Résultats de recherche de titre
Articles 8601 à 8620 sur 9942
Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau's Woods
Par Richard B. Primack. 2014
In his meticulous notes on the natural history of Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau records the first open flowers of…
highbush blueberry on May 11, 1853. If he were to look for the first blueberry flowers in Concord today, mid-May would be too late. In the 160 years since Thoreau’s writings, warming temperatures have pushed blueberry flowering three weeks earlier, and in 2012, following a winter and spring of record-breaking warmth, blueberries began flowering on April 1—six weeks earlier than in Thoreau’s time. The climate around Thoreau’s beloved Walden Pond is changing, with visible ecological consequences. In Walden Warming, Richard B. Primack uses Thoreau and Walden, icons of the conservation movement, to track the effects of a warming climate on Concord’s plants and animals. Under the attentive eyes of Primack, the notes that Thoreau made years ago are transformed from charming observations into scientific data sets. Primack finds that many wildflower species that Thoreau observed—including familiar groups such as irises, asters, and lilies—have declined in abundance or have disappeared from Concord. Primack also describes how warming temperatures have altered other aspects of Thoreau’s Concord, from the dates when ice departs from Walden Pond in late winter, to the arrival of birds in the spring, to the populations of fish, salamanders, and butterflies that live in the woodlands, river meadows, and ponds. Primack demonstrates that climate change is already here, and it is affecting not just Walden Pond but many other places in Concord and the surrounding region. Although we need to continue pressuring our political leaders to take action, Primack urges us each to heed the advice Thoreau offers in Walden: to “live simply and wisely.” In the process, we can each minimize our own contributions to our warming climate.Weather in Texas: The Essential Handbook
Par George W. Bomar. 2017
Only in Texas could a snowstorm pelt the Panhandle at the very moment abrasive dust is scouring the Permian Basin…
while searing heat is wilting the Winter Garden region in the south. The state&’s large size and central location within North America subject it to a great variety of weather occurrences. Texas state meteorologist George W. Bomar has been observing Texas weather for nearly half a century, and in Weather in Texas, he provides the essential guide to all of the state&’s weather phenomena. Writing in lively layman&’s language, Bomar fully explains both how the weather works and how Texans can prepare for and stay safe during extreme weather events. He describes the forces that shape Texas weather from season to season, including the influence of tropical cyclones, frontal boundaries, El Niño, and the polar jet stream. Bomar puts specific weather events in historical context, using a ranking system to illustrate how recent droughts, snowstorms, hurricanes, flash floods, and tornadoes compare with those of previous generations. He also includes comprehensive tabulations of weather data for every area of Texas, quantifying what constitutes &“normal&” weather, as well as the extreme limits of variables such as low and high temperatures, rain days, snow accumulations, and earliest and latest freezes. With everything from the latest science on climate change and weather modification to dramatic stories about landmark weather events, Weather in Texas is a must-have reference for all Texans..Happy Houseplants: 30 Lovely Varieties to Brighten Up Your Home
Par Angela Staehling. 2017
For anyone who has longed for a garden of their own—whether a city dweller or one with less-than-green thumbs—this is…
a handy little guide to growing and maintaining houseplants. Cheerful and informative, Happy Houseplants will guide any budding indoor botanist through a bevy of topics, from soil and water to light and fertilizer. With beautiful illustrations accompanying 30 different profiles of plants, from the easygoing Air Plant to the striking Zebra Cactus, this nifty book is the perfect gift for anyone looking to bring a piece of the outdoors inside.Growing Conifers: The Complete Illustrated Gardening and Landscaping Guide
Par John J. Albers. 2021
Evergreen your landscape with the beauty and benefits of conifers Growing Conifers is a beautifully photographed, comprehensive gardening guide for…
selecting and cultivating conifers. Coverage includes:Conifer taxonomy, classification, and geographic distributionSelecting conifers for size, shape, color, and textureBest practices for placement and planting of trees, shrubs, and groundcovers in urban and rural gardensGrowing needs and low-input maintenanceBuilding healthy soil, minimizing water stress, and integrated pest managementBenefits of conifers including habitat, water and air quality, carbon sequestration, aesthetics, and food.Conifers are often overlooked in gardening and landscaping in favor of deciduous trees and shrubs. Yet conifers come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors and offer tremendous aesthetic and ecological benefits for any garden.Growing Conifers is an essential, comprehensive resource for gardeners and landscape professionals looking to develop beautiful, sustainable landscapes.