![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Physical geography > Arid zones, deserts
At the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico the Red-tailed Hawk is at the top of the food chain. My Baby Is Hungry/Mi polluelo tiene hambre, signed by the author and narrated by the author's husband, will take the reader on an interesting journey of daily survival in the animal kingdom within its setting. The story is bilingual (English/Spanish) and enhanced with real photos and is recommended for anyone with a curiosity about nature and its wonders. En el White Sands National Monument en Nuevo Mexico el Halcon de Cola Roja es el primero en la cadena alimenticia. My Baby Is Hungry/Mi polluelo tiene hambre, firmado por la autora y narrado por su esposo, llevara al lector a un interesante viaje de sobrevivencia cotidiana en el reino animal dentro de su entorno. El cuento es bilingue (ingles y espanol) y realzado con fotos y es recomendado para cualquier persona que tenga curiosidad por saber sobre la naturaleza y sus maravillas.
This book presents current research from across the globe in the study of the fauna, flora and environmental characteristics of desert life. Topics discussed include the conservation status and diversity of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and bird populations in the Thar Desert of India; desert pupfish in Death Valley; floral diversity, threats and conservation in the Nara Desert of Pakistan; mollusc fauna and its ecology in the Indian desert and sustainable beef cattle production in the desert environment of Mendoza, Argentina.
Are you curious? Are you an explorer? Beware In Maria Luisa Retana's imaginative wilderness tale, The Mystic Call /La Llamada Mistica, Spotty the fawn and his heedless young pals... a coatimundi, a javelina, a skunk, a coyote, and a mountain lion... are tempted to seek out unsuspected depths where danger lurks for the unwary. With the help of their newfound friends, the adventurous young animals narrowly escape disaster. Steve Bovee's glorious watercolor illustrations are a feast for the eyes, delighting young and old readers alike. Be careful where you go exploring
Described as 'a writer in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and other self-educated seers' by the "San Francisco Chronicle", David Rains Wallace turns his attention in this new book to another distinctive corner of California - its desert, the driest and hottest environment in North America. Drawing from his frequent forays to Death Valley, Red Rock Canyon, Kelso Dunes, and other locales, Wallace illuminates the desert's intriguing flora and fauna as he explores a controversial, unresolved scientific debate about the origin and evolution of its unusual ecosystems. Eminent scientists and scholars appear throughout these pages, including maverick paleobiologist Daniel Axelrod, botanist Ledyard Stebbins, and naturalists Edmund Jaeger and Joseph Wood Krutch. Weaving together ecology, geology, natural history, and mythology in his characteristically eloquent voice, Wallace reveals that there is more to this starkly beautiful landscape than meets the eye.
Research at Saguaro National Park has provided information on Sonoran Desert tortoise abundance, habitat, distribution, diet, reproduction, genetics, disease, and monitoring strategies. The goal of this short paper is to summarize these studies and their results, and to provide a bibliography of desert tortoise research in the park to date.
Two new chapters will be added to the Second Edition of this successful text, one on debris flow in the Canyon and the other on impact of water flow releases from the Glen Canyon Dam. The rest of the chapters will be updated where necessary and photographs will be replaced or re-screened for better resolution.
Mountains rise like islands from deserts and grasslands along the U.S.-Mexican border. The stunningly varied borderlands offer a laboratory for studying historical trends and ecological cycles, as well as a refuge in which to experience natural history firsthand. In this engaging personal narrative, biologist Fred Gehlbach describes the stability and changes of the past century in the Borderlands' climate, landforms, and natural communities and in its distinctive plants and vertebrates. Historical sketches, maps, and striking photographs richly amplify the text, and a preface updates developments in the region since the book's original publication in 1981.
The countries that make up the MENA region display wide diversity. One of the poorest countries in the world sits alongside two of the wealthiest, whilst the region's natural resources range from immeasurable oil and gas reserves to some of the scantiest natural endowments anywhere in the world. Yet through this diversity runs a common thread: water scarcity. Now, through the impact of human development and climate change, the water resource itself is changing,bringing new risks and increasing the vulnerability of all those dependent on water. Chris Ward and Sandra Ruckstuhl assess the increased challenges now facing the countries of the region, placing particular emphasis on water scarcity and the resultant risks to livelihoods, food security and the environment. They evaluate the risks and reality of climate change in the region, and offer an assessment of the vulnerability of agriculture and livelihoods. In a final section, they explore the options for responding to the new challenges, including policy, institutional, economic and technical measures.
