the midges who live inside holly berries and somehow prevent them from turning red.As a scientist, Maloof accepts that trees have a spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified. As an unrepentant tree hugger, she finds support in the scientific case for biodiversity. As an activist, she can’t help but wonder how much time is left for our forests.

    We spent hundreds of hours with readers testing and refining it to be sure it will work for you.You'll learn the secret to identifying 15 common trees: ash, aspen, birch, cedar, douglas-fir, elm, fir, hemlock, hickory, maple, oak, pine, sourgum, spruce, and sweetgum. Together, these account for 80% of US trees and two of the top three trees in every state.Along the way, you'll reconnect with our ancestors who would not have gotten far without knowing the trees of the enormous forests around them.Includes a comprehensive Next Steps section with guides to the top 10 trees in your state, tree field manuals, how trees work (in six bullet points), their five biggest enemies, and more.

    This experience has given him unique insight into the richness but also the fragility of our environment. 365 Ways to Save the Earth takes the reader on a daily journey through our planet, revealing its hidden face. For every day it proposes a photograph and a simple everyday action that allows the reader to take part in the protection of planet Earth.

    The truth, however, is that local communities have a long history of ambivalence toward new arrivals and minorities. Persistent patterns of segregation by race and income still exist in housing and schools, along with a growing emphasis on rapid metropolitan development (sprawl) that encourages upwardly mobile families to abandon older communities and their problems. This dual pattern is becoming increasingly important as America grows more diverse than ever and economic inequality increases. Two recent trends compel new attention to these issues. First, the geography of race and class represents a crucial litmus test for the new "regionalism"—the political movement to address the linked fortunes of cities and suburbs. Second, housing has all but disappeared as a major social policy issue over the past two decades. This timely book shows how unequal housing choices and sprawling development create an unequal geography of opportunity. It emerges from a project sponsored by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University in collaboration with the Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Brookings Institution. The contributors—policy analysts, political observers, social scientists, and urban planners—document key patterns, their consequences, and how we can respond, taking a hard look at both successes and failures of the past. Place still matters, perhaps more than ever. High levels of segregation shape education and job opportunity, crime and insecurity, and long-term economic prospects. These problems cannot be addressed effectively if society assumes that segregation will take care of itself. Contributors include William Apgar (Harvard University), Judith Bell (PolicyLink), Angela Glover Blackwell (PolicyLink), Allegra Calder (Harvard), Karen Chapple (Cal-Berkeley), Camille Charles (Penn), Mary Cunningham (Urban Institute), Casey Dawkins (Virginia Tech), Stephanie DeLuca (Johns Hopkins), John Goering (CUNY), Edward Goetz (U. of Minnesota), Bruce Katz (Brookings), Barbara Lukermann (U. of Minnesota), Gerrit Knaap (U. of Maryland), Arthur Nelson (Virginia Tech), Rolf Pendall (Cornell), Susan J. Popkin (Urban Institute), James Rosenbaum (Northwestern), Stephen L. Ross (U. of Connecticut), Mara Sidney (Rutgers), Phillip Tegeler (Poverty and Race Research Action Council), Tammy Tuck (Northwestern), Margery Austin Turner (Urban Institute), William Julius Wilson (Harvard).

    The book is both theoretical and practical, combining pedagogical background on why field work enhances educational experiences with the nuts and bolts details of how one gets started.

    The discovery that fusion reactions are responsible for the building of the light elements in the "Big Bang" and the subsequent development of the heavier elements in the stars and in exploding supernovae is one of the field's most exciting successes. In this engaging book, McCracken and Stott reexamine these discoveries in astrophysics and discuss the possibility that fusion reactions are not only our sun's source of power, but may also be induced for our use on earth. * Details the initial discovery of nuclear fusion, all related research, and today's concern over future energy supply* Examines current attempts to create nuclear fusion here on earth* Enhanced with color illustrations and examples* Provides a non-technical treatment of fusion using straightforward language* Includes technical notes for aspiring physicists

    One of the founding fathers of Impressionist art, Monet's works consistently reflect the artist's profound love of nature. Many of his paintings were directly inspired by the gardens that played such an important role in his life--the garden at his house in S�vres in the 1860s, those at his two homes in Argenteuil in the 1870s, followed by a garden at his estate in Vatheuil. Yet the most famous of Monet's gardens was the expansive park in Giverny, which inspired his masterful handling of light and color for more than thirty years and provided motifs for hundreds of individual paintings and series that remain immensely popular today--among them the masterpieces of his Water-Lilies series. This magnificent volume of full-page color plates is devoted to this central theme in the work of the French artist. It presents landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of people in natural settings from nearly all of Monet's creative periods--from his early Impressionist paintings of the 1870s to the Grandes Dacorations of the early 1900s. Also included are photographs of Monet's gardens, diagrammatic recreations of these spaces (based on the artist's paintings), several bills of delivery and planting instructions from horticulturalists.

