front cover of Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change
Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change
An Ecological and Conservation Synthesis
David B. Lindenmayer and Joern Fischer
Island Press, 2006
Habitat loss and degradation that comes as a result of human activity is the single biggest threat to biodiversity in the world today. Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change is a groundbreaking work that brings together a wealth of information from a wide range of sources to define the ecological problems caused by landscape change and to highlight the relationships among landscape change, habitat fragmentation, and biodiversity conservation. The book:
  • synthesizes a large body of information from the scientific literature
  • considers key theoretical principles for examining and predicting effects
  • examines the range of effects that can arise
  • explores ways of mitigating impacts
  • reviews approaches to studying the problem
  • discusses knowledge gaps and future areas for research and management
Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change offers a unique mix of theoretical and practical information, outlining general principles and approaches and illustrating those principles with case studies from around the world. It represents a definitive overview and synthesis on the full range of topics that fall under the widely used but often vaguely defined term "habitat fragmentation."
[more]

front cover of Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design
Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design
Timothy Beatley
Island Press, 2016
What if, even in the heart of a densely developed city, people could have meaningful encounters with nature? While parks, street trees, and green roofs are increasingly appreciated for their technical services like stormwater reduction, from a biophilic viewpoint, they also facilitate experiences that contribute to better physical and mental health: natural elements in play areas can lessen children's symptoms of ADHD, and adults who exercise in natural spaces can experience greater reductions in anxiety and blood pressure.
 
The Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring that nature in the city is more than infrastructure—that it also promotes well-being and creates an emotional connection to the earth among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook begins by introducing key ideas, literature, and theory about biophilic urbanism. Chapters highlight urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities. The final part concludes with lessons on how to advance an agenda for urban biophilia and an extensive list of resources.
 
As the most comprehensive reference on the emerging field of biophilic urbanism, the Handbook is essential reading for students and practitioners looking to place nature at the core of their planning and design ideas and encourage what preeminent biologist E.O. Wilson described as "the innate emotional connection of humans to all living things."
[more]

front cover of Hazardous Seas
Hazardous Seas
A Sociotechnical Framework for Early Tsunami Detection and Warning
Edited by Louise K. Comfort and Harkunti P. Rahayu
Island Press, 2023
Tsunamis are infrequent but terrifying hazards for coastal communities. Difficult to predict, they materialize with little warning, claiming thousands of lives and causing billions of dollars in damage. Recent mega-tsunamis in Japan and Indonesia claimed close to 250,000 lives, triggering wide-scale economic and social disruption.  Developing countries cannot afford costly underwater cable systems, and governments and relief organizations have been forced to rely on flawed warning systems such as deep-sea buoys. Now, a groundbreaking new approach to tsunami detection and warning, which relies on low-cost underwater sensors and networks of smartphone communication, has changed the equation. Developed by an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers, this approach allows at-risk coastal communities to have an economically viable, scientifically sound means to protect themselves.

Coeditors Louise K. Comfort and Harkunti P. Rahayu, accomplished experts in disaster preparedness, contend that it will give communities precious additional minutes to communicate warnings about imminent tsunamis to residents, potentially saving many lives. Chapters authored by a close group of collaborators present the science behind this new approach, describing conceptual design, computational models, and real-time testing of a prototype system in the warm equatorial waters of Indonesia’s Mentawai Sea. Introductory chapters explain the sociotechnical approach—how undersea sensors can transmit data to a network of electronic devices on land to alert residents to impending tsunami threats in near-real time. Subsequent chapters explore what this might look like: assessing communities at risk; designing interactive information systems for communication during an emergency; designing wireless networks for smartphone communication that can guide residents to safety; and designing community-based shelters. The book concludes with a thoughtful analysis of how these sociotechnical advances might be used for all coastal cities at risk of tsunamis, sea-level rise, storm surges, and other hazards.

Hazardous Seas is an invaluable guide for policy makers and international NGOs looking to save lives from tsunamis and mitigate crippling damage to communities, and provides a comprehensive overview of tsunami detection and warning for students of engineering, computer science, planning, policy, and economic and environmental analysis. 
 
[more]

front cover of Hazardous Waste Management
Hazardous Waste Management
Reducing The Risk
Benjamin Goldman
Island Press, 1986
Hazardous Waste Management: Reducing the Risk is the first book to study and rate toxic waste disposal sites and to provide step-by-step guidelines for evaluation, decision, and action. The innovative and practical ranking system shows how to rate facilities on the basis of site, management, and technology.
[more]

front cover of Healing Grounds
Healing Grounds
Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming
Liz Carlisle
Island Press, 2022
A powerful movement is happening in farming today—farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change. For one woman, that’s meant learning her tribe’s history to help bring back the buffalo. For another, it’s meant preserving forest purchased by her great-great-uncle, among the first wave of African Americans to buy land. Others are rejecting monoculture to grow corn, beans, and squash the way farmers in Mexico have done for centuries. Still others are rotating crops for the native cuisines of those who fled the “American wars” in Southeast Asia.
 
In Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors’ methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle. This, Carlisle shows, is the true regenerative agriculture – not merely a set of technical tricks for storing CO2 in the ground, but a holistic approach that values diversity in both plants and people.
 
Cultivating this kind of regenerative farming will require reckoning with our nation’s agricultural history—a history marked by discrimination and displacement. And it will ultimately require dismantling power structures that have blocked many farmers of color from owning land or building wealth. 
 
The task is great, but so is its promise. By coming together to restore these farmlands, we can not only heal our planet, we can heal our communities and ourselves.
 
