A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY21 start with L start with L
the most intensively studied and best-understood tropical field sites
in the world. For over thirty years, La Selva has been a major focus
of research on rainforest ecology, flora, and fauna. This volume
provides the first comprehensive review of this research, covering La
Selva's geographical history and physical setting, its plant and
animal life, and agricultural development and land use.
Drawing together a wealth of information never before available in a
single volume, La Selva offers a substantive treatment of the
ecology of a rainforest. Part 1 summarizes research on the physical
setting and environment of the rainforest, as well as the history of
the research station. Some chapters in this part focus on climate,
geomorphology, and aquatic systems, while others look at soils,
nutrient acquisition, and cycles of energy.
Part 2 synthesizes what is known about the plant community. It begins
with chapters on vegetation types and plant diversity, and also
explores plant demography, spatial patterns of trees, and the impact
of treefall gaps on forest structure and dynamics. Other chapters
address plant physiological ecology, as well as plant reproductive
systems.
Part 3 covers the animal community, summarizing information on the six
best-known animal taxa of the region: fishes, amphibians, reptiles,
birds, mammals, and butterflies. This part includes an overview of
faunal studies at La Selva and a chapter on animal population biology,
which examines animal demography and abundance, and interactions
between predators and prey. Part 4 addresses interactions between
plants and animals and the effects of these interactions on species
diversity.
Part 5 considers the impact of land use and agricultural development
on La Selva and other areas of Costa Rica. One chapter examines land
colonization and conservation in Sarapiqui, another covers subsistence
and commercial agricultural development in the Atlantic lowlands
region, and a third looks at the forest industry in northeastern Costa
Rica. This part also assesses the role and research priorities of La
Selva.
La Selva provides an introduction to tropical ecology for
students and researchers at La Selva, a major source of comparative
information for biologists working in other tropical areas, and a
valuable resource for conservationists.
Relationships with land are fundamental components of Indigenous worldviews, politics, and identity. The disruption of land relations is a defining feature of colonialism; colonial governments and capitalist industries have violently dispossessed Indigenous lands, and have undermined Indigenous political authority through the production of racialized and gendered hierarchies of difference. Consequently, Indigenous resistance and visions for justice and liberation are bound up with land and land-body relationships that challenge colonial power. “Land back” has become a slogan for Indigenous land protectors across the Americas, reflecting how relations to land are foundational to calls for decolonization and liberation.
Land Back highlights the ways Indigenous peoples and anti-colonial co-resistors understand land relations for political resurgence and freedom across the Americas. Contributors place Indigenous practices of freedom within the particularities of Indigenous place-based laws, cosmologies, and diplomacies, while also demonstrating how Indigeneity is shaped across colonial borders. Collectively, they examine the relationships among language, Indigenous ontologies, and land reclamation; Indigenous ecology and restoration; the interconnectivity of environmental exploitation and racial, class, and gender exploitation; Indigenous diasporic movement; community urban planning; transnational organizing and relational anti-racist place-making; and the role of storytelling and children in movements for liberation.
Drawing on research from a variety of academic fields, such as archaeology, history, botany, ecology, and physical science, M. J. Morgan explores the intersection of people and the environment in early eighteenth-century Illinois Country—a stretch of fecund, alluvial river plain along the Mississippi river. Arguing against the traditional narrative that describes Illinois as an untouched wilderness until the influx of American settlers, Morgan illustrates how the story began much earlier.
She focuses her study on early French and Indian communities, and later on the British, nestled within the tripartite environment of floodplain, riverine cliffs and bluffs, and open, upland till plain/prairie and examines the impact of these diverse groups of people on the ecological landscape. By placing human lives within the natural setting of the period—the abundant streams and creeks, the prairies, plants and wildlife—she traces the environmental change that unfolded across almost a century. She describes how it was a land in motion; how the occupying peoples used, extracted, and extirpated its resources while simultaneously introducing new species; and how the flux and flow of life mirrored the movement of the rivers. Morgan emphasizes the importance of population sequences, the relationship between the aboriginals and the Europeans, the shared use of resources, and the effects of each on the habitat.
Land of Big Rivers is a unique, many-themed account of the big-picture ecological change that occurred during the early history of the Illinois Country. It is the first book to consider the environmental aspects of the Illinois Indian experience and to reconsider the role of the French and British in environmental change in the mid-Mississippi Valley. It engagingly recreates presettlement Illinois with a remarkable interdisciplinary approach and provides new details that will encourage understanding of the interaction between physical geography and the plants, animals, and people in the Illinois Country. Furthermore, it exhibits the importance of looking at the past in the context of environmental transformation, which is especially relevant in light of today’s global climate change.
