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"Landscape Bionomics,” or “Bio-integrated Landscape Ecology,” radically transforms the main principles of traditional Landscape Ecology by recognizing the landscape as a living entity rather than merely the spatial distribution of species and communities on the territory, often analysed in separate themes (water, species, pollution, etc.). To be more exact, the landscape is identified as the "life organization integrating a set of plants, animals and human communities and its system of natural, semi-natural, and human cultural ecosystems in a certain spatial configuration." This new perspective inevitably leads to significant changes in how to assess and manage the environment. This bo...
The urgent need for a sustainable environment has resulted in the increased recognition of the field of landscape ecology amongst policy makers working in the area of nature conservation, restoration and territorial planning. Nonetheless, the question of what is precisely meant by the term landscape ecology'is still unresolved. No doubt, a proper foundation of the discipline must first be cemented. This book develops such a foundation. In doing so it provides all the diverse applications of the discipline with a solid framework and proposes an effective diagnostic methodology to investigate the ecological state and the pathologies of the landscape.
This book features a selection of the most representative papers presented during the international conference Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe (ABDD). It invites you on a fascinating journey across the last three centuries of Europe, with death as your guide. The past and present realities of the complex phenomena of death and dying in Romania, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Italy are dealt with, by authors from varying backgrounds: historians, sociologists, priests, humanists, anthropologists, and doctors. This is yet more proof that death as a topic cannot be confined to one science, the deciphering of its meanings and of the shifts it effects requiring a joint, interdisciplinary effort.
This book aims to explore the impact of human alterations of Earth’s ecological systems on human health. Human activities are producing fundamental biophysical changes faster than ever before in the history of our species, which are accompanied by dangerous health effects. Drawing on advanced ecological principles, the book demonstrates the importance of using systemic medicine to study the effects of ecological alterations on human health. Planetary Health is an interdisciplinary field, but first of all it must be systemic and it needs a preferential relationship between Ecology and Medicine. This relation is to be upgrading, because today both ecology and medicine pursue few systemic cha...
This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the second workshop on Evaluation and Planning held at Centre International de Hautes Etudes Agronomiques Mediterraneennes (CIHEAM) in Valenzano (Bari) in November 1993. The workshop was financially and otherwise supported by the School of Engineering, Bari Polytechnic; the School of Agriculture, University of Bari; and CIHEAM. The publication of this book was made possible by to the efforts of the contributing authors. Several other persons have provided invaluable support for the workshop or the preparation of this volume. One of these is Patsy Healey for her fascinating challenge to Andreas Faludi's most recent arguments about ration...
The aim of this book is to bring together multidisciplinary research in the field of green infrastructure design, construction and ecology. The main core of the volume is constituted by contributions dealing with green infrastructure, vegetation science, nature-based solutions and sustainable urban development. The green infrastructure and its ecosystem services, indeed, are gaining space in both political agendas and academic research. However, the attention is focused on the services that nature is giving for free to and for human health and survival. What if we start to see things from another perspective? Our actions shall converge for instance to turn man-made environment like cities fr...
This book is dedicated to the consolidation and to the expansion of theoretic systems thinking as a necessary integration of the general reductionist and analytical attitude dominant in our culture. Reductionism and analytical approaches have produced significant results in many fields of contemporary knowledge giving a great contribution to relevant scientific discoveries and to their technological application, but their validity has been improperly universalized as the only and best methods of knowledge in every domain. It is nowadays clear that analytical or mereological approaches are inadequate to solve many problems and that we should introduce – or support the diffusion of - new con...
Thermodynamics is one of the most exciting branches of physical chemistry which has greatly contributed to the modern science. Being concentrated on a wide range of applications of thermodynamics, this book gathers a series of contributions by the finest scientists in the world, gathered in an orderly manner. It can be used in post-graduate courses for students and as a reference book, as it is written in a language pleasing to the reader. It can also serve as a reference material for researchers to whom the thermodynamics is one of the area of interest.
The landscape and vegetation of the Dolomites have characteristics that are very particular. Some 2300 species live here, about a fifth of the flora in Europe as a whole. This book depicts what the plant cover of the Dolomites is composed of, how it was formed, and what future evolution may bring. The data presented is based on the authors’ combined botanical research, which consists of thousands of surveys throughout the entire region of the Dolomites. To explain the vegetation, 106 plant communities are described in detailed datasheets. Biological, geological, climatic and physical-chemical parameters are given for each plant community, including a description of the habitat, the indicat...
The book, showing virtuous examples of urban planning in Italy and Europe, exposes certain doubts and open questions: what is the new role of urban planning? What actions / rules are now achievable for the protection, planning and management of local-scale landscapes? The overall reflections gathered in the book contribute to suggest innovative visions about landscape planning at local scale, seen as first steps towards a more functional change of perspective. New landscapes are the result of local planning practices that no longer seem able to “understand” the current society through urban design. Public space and new urban centralities interact with the increasingly complex functions of social life and mark the distance from territorial values, relying less and less on physical relationships (economic and functional) and increasingly on symbolic and intangible relationships, as ‘cultural identity’. Landscape is essential for the sustainable future of the urban and rural territory: the landscape quality is a factor of economic competitiveness and acts also as a factor of social cohesion and integration.