McPhee embarks on a fascinating journey across the basement of the continent -- the land masses forming Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and thereabouts -- with a professor and geochronologist acting as a guide.

    In this revised edition, Merlin D. Tuttle, founder and science director of Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas, offers bat aficionados the most up-to-date bat facts, including a wealth of new information on attracting bats and building bat houses and a totally revamped key to the identification of common North American species.

    In Simply Sustainable, perfection is not required. Whether you are looking for easy changes to get you started, or more advanced, high-impact tips for your low-waste home, these simple, effective steps will forever change your relationship to disposable plastic products.Lily Cameron shows readers how to gradually transition away from plastic and curate a minimal, beautiful home in the process. Her approach teaches you how to "make plastic-free living work for you, savor your progress and celebrate that with each small change, you are making a positive impact on the environment, your health and your family's well being."Simply Sustainable proves that zero-waste living can be easy and deeply satisfying, whether shopping at the farmers market, throwing a dinner party, or packing for a getaway weekend. With practical, manageable strategies organized by room, and inspiring photographs of plastic-free homes, you can begin your journey toward intentional, low-waste living.

    While these are essential, many young ecologists need to figure out how to actually do research themselves. How to Do Ecology provides nuts-and-bolts advice on how to develop a successful thesis and research program. This book presents different approaches to posing testable ecological questions. In particular, it covers the uses, strengths, and limitations of manipulative experiments in ecology. It will help young ecologists consider meaningful treatments, controls, replication, independence, and randomization in experiments, as well as where to do experiments and how to organize a season of work. This book also presents strategies for analyzing natural patterns, the value of alternative hypotheses, and what to do with negative results.Science is only part of being a successful ecologist. This engagingly written book offers students advice on working with other people and navigating their way through the land mines of research. Findings that don't get communicated are of little value. How to Do Ecology suggests effective ways to communicate information in the form of journal articles, oral presentations, and posters. Finally, it outlines strategies for developing successful grant and research proposals. Numerous checklists, figures, and boxes throughout the book summarize and reinforce the main points. In short, this book makes explicit many of the unspoken assumptions behind doing good research in ecology, and provides an invaluable resource for meaningful conversations among ecologists.

    Muir recounts in vivid detail the three worlds of his early life: his first eleven years in Scotland; the years 1849–1860 in the central Wisconsin wilderness; and two-and-a-half most inventive years at the University of Wisconsin during that institution’s infancy.

    In Dark Winter, author John L. Casey, a former White House national space policy advisor, NASA headquarters consultant, and space shuttle engineer tells the truth about ominous changes taking place in the climate and the Sun.Casey’s research into the Sun’s activity, which began almost a decade ago, resulted in discovery of a solar cycle that is now reversing from its global warming phase to that of dangerous global cooling for the next thirty years or more. This new cold climate will dramatically impact the world’s citizens. In Dark Winter, he provides evidence of the following:• The end of global warming• The beginning of a “solar hibernation,” a historic reduction in the energy output of the Sun• A long-term drop in Earth’s temperatures• The start of the next climate change to decades of dangerously cold weather• The high probability of record earthquakes and volcanic eruptionsA sobering look at Earth’s future, Dark Winter predicts worldwide, crop- destroying cold; food shortages and riots in the United States and abroad; significant global loss of life; and social, political, and economic upheaval.

    This title shows us how to examine, study, and appreciate microbes in the manner of a birdwatcher, by making sightings of microbial activities and thereby identifying particular microbes as well as understanding what they do and how they do it.

    More than 2,000 close-up color photographs by leading nature photographers reveal the field marks that distinguish each creature, and the clear and concise text that accompanies each image describes the range, habitat, life cycle, and behavior. Budding entomologists will be inspired to explore further with the detailed information on starting a collection, planting an arthropod garden, keeping insects and spiders in captivity, and learning the techniques of macro photography. The unique waterproof cover makes it ideal for use outdoors.

    Tailored to meet the needs of the first time bonsai owner, this book is an extensive directory of every major bonsai type. Bonsai Basics explains in detail all the techniques needed to keep a bonsai alive and in good shape.  Clear text and step-by-step illustrations ensure that even the most nervous newcomer can approach looking after bonsai with confidence.  Filled with over 120 specially commissioned photographs and illustrations, the New Pyramid Bonsai Basics is an extensive directory of both indoor and outdoor trees and their characteristics.

