BiblioVault - Books about Ecosystems & Habitats

Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood

Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic

Charlotte Wrigley

University of Minnesota Press, 2023

Exploring one of the greatest potential contributors to climate change—thawing permafrost—and the anxiety of extinction on an increasingly hostile planet

Climate scientists point to permafrost as a “ticking time bomb” for the planet, and from the Arctic, apocalyptic narratives proliferate on the devastating effects permafrost thaw poses to human survival. In Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood, Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost—and its disappearance—redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity, both material and social, and something that affects not only life on earth but nonlife, too.

Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood approaches the topic of thawing permafrost and the wild new economies and mitigation strategies forming in the far north through a study of the Sakha Republic, Russia’s largest region, and its capital city Yakutsk, which is the coldest city in the world and built on permafrost. Wrigley examines people who are creating commerce out of thawing permafrost, including scientists wishing to recreate the prehistoric “Mammoth steppe” ecosystem by eventually rewilding resurrected woolly mammoths, Indigenous people who forage the tundra for exposed mammoth bodies to sell their tusks, and government officials hoping to keep their city standing as the ground collapses under it. Warming begets thawing begets economic activity— and as a result, permafrost becomes discontinuous, both as land and as a social category, in ways that have implications for the entire planet. Discontinuity, Wrigley shows, eventually evolves into extinction.

Offering a new way of defining extinction through the concept of “discontinuity,” Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood presents a meditative and story-focused engagement with permafrost as more than just frozen ground.

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Eastern Alpine Guide

Natural History and Conservation of Mountain Tundra East of the Rockies

Edited by Mike Jones and Liz Willey

University Press of New England, 2018

This unique book celebrates and documents the incredible and colorful biodiversity of the mountain landscapes of eastern North America, covering all of the major alpine ecosystems in New England, New York, Québec, Newfoundland, and Labrador. Twenty scientists, explorers, naturalists, and land managers from the United States and Canada have collaborated to create this definitive and beautiful account of the flora and fauna of the eastern alpine tundra.

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Ecological Restoration in the Midwest

Past, Present, and Future

Christian Lenhard and Peter C. Smiley, Jr.

University of Iowa Press, 2018

Most people do not realize it, but the Midwest has been at the forefront of ecological restoration longer than perhaps any other region in the United States, dating back to the 1930s. Because of its industrial history, agricultural productivity, and natural features such as the Great Lakes, the Midwest has always faced a unique set of ecological challenges.

Focusing on six cutting-edge case studies that highlight thirty restoration efforts and research sites throughout the region— Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio— editors Christian Lenhart and Peter “Rocky” Smiley Jr. bring together a group of scholars and practitioners to show how midwestern restoration efforts have developed, as well as where they are headed. Whether cleaning up contamination from auto plants in Ohio, or restoring native prairie grasses along the Iowa highway, the contributors uncover a vast network of interested citizens and volunteer groups committed to preserving the region’s environment.

This study, intended for researchers, students, and practitioners, also provides an updated synthesis of restoration theory and practice, and pinpoints emerging issues of importance in the Midwest, such as climate change and the increase in invasive species it will bring to the region. Though focusing exclusively on the Midwest, the contributors demonstrate how these case studies apply to restoration efforts across the globe.

Contributors: Luther Aadland, David P. Benson, Andrew F. Casper, Hua Chen, Joe DiMisa, Steve Glass, Heath M. Hagy, John A. Harrington, Neil Haugerud, Constance Hausman, Michael J. Lemke, Christian Lenhart, Jen Lyndall, Dan Shaw, John A. Shuey, Peter C. Smiley Jr., Daryl Smith

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Ecology and Recovery of Eastern Old-Growth Forests