Most people equate Los Angeles with smog, sprawl, forty suburbs in search of a city-the great "what-not-to-do" of twentieth-century city building. But there's much more to LA's story than this shallow stereotype. History shows that Los Angeles was intensely, ubiquitously planned. The consequences of that planning-the environmental history of urbanism--is one place to turn for the more complex lessons LA has to offer.
Working forward from ancient times and ancient ecologies to the very recent past, Land of Sunshine is a fascinating exploration of the environmental history of greater Los Angeles. Rather than rehearsing a litany of errors or insults against nature, rather than decrying the lost opportunities of "roads not taken," these essays, by nineteen leading geologists, ecologists, and historians, instead consider the changing dynamics both of the city and of nature.
In the nineteenth century, for example, "density" was considered an evil, and reformers struggled mightily to move the working poor out to areas where better sanitation and flowers and parks "made life seem worth the living."
We now call that vision "sprawl," and we struggle just as much to bring middle-class people back into the core of American cities. There's nothing natural, or inevitable, about such turns of events. It's only by paying very close attention to the ways metropolitan nature has been constructed and construed that meaningful lessons can be drawn. History matters.
So here are the plants and animals of the Los Angeles basin, its rivers and watersheds. Here are the landscapes of fact and fantasy, the historical actors, events, and circumstances that have proved transformative over and over again. The result is a nuanced and rich portrait of Los Angeles that will serve planners, communities, and environmentalists as they look to the past for clues, if not blueprints, for enhancing the quality and viability of cities.
In recent years, as the author points out, there has been increasing interest in, and concern for, many aspects of landscape within British, European and wider contexts. This has included the study of the history, development and changes in our perception of landscape, as well as research into the links between past landscapes and political ideologies, economic and social structures, cartography, art and literature.
There is also considerable concern at present with the need to evaluate and classify historic landscapes, and to develop policies for their conservation and management in relation to their scenic, heritage and recreational value. This is manifest not only in the designation of particularly valued areas with enhanced protection from planning developments, such as national parks and world heritage sites, but in the countryside more generally. Further, Ian D. Whyte argues, changes in European Union policies relating to agriculture, with a greater concern for the protection and sustainable management of rural landscapes, are likely to be of major importance in relation to the themes of continuity and change in the landscapes of Britain and Europe.
The Fraser Valley has long been a scene of natural resource appropriation—furs and fish, timber and agriculture—with settlement patterns and land claims centering on the use of these materials. Oliver demonstrates how social change and cultural understanding are tied to the way that people use and remake the landscape. Drawing on ethnographic texts, archaeological evidence, cartography, and historical writing, he has created a deep history of the valley that enables us to view how human entanglements with landscape were creative of a variety of contentious issues. By capturing the multiple dynamics that were operating in the past, Oliver shows us not only how landscape transformations were implicated in constructing different perceptions of place but also how such changes influenced peoples’ understanding of history and identity.
This groundbreaking work examines engagement between people and the environment across a variety of themes, from aboriginal appropriation of nature to colonists’ reworking of physical and conceptual geographies, demonstrating the consequences of these interactions as they permeated various social and cultural spheres. It offers a new lens for viewing a region as it provides fresh insight into such topics as landscape change, perceptions of place, and Indigenous-white relations.
As the world’s population continues to urbanize, the extensive reshaping and ecological transformation of the regions where cities develop have become mainstream concerns. Even the phrase “urban landscape” has evolved from modernist paradox to commonsense category. Yet what exactly does it cover? When did the phenomenon it denotes emerge, and how did it evolve across time and space? Could past dynamics of urban landscapes help reveal their present nature and anticipate future developments?
Answers to such questions are far from evident. While industrial pasts and postindustrial transitions of cities and their landscapes seem to be well charted, preindustrial conditions are only starting to be explored in a few, rapidly expanding fields of archaeology, historical geography, and heritage studies. These areas of study have benefited, over the past three decades, from tremendous advances and renewal in technologies, research methods, and conceptual frameworks. As a result, a wealth of knowledge is unearthed and landscapes turn out to be the very stuff of preindustrial urbanism. In fact, a paradigm shift is underway, according to which, during preindustrial times, landscapes and urbanism were formed in reciprocal relation. Landscapes of Preindustrial Urbanism seeks to introduce such a paradigm shift to landscape scholars and designers while offering alternative visions to urban historians and planners.
