Stretching from the craggy reaches of the Pocono Mountains to the rolling farmlands of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, sprawling east across the Delaware River basin and New Jersey’s coastal plain Atlantic beaches—here is a land of rich historical, cultural, and environmental diversity. Few other locales in the United States have as many varied habitats, each with its own distinctive vegetation and wildlife. The nature lover in the Delaware Valley can travel from ocean, across barrier-beaches, salt-water and fresh-water marshes, pine barrens, deciduous woodlands and fields, to mountains, all in a few hours.
Marsh, Meadow, Mountain, a combination tour guide and ecological primer, is written for the thousands of people in the area with an interest in natural history or for those seeking alternative recreational activities. Each chapter, written by an experienced naturalist intimately familiar with one of the seven major ecosystems, introduces the reader to the dynamic interrelationships in nature, the interactions between a particular habitat and its inhabitants, and its plants and wildlife. Over 135 locations are described including the Pocono Mountains, the Pine Barrens, Stone Harbor, Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, Ridley Creek State Park, Tyler Arboretum, and Tinicum National Environmental Center, which in any season can provide fascinating viewing opportunities depending upon your interests. Each site also includes addresses, directions, trail maps, artistic drawings, and a suggested reading list.
Marsh, Meadow, Mountain conveys both a sense of fun and learning and, ultimately, will instill in the reader a special intimacy with the Delaware Valley’s precious wild places.
Seeking a closer connection with nature than the manicured lawns of suburbia, naturalist Fred Gehlbach and his family built a house on the edge of a wooded ravine in Central Texas in the mid-1960s. On daily walks over the hills, creek hollows, and fields of the ravine, Gehlbach has observed the cycles of weather and seasons, the annual migrations of birds, and the life cycles of animals and plants that also live in the ravine.
In this book, Gehlbach draws on thirty-five years of journal entries to present a composite, day-by-day almanac of the life cycles of this semiwild natural island in the midst of urban Texas. Recording such events as the hatching of Eastern screech owl chicks, the emergence of June bugs, and the first freeze of November, he reminds us of nature's daily, monthly, and annual cycles, from which humans are becoming ever more detached in our unnatural urban environments. The long span of the almanac also allows Gehlbach to track how local and even global developments have affected the ravine, from scars left by sewer construction to an increase in frost-free days probably linked to global warming.
This long-term record of natural cycles provides one of only two such baseline data sets for North America. At the same time, the book is an eloquent account of one keen observer's daily interactions with his wild and human neighbors and of the lessons in connectedness and the "play of life" that they teach.
Did you know . . . ?
These and many more amazing facts await the curious traveler in The Michigan Roadside Naturalist, J. Alan and Margaret B. Holman's captivating guide to the natural treasures of Michigan. A perfect accompaniment to the classic Michigan Trees and The Forests of Michigan, this user-friendly guide offers a Who's Who of the geology, biology, and archaeology of the Great Lakes State, as well as highway adventures along the state's major routes.
The book begins with an educational yet accessible tour of important points in Michigan's natural and archaeological history, followed by seven road trips based on commonly traveled state routes, moving from south to north in the Lower Peninsula and east to west in the Upper Peninsula. Readers can proceed directly to the road trips or familiarize themselves with the state's treasure trove of fascinating features before embarking. Either way, an informative and fun odyssey awaits the passionate naturalist, amateur or otherwise.
J. Alan Holman is Curator Emeritus of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Michigan State University Museum and Emeritus Professor of Geology and Zoology at Michigan State University. Margaret B. Holman is Research Associate at Michigan State University Museum and Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University.
In Modern Nature,Lynn K. Nyhart traces the emergence of a “biological perspective” in late nineteenth-century Germany that emphasized the dynamic relationships among organisms, and between organisms and their environment. Examining this approach to nature in light of Germany’s fraught urbanization and industrialization, as well the opportunities presented by new and reforming institutions, she argues that rapid social change drew attention to the role of social relationships and physical environments in rendering a society—and nature—whole, functional, and healthy.