    This is the first book on Kansas wildflowers or weeds to appear in 25 years. It supersedes earlier guides not only in the number of species it includes--plus its coverage of grasses--but also in its spectacular, true-to-life color photos.Michael Haddock has assembled a guide to 264 wildflowers along with 59 grasses, sedges, and rushes. These comprise many of the state's most common and conspicuous species--as well as some seldom encountered or listed in field guides--and include many that are found throughout the Great Plains.Wildflowers are arranged first by dominant color groups for quick identification, then by family within each color category so that the user can compare a species with similarly colored flowers. Each entry for flower or grass includes a complete profile for any given plant: scientific name, family, common name(s), flowering period, height, distribution and habitat, life span, basic morphological characteristics, and notes on historical food and medicinal uses where applicable.The book also features "finding aids" that allow one to narrow a specimen to a smaller number of possible matches-sometimes more quickly than by comparing it to the photos. These lists were created with the non-specialist in mind and are based on basic vegetative and floral features that are usually easy to determine.Perfect for backpack or glove compartment, Wildflowers and Grasses of Kansas offers a wealth of quick-access information graced with color that leaps off the page, making plant identification a joy rather than a chore. It's a book guaranteed to send even chronic homebodies out into the Great Outdoors in search of these elusive blooms.

    Following in the footsteps of celebrity advocates Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, and Angelina Jolie, Black Market exposes the unsettling truth about the cruel exploitation and bureaucratic indifference surrounding the multibillion-dollar underground industry that drives wildlife exploitation. Includes over 100 gripping black and white and color photographs with never-before-seen aspects of the illegal trade, up-close photojournalism uncovering illegal activities of poachers, traders and wildlife enforcement agencies, heroic tales of impassioned conservation efforts and the valiant individuals and organizations battling to save the world’s precious wildlife heritage.

    It's informed, pragmatic, and refreshingly free of hype. The "Important Things to Know" chapter includes Navajo creation stories along with health precautions and how to buy a Navajo rug. From Four Corners National Monument to the Grand Canyon, Fran Kosik gives needed survival advice on motels, camping, restaurants (and gas stations, which aren't as plentiful as you may think), interspersed with scholarly archeological, geographical anthropological information, and sensitive attention to the people who still live there.

    

    This environmental sociology reader emphasizes utilizing the sociological imagination to examine the race, class, gender, and other power dimensions that intersect environmental issues. It includes excerpts from recently published pieces that use various sociological perspectives, especially critical frameworks, to examine a wide range of topics-from the globalization of hazardous wastes and industries to mountaintop removal for mining to the construction of nature in a television sitcom. This second edition, like the first, aims to engage undergraduate students, and includes nine new selections chosen from recent work. A section on social constructionism has been added, and the section on science, risk, and health has been expanded to mirror the increased interest in that field. The new edition also includes a chapter on climate change and new selections in the section on 'Thinking about Change/Working for Change, ' which helps students see how individuals can affect the future of the planet through their actions.

    Yosemite in Time puts this park in a new light with re-photographs of some of the most enduring images taken at Yosemite, and three essays by noted cultural critic Rebecca Solnit. The photographs and essays reconsider the iconic status of Yosemite in America's conception of wilderness, examining how the place was appropriated by its early Euro-American visitors and showing how our conceptions of landscape have altered and how land has changed — or not — over time. Arresting and incisive, Yosemite in Time is an intimate reconsideration of a park that millions of people hold dear.

