Why Ecology Matters

Author : Charles J. Krebs
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2016-05-25
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226318295

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Why Ecology Matters by Charles J. Krebs Pdf

Global temperatures and seawater levels rise; the world’s smallest porpoise species looms at the edge of extinction; and a tiny emerald beetle from Japan flourishes in North America—but why does it matter? Who cares? With this concise, accessible, and up-to-date book, Charles J. Krebs answers critics and enlightens students and environmental advocates alike, revealing not why phenomena like these deserve our attention, but why they demand it. Highlighting key principles in ecology—from species extinction to the sun’s role in powering ecosystems—each chapter introduces a general question, illustrates that question with real-world examples, and links it to pressing ecological issues in which humans play a central role, such as the spread of invasive species, climate change, overfishing, and biodiversity conservation. While other introductions to ecology are rooted in complex theory, math, or practice and relegate discussions of human environmental impacts and their societal implications to sidebars and appendices, Why Ecology Matters interweaves these important discussions throughout. It is a book rooted in our contemporary world, delving into ecological issues that are perennial, timeless, but could not be more timely.

Author : Jane Bennett
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2010-01-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780822391623

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Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennett Pdf

In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy.

Author : DK
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 704 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2019-04-02
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781465488428

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The Ecology Book by DK Pdf

Learn about species, environments, ecosystems and biodiversity in The Ecology Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Ecology in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Ecology Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Ecology, with: - More than 90 of the greatest ideas in ecology - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The Ecology Book is a captivating introduction to what’s happening on our planet with the environment and climate change, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you’ll discover more than 90 of the greatest ideas when it comes to understanding the living world and how it works, through exciting text and bold graphics. Your Ecological Questions, Simply Explained How do species interact with each other and their environment? How do ecosystems change? What is biodiversity and can we afford to damage it? This fresh new guide looks at our influence on the planet as it grows, and answers these profound questions. If you thought it was difficult to learn about this field of science, The Ecology Book presents the information in a clear layout. Learn the key theories, movements, and events in biology, geology, geography, and environmentalism from the ideas of classical thinkers in this comprehensive guide. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Ecology Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

Author : Rafael Reyna-Hurtado,Colin A. Chapman
Publisher : Springer
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2019-01-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783030034634

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Movement Ecology of Neotropical Forest Mammals by Rafael Reyna-Hurtado,Colin A. Chapman Pdf

This book brings a unique perspective to animal movement studies because all cases came from tropical environments where the great diversity, either biological and structurally (trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes), presents the animal with several options to fulfill its live requirements. These conditions have forced the evolution of unique movement patterns and ecological strategies. Movement is an essential process in the life of all organisms. Animals move because they are hungry, thirsty, to avoid being eaten, or because they want to find mates. Understanding the causes and consequences of animal movement is not an easy task for behavioural ecologists. Many animals are shy, move in secretive ways and are very sensible to human presence, therefore, studying the movements of mammals in tropical environments present logistical and methodological challenges that have recently started to be solved by ecologist around the world. In this book we are compiling a set of extraordinary cases where researchers have used some of the modern technology and the strongest methodological approaches to understand movement patterns in wild tropical mammals. We hope this book will inspire and encourage young researchers to investigate wild mammal ́s movements in some of the amazing tropical environments of the world.

Author : Charles Krebs
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 596 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2008-04-02
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0520254791

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The Ecological World View by Charles Krebs Pdf

Filled with many examples of topic issues and current events, this book develops a basic understanding of how the natural world works and of how humans interact with the planet's natural ecosystems. It covers the history of ecology and describes the general approaches of the scientific method, then takes a look at basic principles of population dynamics and applies them to everyday practical problems.

Author : Theresa J. May
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2020-08-09
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781000069983

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Earth Matters on Stage by Theresa J. May Pdf

Earth Matters on Stage: Ecology and Environment in American Theater tells the story of how American theater has shaped popular understandings of the environment throughout the twentieth century as it argues for theater’s potential power in the age of climate change. Using cultural and environmental history, seven chapters interrogate key moments in American theater and American environmentalism over the course of the twentieth century in the United States. It focuses, in particular, on how drama has represented environmental injustice and how inequality has become part of the American environmental landscape. As the first book-length ecocritical study of American theater, Earth Matters examines both familiar dramas and lesser-known grassroots plays in an effort to show that theater can be a powerful force for social change from frontier drama of the late nineteenth century to the eco-theater movement. This book argues that theater has always and already been part of the history of environmental ideas and action in the United States. Earth Matters also maps the rise of an ecocritical thought and eco-theater practice – what the author calls ecodramaturgy – showing how theater has informed environmental perceptions and policies. Through key plays and productions, it identifies strategies for artists who want their work to contribute to cultural transformation in the face of climate change.