[more]

front cover of Health and Community Design
Health and Community Design
The Impact Of The Built Environment On Physical Activity
Lawrence D. Frank, Peter O. Engelke, and Thomas L. Schmid
Island Press, 2003

Health and Community Design is a comprehensive examination of how the built environment encourages or discourages physical activity, drawing together insights from a range of research on the relationships between urban form and public health. It provides important information about the factors that influence decisions about physical activity and modes of travel, and about how land use patterns can be changed to help overcome barriers to physical activity. Chapters examine:

• the historical relationship between health and urban form in the United States
• why urban and suburban development should be designed to promote moderate types of physical activity
• the divergent needs and requirements of different groups of people and the role of those needs in setting policy
• how different settings make it easier or more difficult to incorporate walking and bicycling into everyday activities
A concluding chapter reviews the arguments presented and sketches a research agenda for the future.

[more]

front cover of Healthy Homes, Healthy Kids
Healthy Homes, Healthy Kids
Protecting Your Children From Everyday Environmental Hazards
Charity Y. Vitale and Joyce M. Schoemaker
Island Press, 1991

This comprehensive and authoritative handbook, written by scientists, identifies many hazards that parents tend to overlook. It translates technical, scientific information into an accessible how-to guide to help parents protect children from even the most toxic substances.

[more]

front cover of A Healthy Nature Handbook
A Healthy Nature Handbook
Illustrated Insights for Ecological Restoration from Volunteer Stewards of Chicago Wilderness
Edited by Justin Pepper and Don Parker
Island Press, 2021
The Chicago metropolitan area is home to far more protected nature than most people realize. Over half a million acres of protected land known as the Chicago Wilderness are owned and managed by county forest preserve districts and other public and private sector partners. But there’s a critical factor of the Chicago Wilderness conservation effort that makes it unique: a pioneering grassroots volunteer community, thousands strong, has worked for decades alongside agency staff to restore these nearby natural areas, learning how to manage biodiversity in an altered and ever-changing urban context.
 
A Healthy Nature Handbook captures hard-earned ecological wisdom from this community in engaging and highly readable chapters, each including illustrated restoration sequences. Restoration leaders cover large-scale seeding approaches, native seed production, wetland and grassland bird habitat restoration, monitoring, and community building. 

Contributions from local artists bring the region’s beauty to life with vibrant watercolors, oil paintings, and sketches. A Healthy Nature Handbook is packed with successful approaches to restoring nature and is a testament to both the Chicago region’s surprising natural wealth and the stewards that are committed to its lasting health. 
[more]

logo for Island Press
The Heart of America
Our Landscape, Our Future
Tim Palmer
Island Press, 1999
From the cliffs of Big Sur to the dunes at Cape Hatteras, from the bogs of the Boundary Waters to the deserts of the Rio Grande, the landscape of America has shaped us into the people we are. Not only is it central to ecological health and essential to the economy, it has helped form our culture and serves as a basis of national pride. The heart of America lies in the rock and soil, the mountains and the plains that surround us.In this illuminating portrait of America at the threshold of the new millennium, author Tim Palmer explores and assesses the landscape of the United States -- both timeless wonders of natural beauty and lost places scarred by human exploitation. He takes the reader on an informative and inspirational tour of our most vital landscapes, including mountains, forests, grasslands, deserts, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and seashores. He introduces us to the basic geography and ecological value of each landscape, describes historical patterns of land use, considers the most serious threats, and discusses what is being done to protect the landscape for future generations. Throughout, he instills a deeper understanding of the importance of the land, a sense of outrage at the damage that has been done, and a feeling of hope that those working to correct past abuses will succeed.Weaving together geographical, historical, and ecological information and insights, Palmer draws on thirty years of professional experience as a writer, photographer, conservationist, planner, landscape architect, and veteran traveler to present a fresh look at the past, present, and future of our land.Resounding in its account of these landscapes, compelling in the force of its information and the hope of its timely message, The Heart of America offers a fascinating measure of the land around us and a unique look at the place we call home.
[more]

front cover of The Heart of the City
The Heart of the City
Creating Vibrant Downtowns for a New Century
Alexander Garvin
Island Press, 2019
Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles.

In The Heart of the City, distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how to plan for a mix of housing, businesses, and attractions; enhance the public realm; improve mobility; and successfully manage downtown services. Garvin opens the book with diagnoses of downtowns across the United States, including the people, businesses, institutions, and public agencies implementing changes. In a review of prescriptions and treatments for any downtown, Garvin shares brief accounts—of both successes and failures—of what individuals with very different objectives have done to change their downtowns. The final chapters look at what is possible for downtowns in the future, closing with suggested national, state, and local legislation to create standard downtown business improvement districts to better manage downtowns.

This book will help public officials, civic organizations, downtown business property owners, and people who care about cities learn from successful recent actions in downtowns across the country, and expand opportunities facing their downtown. Garvin provides recommendations for continuing actions to help any downtown thrive, ensuring a prosperous and thrilling future for the 21st-century American city.
[more]

logo for Island Press
Heartsblood
Hunting, Spirituality, and Wildness in America
David Petersen; Foreword by Ted Williams
Island Press, 2000
In this age of boneless chicken breasts and drive-thru Happy Meals, why do some humans still hunt? Is it a visceral, tooth-and-claw hunger for meat, tied in a primitive savage knot with an innate lust for violence and domination? Or might it be a hunger of an entirely different sort? And if so, what? In Heartsblood, writer and veteran outdoorsman David Petersen offers a thoroughly informed, unsettlingly honest, intensely personal exploration of this increasingly contentious issue. He draws clear distinctions between true hunting and contemporary hunter behavior, praising what's right about the former and damning what's wrong with the latter, as he seeks to render the terms "hunter" and "antihunter" palpable -- to put faces on these much-used but little-understood generalizations.Petersen looks at the evolutionary roots and philosophical underpinnings of hunting, and offers a compelling portrait of an "animistic archetype" -- a paradigm for the true hunter/conservationist that is in sharp contrast with today's technology-laden, gadget-loving sport hunter. He considers the social and ecological implications of trophy hunting and deconstructs the "Bambi syndrome" -- the oversentimentalization of young animals by most Americans, including many hunters. He also explores gender issues in hunting, and highlights important qualities that are largely missing in today's mentoring of tomorrow's hunters.Throughout, Petersen emphasizes the fundamental spiritual aspects of hunting, and offers numerous finely drawn and compelling first-person hunting narratives that explain and provide substance to his arguments. Along with that personal experience, he draws on philosophy, evolutionary theory, biology, and empirical studies to create an engaging and literate work that offers a unique look at hunting, hunters, and, in the words of the author, "life's basic truths."
[more]