    But there's much more to LA's story than this shallow stereotype. History shows that Los Angeles was intensely, ubiquitously planned. The consequences of that planning-the environmental history of urbanism-is one place to turn for the more complex lessons LA has to offer. Working forward from ancient times and ancient ecologies to the very recent past, Land of Sunshine is a fascinating exploration of the environmental history of greater Los Angeles. Rather than rehearsing a litany of errors or insults against nature, rather than decrying the lost opportunities of roads not taken, these essays, by nineteen leading geologists, ecologists, and historians, instead consider the changing dynamics both of the city and of nature. In the nineteenth century, for example, density was considered an evil, and reformers struggled mightily to move the working poor out to areas where better sanitation and flowers and parks made life seem worth the living. middle-class people back into the core of American cities. There's nothing natural, or inevitable, about such turns of events. It's only by paying very close attention to the ways metropolitan nature has been constructed and construed that meaningful lessons can be drawn. History matters. So here are the plants and animals of the Los Angeles basin, its rivers and watersheds. Here are the landscapes of fact and fantasy, the historical actors, events, and circumstances that have proved transformative over and over again. The result is a nuanced and rich portrait of Los Angeles that will serve planners, communities, and environmentalists as they look to the past for clues, if not blueprints, for enhancing the quality and viability of cities.

    Woodlands are distinguished from forests by the fact that their canopies do not touch, tree heights are usually lower and they usually have a grassy understorey. They support a fascinating and diverse array of birds, mammals, reptiles, frogs, invertebrates and plants, and have been under massive pressure from grazing and agriculture over the past 200 years. In many cases only small remnant patches of some types of woodland survive. Understanding and appreciating woodlands is an important way forward for promoting their sustainable management and conservation. "Woodlands: A Disappearing Landscape" explains with lucid text and spectacular photographs the role that woodlands play in supporting a range of native plants and animals that has existed there for millions of years. The book is set out as a series of logically linked chapters working from the woodland canopy (the tree crowns), through the understorey, the ground layers, and to the lowest lying parts of landscape wetlands, creeks and dams. Each chapter illustrates many key topics in woodland biology with text and images, explaining important aspects of woodland ecology as well as woodland management and conservation. Features* top-quality images by one of Australia s finest natural history photographers * text by Eureka prize winner, David Lindenmayer * complements much that has been written about Australia s tall forests"

    Yet today, invading plant species have devastated this nearly forgotten botanical heritage. In this lively, vividly detailed work, Richard A. Minnich synthesizes a unique and wide-ranging array of sources—from the historic accounts of those early explorers to the writings of early American botanists in the nineteenth century, newspaper accounts in the twentieth century, and modern ecological theory—to give the most comprehensive historical analysis available of the dramatic transformation of California's wildflower prairies. At the same time, his groundbreaking book challenges much current thinking on the subject, critically evaluating the hypothesis that perennial bunchgrasses were once a dominant feature of California's landscape and instead arguing that wildflowers filled this role. As he examines the changes in the state's landscape over the past three centuries, Minnich brings new perspectives to topics including restoration ecology, conservation, and fire management in a book that will change our of view of native California.

    Brilliantly combining a huge amount of up-to-date information, visual charts, and clear explanation, Patrick Hossay shows how an historical path of colonialism, capitalist development and industrial growth has yielded bad results. He proposes a fundamental restructuring of the way business is done, and the book suggests ways in which we can work for lasting change.

    Their overview of this transnational movement reveals important links between environmental management and social justice agendas for sustainable use of resources by local communities. In this volume, leaders who have been instrumental in creating and shaping CBNRM describe their model programs; the countermapping movement and collective claims to land and resources; legal strategies for gaining rights to resources and territories; biodiversity conservation and land stabilization priorities; and environmental justice and minority rights. This book will be of value to instructors, practitioners and activists in anthropology, cultural geography, environmental justice, environmental policy, political ecology, indigenous rights, conservation biology, and CBNRM.

    Combining two Sloane books, "Eric Sloane’s Almanac and Weather Forecaster" (1955) and "Folklore of American Weather" (1963), this omnibus is filled with traditional weather sayings and beliefs. In "Eric Sloane’s Weather Almanac," readers will learn forecasting tips such as which winds bring what kinds of weather, how to ""read"" clouds, how to foretell the weather by the moon, and more. Also included is fun climate lore such as old-time sayings about when sap is running and why you should dig your well where lightning has struck. One hundred thirty-five of Sloane’s drawings clarify and enhance the text of this entertaining and informative book by one of the most popular recorders of American history. Before Eric Sloane (1905-1985) became famous for paintings and books, he was one of the top weather experts in the United States and wrote several books on the subject for the U.S. Navy.