Author : Mark Everard
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2020-12-22
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781000284485

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The Ecology of Everyday Things by Mark Everard Pdf

Nature is all around us, in the beautiful but also in the unappealing and functional, and from the awe-inspiring to the mundane. It is vital that we learn to see the agency of the natural world in all things that make our lives possible, comfortable and profitable. The Ecology of Everyday Things pulls back the veil of our familiarity on a range of ‘everyday things’ that surround us, and which we perhaps take too much for granted. This key into the magic world of the everyday can enable us to take better account of our common natural inheritance. Professor James Longhurst, Assistant Vice Chancellor, University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) For many people, ecosystems may be a remote concept, yet we eat, drink, breathe and interface with them in every moment of our lives. In this engaging textbook, ecosystems scientist Dr. Mark Everard considers a diversity of ‘everyday things’, including fascinating facts about their ecological origins: from the tea we drink, to the things we wear, read and enjoy, to the ecology of communities and space flight, and the important roles played by germs and ‘unappealing creatures’ such as slugs and wasps. In today’s society, we are so umbilically connected to ecosystems that we fail to notice them, and this oversight blinds us to the unsustainability of everyday life and the industries and policy environment that supports it. The Ecology of Everyday Things takes the reader on an enlightening, fascinating voyage of discovery, all the while soundly rooted in robust science. It will stimulate awareness about how connected we all are to the natural world and its processes, and how important it is to learn to better treat our environment. Ideal for use in undergraduate- and school-level teaching, it will also interest, educate, engage and enthuse a wide range of less technical audiences.

Author : Leslie A. Real,James H. Brown
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 920 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226182100

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Foundations of Ecology by Leslie A. Real,James H. Brown Pdf

Assembled here for the first time in one volume are forty classic papers that have laid the foundations of modern ecology. Whether by posing new problems, demonstrating important effects, or stimulating new research, these papers have made substantial contributions to an understanding of ecological processes, and they continue to influence the field today. The papers span nearly nine decades of ecological research, from 1887 on, and are organized in six sections: foundational papers, theoretical advances, synthetic statements, methodological developments, field studies, and ecological experiments. Selections range from Connell's elegant account of experiments with barnacles to Watt's encyclopedic natural history, from a visionary exposition by Grinnell of the concept of niche to a seminal essay by Hutchinson on diversity. Six original essays by contemporary ecologists and a historian of ecology place the selections in context and discuss their continued relevance to current research. This combination of classic papers and fresh commentaries makes Foundations of Ecology both a convenient reference to papers often cited today and an essential guide to the intellectual and conceptual roots of the field. Published with the Ecological Society of America.

Author : Mark Vellend
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2020-09-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780691208992

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The Theory of Ecological Communities (MPB-57) by Mark Vellend Pdf

A plethora of different theories, models, and concepts make up the field of community ecology. Amid this vast body of work, is it possible to build one general theory of ecological communities? What other scientific areas might serve as a guiding framework? As it turns out, the core focus of community ecology—understanding patterns of diversity and composition of biological variants across space and time—is shared by evolutionary biology and its very coherent conceptual framework, population genetics theory. The Theory of Ecological Communities takes this as a starting point to pull together community ecology's various perspectives into a more unified whole. Mark Vellend builds a theory of ecological communities based on four overarching processes: selection among species, drift, dispersal, and speciation. These are analogues of the four central processes in population genetics theory—selection within species, drift, gene flow, and mutation—and together they subsume almost all of the many dozens of more specific models built to describe the dynamics of communities of interacting species. The result is a theory that allows the effects of many low-level processes, such as competition, facilitation, predation, disturbance, stress, succession, colonization, and local extinction to be understood as the underpinnings of high-level processes with widely applicable consequences for ecological communities. Reframing the numerous existing ideas in community ecology, The Theory of Ecological Communities provides a new way for thinking about biological composition and diversity.

Author : Heidi C. M. Scott
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2015-01-14
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780271065366

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Chaos and Cosmos by Heidi C. M. Scott Pdf

In Chaos and Cosmos, Heidi Scott integrates literary readings with contemporary ecological methods to investigate two essential and contrasting paradigms of nature that scientific ecology continues to debate: chaos and balance. Ecological literature of the Romantic and Victorian eras uses environmental chaos and the figure of the balanced microcosm as tropes essential to understanding natural patterns, and these eras were the first to reflect upon the ecological degradations of the Industrial Revolution. Chaos and Cosmos contends that the seed of imagination that would enable a scientist to study a lake as a microcosmic world at the formal, empirical level was sown by Romantic and Victorian poets who consciously drew a sphere around their perceptions in order to make sense of spots of time and place amid the globalizing modern world. This study’s interest goes beyond likening literary tropes to scientific aesthetics; it aims to theorize the interdisciplinary history of the concepts that underlie our scientific understanding of modern nature. Paradigmatic ecological ideas such as ecosystems, succession dynamics, punctuated equilibrium, and climate change are shown to have a literary foundation that preceded their status as theories in science. This book represents an elevation of the prospects of ecocriticism toward fully developed interdisciplinary potentials of literary ecology.