Edited by Andrew M. Barton and William S. Keeton

Island Press, 2018

The landscapes of North America, including eastern forests, have been shaped by humans for millennia, through fire, agriculture, hunting, and other means. But the arrival of Europeans on America’s eastern shores several centuries ago ushered in the rapid conversion of forests and woodlands to other land uses. By the twentieth century, it appeared that old-growth forests in the eastern United States were gone, replaced by cities, farms, transportation networks, and second-growth forests. Since that time, however, numerous remnants of eastern old growth have been discovered, meticulously mapped, and studied. Many of these ancient stands retain surprisingly robust complexity and vigor, and forest ecologists are eager to develop strategies for their restoration and for nurturing additional stands of old growth that will foster biological diversity, reduce impacts of climate change, and serve as benchmarks for how natural systems operate.

Forest ecologists William Keeton and Andrew Barton bring together a volume that breaks new ground in our understanding of ecological systems and their importance for forest resilience in an age of rapid environmental change. This edited volume covers a broad geographic canvas, from eastern Canada and the Upper Great Lakes states to the deep South. It looks at a wide diversity of ecosystems, including spruce-fir, northern deciduous, southern Appalachian deciduous, southern swamp hardwoods, and longleaf pine. Chapters authored by leading old-growth experts examine topics of contemporary forest ecology including forest structure and dynamics, below-ground soil processes, biological diversity, differences between historical and modern forests, carbon and climate change mitigation, management of old growth, and more.

This thoughtful treatise broadly communicates important new discoveries to scientists, land managers, and students and breathes fresh life into the hope for sensible, effective management of old-growth stands in eastern forests.

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Ecology of the Bay of Quinte

Health, Management and Global Implications

C.K. Minns

Michigan State University Press, 2022

Project Quinte was a Canadian multi-agency collaborative initiative—launched in 1972 and lasting until 2018—that generated the longest ecosystem-based data set in the Great Lakes. The project produced a special bulletin of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries Science in 1986 and two special issues of Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management more recently. This monograph provides a broad sweep of the many facets of aquatic ecosystem structure and function that were explored in efforts to define and solve the challenges to ecosystem health present in the Bay of Quinte ecosystem and to sustain it hopefully far into the future. Many papers provide a long-term perspective that highlights the need to maintain monitoring programs while increasing our basic knowledge. Long-term studies of ecosystems like Quinte continually reveal new questions and challenges beyond the scope of controlled laboratory experiments. The health of the Bay of Quinte is much improved as a result of the long-term participation of people, time, and resources reflected in this book. The monograph through its twenty-six in-depth chapters opens a wide panorama for exploration and application of the ecosystem approach and the resulting productivity, with much remaining to be done by those that follow in these footsteps. Approximately one hundred scientists have collectively participated toward the preparation of various chapters included in this meticulously peer-reviewed monograph.

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Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans

Edited by Karen McLeod and Heather Leslie

Island Press, 2009

Conventional management approaches cannot meet the challenges faced by ocean and coastal ecosystems today. Consequently, national and international bodies have called for a shift toward more comprehensive ecosystem-based marine management. Synthesizing a vast amount of current knowledge, Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans is a comprehensive guide to utilizing this promising new approach.

At its core, ecosystem-based management (EBM) is about acknowledging connections. Instead of focusing on the impacts of single activities on the delivery of individual ecosystem services, EBM focuses on the array of services that we receive from marine systems, the interactive and cumulative effects of multiple human activities on these coupled ecological and social systems, and the importance of working towards common goals across sectors. Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans provides a conceptual framework for students and professionals who want to understand and utilize this powerful approach. And it employs case studies that draw on the experiences of EBM practitioners to demonstrate how EBM principles can be applied to real-world problems.

The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the factors that contribute to social and ecological resilience —the extent to which a system can maintain its structure, function, and identity in the face of disturbance. Utilizing the resilience framework, professionals can better predict how systems will respond to a variety of disturbances, as well as to a range of management alternatives. Ecosystem-Based Management for the Oceans presents the latest science of resilience, while it provides tools for the design and implementation of responsive EBM solutions.