    The years of innocence are waning. But we have had the good fortune to live through a period when a child's mind is wide open and as absorbent as a sponge. Blessed years of exploration and discovery, fat and full of the natural world, which surrounds her here ... the mountains and forests and ospreys, eagles, otters and pine martens of a beautiful land.' NATURE'S CHILD is John Lister-Kaye's account of bringing up his daughter to appreciate the nature around her so beloved to himself. It is also a moving meditation on that world, and on their relationship, as he shows her how caterpillars metamorphose into moths; how beavers build dams in Norway; how half a million sea birds migrate to Shetland once a year to breed; how white rhinos behave in the wilds of Swaziland; how baby polar bears are raised on an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. As John puts it: 'Life is a collection of fragments of time charged with deeply personal sensation and meaning ... we had watched polar bears for a few minutes, but the recollection of those images are locked in for life. What is love if not time given in joy and delight?'

    They have changed behavior; they have built institutions. And they have developed norms and principles for their time. Today's environmental challenges--at once global, technological, and commercial--require new behaviors, new institutions, and new principles.In this highly original work, Thomas Princen builds one such principle: sufficiency. Sufficiency is not about denial, not about sacrifice or doing without. Rather, when resource depletion and overconsumption are real, sufficiency is about doing well. It is about good work and good governance; it is about goods that are good only to a point.With examples ranging from timbering and fishing to automobility and meat production, Princen shows that sufficiency is perfectly sensible and yet absolutely contrary to modern society's dominant principle, efficiency. He argues that seeking enough when more is possible is both intuitive and rational--personally, organizationally and ecologically rational. And under global ecological constraint, it is ethical. Over the long term, an economy--indeed a society--cannot operate as if there's never enough and never too much.

    Have you ever wondered what happens to the things you throw away? In this book you can find out more about trash and follow its journey to be buried, burned, or recycled into something new.

    There have been vacant-lot gardens, school gardens, Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens, and community gardens—each representing a consistent impulse to return to gardening during times of social and economic change. In this critical history of community gardening in America, the most comprehensive review of the greening of urban communities to date, Laura J. Lawson documents the evolution of urban garden programs in the United States. Her vibrant narrative focuses on the values associated with gardening, the ebb and flow of campaigns during times of social and economic crisis, organizational strategies of these primarily volunteer campaigns, and the sustainability of current programs.

    They clash fiercely at the continent's southern tip, dividing the region into two contrasting marine ecosystems that rank among the richest, most biologically diverse and oceanographically complex on the planet.The waters of the west coast are fed by the Benguela, a cold current that accounts for the enormous volume of marine life found here, while those of the east coast - warmed by the Agulhas current - are noted for their huge variety of life forms.Currents of Contrast - Life in Southern Africa's Two Oceans first introduces the realm of the Benguela, where you will encounter the ocean's ultimate predator, the great white shark. Here, the nutrient-rich waters wash over rocky reefs, and vast kelp forests thrive, providing food for diverse animals and plants, among them Cape clawless otters. In the realm of the Agulhas, you can explore the Knysna estuary and its most charismatic inhabitant, the Knysna seahorse. Follow the sardine run on the east coast and witness the suite of predators that feasts on this silver cornucopia.

    In reality, the major tropical rain forest regions, in tropical America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and New Guinea, have as many differences as similarities, as a result of their isolation from each other during the evolution of their floras and faunas. This new edition reinforces this message with new examples from recent and on-going research.After an introduction to the environments and geological histories of the major rain forest regions, subsequent chapters focus on plants, primates, carnivores and plant-eaters, birds, fruit bats and gliding animals, and insects, with an emphasis on the ecological and biogeographical differences between regions. This is followed by a new chapter on the unique tropical rain forests of oceanic islands. The final chapter, which has been completely rewritten, deals with the impacts of people on tropical rain forests and discusses possible conservation strategies that take into account the differences highlighted in the previous chapters. This exciting and very readable book, illustrated throughout with color photographs, will be invaluable reading for undergraduate students in a wide range of courses as well as an authoritative reference for graduate and professional ecologists, conservationists, and interested amateurs.