Author : Noel Keough
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2021-09-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1773852485

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Sustainability Matters by Noel Keough Pdf

Calgary, Alberta is a culturally diverse urban metropolis. Sprawling and car-dependent, fast-growing and affluent, it is dominated by the fossil fuel industry. For 30 years, Calgary has struggled to turn sustainability rhetoric into reality. Sustainability Matters is the story of Calgary's setbacks and successes on the path toward sustainability. Chronicling two decades of public conversations, political debate, urban policy and planning, and scholarly discovery, it is both a fascinating case study and an accessible introduction to the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A clear-eyed view of the struggles of turning knowledge into action, this book illuminates the places where theory and reality converge and presents an approach to municipal development, planning, and governance that takes seriously the urgent need to address climate change and injustice. Addressing a wide variety of topics and themes, including energy, diversity, economic development, and ecological health, Sustainability Matters is both a critique of current practice and a vision for the future that uses the city of Calgary as a microcosm to address issues faced by cities around the world. This is essential reading not only for every Calgarian working for a vibrant and sustainable future, but for all those interested in in the future of cities in a post-carbon world.

Author : Charles J. Krebs
Publisher : Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company
Page : 695 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Science
ISBN : 0321068793

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Ecology by Charles J. Krebs Pdf

This best-selling majors ecology book continues to present ecology as a series of problems for readers to critically analyze. No other text presents analytical, quantitative, and statistical ecological information in an equally accessible style. Reflecting the way ecologists actually practice, the book emphasizes the role of experiments in testing ecological ideas and discusses many contemporary and controversial problems related to distribution and abundance. Throughout the book, Krebs thoroughly explains the application of mathematical concepts in ecology while reinforcing these concepts with research references, examples, and interesting end-of-chapter review questions. Thoroughly updated with new examples and references, the book now features a new full-color design and is accompanied by an art CD-ROM for instructors. The field package also includes The Ecology Action Guide, a guide that encourages readers to be environmentally responsible citizens, and a subscription to The Ecology Place (www.ecologyplace.com), a web site and CD-ROM that enables users to become virtual field ecologists by performing experiments such as estimating the number of mice on an imaginary island or restoring prairie land in Iowa. For college instructors and students.

Author : Katy Bowman
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2016-11-30
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1905367775

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Movement Matters by Katy Bowman Pdf

If you could fit our culture of convenience into a petri dish, what would it look like?Movement Matters is a series of essays in which biomechanist Katy Bowman continues to explain the mechanics of a sedentary culture and the deep complexity of the phenomenon we call movement. By exposing convenience as a way of outsourcing movements, Katy's groundbreaking work in the relationship between movement and nature expands to models that have evolved from thinking of the body as a single structure to considering it to be a cluster of a trillion bodies, and how those trillion bodies are being loaded by our habitat and how we move to interact with it.From movement nutrients to forest school to the problems with investigating parts, our culturally conditioned preference to be sedentary is explored from many angles.Thought-provoking, inspiring, and always entertaining, Movement Matters is a collection of essays conducting a deep exploration of movement and its role in science, community, work, and social responsibility. Deftly deconstructing sedentary assumptions that underlie much of our research into human health, Bowman works to reclaim our space in and responsibility to nature and ourselves.With essays on foraging, the nearsightedness epidemic, and the limitations of a parts approach to health, Bowman's gaze is sweeping and incisive, always with the underlying message that moving is powerful and important, and perhaps the most joyful, freeing, and efficient form of activism there is.

Author : María Puig de la Bellacasa
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 371 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2017-03-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781452953472

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Matters of Care by María Puig de la Bellacasa Pdf

To care can feel good, or it can feel bad. It can do good, it can oppress. But what is care? A moral obligation? A burden? A joy? Is it only human? In Matters of Care, María Puig de la Bellacasa presents a powerful challenge to conventional notions of care, exploring its significance as an ethical and political obligation for thinking in the more than human worlds of technoscience and naturecultures. Matters of Care contests the view that care is something only humans do, and argues for extending to non-humans the consideration of agencies and communities that make the living web of care by considering how care circulates in the natural world. The first of the book’s two parts, “Knowledge Politics,” defines the motivations for expanding the ethico-political meanings of care, focusing on discussions in science and technology that engage with sociotechnical assemblages and objects as lively, politically charged “things.” The second part, “Speculative Ethics in Antiecological Times,” considers everyday ecologies of sustaining and perpetuating life for their potential to transform our entrenched relations to natural worlds as “resources.” From the ethics and politics of care to experiential research on care to feminist science and technology studies, Matters of Care is a singular contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary debate that expands agency beyond the human to ask how our understandings of care must shift if we broaden the world.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 40 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2009-10-09
Category : Transportation, Automotive
ISBN : MINN:30000011624370

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U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Register by Anonim Pdf