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Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.
Author : James A. Kushlan Publisher : University Press of Florida Page : 214 pages File Size : 54,6 Mb Release : 2020-08-11 Category : History ISBN : 9780813065489
Seeking the American Tropics by James A. Kushlan Pdf
For centuries, the southernmost region of the Florida peninsula was seen by outsiders as wild and inaccessible, one of the last frontiers in the quest to understand and reveal the natural history of the continent. Seeking the American Tropics tells the stories of the explorers and adventurers who—for better and for worse—helped open the unique environment of South Florida to the world. Beginning with the arrival of Juan Ponce de León in 1513, James Kushlan describes how most of the famous Spanish explorers never made it to South Florida, leaving the area’s rich natural history out of scientific records for the next 250 years. It wasn’t until the British colonial and early American periods that the first surveyors were commissioned and the first naturalists—Titian Peale and John James Audubon—arrived to collect, draw, and report the subtropical flora and fauna that were so unique to North America. Moving into the railroad era, Kushlan illuminates the activities of scientists such as Henry Nehrling and Charles Torrey Simpson alongside the dabbling of wealthy amateur naturalists. He follows the story to the 1920s, when tourism was flourishing and signs of ecological damage were starting to show. Years of wildlife trade, resource extraction, invasive species introduction, and swamp drainage had taken their toll. And many of the naturalists who had been outspoken about protecting South Florida’s environment had also played a part in its destruction. Today the region is among one of the most thoroughly studied places on the planet—but at a cost. In this absorbing and cautionary tale, Kushlan illustrates how exploration has so often trumped conservation throughout history. He exposes how much of the natural world we have already lost in this vivid portrait of the Florida of yesterday.
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A string of murders being committed by a mysterious voodoo assassin on the exotic island city of Key West pits a crusading environmental shock-jock and a homicide detective against a maelstrom of unscrupulous developers, scammers and everyday citizens. 25,000 first printing.
Seventeen marvelous essays introducing the habitats, ecology, plants, and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. A lively, lucid portrait of the tropics as seen by two uncommonly observant and thoughtful field biologists. Its seventeen marvelous essays introduce the habitats, ecology, plants, and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. Includes a lengthy appendix of practical advice for the tropical traveler.
Just after the Civil War, two states prominently laid claim to being America's paradise destinations. Private companies, state agencies, and journalists all lent a hand in creating a seductive, expansionist imagery that promoted semitropical California and Florida and helped "sell" Americans on the idea of an attainable paradise within the United States. In Tropic of Hopes, Henry Knight examines the promotion of California and Florida from the end of the Civil War to the eve of the Great Depression, a period when both states were transformed from remote, sparsely populated locales into two of the most publicized and dreamed-about destinations in America. Using the discussion of climate, geography, race, and environment to link agricultural, tourist, and urban development in these regions, Knight provides a highly original and informative account.
Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics by Michael Boyden Pdf
The biggest challenge of the twenty-first century is to bring the effects of public life into relation with the intractable problem of global atmospheric change. Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics explains how we came to think of the climate as something abstract and remote rather than a force that actively shapes our existence. The book argues that this separation between climate and sensibility predates the rise of modern climatology and has deep roots in the era of colonial expansion, when the American tropics were transformed into the economic supplier for Euro-American empires. The book shows how the writings of American travellers in the Caribbean registered and pushed forward this new understanding of the climate in a pivotal period in modern history, roughly between 1770 and 1860, which was fraught with debates over slavery, environmental destruction, and colonialism. Offering novel readings of authors including J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Leonora Sansay, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James McCune Smith in light of their engagements with the American tropics, this book shows that these authors drew on a climatic epistemology that fused science and sentiment in ways that citizen science is aspiring to do today. By suggesting a new genealogy of modern climate thinking, Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics thus highlights the urgency of revisiting received ideas of tropicality deeply ingrained in American culture that continue to inform current debates on climate debt and justice.
First Woman: Joanne Simpson and the Tropical Atmosphere by James Rodger Fleming Pdf
Clouds are the spark plugs in the heat engine of the tropical atmosphere, and heat from the tropics drives the planet's general circulation. Atmospheric scientists didn't know this in the 1950s, but Joanne Simpson, the first American woman to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology, did. Most histories of meteorology focus on polar and temperate regions and the accomplishments of male scientists. They marginalize or erase completely the contributions of female researchers. Joanne's work on the tropical atmosphere did not fit this pattern. Joanne had a lifelong passion for clouds and severe storms. She flew into and above them, photographed them, modeled them, attempted to modify them, and studied them from all angles. She held two university professorships, married three times, had two lovers (one secret), mentored a generation of meteorologists, and blazed a trail for other women to follow. This book is about Joanne's personal and professional life, her career prospects as a woman in science, and her relationship to the tropical atmosphere. These multifaceted and interacting textual streams constitute a braided narrative and form a complex dynamic system that displays surprising emergent properties. Is Joanne Simpson best remembered as a pioneer woman scientist or the best tropical scientist of her generation? She was both, with the emphasis on best scientist.