    But diversity too often has been surrendered to monocultures of fields and spirits, predisposing much of modern agriculture to uniformity and, consequently, vulnerability. Today it is primarily at the individual level—such as growing and saving a strange old bean variety or a curious-looking gourd—that any lasting conservation actually takes place. As scientists grapple with the erosion of genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives, old-timey farmers and gardeners continue to save, propagate, and pass on folk varieties and heirloom seeds. Virginia Nazarea focuses on the role of these seedsavers in the perpetuation of diversity. She thoughtfully examines the framework of scientific conservation and argues for the merits of everyday conservation—one that is beyond programmatic design. Whether considering small-scale rice and sweet potato farmers in the Philippines or participants in the Southern Seed Legacy and Introduced Germplasm from Vietnam in the American South, she explores roads not necessarily less traveled but certainly less recognized in the conservation of biodiversity.Through characters and stories that offer a wealth of insights about human nature and society, Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers helps readers more fully understand why biodiversity persists when there are so many pressures for it not to. The key, Nazarea explains, is in the sovereign spaces seedsavers inhabit and create, where memories counter a culture of forgetting and abandonment engendered by modernity. A book about theory as much as practice, it profiles these individuals, who march to their own beat in a world where diversity is increasingly devalued as the predictability of mass production becomes the norm.Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers offers a much-needed, scientifically researched perspective on the contribution of seedsaving that illustrates its critical significance to the preservation of both cultural knowledge and crop diversity around the world. It opens new conversations between anthropology and biology, and between researchers and practitioners, as it honors conservation as a way of life.

    In Mapping and Imagination in the Great Basin, geographer-historian Richard Francaviglia shows how the Great Basin's gradual emergence from its large cartographic silence both paralleled the development of the sciences of surveying, geology, hydrology, and cartography, and reflected the changing geopolitical aspirations of the European colonial powers and the United States. Francaviglia's compelling, wide-ranging discussion combines an explanation of the physical realities of the Great Basin with a cogent examination of the ways humans, from early Native Americans to nineteenth-century surveyors to twentieth-century highway and air travelers, have understood, defined, and organized this space, psychologically and through the medium of maps. and nations - Spain, Mexico, France, England and the Americas - and shows how their maps of the Great Basin reflected attitudes and beliefs about what lay in the interior American West. These maps run the gamut, from the manuscript maps of early explorers to printed maps used to promote rail and air travel across the Great Basin, as well as satellite and computer-derived maps of the very recent past. This rich interdisciplinary account of the mapping of the Great Basin combines a chronicle of the exploration of the region with a history of the art and science of cartography and of the political, economic, and social contexts in which maps are created. The result is an impressive contribution to the canon of American Western history and of the evolution and multifarious functions of maps, ancient and modern. Mapping and Imagination in the Great Basin will be irresistible to historians, geographers, lovers of maps, and anyone who thrills to the exploits of early Western explorers.

    . . The best compact history of the science of global warming I have read."—Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books The world's premier climatologist, Lonnie Thompson has been risking his career and life on the highest and most remote ice caps along the equator, in search of clues to the history of climate change. His most innovative work has taken place on these mountain glaciers, where he collects ice cores that provide detailed information about climate history, reaching back 750,000 years. To gather significant data Thompson has spent more time in the death zone—the environment above eighteen thousand feet—than any man who has ever lived.Scientist and expert climber Mark Bowen joined Thompson's crew on several expeditions; his exciting and brilliantly detailed narrative takes the reader deep inside retreating glaciers from China, across South America, and to Africa to unravel the mysteries of climate. Most important, we learn what Thompson's hard-won data reveals about global warming, the past, and the earth's probable future.

    Although environmental restoration is quickly becoming a widespread pursuit, debate over the methods and goals of this endeavor often halts progress. The same question confronts artistic and environmental restorationists: Which systems need restoring, and to what states should they be restored?In Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration, Marcus Hall explores the answer to this question while offering an alternative to the usual narrative of humans disrupting and spoiling the earth. Hall's purpose is not to deny that humans have done lasting damage but to show that those who believed in restoration did not always agree on what they wanted to restore, or how, or to what form. With guidance from the pioneer conservationist George Perkins Marsh, the reader travels between the United States and Italy to see that restoration has taken many forms over the past two hundred years, from maintaining and repairing, to gardening and naturalizing. By contrasting land management in these two countries and elsewhere, Earth Repair clarifies different meanings of restoration, shows how such meanings have changed through time and place, and suggests how restorationists can apply these insights to their own practices.

    This book tells us how global warming is affecting Australia.