This quintessentially modern view of nature, Nyhart shows, stood in stark contrast to the standard naturalist’s orientation toward classification. While this new biological perspective would eventually grow into the academic discipline of ecology, Modern Nature locates its roots outside the universities, in a vibrant realm of populist natural history inhabited by taxidermists and zookeepers, schoolteachers and museum reformers, amateur enthusiasts and nature protectionists.
Probing the populist beginnings of animal ecology in Germany, Nyhart unites the history of popular natural history with that of elite science in a new way. In doing so, she brings to light a major orientation in late nineteenth-century biology that has long been eclipsed by Darwinism.
This is the story of a Chinese doctor, his book, and the creatures that danced within its pages. The Monkey and the Inkpot introduces natural history in sixteenth-century China through the iconic Bencao gangmu (Systematic materia medica) of Li Shizhen (1518–1593).
The encyclopedic Bencao gangmu is widely lauded as a classic embodiment of pre-modern Chinese medical thought. In the first book-length study in English of Li’s text, Carla Nappi reveals a “cabinet of curiosities” of gems, beasts, and oddities whose author was devoted to using natural history to guide the application of natural and artificial objects as medical drugs. Nappi examines the making of facts and weighing of evidence in a massive collection where tales of wildmen and dragons were recorded alongside recipes for ginseng and peonies.
Nappi challenges the idea of a monolithic tradition of Chinese herbal medicine by showing the importance of debate and disagreement in early modern scholarly and medical culture. The Monkey and the Inkpot also illuminates the modern fate of a book that continues to shape alternative healing practices, global pharmaceutical markets, and Chinese culture.
Cape Cod is known for its beaches, throngs of summer visitors, and the activities that accompany seaside living, but it is also home to many kettle ponds, which offer a more tranquil setting. Formed from glaciers breaking apart and so named due to a rounded shape that appears like a kettle, these waterways are home to a diverse array of wildlife, while remaining peaceful and even a bit hidden.
Big enough for a canoeist to feel solitude and serenity, small enough to not appear on large-scale maps, Centerville’s Long Pond (one of seven on the Cape that share this name), consists of fifty-one acres of crystal clear waters, fresh air, and the fish, turtles, waterfowl, ospreys, and otters that call this special place home. In A Moving Meditation, Stephen G. Waller offers an intimate look at the pond’s intriguing natural and human history; its abundant animal life, across the seasons; and the encroaching effects of climate change.
Muskegon is a derivation of a Native American word meaning "river with marshes." Jeff Alexander examines the creation, uses of, devastation, and restoration of Michigan's historic and beautiful Muskegon River.
Four of the five Great Lakes touch Michigan's shores; the state's shoreline spans more than 4,500 miles, not to mention more than 11,000 inland lakes and a multitude of rivers. The Muskegon River, the state's second longest river, runs 227 miles and has the most diverse features of any of Michigan’s many rivers. The Muskegon rises from the center of the state, widens, and moves westward, passing through the Pere Marquette and AuSable State Forests. The river ultimately flows toward Lake Michigan, where it opens into Muskegon Lake, a 12 square-mile, broad harbor located between the Muskegon River and Lake Michigan.
Formed several thousand years ago, when the glaciers that created the Great Lakes receded, and later inhabited by Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians, the Muskegon River was used by French fur trappers in the 1600s. Rich in white pine, the area was developed during the turn-of-the-century lumber boom, and at one time Muskegon Lake boasted more than 47 sawmills. The Muskegon was ravaged following settlement by Europeans, when rivers and streams were used to transport logs to the newly developing cities. Dams on rivers and larger streams provided power for sawmills and grain milling, and later provided energy for generating electricity as technology advanced.
There is now an ambitious effort to restore and protect this mighty river's natural features in the face of encroaching urbanization and land development that threatens to turn this majestic waterway into a mirror image of the Grand River, Michigan's longest river and one of its most polluted.
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