Biology: Ecology Books

The fourth edition of the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of ecology available. Written in a clear, accessible style, it contains over 6,000 entries on all aspects of ecology and related environmental scientific disciplines such as biogeography, genetics, soil science, geomorphology, atmospheric science, and oceanography.   Coverage is wide-ranging and includes plant and animal physiology, animal behaviour, pollution, conservation, habitat management, population, evolution, environmental pollution, climatology and meteorology.The dictionary will be invaluable to students of ecology, biology, conservation studies, environmental sciences, and professionals in related areas, as well as the general reader with an interest in the natural world.

A wide ranging, inter-disciplinary resource covering a broad spectrum of environmental concerns, embracing science, politics, economics, philosophy, and history, and containing entries on current hot topics such as Antartica, Gaia hypothosis, genetic engineering, Kyoto Protocol, and the United Nations Conference on Environmental Development.

Scholars, scientists, and policymakers have hailed ecosystem-based management (EBM) as a remedy for the perceived shortcomings of the centralized, top-down, expert-driven environmental regulatory framework established in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. EBM entails collaborative, landscape-scale planning and flexible, adaptive implementation. But although scholars have analyzed aspects of EBM for more than a decade, until now there has been no systematic empirical study of the overall approach. In "Natural Experiments," Judith Layzer provides a detailed assessment of whether EBM delivers in practice the environmental benefits it promises in theory. She does this by examining four nationally known EBM initiatives (the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Program in Austin, Texas, the San Diego Multiple Species Program, the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, and the California Bay-Delta Program) and three comparison cases that used more conventional regulatory approaches (Arizona's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan and efforts to restore Florida's Kissimmee River and California's Mono Basin). Layzer concludes that projects that set goals based on stakeholder collaboration, rather than through conventional politics, are less likely to result in environmental improvement, largely because the pursuit of consensus drives planners to avoid controversy and minimize short-term costs. Layzer's resolutely practical focus cuts through the ideological and theoretical arguments for and against EBM to identify strategies that hold genuine promise for restoring the ecological resilience of our landscapes.

"The Oxford Companion to the Earth is a unique reference work, offering unrivalled coverage of the Earth Sciences, from volcanoes to flood plains, diamonds to meteors, deserts to deep seas. All aspects of geology, including climatology, mineralogy, and oceanography, are covered. In addition, there are many eclectic entries, for example on dinosaur hunters, and fossils and folklore, as well as biographies of the key figures involved."

Power and social inequality shape patterns of land use and resource management. This book explores this relationship from different perspectives, illuminating the complexity of interactions between human societies and nature. Most of the contributors use the perspective of "political ecology" as a point of departure, recognizing that human relations to the environment and human social relations are not separate phenomena but inextricably intertwined. What makes this volume unique is that it sets this approach in a trans-disciplinary, global, and historical framework.