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Ecosystem-Based Management of Laurentian Great Lakes Areas of Concern

Three Decades of U.S. - Canadian Cleanup and Recovery

John H. Hartig

Michigan State University Press, 2021

This volume provides an in-depth look at the remediation and restoration of the forty three most polluted areas of the Great Lakes called Areas of Concern (AOCs). This binational restoration effort is unique in that it has fostered use of locally designed ecosystem approaches to restoring impaired beneficial uses as called for in the Canada–U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. In total, thirty-seven Canadian and U.S. scientists contributed to this comprehensive evaluation of what has been achieved and learned from over three decades of remediation and restoration efforts. This book will be an excellent resource to researchers, resource managers, university faculty, and students within the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem, and others interested in restoring degraded aquatic ecosystems throughout the world. No other volume or textbook provides such a comprehensive evaluation of AOCs. A foreword is provided by Dianne Saxe, former environmental commissioner of Ontario. Leading primary contributors include J. H. Hartig, M. Munawar, L. Richman, S. W. Pickard, M. L. Tuchman, R. Stewart, J. Ridgway, R. K. Sherman, N. T. French, K. C. Williams, G. Krantzberg, and C. McLaughlin.

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Elephant Trees, Copales, and Cuajiotes

A Natural History of Bursera

Judith Becerra and David Yetman; Foreword by Exequiel Ezcurra

University of Arizona Press, 2024

Predominantly native to the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and the Caribbean, the various species of Bursera have been prized throughout history for their distinctive aromas, medicinal properties, workable wood, and attractive appearance. Despite its extensive past and current use as incense in religious ceremonies, and its resourceful antiseptic ability to treat a range of maladies, no comprehensive book exists on this vital yet overlooked plant. Highlighting bursera’s importance and impact within the desert Southwest and Mexico, this volume will be the first book to describe the ecology, evolution, ethnobotany, and peculiar chemistry of the many species of Bursera.

In the United States, Bursera is represented by the short, contorted, and aromatic elephant tree of the hot Sonoran Desert and the stately and colorful gumbo limbo of southern Florida, while in the torrid lowlands of southern Mexico, the engines of evolution have produced forests dominated by dozens of species of Bursera, each with a peculiar ecological slot. This evolutionary tableau presents a complicated sex life that puzzles scientists. Recent research also reveals a gripping narrative of an epic struggle between trees and the insects that would subsist on their leaves: the insects seeking to exploit a food resource, the trees reacting with ever-changing, dramatic counter strategies. In addition to the fascinating and intricate workings of the genus’s ecological adaptations, burseras play a formative role in the lives of indigenous populations. Native peoples relish the plants’ aromatic resin, workable wood, and often colorful bark as a source for endless human applications.

Written in an engaging style, enhanced with two hundred color photographs, and complete with a compendium of species descriptions, this book will be an essential reference on a significant North American plant.

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Emerald Labyrinth

A Scientist's Adventures in the Jungles of the Congo

Eli Greenbaum

University Press of New England, 2017

Emerald Labyrinth is a scientist and adventurer’s chronicle of years exploring the rainforests of sub-Saharan Africa. The richly varied habitats of the Democratic Republic of the Congo offer a wealth of animal, plant, chemical, and medical discoveries. But the country also has a deeply troubled colonial past and a complicated political present. Author Eli Greenbaum is a leading expert in sub-Saharan herpetology—snakes, lizards, and frogs—who brings a sense of wonder to the question of how science works in the twenty-first century. Along the way he comes face to face with spitting cobras, silverback mountain gorillas, wild elephants, and the teenaged armies of AK-47-toting fighters engaged in the continent’s longest-running war. As a bellwether of the climate and biodiversity crises now facing the planet, the Congo holds the key to our planet’s future. Writing in the tradition of books like The Lost City of Z, Greenbaum seeks out the creatures struggling to survive in a war-torn, environmentally threatened country. Emerald Labyrinth is an extraordinary book about the enormous challenges and hard-won satisfactions of doing science in one of the least known, least hospitable places on earth.