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------New Society Publishers is an activist, solutions-oriented publisher focused on publishing books to build a more just and sustainable future. They pride themselves on holding the highest environmental standards of any publisher in North America. In 2002, they committed to printing all their books (including their full color books) on uncoated 100% post-consumer recycled paper, processed chlorine-free, with low-VOC vegetable-based inks. In doing so, the Growing Conifers' print run alone saved 66 fully grown trees, 5300 gallons of water, and 28,000 lbs of greenhouse gases. When you buy New Society Publishers' books, you are part of the solution!This guide to falconry dates to mid-19th century Britain, and explains both the history and practical elements of using birds…
of prey to hunt wild animals. Raising and training intelligent birds of prey to hunt animals was popular in Europe from the Middle Ages onward. Over the centuries, techniques and practices were refined, with the peculiarities of the various birds used - be they peregrine falcons, goshawks, sparrow-hawks or otherwise - investigated by generations of enthusiasts. This history is detailed and supplemented with the author's own practical experience and advice. Gage Earle Freeman was a clergyman who spent some years assigned to India. As a lifelong enthusiast of falconry, Freeman was impressed to behold the practice in India; a culture where hunting with birds of prey had been a tradition for millennia. As an experienced falconer, Freeman was able to put the skills he'd honed on Buxton Moor in England to use in India - his talents met appreciation, and he received birds as gifts.-Print ed.Public Policy and Land Exchange: Choice, law, and praxis (Routledge Studies in Environmental Policy)
Par Giancarlo Panagia. 2015
This original contribution to the field is the first to bring economic sociology theory to the study of federal land…
exchanges. By blending public choice theory with engaging case studies that contextualize the tactics used by land developers, this book uses economic sociology to help challenge the under-valuation of federal lands in political decisions. The empirically-based, scholarly analysis of federal-private land swaps exposes serious institutional dysfunctions, which sometimes amount to outright corruption. By evaluating investigative reports of each federal agency case study, the book illustrates the institutional nature of the actors in land swaps and, in particular, the history of U.S. agencies’ promotion of private interests in land exchanges. Using public choice theory to make sense of the privatization of public lands, the book looks in close detail at the federal policies of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service land swaps in America. These pertinent case studies illustrate the trends to transfer federal lands notwithstanding their flawed value appraisals or interpretation of public interest; thus, violating both the principles of equality in value and observance of specific public policy. The book should be of interest to students and scholars of public land and natural resource management, as well as political science, public policy and land law.What is Science?: Myths and Reality
Par Jordanka Zlatanova. 2020
In a multitude of ways, science affects the life of almost every person on earth. From medicine and nutrition to…
communication and transportation, the products of scientific research have changed human life. These changes have mostly taken place in the last two centuries, so rapidly that the average person is unable to keep informed. A consequence of this "information gap" has been the increasing suspicion of science and scientists. The lack of true understanding of science, especially of "fundamental" research, motivates this effort to narrow this gap by explaining scientific endeavor and the data-driven worldviews of scientists. Key Features Fills an existing void in the understanding of science among the general population Is written in a nontechnical language to facilitate understanding Covers a wide range of science-related subjects: The value of "basic research" How scientists work by sharing results and ideas How science is funded by governments and private entities Addresses the possible dangers of research and how society deals with such risks Expresses the viewpoint of an author with extensive experience working in laboratories all over the worldRethinking Nature: Challenging Disciplinary Boundaries (Routledge Environmental Humanities)
Par Aurélie Choné, Isabelle Hajek, Philippe Hamman. 2017
Contemporary ideas of nature were largely shaped by schools of thought from Western cultural history and philosophy until the present-day…