Law and the Environment: A Multidisciplinary Reader brings together for the first time some of the most important original work on environmental policy by scientists, ecologists, philosophers, historians, economists, and legal scholars. Each of the book's four parts provides a different focus on the nature and scope of environmental problems and attempts to use public policy to address these concerns. Part I examines how ecology, economics, and ethics analyze environmental problems and why they support collective action to respond to them. Part II examines the history and present state of environmental law, from early attempts to engage the government to current debate over the effectiveness of environmental policy. Part III explores the process by which environmental law gets translated into regulatory policy. Part IV considers the future of environmental law at a time when international environmental concerns have become a major force in global diplomacy and international trade agreements.
In drawing together a wide variety of perspectives on these issues, Robert V. Percival and Dorothy C. Alevizatos offer a comprehensive examination of how society has responded to the difficult challenges posed by environmental problems. The selections provide a rich introduction to the complexities of environmental policy disputes.
Learning to Listen to the Land represents the sounding of an alarm. It's authors call on us to recognize the consequences of our actions, and inactions, and to develop a sense of connection with the earth.
More than four decades after that book’s publication, the fourteen contributions in this volume review and analyze its theoretical and methodological influence in light of recent research across disciplines. Among a spectrum of authors representing several generations are those who participated directly in the Basin of Mexico surveys—including the late Jeffrey R. Parsons—as well as those who have been actively working on recent projects in the basin and neighboring regions.
Providing a broad and multidisciplinary perspective of the present and future state of research in the area, The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico will be of interest to Mesoamerican and Latin American archaeologists as well as geographers, geologists, historians, and specialists in the study of past environments.
Contributors: Guillermo Acosta Ochoa, Aleksander Borejsza, Destiny Crider, Charles Frederick, Raúl García-Chávez, Larry Gorenflo, Angela Huster, Georgina Ibarra Arzave, Charles Kolb, Frank Lehmkuhl, Abigail Meza Peñaloza, Emily McClung de Tapia, John K. Millhauser, Deborah Nichols, Jeffrey R. Parsons, Serafin Sánchez Pérez, Philipp Schulte, Sergey Sedov, Elizabeth Solleiro Rebolledo, Daisy Valera Fenández, Federico Zertuche
A radical proposal for how a tiny organism can transform our understanding of human relations
Serving as both a guide and companion publication to the conceptual art project of the same name, The Lichen Museum explores how the physiological characteristics of lichens provide a valuable template for reimagining human relations in an age of ecological and social precarity. Channeling between the personal, the scientific, the philosophical, and the poetic, A. Laurie Palmer employs a cross-disciplinary framework that artfully mirrors the collective relations of lichens, imploring us to envision alternative ways of living based on interdependence rather than individualism and competition.
Lichens are composite organisms made up of a fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria thriving in a mutually beneficial relationship. The Lichen Museum looks to these complex organisms, remarkable for their symbiosis, diversity, longevity, and adaptability, as models for relations rooted in collaboration and nonhierarchical structures. In their resistance to fast-paced growth and commodification, lichens also offer possibilities for humans to reconfigure their relationship to time and attention outside of the accelerated pace of capitalist accumulation.
Drawing together a diverse set of voices, including personal encounters with lichenologists and lichens themselves, Palmer both imagines and embodies a radical new approach to human interconnection. Using this tiny organism as an emblem through which to navigate environmental and social concerns, this work narrows the gap between the human and natural worlds, emphasizing the notion of mutual dependence as a necessary means of survival and prosperity.
For roughly 99% of their existence on earth, Homo sapiens lived in small bands of semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, finding everything they needed to survive and thrive in the biological richness that surrounded them. Most if not all of the problems that threaten our own technologically advanced society -- from depletion of natural capital to the ever-present possibility of global annihilation -- would be inconceivable to these traditional, immediate-return societies. In fact, hunter-gatherer societies appear to have solved problems of production, distribution, and social and environmental sustainability that our own culture seems incapable of addressing.
Limited Wants, Unlimited Means examines the hunter-gatherer society and lifestyle from a variety of perspectives. It provides a brief introduction to the rich anthropological and sociological literature on non-agricultural societies, bringing together in one volume seminal writings on the few remaining hunter-gatherer cultures including, the !Kung, the Hadza, and the Aborigines. It examines the economics of traditional societies, and concludes with a multifaceted investigation of how such societies function and what they can teach us in our own quest for environmental sustainability and social equality.