front cover of Heatstroke
Heatstroke
Nature in an Age of Global Warming
Anthony D. Barnosky
Island Press, 2010
In 2006, one of the hottest years on record, a “pizzly” was discovered near the top of the world. Half polar bear, half grizzly, this never-before-seen animal might be dismissed as a fluke of nature. Anthony Barnosky instead sees it as a harbinger of things to come.

In Heatstroke, the renowned paleoecologist shows how global warming is fundamentally changing the natural world and its creatures. While melting ice may have helped produce the pizzly, climate change is more likely to wipe out species than to create them. Plants and animals that have followed the same rhythms for millennia are suddenly being confronted with a world they’re unprepared for—and adaptation usually isn’t an option.

This is not the first time climate change has dramatically transformed Earth. Barnosky draws connections between the coming centuries and the end of the last ice age, when mass extinctions swept the planet. The differences now are that climate change is faster and hotter than past changes, and for the first time humanity is driving it. Which means this time we can work to stop it.

No one knows exactly what nature will come to look like in this new age of global warming. But Heatstroke gives us a haunting portrait of what we stand to lose and the vitality of what can be saved.
[more]

logo for Island Press
The Hidden Costs of Coastal Hazards
Implications For Risk Assessment And Mitigation
The H. John Heinz III Center for Science; Foreword by Gilbert F. White
Island Press, 2000
Society has limited hazard mitigation dollars to invest. Which actions will be most cost effective, considering the true range of impacts and costs incurred? In 1997, the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment began a two-year study with a panel of experts to help develop new strategies to identify and reduce the costs of weather-related hazards associated with rapidly increasing coastal development activities.The Hidden Costs of Coastal Hazards presents the panel's findings, offering the first in-depth study that considers the costs of coastal hazards to natural resources, social institutions, business, and the built environment. Using Hurricane Hugo, which struck South Carolina in 1989, as a case study, it provides for the first time information on the full range of economic costs caused by a major coastal hazard event. The book: describes and examines unreported, undocumented, and hidden costs such as losses due to business interruption, reduction in property values, interruption of social services, psychological trauma, damage to natural systems, and others examines the concepts of risk and vulnerability, and discusses conventional approaches to risk assessment and the emerging area of vulnerability assessment recommends a comprehensive framework for developing and implementing mitigation strategies documents the human impact of Hurricane Hugo and provides insight from those who lived through it.The Hidden Costs of Coastal Hazards takes a structured approach to the problem of coastal hazards, offering a new framework for community-based hazard mitigation along with specific recommendations for implementation. Decisionmakers -- both policymakers and planners -- who are interested in coastal hazard issues will find the book a unique source of new information and insight, as will private-sector decisionmakers including lenders, investors, developers, and insurers of coastal property.
[more]

front cover of The Hidden Potential of Sustainable Neighborhoods
The Hidden Potential of Sustainable Neighborhoods
Lessons from Low-Carbon Communities
Harrison Fraker
Island Press, 2013
How do you achieve effective low-carbon design beyond the building level? How do you create a community that is both livable and sustainable? More importantly, how do you know if you have succeeded? Harrison Fraker goes beyond abstract principles to provide a clear, in-depth evaluation of four first generation low-carbon neighborhoods in Europe, and shows how those lessons can be applied to the U.S. Using concrete performance data to gauge successes and failures, he presents a holistic model based on best practices.
 
The four case studies are: Bo01 and Hammarby in Sweden, and Kronsberg and Vauban in Germany. Each was built deliberately to conserve resources: all are mixed-used, contain at least 1,000 units, and have aggressive goals for energy and water efficiency, recycling, and waste treatment.
 
For each case study, Fraker explores the community's development process and  goals and objectives as they relate to urban form, transportation, green space, energy, water and waste systems, and a social agenda. For each model, he looks at overall performance and lessons learned.
  
Later chapters compare the different strategies employed by the case-study communities and develop a comprehensive model of sustainability, looking specifically at how these lessons can be employed in the United States, with a focus on retrofitting existing communities. This whole-systems approach promises not only a smaller carbon footprint, but an enriched form of urban living. 
  
The Hidden Potential of Sustainable Neighborhoods will be especially useful for urban designers, architects, landscape architects, land use planners, local policymakers and NGOs, citizen activists, students of urban design, planning, architecture, and landscape architecture.
[more]

front cover of High Tech Trash
High Tech Trash
Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
Elizabeth Grossman
Island Press, 2008
The Digital Age was expected to usher in an era of clean production, an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants. But as environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman reveals in this penetrating analysis of high tech manufacture and disposal, digital may be sleek, but it's anything but clean. Deep within every electronic device lie toxic materials that make up the bits and bytes, a complex thicket of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, and a host of other often harmful ingredients.

High Tech Trash is a wake-up call to the importance of the e-waste issue and the health hazards involved. Americans alone own more than two billion pieces of high tech electronics and discard five to seven million tons each year. As a result, electronic waste already makes up more than two-thirds of the heavy metals and 40 percent of the lead found in our landfills. But the problem goes far beyond American shores, most tragically to the cities in China and India where shiploads of discarded electronics arrive daily. There, they are "recycled"-picked apart by hand, exposing thousands of workers and community residents to toxics.