    Memory is not their guide — no one butterfly makes the round trip — but each year somehow find their way to the same fifty acres of forest on the high slopes of Mexico’s Neovolcanic Mountains, and then make the return trip in the spring.In Four Wings and a Prayer, Sue Halpern sets off on an adventure to delve into the secrets behind this extraordinary phenomenon. She visits scientists and butterfly lovers across the country, offering a keenly observed portrait of the monarchs’ migration and of the people for whom they have become a glorious obsession. Combining science, memoir, and travel writing, Four Wings and a Prayer is an absorbing travelogue and a fascinating meditation on a profound mystery of the natural world.

    Wherever you are right now, the chances are that there are worms, woodlice, centipedes, flies, silverfish, wasps, beetles, mice, shrews and much, much more, quietly living within just a few paces of you.Dave Goulson gives us an insight into the fascinating and sometimes weird lives of these creatures, taking us burrowing into the compost heap, digging under the lawn and diving into the garden pond. He explains how our lives and ultimately the fate of humankind are inextricably intertwined with that of earwigs, bees, lacewings and hoverflies, unappreciated heroes of the natural world.The Garden Jungle is at times an immensely serious book, exploring the environmental harm inadvertently done by gardeners who buy intensively reared plants in disposable plastic pots, sprayed with pesticides and grown in peat cut from the ground. Goulson argues that gardens could become places where we can reconnect with nature and rediscover where food comes from. With just a few small changes, our gardens could become a vast network of tiny nature reserves, where humans and wildlife can thrive together in harmony rather than conflict.For anyone who has a garden, and cares about our planet, this book is essential reading.

    Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great, untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.Island on Fire is the story not only of a single eruption but the people whose lives it changed, the dawn of modern volcanology, as well as the history—and potential—of other super-volcanoes like Laki around the world. And perhaps most pertinently, in the wake of the eruption of another Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, which closed European air space in 2010, acclaimed science writers Witze and Kanipe look at what might transpire should Laki erupt again in our lifetime.

    This book is intended for use in a one- or two-semester course in environmental science, human ecology, or environmental studies at the college or advanced placement high school level.The goal of this book is to provide an up-to-date, introductory global view of essential themes in environmental science along with emphasis on details and case studies that will help students process and retain the general principles. Because most students who will use this book are freshman or sophomore non-science majors, the authors make the text readable and accessible without technical jargon or a presumption of prior science background. At the same time, enough data and depth are presented to make this book suitable for many upper-division classes and a valuable resource for students who will keep it in their personal libraries after their formal studies are completed.

    But to a geologist, stones are richly illustrated narratives, telling gothic tales of cataclysm and reincarnation. For more than four billion years, in beach sand, granite, and garnet schists, the planet has kept a rich and idiosyncratic journal of its past. Fulbright Scholar Marcia Bjornerud takes the reader along on an eye-opening tour of Deep Time, explaining in elegant prose what we see and feel beneath our feet. Both scientist and storyteller, Bjornerud uses anecdotes and metaphors to remind us that our home is a living thing with lessons to teach. She shows how our planet has long maintained a delicate balance, and how the global give-and-take has sustained life on Earth through numerous upheavals. But with the rapidly escalating effects of human beings on their home planet, that cosmic balance is being threatened -- and the consequences may be catastrophic. Containing a glossary and detailed timescale, as well as vivid descriptions and historic accounts, Reading the Rocks is literally a history of the world, for all friends of the Earth.

    Thousands of small and large processes are taking place, details that are long often fascinating and beautiful. But we've long forgotten how to recognise them.Peter Wohlleben, bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees, invites us to become an expert, to take a closer look and interpret the signs that clouds, wind, plants and animals convey. Chaffinches become weather prophets, bees are live thermometers, courgettes tell us the time.The Weather Detective combines scientific research with charming anecdotes to explain the extraordinary cycles of life, death and regeneration that are evolving on our doorstep, bringing us closer to nature than ever before. A walk in the park will never be the same again.