France and the American Tropics to 1700 by Philip P. Boucher Pdf
“An important addition to the literature on Caribbean history and colonial societies in the 17th century.” —Choice Traditionally, the story of the Greater Caribbean has been dominated by the narrative of Iberian hegemony, British colonization, the plantation regime, and the Haitian Revolution of the eighteenth century. Relatively little is known about the society and culture of this region—and particularly France’s role in them—in the two centuries prior to the rise of the plantation complex of the eighteenth century. Here, historian Philip P. Boucher offers the first comprehensive account of colonization and French society in the Caribbean. Boucher’s analysis contrasts the structure and character of the French colonies with that of other colonial empires. Describing the geography, topography, climate, and flora and fauna of the region, Boucher recreates the tropical environment in which colonists and indigenous peoples interacted. He then examines the lives and activities of the region’s inhabitants—the indigenous Island Caribs, landowning settlers, indentured servants, African slaves, and people of mixed blood, the gens de couleur. He argues that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not merely a prelude to the classic plantation regime model. Rather, they were an era presenting a variety of possible outcomes. This original narrative demonstrates that the transition to sugar and the plantation complex was more gradual in the French properties than generally depicted—and that it was not inevitable.
Understories: Plants and Culture in the American Tropics by Lesley Wylie Pdf
Understories: Plants and Culture in the American Tropics establishes the central importance of plants to the histories and cultures of the extended tropical region stretching from the U.S. South to Argentina. Through close examination of a number of significant plants – cacao, mate, agave, the hevea brasilensis, kudzu, the breadfruit, soy, and the ceiba pentandra, among others – this volume shows that vegetal life has played a fundamental role in shaping societies and in formulating cultural and environmental imaginaries in and beyond the region. Drawing on a wide range of cultural traditions and forms across literature, popular music, art, and film, the essays included in this volume transcend regional and linguistic boundaries to bring together multiple plant-centred histories or ‘understories’ – narratives that until now have been marginalized or gone unnoticed. Attending not only to the significant influence of humans on plants, but also of plants on humans, this book offers new understandings of how colonization, globalization, and power were, and continue to be, imbricated with nature in the American tropics.
Everything in this book invites us to marvel at the Colombian tropics. As the point of convergence of the tectonic plates, flora and fauna of three American continents, the world's two largest oceans and its most variegated mountains, it is a territory of excess. The restless lens of Aldo Brando focuses on this natural setting, furnishing us with a panoply of images that excite both the eye and the imagination. As he eminent Colombian writer German Arciniegas points out, this book is "a vertical exploration of a country which is the synthesis of the Americas." Novel and unique, it is a summary of fifteen years work by a photojournalist whose documentation of wild life goes beyond capturing the physical contours of the seas, islands, jungles, savannahs, mountains and inhabitants of Colombia. "It penetrates into the beauty and soul" of natural wonders, as one of the world's leading professionals in the field-- the American wildlife photographer Art Wolfe-- recognizes in his prologue. The book's five chapters are accompanied by an essay written by the Colombian journalist, Arturo Guerrero, who invites us to share in the astonishment and poetry found in nature and science. The dazzling photographs of this book evoke the magic of the tropical ecosystems of the new world, and draw near to the intimacy of nature. It also allows us to reflect upon mankind's contradictory relationship with the natural world. Professor Sir Ghillean Prance, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, writes in his introduction: "It is my hope that this book helps to encourage the conservation of Colombian ecosystems, which are a valuable resource, not only for inhabitants of that nation but also for the world."The book concludes with a heartfelt message by the Colombian poet William Ospina. Aldo Brando. As a student of marine biology in the early 1980's, Brando became interested in wildlife photography and film-making, specializing in Colombia's tropical ecosystems. His work has appeared in such books as "Coral Reefs of the Caribbean," "Mangroves," "Paramos," "Colombia from the air," "For a Country Within the Reach of the Children," all published by Villegas Editores; "Malpelo, Oceanic Island of Colombia," published by Imprenta Mariscal/National Geographic. His photographs have also appeared in "Americas," "BBC Wildlife," "Earth," "Climbing," "Natural History," "Terre Sauvage," the" San Francisco Examiner," "Sinra and Wildlife Conservation," among other magazines. His collective exhibitions include the Smithsonian's international display on tropical rainforests, and "Forests Revisited: Expeditions at the End of the Millennium," held at the United Nations in New York.