concerns with environmental change and biodiversity conservation. There are many different ways of conceptualising nature in epistemological terms, reflecting the tensions between the polarities of humans as masters or protectors of nature and as part of or outside of nature. The book shows how nature is today the focus of numerous debates, calling for an approach which goes beyond the merely technical or scientific. It adopts a threefold – critical, historical and cross-disciplinary – approach in order to summarise the current state of knowledge. It includes contributions informed by the humanities (especially history, literature and philosophy) and social sciences, concerned with the production and circulation of knowledge about "nature" across disciplines and across national and cultural spaces. The volume also demonstrates the ongoing reconfiguration of subject disciplines, as seen in the recent emergence of new interdisciplinary approaches and the popularity of the prefix "eco-" (e.g. ecocriticism, ecospirituality, ecosophy and ecofeminism, as well as subdivisions of ecology, including urban ecology, industrial ecology and ecosystem services). Each chapter provides a concise overview of its topic which will serve as a helpful introduction to students and a source of easy reference.? This text is also valuable reading for researchers interested in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, ecology, politics and all their respective environmentalist strands.Law, Property and Disasters: Adaptive Perspectives from the Global South
Par Daniel Fitzpatrick, Caroline Compton. 2021
This book re-considers property law for a future of environmental disruption. As slogans such as “build the wall” or “stop…
the boats” affect public policy, there are counter-questions as to whether positivist or statist notions of property are fit for purpose in a time of human mobility and environmental disruption. State-centric property laws construct legal fictions of sovereign control over land, notwithstanding the persistent reality of informal settlements in many parts of the Global South. In a world affected by catastrophic disasters, this book develops a vision of adaptive governance for property in land based on a critical re-assessment of state-centric property law. This book will appeal to a broad readership with interests in legal theory, property law, adaptive governance, international development, refugee studies, postcolonial studies, and natural disasters.Biological Economies: Experimentation and the politics of agri-food frontiers (Routledge Studies in Food, Society and the Environment)
Par Michael Carolan, Hugh Campbell, Nick Lewis, Richard Le Heron. 2016
Recent agri-food studies, including commodity systems, the political economy of agriculture, regional development, and wider examinations of the rural dimension…
in economic geography and rural sociology have been confronted by three challenges. These can be summarized as: ‘more than human’ approaches to economic life; a ‘post-structural political economy’ of food and agriculture; and calls for more ‘enactive’, performative research approaches. This volume describes the genealogy of such approaches, drawing on the reflective insights of more than five years of international engagement and research. It demonstrates the kinds of new work being generated under these approaches and provides a means for exploring how they should be all understood as part of the same broader need to review theory and methods in the study of food, agriculture, rural development and economic geography. This radical collective approach is elaborated as the Biological Economies approach. The authors break out from traditional categories of analysis, reconceptualising materialities, and reframing economic assemblages as biological economies, based on the notion of all research being enactive or performative.First published in 1966 these collected papers, written by the distinguished and visionary climatologist Hubert H. Lamb, describe how climates come about and…
give a history of climatic changes from the last ice-age to the 1960s.THIS BOOK JUST MIGHT SAVE THE PLANET "When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. The…
second best time? Today."--Chinese proverb Twenty years ago, David Milarch, a northern Michigan nurseryman with a penchant for hard living, had a vision: angels came to tell him that the earth was in trouble. Its trees were dying, and without them, human life was in jeopardy. The solution, they told him, was to clone the champion trees of the world--the largest, the hardiest, the ones that had survived millennia and were most resilient to climate change--and create a kind of Noah's ark of tree genetics. Without knowing if the message had any basis in science, or why he'd been chosen for this task, Milarch began his mission of cloning the world's great trees. Many scientists and tree experts told him it couldn't be done, but, twenty years later, his team has successfully cloned some of the world's oldest trees--among them giant redwoods and sequoias. They have also grown seedlings from the oldest tree in the world, the bristlecone pine Methuselah. When New York Times journalist Jim Robbins came upon Milarch's story, he was fascinated but had his doubts. Yet over several years, listening to Milarch and talking to scientists, he came to realize that there is so much we do not yet know about trees: how they die, how they communicate, the myriad crucial ways they filter water and air and otherwise support life on Earth. It became clear that as the planet changes, trees and forest are essential to assuring its survival. The Man Who Planted Trees is both a fascinating investigation into the world of trees and the inspiring story of one man's quest to help save the planet. This book's hopeful message of what one man can accomplish against all odds is also a lesson about how each of us has the ability to make a difference. This book was printed in the United States of America on Rolland EnviroTM 100 Book, which is manufactured using FSC-certified 100% postconsumer fiber and meets permanent paper standards.From the Hardcover edition.Children of Katrina