Colonial Geography charts changes in conceptions of the relationship between people and landscapes in mainland Tanzania during the German colonial period. In German minds, colonial development would depend on the relationship between East Africans and the landscape. Colonial Geography argues that the most important element in German imperialism was not its violence but its attempts to apply racial thinking to the mastery and control of space. Utilizing approaches drawn from critical geography, the book argues that the development of a representational space of empire had serious consequences for German colonialism and the population of East Africa. Colonial Geography shows how spatial thinking shaped ideas about race and empire in the period of New Imperialism.
Beyond the Megacity connects and reconnects the global debate on the contemporary urban condition to the Latin American tradition of seeing, considering, and theorizing urbanization from the margins. It develops the approach of "peripheral urbanization" as a way to integrate the theoretical agendas belonging to global suburbanisms, neo-Marxist accounts of planetary urbanization, and postcolonial urban studies, and to move urban theory closer to the complexity and diversity of urbanization in the Global South. From an interdisciplinary perspective, Beyond the Megacity investigates the natures, causes, implications, and politics of current urbanization processes in Latin America. The book draws on case studies from various countries across the region, covering theoretical and disciplinary approaches from the fields of geography, anthropology, sociology, urban studies, agrarian studies, and urban and regional planning, and is written by academics, journalists, practitioners, and scholar-activists. Beyond the Megacity unites these unique perspectives by shifting attention to the places, processes, practices, and bodies of knowledge that have often been neglected in the past.
In the spirit of the avid desert botanist Willis Linn Jepson, "The
Jepson Desert Manual "provides botanical enthusiasts of all
backgrounds with the first comprehensive field guide focused
exclusively on native and naturalized vascular plants of
California's southeastern deserts. Based on "The Jepson Manual:
Higher Plants of California, "the "Desert Manual "incorporates new
illustrations for more than two hundred desert taxa, revised keys
to identification, updated distributional information, and 128
color photographs. This guide will allow easier identification of
California's fascinating desert plants than would be possible in a
manual with broader geographic coverage.
This work is intended for ages 5-9. Plants and animals in the Sonoran Desert food chains have had to adapt to the hot, dry climate of this habitat. Conserving water is a large part of these food-chain adaptations. Learn about the spectacular Saguaro cacti and the many herbivores and carnivores that are part of the food chains of this desert. Children will learn about: how plants make food; how desert plants and animals adapt to drought and heat; desert hunters and scavengers; dangers to Sonoran Desert food chains and webs; and how to help save desert plants and animals.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.
Bristol takes readers on a journey through the history of Glacier National Park, beginning over a billion years ago from the formation of the Belt Sea, to the present day climate-changing extinction of the very glaciers that sculpted most of the wonders of its landscapes. He delves into the ways in which this area of Montana seemed to have been preparing itself for the coming of humankind through a series of landmass adjustments like the Lewis Overthrust and the ice ages that came and went. First there were tribes of Native Americans whose deep regard for nature left the landscape intact. They were followed by Euro-American explorers and settlers who may have been awed by the new lands, but began to move wildlife to near extinction. Fortunately for the area that would become Glacier, some began to recognize that laying siege to nature and its bounties would lead to wastelands. Bristol recounts how a renewed conservation ethic fostered by such leaders as Emerson, Thoreau, Olmstead, Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt took hold. Their disciples were Grinnell, Hill, Mather, Albright, and Franklin Roosevelt, and they would not only take up the call but rally for the cause. These giants would create and preserve a park landscape to accommodate visitors and wilderness alike.
This personal narrative about life in a remote desert region of Western India tells of how love of place and love of person find their equilibrium in a world far removed from modernity. Yet this small, distant land of kingship and pastoral life is rapidly being eroded by the new India of commerce and industrialization. The author describes in terms how an ancient society is transformed by the culture of consumption where the lyrical beauty of balance, exchange and loyalty are translated into a single market economy. The people and places of post-Partition Kacch, where even the land and value systems of a lately independent India now appear in a nostalgic light, are described in detail. This is a record of private emotion and physical terrain, of traditions and of profound social practice, and is in a sense one more depiction of what is rapidly becoming another 'tristes tropiques'.