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The Empty Ocean

Richard Ellis

Island Press, 2003

In The Empty Ocean, acclaimed author and artist Richard Ellis tells the story of our continued plunder of life in the sea and weighs the chances for its recovery. Through fascinating portraits of a wide array of creatures, he introduces us to the many forms of sea life that humans have fished, hunted, and collected over the centuries, from charismatic whales and dolphins to the lowly menhaden, from sea turtles to cod, tuna, and coral.

Rich in history, anecdote, and surprising fact, Richard Ellis’s descriptions bring to life the natural history of the various species, the threats they face, and the losses they have suffered. Killing has occurred on a truly stunning scale, with extinction all too often the result, leaving a once-teeming ocean greatly depleted. But the author also finds instances of hope and resilience, of species that have begun to make remarkable comebacks when given the opportunity.

Written with passion and grace, and illustrated with Richard Ellis’s own drawings, The Empty Ocean brings to a wide audience a compelling view of the damage we have caused to life in the sea and what we can do about it. "

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Enchanted Forests

The Poetic Construction of a World before Time

Boria Sax

Reaktion Books, 2023

Linking literature, philosophy, art, and personal experience, a moving exploration of the wooded landscape’s power.

In 1985 Boria Sax inherited an area of forest in New York State, which had been purchased by his Russian, Jewish, and Communist grandparents as a buffer against what they felt was a hostile world. For Sax, in the years following, the woodland came to represent a link with those who currently live and had lived there, including Native Americans, settlers, bears, deer, turtles, and migrating birds. In this personal and eloquent account, Sax explores the meanings and cultural history of forests from prehistory to the present, taking in Gilgamesh, Virgil, Dante, the Gawain poet, medieval alchemists, the Brothers Grimm, Hudson River painters, Latin American folklore, contemporary African novelists, and much more. Combining lyricism with contemporary scholarship, Sax opens new emotional, intellectual, and environmental perspectives on the storied history of the forest.

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Entering the Watershed

A New Approach To Save America's River Ecosystems

Bob Doppelt, Mary Scurlock, Chris Frissell, and James Karr

Island Press, 1993

Entering the Watershed is the product of a two-year project established by the Pacific Rivers Council to develop new federal riverine protection and restoration policy alternatives. It recommends a comprehensive new approach to river protection based on principles of watershed dynamics, ecosystem function, and conservation biology -- a nationwide, strategic community- and ecosystem-based watershed restoration initiative. The book:

describes in detail the existing level of damage to rivers and species
analyzes flaws and gaps in existing policy
provides the framework necessary to develop new policies
outlines the scientific underpinnings and management strategies needed in new policy
makes specific policy proposals

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Ephemeral by Nature

Exploring the Exceptional with a Tennessee Naturalist

Stephen Lyn Bales

University of Tennessee Press, 2017

In this captivating collection of twelve essays, a testament to a lifetime’s fascination with the outdoors and its myriad wonders, naturalist Stephen Lyn Bales examines a variety of flora and fauna that in one way or another can be described as “ephemeral”—that is, fleeting, short-lived, or transient.

Focusing on his native East Tennessee, Bales introduces us to several oddities, including the ghost plant, a wispy vascular plant that resembles a rooster’s tail and grows mainly in areas devoid of sunlight; the Appalachian panda, an ancestor of today’s red panda that wandered the region millions of years ago and whose fossil remains have only recently been discovered; and the freshwater jellyfish, a tiny organism that is virtually invisible except for those hot summer days when clusters of them bloom into shimmering “medusae,” sometimes by the thousands. Other essays consider such topics as the plight of the monarch butterfly, a gorgeous insect whose populations have dropped by 90 percent in only the last two decades; the reintroduction of the lake sturgeon, one of nature’s most primitive and seldom-seen fish, into the waters of the Tennessee Valley; and the surprising emergence of coyote-wolf and coyote-dog hybrids in the eastern states.