Limited Wants, Unlimited Means is an important work for students of cultural anthropology, economic anthropology, environmental studies, and sustainable development, as well as for professionals, researchers, and anyone interested in prehistoric societies, environmental sustainability, or social justice.
In this groundbreaking environmental biography of Abraham Lincoln, James Tackach maps Lincoln’s lifelong relationship with the natural world from his birth and boyhood on Midwestern farms through his political career and presidency dealing with the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the Civil War.
Lincoln was born in a generation that grew up on farms but began to move to cities as industrialization transformed the American economy. Turning away from the outdoor, manual labor of his youth, he chose careers in law and politics but always found solace outside first on the prairies of Illinois and, later, at the woodsy presidential retreat. As Tackach shows, Lincoln relied on examples and metaphors from the natural world in his speeches and writings.
As a member of the Whig Party Lincoln endorsed the Industrial Revolution, which transformed the nation’s economy and its physical, social, and cultural landscapes, and advocated for the creation of railroads, canals, roads, and bridges to facilitate growth and the distribution of products. But he and his party failed to take steps to protect the natural environment. Surveying the destruction of the environment in the mid-nineteenth century, Tackach outlines how some American writers, the first voices for protection and conservation, began to call attention to the results of deforestation and the overhunting of animals during Lincoln’s lifetime.
As commander in chief during the Civil War, Lincoln approved a strategy that included significant infrastructure and environmental damage. In the South, where most of the battles occurred, Union troops burned cities and towns and destroyed plantations, farms, and natural landscapes. Tackach argues that, midway through his presidency, Lincoln seemed to sense that postwar Reconstruction would have to be spiritual, political, economic, and environmental in order to heal the nation’s wounds. He signed the Morrill Act, creating the land-grant colleges, and the environmentally progressive Yosemite Grant Act, which preserved thousands of acres of forest in California.
The first scholar to thoroughly investigate Lincoln’s lifelong relationship with the natural environment, Tackach paints Lincoln’s personal and professional life against the backdrop of nineteenth-century American environmental history, issues, and writers, providing insights into contemporary environmental issues.
Facing two oceans and three seas, Alaska's coastline stretches through bays, fjords, and around islands for 45,000 miles. Living with the Coast of Alaska, a new volume in the Living with the Shore series, is a user's guide for both present and future inhabitants of Alaska. Providing individual property owners in all regions of the state with the fundamentals of hazard recognition and mitigation strategy, the authors discuss the geological history of Alaska and its relation to the area's cultural history and present customized hazard risk assessments for coastal communities.
Describing the dynamic nature of natural seismic events and coastal processes in Alaska, the authors emphasize the multiplicity of potential effects that result from a unique combination of geology, climate, and the sea. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami waves, avalanches, glacial advances, storm surges, flash flooding, wind channeling, and shoreline erosion combined with human-induced hazards such as oil spills, fire, and beach and offshore mining accidents make living with danger a way of life in Alaska. The authors provide information on federal and state laws and programs regarding natural disasters and coastal zone management as well as practical suggestions for the design and construction of buildings. For private, commercial, and public developments, this book offers a manual to help Alaskans make informed decisions to minimize, if not avoid, damage and danger.
2008 — Gold Award in Californiana – California Book Awards – Commonwealth Club of California
2010 — NACCS Book Award – National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies
City plazas worldwide are centers of cultural expression and artistic display. They are settings for everyday urban life where daily interactions, economic exchanges, and informal conversations occur, thereby creating a socially meaningful place at the core of a city.
At the heart of historic Los Angeles, the Plaza represents a quintessential public space where real and imagined narratives overlap and provide as many questions as answers about the development of the city and what it means to be an Angeleno. The author, a social and cultural historian who specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Los Angeles, is well suited to explore the complex history and modern-day relevance of the Los Angeles Plaza. From its indigenous and colonial origins to the present day, Estrada explores the subject from an interdisciplinary and multiethnic perspective, delving into the pages of local newspapers, diaries and letters, and the personal memories of former and present Plaza residents, in order to examine the spatial and social dimensions of the Plaza over an extended period of time.
The author contributes to the growing historiography of Los Angeles by providing a groundbreaking analysis of the original core of the city that covers a long span of time, space, and social relations. He examines the impact of change on the lives of ordinary people in a specific place, and how this change reflects the larger story of the city.
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