Par Lori Peek, Alice Fothergill. 2015
When children experience upheaval and trauma, adults often view them as either vulnerable and helpless or as resilient and able…
to easily "bounce back. " But the reality is far more complex for the children and youth whose lives are suddenly upended by disaster. How are children actually affected by catastrophic events and how do they cope with the damage and disruption?Children of Katrina offers one of the only long-term, multiyear studies of young people following disaster. Sociologists Alice Fothergill and Lori Peek spent seven years after Hurricane Katrina interviewing and observing several hundred children and their family members, friends, neighbors, teachers, and other caregivers. In this book, they focus intimately on seven children between the ages of three and eighteen, selected because they exemplify the varied experiences of the larger group. They find that children followed three different post-disaster trajectories-declining, finding equilibrium, and fluctuating-as they tried to regain stability. The children's moving stories illuminate how a devastating disaster affects individual health and well-being, family situations, housing and neighborhood contexts, schooling, peer relationships, and extracurricular activities. This work also demonstrates how outcomes were often worse for children who were vulnerable and living in crisis before the storm. Fothergill and Peek clarify what kinds of assistance children need during emergency response and recovery periods, as well as the individual, familial, social, and structural factors that aid or hinder children in getting that support.Forestry In Development Planning: Lessons From The Rural Experience
Par Harry W. Blair. 1988
This book explores some of the relationship between forestry and rural development focusing on lessons that the overall experience in…
rural development might have for social forestry. It examines a single social forestry project to see how it would look from a rural development perspective.'One of the most perceptive and thought-provoking books yet written about the multiple intersecting crises that are now upending our…
once-familiar world. . . Essential reading for these turbulent times.' Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement 'Hine’s brilliant book demands we stare into that abyss and rethink our securest certainties about what is actually going on in the climate crisis. It’s lucidly unsettling and yet in the end empowering. There is something we can do, and it starts with where we look, how we see and what we choose to change.’ Brian Eno, Musician Dougald Hine, author and social thinker, has spent most of his life talking to people about climate change. And then one afternoon in the second year of the pandemic, he found he had nothing left to say. Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological destruction want to stop talking about climate change now? At Work in the Ruins explores that question. “Climate change asks us questions that climate science cannot answer,” Hine says. Questions like, how did we end up in this mess? Is it just a piece of bad luck with the atmospheric chemistry—or is it the result of a way of approaching the world that would always have brought us to such a pass? How we answer such questions has consequences. According to Hine, our answers shape our understanding and our thinking about what kind of problem we think we’re dealing with and, therefore, what kind of responses we go looking for. “But when science is turned into an object of belief and a source of overriding authority,” Hine continues, “it becomes hard even to talk about the questions that it cannot answer.” In eloquent, deeply researched prose, Hine demonstrates how our over-reliance on the single lens of science has blinded us to the nature of the crises around and ahead of us, leading to ‘solutions’ that can only make things worse. At Work in the Ruins is his reckoning with the strange years we have been living through and our long history of asking too much of science. It’s also about how we find our bearings and what kind of tasks are worth giving our lives to, given all we know or have good grounds to fear about the trouble the world is in. For anyone who has found themselves needing to make sense of the COVID time and how we talk about it, At Work in the Ruins offers guidance by standing firmly forward and facing the depth of the trouble we are in. Hine, ultimately, helps us find the work that is worth doing, even in the ruins. 'A book of rare originality and depth—profound, far-reaching, mind-altering stuff.' Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart has Five OpeningsA Global Atlas of Atolls
Par Walter M. Goldberg, Eugene C. Rankey. 2023
Scattered like dots rising from the deep across vast expanses of the world’s tropical and subtropical oceans, atolls with their…