Written with insight, humor, and heart, Ephemeral by Nature is as entertaining as it is instructive. Along with a wealth of biological details—and his own handsome pen-and-ink drawings—Bales fills the book with delightful anecdotes of field trips, species-protection efforts, and those thrilling occasions when some elusive member of the natural order shows itself to us, if only for a brief moment.

Stephen Lyn Bales, senior naturalist at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, is the author of Natural Histories: Stories from the Tennessee Valley and Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935–1941, both published by the University of Tennessee Press.

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ESSAYS ON MOUNTAINEERING

ARMAND E. SINGER

West Virginia University Press, 1982

The Explorer's Guide to Death Valley National Park, Fourth Edition

T. Scott Bryan

University Press of Colorado, 2020

Originally published in 1995, soon after Death Valley National Park became the fifty-third park in the US park system, The Explorer’s Guide to Death Valley National Park was the first complete guidebook available for this spectacular area.

Now in its fourth edition, this is still the only book that includes all aspects of the park. Much more than just a guidebook, it covers the park’s cultural history, botany and zoology, hiking and biking opportunities, and more. Information is provided for all of Death Valley’s visitors, from first-time travelers just learning about the area to those who are returning for in-depth explorations.

This new edition features a number of important changes—including information on the boundary and wilderness changes that resulted from the Dingell Act of 2019, the reopened Keane Wonder Mine area, the devastating flash flooding of Scotty’s Castle, scenic river designations, the Inn and Ranch resorts, renovated and now operated as the Oasis at Death Valley—as well as new maps and updated color photos. With extensive input from National Park Service resource management, law enforcement, and interpretive personnel, as well as a thorough bibliography for suggested reading, The Explorer’s Guide to Death Valley National Park, Fourth Edition is the most up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive guide available for this national treasure.

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The Explorer's Guide to Death Valley National Park, Third Edition

T. Scott Bryan and Betty Tucker Bryan

University Press of Colorado, 2015

Originally published in 1995, soon after Death Valley National Park became the fifty-third park in the US park system, The Explorer's Guide to Death Valley National Park was the first complete guidebook available for this spectacular area.

Now in its third edition, this is still the only book that includes all aspects of the park. Much more than just a guidebook, it covers the park's cultural history, botany and zoology, hiking and biking opportunities, and more. Information is provided for all of Death Valley's visitors, from first-time travelers just learning about the area to those who are returning for in-depth explorations.

The book includes updated point-to-point logs for every road within and around the park, as well as more accurate maps than those in any other publication. With extensive input from National Park Service resource management, law enforcement, and interpretive personnel, as well as a thorough bibliography for suggested reading, The Explorer's Guide to Death Valley National Park, Third Edition is the most up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive guide available for this national treasure.

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Exploring the Big Woods

A Guide to the Last Great Forest of the Arkansas Delta

Matthew D. Moran

University of Arkansas Press, 2016

Exploring the Big Woods: A Guide to the Last Great Forest of Eastern Arkansas is both a natural history and a guide to one of the last remnants of Mississippi bottomland forest, an ecosystem that once stretched from southern Illinois to the Gulf Coast.

Crossed by the White River and its tributaries, which periodically flood and release nutrients, the Big Woods is one of the few places in the Mississippi River Valley where this life-giving flood cycle persists. As a result, it is home to an unusual abundance of animals and plants.

Immense cypresses, hickories, sweetgums, oaks, and sycamores; millions of migrating waterfowl; incredible scenery; and the complex relationship between humans and nature are all to be discovered here.

Exploring the Big Woods will introduce readers to the natural features, plants, animals, and hiking and canoeing trails going deep into the forests and swamps of this rare and beautiful natural resource.

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