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Biological diversity is important for ecosystem function and services, which in turn is essential for human well-being. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, international efforts have been made to achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss. The loss continues, however. The Asia-Pacific region includes both developing countries with high biodiversity and developed countries with sophisticated data collection and analyses, but only limited information about the status quo of biodiversity in this region has been available. Many Asia-Pacific countries have rapidly grown their economies and social infrastructures, causing a loss of biodiversity and requiring...
Important breakthroughs have recently been made in our understanding of the cognitive and sensory abilities of pollinators: how pollinators perceive, memorise and react to floral signals and rewards; how they work flowers, move among inflorescences and transport pollen. These new findings have obvious implications for the evolution of floral display and diversity, but most existing publications are scattered across a wide range of journals in very different research traditions. This book brings together for the first time outstanding scholars from many different fields of pollination biology, integrating the work of neuroethologists and evolutionary ecologists to present a multi-disciplinary approach. Aimed at graduates and researchers of behavioural and pollination ecology, plant evolutionary biology and neuroethology, it will also be a useful source of information for anyone interested in a modern view of cognitive and sensory ecology, pollination and floral evolution.
This open access book provides a theoretical framework and case studies on decision science for regional sustainability by integrating the natural and social sciences. The cases discussed include solution-oriented transdisciplinary studies on the environment, disasters, health, governance and human cooperation. Based on these case studies and comprehensive reviews of relevant works, including lessons learned from past failures for predictable surprises and successes in adaptive co-management, the book provides the reader with new perspectives on how we can co-design collaborative projects with various conflicts of interest and how we can transform our society for a sustainable future. The bo...
This volume examines the topic of local biodiversity conservation in the Asia-Pacific region, one of the most rapidly changing areas in the world. With a focus on aquatic systems, this book offers insight on the state of local biodiversity, challenges in management and conservation of biodiversity, and newly developed methods for monitoring biodiversity. In addition, because the service provided by an ecosystem for humans is interlinked with conservation, the final part is dedicated to evaluating the socioeconomic aspect of ecosystem services, with special reference to local biodiversity. In effect, all contributions provide information that is invaluable for effective conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. This work will interest all stakeholders in biodiversity conservation, including policy makers, NPOs, NGOs, environment-related industries, and biodiversity researchers, not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but also across the entire globe.
This volume focuses on new trends in monitoring biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific region, one of the most rapidly changing areas in the world. It provides reviews of the challenges in studying the spatial variability of biodiversity across various ecosystems. This book also describes newly developed concepts and methods for biodiversity observation including ubiquitous genotyping, systematic conservation, monitoring of the functions and services of ecosystems and biodiversity informatics. These contributions will lead to establishing integrative observations and assessments of biodiversity, essential for reporting the current status and for the effective conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. This work will interest biodiversity researchers not only in the Asia-Pacific region but also across the entire globe.
The understanding of global environmental management problems is best achieved through transdisciplinary research lenses that combine scientific and other sector (industry, government, etc.) tools and perspectives. However, developing effective research teams that cross such boundaries is difficult. This book demonstrates the importance of transdisciplinarity, describes challenges to such teamwork, and provides solutions for overcoming these challenges. It includes case studies of transdisciplinary teamwork, showing how these solutions have helped groups to develop better understandings of environmental problems and potential responses.
A 2017 Choice Magazine "Outstanding Academic Title" Conifers are known to everyone as a conspicuous kind of evergreen trees or shrubs that feature prominently in gardens and parks as well as in many managed forests in the cool to cold temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Numerous books have been written about them and continue to appear, mostly with a bias towards these uses in Europe and North America. This second edition, revised and updated, of A Handbook of the World's Conifers is departing from this traditional approach in that it includes all the world's 615 species of conifers, of which some 200 occur in the tropics. It gives as much information about these and the Southern Hemisphere conifers as about the better known species, drawing on research into the taxonomy, biology, ecology, distribution and uses by the author over nearly 35 years. The result is a truly encyclopedic work, a true handbook of all the world's conifers, richly illustrated by the author with his line drawings and photographs taken from the natural habitats of the species.
The Baboquivari Mountains, long considered to be a sacred space by the Tohono OÕodham people who are native to the area, are the westernmost of the so-called Sky Islands. The mountains form the border between the floristic regions of Chihuahua and Sonora. This encyclopedic work describes the flora of this unique area in detail. It includes descriptions, identifications, ecology, and extensive etymologies of plant names in European and indigenous languages. Daniel Austin also describes pollination biology and seed dispersal and explains how plants in the area have been used by humans, beginning with Native Americans. The term Òsky islandÓ was first used by Weldon Heald in 1967 to describe ...
The studies in this volume provide an ethnography of a plantation frontier in central Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Drawing on the expertise of both natural scientists and social scientists, the key focus is the process of commodification of nature that has turned the local landscape into anthropogenic tropical forests. Analysing the transformation of the space of mixed landscapes and multiethnic communities—driven by trade in forest products, logging and the cultivation of oil palm—the contributors explore the changing nature of the environment, multispecies interactions, and the metabolism between capitalism and nature. The project involved the collaboration of researchers specialising in...
This book demonstrates how the inclusion of nature in engineering decisions results in innovative solutions that are economically feasible, ecologically viable, and socially desirable. It advances progress toward nature-positive decisions by protection and restoration of ecosystems and respect for ecological boundaries. The topic of this book is an active area of academic research, and leading companies are including goals associated with ecosystem services in their sustainability plans. This book is the first collection of methods and applications that explicitly include the role of nature in supporting engineering activities and describes the role that ecosystems play in supporting technology and industry. It describes approaches, models, applications, and challenges for innovation and sustainability that will be useful to students and practitioners.