As Grossman notes, "This is a story in which we all play a part, whether we know it or not. If you sit at a desk in an office, talk to friends on your cell phone, watch television, listen to music on headphones, are a child in Guangdong, or a native of the Arctic, you are part of this story."

The answers lie in changing how we design, manufacture, and dispose of high tech electronics. Europe has led the way in regulating materials used in electronic devices and in e-waste recycling. But in the United States many have yet to recognize the persistent human health and environmental effects of the toxics in high tech devices. If Silent Spring brought national attention to the dangers of DDT and other pesticides, High Tech Trash could do the same for a new generation of technology's products.

[more]

front cover of High Tech Trash
High Tech Trash
Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
Elizabeth Grossman
Island Press, 2007
The Digital Age was expected to usher in an era of clean production, an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants. But as environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman reveals in this penetrating analysis of high tech manufacture and disposal, digital may be sleek, but it's anything but clean. Deep within every electronic device lie toxic materials that make up the bits and bytes, a complex thicket of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, and a host of other often harmful ingredients.

High Tech Trash is a wake-up call to the importance of the e-waste issue and the health hazards involved. Americans alone own more than two billion pieces of high tech electronics and discard five to seven million tons each year. As a result, electronic waste already makes up more than two-thirds of the heavy metals and 40 percent of the lead found in our landfills. But the problem goes far beyond American shores, most tragically to the cities in China and India where shiploads of discarded electronics arrive daily. There, they are "recycled"-picked apart by hand, exposing thousands of workers and community residents to toxics.

As Grossman notes, "This is a story in which we all play a part, whether we know it or not. If you sit at a desk in an office, talk to friends on your cell phone, watch television, listen to music on headphones, are a child in Guangdong, or a native of the Arctic, you are part of this story."

The answers lie in changing how we design, manufacture, and dispose of high tech electronics. Europe has led the way in regulating materials used in electronic devices and in e-waste recycling. But in the United States many have yet to recognize the persistent human health and environmental effects of the toxics in high tech devices. If Silent Spring brought national attention to the dangers of DDT and other pesticides, High Tech Trash could do the same for a new generation of technology's products.

[more]

front cover of The Historical Ecology Handbook
The Historical Ecology Handbook
A Restorationist's Guide to Reference Ecosystems
Edited by Dave Egan and Evelyn A. Howell; Foreword by Curt Meine
Island Press, 2005

The Historical Ecology Handbook makes essential connections between past and future ecosystems, bringing together leading experts to offer a much-needed introduction to the field of historical ecology and its practical application by on-the-ground restorationists.

Chapters present individual techniques focusing on both culturally derived evidence and biological records, with each chapter offering essential background, tools, and resources needed for using the technique in a restoration effort. The book ends with four in-depth case studies that demonstrate how various combinations of techniques have been used in restoration projects.

The Historical Ecology Handbook is a unique and groundbreaking guide to determining historic reference conditions of a landscape. It offers an invaluable compendium of tools and techniques, and will be essential reading for anyone working in the field of ecological restoration.

[more]

front cover of Holding Our Ground
Holding Our Ground
Protecting America's Farms And Farmland
Tom Daniels and Deborah Bowers
Island Press, 1997

Farmers, who own or rent most of the private land in America, hold the key not only to the nation's food supply, but also to managing community growth, maintaining an attractive landscape, and protecting water and wildlife resources.

While the issue of protecting farmland and open space is not new, the intensity of the challenge has increased. Farmers are harder pressed to make a living, and rural and suburban communities are struggling to accommodate increasing populations and the development that comes with them. Holding Our Ground can help landowners and communities devise and implement effective strategies for protecting farmland. The book:

  • discusses the reasons for protecting farmland and how to make those reasons widely known and understood
  • describes the business of farming, federal government farm programs, and the role of land in farmers's decisions
  • analyzes federal, state, and local farmland protection efforts and techniques
  • explores a variety of land protection options including purchase of development rights; transfer of development rights; private land trusts; and financial, tax, and estate planning
  • reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the farmland protection tools available
The authors describe the many challenges involved in protecting farmland and explain how to create a package of techniques that can meet those challenges. In addition, they offer appendixes with model zoning ordinances, nuisance disclaimers, conservation easements, and other documents that individuals and communities need to carry out the programs discussed.

Holding Our Ground provides citizens, elected officials, planners, and landowners with a solid basis for understanding the issues behind farmland protection, and will be an invaluable resource in developing techniques and programs for achieving long-term protection goals.

[more]

front cover of Holistic Management
Holistic Management
A New Framework for Decision Making
Allan Savory and Jody Butterfield; Center for Holistic Management
Island Press, 1999
Increasingly sophisticated technology and an ever-expand-ing base of knowledge have not been enough to allow humans to halt the worldwide progression of environmental degradation. Extensive fieldwork in both Africa and the United States convinced Allan Savory that neither the forces of nature nor commonly blamed culprits -- overpopulation, poor farming practices, lack of financial support -- were causing the decline of once-healthy ecosystems. He also noted that once land has become degraded, leaving it alone seldom helps revitalize it. Savory eventually came to realize that on the most fundamental level, environmental problems are caused by human management decisions, and only through wholesale changes in the way decisions are made can functioning ecosystems be restored. In response to that startling discovery, Savory began to develop a revolutionary new approach to decision-making and management. Known initially as Holistic Resource Management, and now as simply Holistic Management, it considers humans, their economies, and the environment as inseparable. It includes a common-sense decision-making framework that requires no specialized knowledge or elaborate technology to utilize, and is applicable in any environment or management situation. At the heart of the approach lies a simple testing process that enables people to make decisions that simultaneously consider economic, social, and environmental realities, both short- and long-term.Holistic Management is a newly revised and updated edition of Holistic Resource Management (Island Press, 1988), which was the first book-length treatment of Savory's decision-making framework and how it could be applied. A decade of trial-and-error implementation has strengthened and clarified the book's ideas, and has expanded the scope of the process to include all manner of decisions and management situations, not just those that relate to land and resource management.Holistic Management has been practiced by thousands of people around the world to profitably restore and promote the health of their land through practices that mimic nature, and by many others who have sought a more rewarding personal or family life. This book is an essential handbook for anyone involved with land management and stewardship -- ranchers, farmers, resource managers, and others -- and a valuable guide for all those seeking to make better decisions within their organizations or in any aspect of their personal lives.
[more]