The modern southwestern cities of Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and El Paso occupy lands that once supported rich desert ecosystems. Typical development activities often resulted in scraping these desert lands of an ancient living landscape, to be replaced with one that is human-made and dependent on a large consumption of energy and natural resources. Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development explores the natural and built environment of the American Southwest and introduces development tools for shaping the future of the region in a more sustainable way. Explore the Desert Landscape and Ecology This transdisciplinary collaboration draws on insights from leading authorities in their fields, spanning science, ecology, planning, landscape development, architecture, and urban design. Organized into five parts, the book begins by introducing the physical aspects of the desert realm: the land, geology, water, and climate. The second part deals with the "living" and ecological aspects, from plants and animals to ecosystems. The third part, on planning in the desert, covers the ecological and social issues surrounding water, natural resource planning, and community development. Bring the Desert into the City The fourth part looks at how to bring nature into the built environment through the use of native plants, the creation of habitats for nature in urban settings, and the design of buildings, communities, and projects that create life. The final part of the book focuses on urban sustainability and how to design urban systems that provide a secure future for community development. Topics include water security, sustainable building practices, and bold architecture and community designs. Design Solutions That Work with the Local Environment This book will inspire discussion and contemplation for anyone interested in desert development, from developers and environmentalists to planners, community leaders, and those who live in desert regions. Throughout this volume, the contributors present solutions to help promote ecological balance between nature and the built environment in the American Southwest-and offer valuable insights for other ecologically fragile regions around the world.
Arid environments are landscapes that receive very little precipitation. Deserts can be described as an arid environment where more water is lost that gained as precipitation. Arid environments have been classified as mega thermal climates; areas of having great heat. This book focuses on regions classified as arid environments and how systematic, evidence-based synthesis may be useful for assessing ecological and cost-effective strategies for assessing revegetation in arid lands. It discusses foundations and main driving forces of socio-economic developments of arid zone and important mechanisms affecting the success of certain species over others. This book brings new research advances from around the world.
Lack of water is the limiting factor for many household and community-based activities for millions of people living in dryland areas. Rural water supply programmes tend to focus on only two social aspects: improved access to domestic supply and improved sanitation. Less attention has been paid to how communities prefer to use water to develop their own livelihoods. This is due partly to the difficulties of abstracting sufficient reliable groundwater in dryland areas and partly to a misunderstanding of why wells and boreholes fail, which leads to a general belief that abstraction should be limited to domestic supply to conserve the resource. When more water is available, not only are basic drinking and washing needs satisfied but also other activities with a high economic value become feasible, such as small-scale irrigation, fruit orchards, livestock feedlots, small-scale dairy units, fish farming, brick-making, etc. Such diversification avoids over-reliance on rain-fed cropping of marginal lands.;This book aims to show how research in Southern Africa has shed light on why conventional wells and boreholes fail, on the potential of the groundwater resource to support production through improved siting and selection of more appropriate well designs and on the positive impacts and some problems that can emerge at productive water points. The findings are presented in a practical manner to encourage planners and practitioners in rural water supply to consider developing productive water points in drought-prone areas, and to provide the information they need to follow this through. |
You may like...
Geotechnics of Soft Soils: Focus on…
Minna Karstunen, Martino Leoni
Hardcover
R6,644
Discovery Miles 66 440
Preliminary Reconnaissance Report of the…
Architectural Institute of Japan
Hardcover
R4,127
Discovery Miles 41 270
Land Subsidence Analysis in Urban Areas…
David G. Zeitoun, Eliyahu Wakshal
Hardcover
Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering…
Michele Maugeri, Claudio Soccodato
Hardcover
Seismic Evaluation and Rehabilitation of…
Alper Ilki, Michael N. Fardis
Hardcover
R4,998
Discovery Miles 49 980
Design and Construction of Pavements and…
Antonio Gomes Correia, Yoshitsugu Momoya, …
Hardcover
R4,355
Discovery Miles 43 550
|