Publisher's description: The earth is continuously changing and evolving yet it is unclear how environmental changes will affect us in years to come. What changes are inevitable? What changes, if any, are beneficial? And what can we do as citizens of this planet to protect it and our future generations? Larry Slobodkin, one of the leading pioneers of modern ecology, offers compelling answers to these questions in A Citizen's Guide to Ecology. He provides...

America's national mammal sustained the lives of Native people for untold generations before being driven to the brink of extinction, eventually prompting an unlikely collection of people to rescue it from disappearing forever.

Annotation As recently as 11,000 years ago--"near time" to geologists--mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age. Part paleontological adventure and part memoir,...

By studying the many ways diverse peoples have changed, shaped, and conserved the natural world over time, environmental historians provide insight into humanity's unique relationship with nature and, more importantly, are better able to understand the origins of our current environmental crisis. Beginning with the precolonial land-use practice of Native Americans and concluding with our twenty-first century concerns over our global ecological crisis,...

"A broader and more comprehensive understanding of how we communicate with each other about the natural world and our relationship to it is essential to solving environmental problems. How do individuals develop beliefs and ideologies about the environment? How do we express those beliefs through communication? How are we influenced by the messages of pop culture and social institutions? And how does all this communication become part of the larger...

"This is a book about ecology, environment, nature, and the misleading information that plagues the discussions of these topics. It is easy-to-read, fun, and doesn't have to be read all at once; you can pick it up for five or ten minutes, get one idea out of it, put it down, and come back for other five or ten minutes some other time. It's light reading about very difficult subjects, such as: is trying to save every single species necessarily a good...

Roderick Nash's classic study of changing attitudes toward wilderness during American history, as well as the origins of the environmental and conservation movements, has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. The Los Angeles Times listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century, Outside Magazine included it in a survey of "books that changed our world," and it has been called the...

"Nature's Services brings together world-renowned scientists from a variety of disciplines to examine the character and value of ecosystem services, the damage that has been done to them, and the consequent implications for human society. Contributors present a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value." "Nature's Services represents one of the first efforts...

The eminent biologist reflects on his own response to nature and the aesthetic aspects of his exploration of natural systems in an intensely personal essay that examines the essential links between mankind and the rest of the living world.

"Part of the nonfiction Orca Footprints series for middle-grade readers, this book explores the science of road ecology and what happens when highways, wildlife and habitats intersect. Illustrated with photographs throughout."-- Provided by publisher.