turquoise lagoons and reefs teeming with colorful marine life have captured the public imagination. They have also been the homeland of millions of people for millennia as various groups of migrants spread across the far reaches if the Pacific, Indian and Western Atlantic regions. Developed from recently available satellite data, A Global Atlas of Atolls presents high-quality details of 475 atolls across the globe, characterizing aspects of the atoll rim, the lagoon, and their coral reef communities in unprecedented detail. In synthesizing and enhancing understanding of these unique seascapes, this volume provides a distinct compendium of descriptions and images, as well as documentation of the environmental conditions of winds, waves, and tides and a summary of the background literature for each atoll area. There is no comparable work. After an introduction that includes a glossary of terms, each atoll is documented in the form of an atlas written for scientists, but accessible to any diver or reader interested in these spectacular reef-island habitats. This book also describes some current challenges and perspectives on their future. It will be useful as a reference work for marine scientists, while providing a minimum of technical jargon for those who are not scientists, but who enjoy reading about exotic places with unusual attributes.El Hierro Island (Active Volcanoes of the World)
Par Pablo J. González. 2023
This book presents an in-depth review of El Hierro Island, the youngest and most southwesterly volcano of the Canary Islands.…
In October 2011, a submarine eruption started offshore El Hierro Island. The 2011–2012 El Hierro eruption has probably been the best monitored and studied submarine eruption to date and has sparked interest in the study of this young ocean island volcano. During the last decade, multidisciplinary investigations, e.g., on the geological and volcanological character of its past and latest onshore and offshore eruptions, the geophysical and geochemical signatures of its magmatic plumbing system structure and dynamics, as well as the bio-geophysical interactions and consequences of submarine eruptions in the ocean, have been conducted. This book provides an authoritative review of many of these scientific advances as well as multiple remaining unknowns for the study of El Hierro Island and its 2011–2012 submarine eruption. Such knowledge should be of great interest to specialists not only in the Canary Islands volcanism but also in similar ocean island intraplate volcanoes.Greenergized: A Business Fable on Clean Energy
Par Dennis Posadas. 2013
Renewable energy versus fossil fuels: the debate rages on, worldwide. At stake is nothing less than the protection of our…
planet from the ravages of climate change. But the costs involved in making the switch to clean energy are daunting. How do we pay for solar and wind energy? Do we scrap all our gasoline-driven autos? How do we move forward?Although the importance of this topic is hard to overstate, it nevertheless consistently fails to engage at the level that it so patently needs to. This is what has led technology expert and seasoned commentator Dennis Posadas to approach the issues in a new and intriguing way. Posadas understands that we respond best to narratives, and that is why he has written what he describes as a "green thinking fable". In this fable, we meet Daniel, a young graduate of the fictional Oriental College, who is thrust into a debate between José, an oil man, and Professor Ruiz, an advocate of clean energy. We follow the lines of argument as Daniel's awareness increases, and he experiences a paradigm shift in his thinking. We see how his short-term outlook focusing on the cost of renewable energy evolves into long-term thinking about the cost of not making the shift to renewables. Posadas's business fable puts the issues in front of the general reader in an engaging and digestible way. It covers concepts such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, waste to energy, feed-in-tariffs, carbon tax, intermittent sources, cost of fossil fuels, health impact of fossil fuel use, energy efficiency, and other relevant topics necessary for understanding this debate. The story and characters may be fictional, but the situations and the technology discussions are based on current facts. Decide for yourself where you stand on the renewables versus fossil fuels debate, and discuss this story with your friends and colleagues. Greenergized is a much-needed route into the issues surrounding the most serious debate our generation faces. And it pulls off the brilliant trick of being highly readable at the same time.Elizabeth Sutton, using a phenomenological approach, investigates how animals in art invite viewers to contemplate human relationships to the natural…
world. Using Rembrandt van Rijn’s etching of The Presentation in the Temple (c. 1640), Joseph Beuys’s social sculpture I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), archaic rock paintings at Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, and examples from contemporary art, this book demonstrates how artists across time and cultures employed animals to draw attention to the sensory experience of the composition and reflect upon the shared sensory awareness of the world.All of the People, All of the Time: Strategic Communication and American Politics
Par Jarol B. Manheim. 1992
This book is about the uses and abuses of political communication in contemporary American society, employing numerous anecdotes and examples…
and drawings upon the latest research and theories of communication and political science in America.