front cover of Holistic Management Handbook
Holistic Management Handbook
Healthy Land, Healthy Profits
Jody Butterfield, Sam Bingham, and Allan Savory
Island Press, 2006
Holistic management, as described by Allan Savory in the books Holistic Resource Management (Island Press, 1988) and the revised edition, Holistic Management (Island Press, 2001), has been practiced by thousands of people around the world to profitably restore and promote the health of their land through practices that mimic nature, and by many others who have sought a more rewarding personal or family life. Holistic Management Handbook offers a detailed explanation of the planning procedures presented in those books and gives step-by-step guidance for implementing holistic management on a ranch or farm.
 
Holistic Management and Holistic Management Handbook are essential reading for anyone involved with land management and stewardship, and together represent an indispensable guide for individuals interested in making better decisions within their organizations or in any aspect of their personal or professional lives.
[more]

front cover of Holistic Management Handbook, Third Edition
Holistic Management Handbook, Third Edition
Regenerating Your Land and Growing Your Profits
Jody Butterfield, Sam Bingham, and Allan Savory
Island Press, 2019
Holistic management is a systems-thinking approach developed by biologist Allan Savory to restore the world’s grassland soils and minimize the damaging effects of climate change and desertification on humans and the natural world. This third edition of Holistic Management Handbook: Regenerating Your Land and Growing Your Profits is the long-awaited companion volume to the classic text Holistic Management, Third Edition. Crafted under the direction of Savory’s longtime collaborator Jody Butterfield, this handbook is the key to developing a comprehensive holistic land plan based on Savory’s principles that will help you to restore health to your land and ensure a stable, sustainable livelihood from its bounty.

This new edition, thoroughly revised, updated, and streamlined, explains the planning procedures described in Holistic Management, and offers step-by-step instructions for running a ranch or farm using a holistic management approach. Butterfield and her coauthors describe how to use the handbook in conjunction with the textbook to tailor a management plan for your unique combination of land, livestock, and finances. Their mantra is “plan, monitor, control, and replan.” Using a four-part approach, the authors walk readers through basic concepts and techniques, help them put a plan onto paper, monitor the results, and adjust the details as needed. Appendixes provide updated worksheets, checklists, planning and monitoring forms, and detailed examples of typical scenarios a user might encounter. The handbook includes a comprehensive glossary of terms.

Ranchers, farmers, pastoralists, social entrepreneurs, government agencies, and NGOs working to address global environmental degradation will find this comprehensive handbook an indispensable guide to putting the holistic management concept into action with tangible results they can take to the bank.
 
[more]

front cover of Holistic Management, Third Edition
Holistic Management, Third Edition
A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment
Allan Savory with Jody Butterfield
Island Press, 2016
Fossil fuels and livestock grazing are often targeted as major culprits behind climate change and desertification. But Allan Savory, cofounder of the Savory Institute, begs to differ. The bigger problem, he warns, is our mismanagement of resources. Livestock grazing is not the problem; it’s how we graze livestock. If we don’t change the way we approach land management, irreparable harm from climate change could continue long after we replace fossil fuels with environmentally benign energy sources.

Holistic management is a systems-thinking approach for managing resources developed by Savory decades ago after observing the devastation of desertification in his native Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Properly managed livestock are key to restoring the world’s grassland soils, the major sink for atmospheric carbon, and minimizing the most damaging impacts on humans and the natural world. This book updates Savory's paradigm-changing vision for reversing desertification, stemming the loss of biodiversity, eliminating fundamental causes of human impoverishment throughout the world, and climate change. Reorganized chapters make it easier for readers to understand the framework for Holistic Management and the four key insights that underlie it. New color photographs showcase before-and-after examples of land restored by livestock.

This long-anticipated new edition is written for new generations of ranchers, farmers, eco- and social entrepreneurs, and development professionals working to address global environmental and social degradation. It offers new hope that a sustainable future for humankind and the world we depend on is within reach.
 
[more]

front cover of The Holistic Resource Management Workbook
The Holistic Resource Management Workbook
Sam Bingham and Allan Savory
Island Press, 1990

front cover of Hope Is an Imperative
Hope Is an Imperative
The Essential David Orr
David W. Orr
Island Press, 2010
For more than three decades, David Orr has been one of the leading voices of the environmental movement, championing the cause of ecological literacy in higher education, helping to establish and shape the field of ecological design, and working tirelessly to raise awareness of the threats to future generations posed by humanity’s current unsustainable trajectory.
 
Hope Is an Imperative brings together in a single volume Professor Orr’s most important works. These include classics such as “What Is Education For?,” one of the most widely reprinted essays in the environmental literature, “The Campus and the Biosphere,” which helped launch the green campus movement,and “Loving Children: A Design Problem,” which renowned theologian and philosopher Thomas Berry called “the most remarkable essay I’ve read in my whole life.”
 
The book features thirty-three essays, along with an introductory section that considers the evolution of environmentalism, section introductions that place the essays into a larger context, and a foreword by physicist and author Fritjof Capra.
 
