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Some European lands have been progressively alleviated of human pressures, particularly traditional agriculture in remote areas. This book proposes that this land abandonment can be seen as an opportunity to restore natural ecosystems via rewilding. We define rewilding as the passive management of ecological successions having in mind the long-term goal of restoring natural ecosystem processes. The book aims at introducing the concept of rewilding to scientists, students and practitioners. The first part presents the theory of rewilding in the European context. The second part of the book directly addresses the link between rewilding, biodiversity, and habitats. The third and last part is dedicated to practical aspects of the implementation of rewilding as a land management option. We believe that this book will both set the basis for future research on rewilding and help practitioners think about how rewilding can take place in areas under their management.
Bridging the gap between local knowledge and western science is essential to understanding the world's ecosystems and the ways in which humans interact with and shape those ecosystems. This book brings together a group of world-class scientists in an unprecedented effort to build a formal framework for linking local and indigenous knowledge with the global scientific enterprise. Contributors explore the challenges, costs, and benefits of bridging scales and knowledge systems in assessment processes and in resource management. Case studies look at a variety of efforts to bridge scales, providing important lessons concerning what has worked, what has not, and the costs and benefits associated with those efforts. Drawing on the groundbreaking work of the Millennium Eco-system Assessment, Bridging Scales and Knowledge Systems will be indispensable for future efforts to conduct ecosystem assessments around the world.
In consequence of significant social, political, economic, and demographic changes several wildlife species are currently growing in numbers and recolonizing Europe. While this is rightly hailed as a success of the environmental movement, the return of wildlife brings its own issues. As the animals arrive in the places we inhabit, we are learning anew that life with wild nature is not easy, especially when the accumulated cultural knowledge and experience pertaining to such coexistence have been all but lost. This book provides a hermeneutic study of the ways we come to understand the troubling impacts of wildlife by exploring and critically discussing the meanings of 'ecological discomforts...
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book provides a unique overview of the impacts of railways on biodiversity, integrating the existing knowledge on the ecological effects of railways on wildlife, identifying major knowledge gaps and research directions and presenting the emerging field of railway ecology. The book is divided into two major parts: Part one offers a general review of the major conceptual and theoretical principles of railway ecology. The chapters consider the impacts of railways on wildlife populations and concentrate on four major topics: mortality, barrier effects, species invasions and disturbances (ranging from noise to chemical pollution). Part two focuses on a number of case studies from Europe, Asia and North America written by an international group of experts.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is one of the most cherished and reviled laws ever passed. It mandates protection and preservation of all the nation’s species and biodiversity, whatever the cost. It has been a lightning rod for controversy and conflicts between industry/business and environmentalists. In this volume, leading Endangered Species Act experts interpret and propose legislative and administrative changes to prepare the ESA for future challenges. They explore regulations on avoiding harm to and producing benefits for species, cooperation between state and federal agencies, scientific analyses, and the necessary politics to enact their ideas. This is a call to action to chart an enlightened future for the Endangered Species Act that embraces the nation’s moral commitment of 50 years ago to address species extinction constructively, mindful of biodiversity, and as a fixture among the nation’s values and needs. The interconnected web of life includes all living species that depend on each other for survival, us among them. The stakes—our very future—are too high to ignore.
As the world population grows, so does the demand for food, putting unprecedented pressure on agricultural lands. In many desert dryland regions, however, intensive cultivation is causing their productivity to decline precipitously. "Rewilding" the least productive of these landscapes offers a sensible way to reverse the damage, recover natural diversity, and ensure long-term sustainability of remaining farms and the communities they support. This accessibly written, groundbreaking contributed volume is the first to examine in detail what it would take to retire eligible farmland and restore functioning natural ecosystems. The lessons in Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes will be useful to conservation leaders, policymakers, groundwater agencies, and water managers looking for inspiration and practical advice for solving the complicated issues of agricultural sustainability and water management.
What Is Vertical Farming By 2050, it’s estimated that there will be two billion more human beings than there are today. To feed that many people, we’ll need a landmass the size of South America to account for the food production. Unfortunately for everyone, they don’t make new continents anymore, and if the lack of land isn’t enough to worry about, year by year, the planet is losing arable land due to the changing climate, intensifying weather conditions, air quality, and more. Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers. It often incorporates controlled-environment agriculture, which aims to optimize plant growth, and soilless farming techniques su...
What Is Arcology Arcology is a complete urban vision that combines architecture and ecology. In nature, organisms evolve in complexity and become a more compact system as they evolve. A city should evolve in the same way, as if it were a living system. Urban civilization's many challenges — population expansion, pollution, energy and natural resource depletion, food shortages, and quality of life – can be addressed positively by combining architecture and ecology as one integrated process. In order to support the diverse activities that preserve human culture and environmental balance, Arcology acknowledges the need for a fundamental redesign of the spreading urban landscape into dense, ...
This book presents a series of "ecological law" case studies, designed to illustrate in concrete, real-world ways how ecological law would transform law in a range of diverse contexts. Ecological law is an emerging, and currently mostly theoretical, discipline grounded in the need to shift away from anthropocentric legal systems, which aim to promote economic growth using strong protections of private property regimes and state sovereignty, to ecological approaches, which emphasize ecocentrism, the primacy of ecological limits, and intragenerational, intergenerational, and interspecies fairness and justice. The ecological law case studies presented in this book apply the theoretical principl...