Hope Is an Imperative is a comprehensive collection of works by one of the most important thinkers and writers of our time. It offers a complete introduction to the writings of David Orr for readers new to the field, and represents a welcome compendium of key essays for longtime fans. The book is a must-have volume for every environmentalist’s bookshelf.
[more]

front cover of Hope's Horizon
Hope's Horizon
Three Visions For Healing The American Land
Chip Ward
Island Press, 2004

At a time of widespread environmental pessimism, Hope's Horizon goes on an inspirational offensive. In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, author Chip Ward tells of his travels among a new generation of activists who are moving beyond defensive environmental struggles and advocating pioneering, proactive strategies for healing the land.

Chip Ward's three-year odyssey took him behind the scenes of efforts to reconnect fragmented habitats and "re-wild" the North American continent; the campaign to drain Lake Powell and restore Glen Canyon to its natural state; and the struggle to keep nuclear waste off Western Shoshone ancestral lands and, ultimately, to abolish all nuclear power and weapons. These movements, and the practical visionaries leading them, challenge readers with a new paradigm in which land is used in a spirit of collaboration with natural systems rather than domination of them. Broad in its sweep, Hope's Horizon uses its topical subjects as springboards for exploring how we can redefine our place in the world while restoring damaged habitats, replenishing lost diversity, and abandoning harmful technologies.

Lively, literate, and free of the grimness that characterizes so much environmental writing, Hope's Horizon will change the way readers see the world. It makes complicated concepts and issues accessible, and wild ideas compelling. And while the book's starting point is a hard-nosed indictment of humanity's failed stewardship of the earth, the stories that follow tell of catalytic optimism and ecological wisdom in the face of self-destructive habit and blind pride.

[more]

front cover of Hot
Hot
Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth
Mark Hertsgaard
Island Press, 2012
On December 7, 2011, Mark Hertsgaard participated in The National Climate Seminar, a series of webinars sponsored by Bard College’s Center for Environmental Policy. The online seminars provide a forum for leading scientists, writers, and other experts to talk about critical issues regarding climate change. The series also opens a public conversation, inviting participants to ask questions and contribute their own thoughts.
 
Hertsgaard has spent the last two decades reporting on climate change for media outlets including The New Yorker, NPR, Time, Vanity Fair, and The Nation, where he is the environment correspondent. His lecture focused on political movements and how environmental advocates can provoke change in public attitudes and on Capitol Hill. Hertsgaard sees 2011’s Occupy movement as a sign of real hope and discussed what climate activists can learn from Occupy’s tactics. 
 
This E-ssential is an edited version of Hertsgaard’s talk and the subsequent question and answer session. While some material has been cut and some language modified for clarity, the intention was to retain the substance of the original discussion. 
[more]

front cover of How to Feed the World
How to Feed the World
Jessica Eise and Ken Foster
Island Press, 2018
By 2050, we will have ten billion mouths to feed in a world profoundly altered by environmental change. How can we meet this challenge? In How to Feed the World, a diverse group of experts from Purdue University break down this crucial question by tackling big issues one-by-one. Covering population, water, land, climate change, technology, food systems, trade, food waste and loss, health, social buy-in, communication, and, lastly, the ultimate challenge of achieving equal access to food, the book reveals a complex web of factors that must be addressed in order to reach global food security.
 
How to Feed the World unites contributors from different perspectives and academic disciplines, ranging from agronomy and hydrology to agricultural economy and communication. Hailing from Germany, the Philippines, the U.S., Ecuador, and beyond, the contributors weave their own life experiences into their chapters, connecting global issues to our tangible, day-to-day existence. Across every chapter, a similar theme emerges: these are not simple problems, yet we can overcome them. Doing so will require cooperation between farmers, scientists, policy makers, consumers, and many others.
 
The resulting collection is an accessible but wide-ranging look at the modern food system. Readers will not only get a solid grounding in key issues, but be challenged to investigate further and contribute to the paramount effort to feed the world. 
[more]

front cover of How to Save a River
How to Save a River
A Handbook For Citizen Action
David M. Bolling
Island Press, 1994

How to Save a River presents in a concise and readable format the wisdom gained from years of river protection campaigns across the United States. The book begins by defining general principles of action, including getting organized, planning a campaign, building public support, and putting a plan into action. It then provides detailed explanations of how to:

  • form an organization and raise money
  • develop coalitions with other groups
  • plan a campaign and build public support
  • cultivate the media and other powerful allies
  • develop credible alternatives to damaging projects
How to Save a River provides an important overview of the resource issues involved in river protection, and suggests sources for further investigation. Countless examples of successful river protection campaigns prove that ordinary citizens do have the power to create change when they know how to organize themselves.
[more]

front cover of How to Study Public Life
How to Study Public Life
Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre
Island Press, 2013
How do we accommodate a growing urban population in a way that is sustainable, equitable, and inviting? This question is becoming increasingly urgent to answer as we face diminishing fossil-fuel resources and the effects of a changing climate while global cities continue to compete to be the most vibrant centers of culture, knowledge, and finance.

Jan Gehl has been examining this question since the 1960s, when few urban designers or planners were thinking about designing cities for people. But given the unpredictable, complex and ephemeral nature of life in cities, how can we best design public infrastructure—vital to cities for getting from place to place, or staying in place—for human use? Studying city life and understanding the factors that encourage or discourage use is the key to designing inviting public space.

In How to Study Public Life Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre draw from their combined experience of over 50 years to provide a history of public-life study as well as methods and tools necessary to recapture city life as an important planning dimension.

This type of systematic study began in earnest in the 1960s, when several researchers and journalists on different continents criticized urban planning for having forgotten life in the city. City life studies provide knowledge about human behavior in the built environment in an attempt to put it on an equal footing with knowledge about urban elements such as buildings and transport systems. Studies can be used as input in the decision-making process,  as part of overall planning, or in designing individual projects such as streets, squares or parks. The original goal is still the goal today: to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. Anyone interested in improving city life will find inspiration, tools, and examples in this invaluable guide.
[more]

front cover of Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration
Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration
Integrating Science, Nature, and Culture
Edited by Dave Egan, Evan E. Hjerpe, and Jesse Abrams
Island Press, 2011

When it comes to implementing successful ecological restoration projects, the social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions are often as important as-and sometimes more important than-technical or biophysical knowledge.

Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration takes an interdisciplinary look at the myriad human aspects of ecological restoration. In twenty-six chapters written by experts from around the world, it provides practical and theoretical information, analysis, models, and guidelines for optimizing human involvement in restoration projects. Six categories of social activities are examined:

  • collaboration between land manager and stakeholders
  • ecological economics
  • volunteerism and community-based restoration
  • environmental education
  • ecocultural and artistic practices
  • policy and politics

For each category, the book offers an introductory theoretical chapter followed by multiple case studies, each of which focuses on a particular aspect of the category and provides a perspective from within a unique social/political/cultural setting.

Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration delves into the often-neglected aspects of ecological restoration that ultimately make the difference between projects that are successfully executed and maintained with the support of informed, engaged citizens, and those that are unable to advance past the conceptual stage due to misunderstandings or apathy. The lessons contained will be valuable to restoration veterans and greenhorns alike, scholars and students in a range of fields, and individuals who care about restoring their local lands and waters.

[more]

front cover of Human Ecology
Human Ecology
Following Nature's Lead
Frederick Steiner; Foreword by Richard T.T. Forman
Island Press, 2002

Human ecology is an emerging discipline that studies the interrelationships between humans and their environment, drawing on insights from biology, sociology, anthropology, geography, engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and conservation. A vast, multidisciplinary literature underscores this approach, and in Human Ecology, noted landscape planner Frederick Steiner synthesizes the work of diverse, sometimes divergent, scholars to illustrate how human interactions can be understood as ecological relationships, using hierarchy as an organizing device.

Steiner builds on the work of leading thinkers including Christopher Alexander, William Cronon, Clifford Geertz, James Lovelock, Eugene Odum, Paul Shepard, Anne Whiston Spirn, E. O. Wilson, Gerald Young, and many others to present a historical and analytical examination of how humans interact with each other as well as with other organisms and their surroundings.

The first two chapters summarize the development of this "new ecology" and the theory of human ecology. The remainder of the book provides an accessible introduction to the major elements of human ecological theory including language, culture, and technology; structure, function, and change; edges and boundaries; interaction, integration, and institution; diversity; and adaptation. The chapters are organized hierarchically from the smallest scale to the largest with each chapter addressing a specific level as an ecosystem. The final chapter probes some of the ethical implications of this new field.

Human Ecology brings together for the first time scholarship from the social and natural sciences as well as the environmental design arts to offer an overview of the field of human ecology and to show how the field may help us to envision our futures. While the approach is largely theoretical, it has broad policy and practical implications, and represents an important new work for anyone concerned with interactions between humans and the environment.

[more]

front cover of Human Ecology
Human Ecology
How Nature and Culture Shape Our World
Frederick Steiner; Foreword by Richard T.T. Forman
Island Press, 2002
Humans have always been influenced by natural landscapes, and always will be—even as we create ever-larger cities and our developments fundamentally change the nature of the earth around us. In Human Ecology, noted city planner and landscape architect Frederick Steiner encourages us to consider how human cultures have been shaped by natural forces, and how we might use this understanding to contribute to a future where both nature and people thrive.
 
Human ecology is the study of the interrelationships between humans and their environment, drawing on diverse fields from biology and geography to sociology, engineering, and architecture. Steiner admirably synthesizes these perspectives through the lens of landscape architecture, a discipline that requires its practitioners to consciously connect humans and their environments.  After laying out eight principles for understanding human ecology, the book’s chapters build from the smallest scale of connection—our homes—and expand to community scales, regions, nations, and, ultimately, examine global relationships between people and nature.
 
In this age of climate change, a new approach to planning and design is required to envision a livable future. Human Ecology provides architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and planners—and students in those fields— with timeless principles for new, creative thinking about how their work can shape a vibrant, resilient future for ourselves and our planet.
[more]

front cover of Human Natures
Human Natures
Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect
Paul R. Ehrlich
Island Press, 2000

The Bell Curve, The Moral Animal, The Selfish Gene -- these and a host of other books and articles have made a seemingly overwhelming case that our genes determine our behavior. Now, in a new book that is sure to stir controversy, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists shows why most of those claims of genetic destiny cannot be true, and explains how the arguments often stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution itself.

"You can't change human nature," the saying goes. But you can, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich shows us in Human Natures, and in fact, evolution is the story of those changing natures. He makes a compelling case that "human nature" is not a single, unitary entity, but is as diverse as humanity itself, and that changes in culture and other environmental variations play as much of a role in human evolution as genetic changes. We simply don't have enough genes to specify behavior at the level that is often asserted.

Never has knowledge of our evolutionary past been more important to our future. Developing intelligent strategies for antibiotic use, pest control, biodiversity protection -- and even for establishing more equitable social arrangements -- all depend on understanding evolution and how it works. A hallmark of Human Natures is the author's ability to convey lucidly that understanding in the course of presenting an engrossing history of our species. Using personal anecdote, vivid example, and stimulating narrative, Ehrlich guides us through the thicket of controversies over what science can and cannot say about the influence of our evolutionary past on everything from race to religion, from sexual orientation to economic development.

A major work of synthesis and scholarship, Human Natures gives us the fruit of a lifetime's thought and research on evolution and environment by a modern master of scientific understanding. Ehrlich's innovative vision lights the way to a fresh view of human nature and evolution, bringing insight and clarity to urgent questions of where we are as a species, and where we may be headed.

[more]

front cover of Human Transit
Human Transit
How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives
Jarrett Walker
Island Press, 2011
Public transit is a powerful tool for addressing a huge range of urban problems, including traffic congestion and economic development as well as climate change. But while many people support transit in the abstract, it's often hard to channel that support into good transit investments.  Part of the problem is that transit debates attract many kinds of experts, who often talk past each other.  Ordinary people listen to a little of this and decide that transit is impossible to figure out.
 
Jarrett Walker believes that transit can be simple, if we focus first on the underlying geometry that all transit technologies share. In Human Transit, Walker supplies the basic tools, the critical questions, and the means to make smarter decisions about designing and implementing transit services.
 
Human Transit explains the fundamental geometry of transit that shapes successful systems; the process for fitting technology to a particular community; and the local choices that lead to transit-friendly development. Whether you are in the field or simply a concerned citizen, here is an accessible guide to achieving successful public transit that will enrich any community.
[more]

front cover of Human Transit, Revised Edition
Human Transit, Revised Edition
How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives
Jarrett Walker
Island Press, 2024
Transportation expert Jarrett Walker believes that transit can be simple, if we focus on the underlying geometry that all transit systems share. In Human Transit, Revised Edition, he provides the basic tools and critical questions needed to make smarter decisions about designing and implementing services, refreshed with updated information and examples.
 
The first edition of Human Transit, published in 2011, has become a classic for professionals, advocates, and interested citizens. No other book explains the basic principles of public transit in such lively and accessible prose, all based on a respect for your right to form your own opinion. Walker’s goal is not to make you share his values, but to give you the tools to clarify and advocate for yours. 

Walker has updated and expanded the book to deepen its explanations. His ongoing work as a network planning consultant has provided a wealth of new examples, images, and tools. New topics include the problem with specialization; the role of flexible or “demand response” services; how to know when to redesign your network; and responding to tech-industry claims that transit will soon be obsolete.  Finally, he has also added a major new section exploring the idea of access to opportunity as a core measure of transit’s success.

Whether you are a professional or a concerned citizen, the revised edition of this accessible guide can help you to achieve successful public transit that will enrich any community.
 
 
[more]

front cover of Human Well-Being and Economic Goals
Human Well-Being and Economic Goals
Edited by Frank Ackerman, David Kiron, Neva R. Goodwin, Jonathan M. Harris, andKevin P. Gallagher; Foreword by Kenneth Arrow
Island Press, 1997

What are the ends of economic activity? According to neoclassical theory, efficient interaction of the profit-maximizing "ideal producer" and the utility-maximizing "ideal consumer" will eventually lead to some sort of social optimum. But is that social optimum the same as human well-being? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals addresses that issue, considering such questions as:

  • Does the maximization of individual welfare really lead to social welfare?
  • How can we deal with questions of relative welfare and of equity?
  • How do we define, or at least understand, individual and social welfare?
  • And how can these things be measured, or even assessed?

Human Well-Being and Economic Goals brings together more than 75 concise summaries of the most significant literature in the field that consider issues of present and future individual and social welfare, national development, consumption, and equity. Like its predecessors in the Frontier Issues in Economic Thought series, it takes a multidisciplinary approach to economic concerns, examining their sociological, philosophical, and psychological aspects and implications as well as their economic underpinnings.

Human Well-Being and Economic Goals provides a powerful introduction to the current and historical writings that examine the concept of human well-being in ways that can help us to set goals for economic activity and judge its success. It is a valuable summary and overview for students, economists, and social scientists concerned with these issues.

[more]

front cover of Humanity's Moment
Humanity's Moment
A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope
Joëlle Gergis
Island Press, 2023
When climate scientist Joëlle Gergis set to work on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, the research she encountered kept her up at night. Through countless hours spent with the world’s top scientists to piece together the latest global assessment of climate change, she realized that the impacts were occurring faster than anyone had predicted.

In Humanity’s Moment, Joëlle takes us through the science in the IPCC report with unflinching honesty, explaining what it means for our future, while sharing her personal reflections on bearing witness to the heartbreak of the climate emergency unfolding in real time. But this is not a lament for a lost world. It is an inspiring reminder that human history is an endless tug-of-war for social justice. We are each a part of an eternal evolutionary force that can transform our world.

Joëlle shows us that the solutions we need to live sustainably already exist—we just need the social movement and political will to create a better world. Humanity’s Moment is a climate scientist’s guide to rekindling hope, and a call to action to restore our relationship with ourselves, each other, and our planet.
[more]

front cover of The Hype About Hydrogen
The Hype About Hydrogen
Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate
Joseph J. Romm
Island Press, 2005
Lately it has become a matter of conventional wisdom that hydrogen will solve many of our energy and environmental problems. Nearly everyone -- environmentalists, mainstream media commentators, industry analysts, General Motors, and even President Bush -- seems to expect emission-free hydrogen fuel cells to ride to the rescue in a matter of years, or at most a decade or two.

Not so fast, says Joseph Romm. In The Hype about Hydrogen, he explains why hydrogen isn't the quick technological fix it's cracked up to be, and why cheering for fuel cells to sweep the market is not a viable strategy for combating climate change. Buildings and factories powered by fuel cells may indeed become common after 2010, Joseph Romm argues, but when it comes to transportation, the biggest source of greenhouse-gas emissions, hydrogen is unlikely to have a significant impact before 2050.

The Hype about Hydrogen offers a hype-free explanation of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, takes a hard look at the practical difficulties of transitioning to a hydrogen economy, and reveals why, given increasingly strong evidence of the gravity of climate change, neither government policy nor business investment should be based on the belief that hydrogen cars will have meaningful commercial success in the near or medium term. Romm, who helped run the federal government's program on hydrogen and fuel cells during the Clinton administration, provides a provocative primer on the politics, business, and technology of hydrogen and climate protection.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter