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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Biogeography
Geochemical kinetics as a topic is now of importance to a wide range of geochemists in academia, industry, and government, and all geochemists need a rudimentary knowledge of the field. This book summarizes the fundamentals of geochemical kinetics with examples drawn especially from mineral dissolution and precipitation. It also encompasses discussion of high temperature processes and global geochemical cycle modeling. Analysis of textures of rocks, sediments, and mineral surfaces are incorporated throughout and provide a sub-theme of the book.
What happens when a chemical is released into the environment? It diffuses, disperses, adsorbs, reacts, and/or changes state. To predict and analyze this process, the mathematics of diffusion is applied to lakes, rivers, groundwater, the atmosphere, the oceans, and transport between these media. A sustainable world requires a deep understanding of the transport of chemicals through the environment and how to address and harness this process. This volume presents a succinct and in-depth introduction to this critical topic. Featuring authoritative, peer-reviewed articles from the Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology, Transport and Fate of Chemicals in the Environment represents an essential one-stop reference for an audience of researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and industry professionals.
A reappraisal of Lamarckism-its historical impact and contemporary significance.In 1809-the year of Charles Darwin's birth-Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published Philosophie zoologique, the first comprehensive and systematic theory of biological evolution. The Lamarckian approach emphasizes the generation of developmental variations; Darwinism stresses selection. Lamarck's ideas were eventually eclipsed by Darwinian concepts, especially after the emergence of the Modern Synthesis in the twentieth century. The different approaches-which can be seen as complementary rather than mutually exclusive-have important implications for the kinds of questions biologists ask and for the type of research they conduct. Lamarckism has been evolving-or, in Lamarckian terminology, transforming-since Philosophie zoologique's description of biological processes mediated by "subtle fluids." Essays in this book focus on new developments in biology that make Lamarck's ideas relevant not only to modern empirical and theoretical research but also to problems in the philosophy of biology. Contributors discuss the historical transformations of Lamarckism from the 1820s to the 1940s, and the different understandings of Lamarck and Lamarckism; the Modern Synthesis and its emphasis on Mendelian genetics; theoretical and experimental research on such "Lamarckian" topics as plasticity, soft (epigenetic) inheritance, and individuality; and the importance of a developmental approach to evolution in the philosophy of biology. The book shows the advantages of a "Lamarckian" perspective on evolution. Indeed, the development-oriented approach it presents is becoming central to current evolutionary studies-as can be seen in the burgeoning field of Evo-Devo. Transformations of Lamarckism makes a unique contribution to this research.
The biological and philosophical implications of the emergence of new collective individuals from associations of living beings. Our intuitive assumption that only organisms are the real individuals in the natural world is at odds with developments in cell biology, ecology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and other fields. Although organisms have served for centuries as nature's paradigmatic individuals, science suggests that organisms are only one of the many ways in which the natural world could be organized. When living beings work together-as in ant colonies, beehives, and bacteria-metazoan symbiosis-new collective individuals can emerge. In this book, leading scholars consider the biological and philosophical implications of the emergence of these new collective individuals from associations of living beings. The topics they consider range from metaphysical issues to biological research on natural selection, sociobiology, and symbiosis. The contributors investigate individuality and its relationship to evolution and the specific concept of organism; the tension between group evolution and individual adaptation; and the structure of collective individuals and the extent to which they can be defined by the same concept of individuality. These new perspectives on evolved individuality should trigger important revisions to both philosophical and biological conceptions of the individual. Contributors Frederic Bouchard, Ellen Clarke, Jennifer Fewell, Andrew Gardner, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Charles J. Goodnight, Matt Haber, Andrew Hamilton, Philippe Huneman, Samir Okasha, Thomas Pradeu, Scott Turner, Minus van Baalen
The southeastern United States is home to the richest, most diverse freshwater mussel faunas on the planet, and Mississippi is no exception in this regard. Until fairly recent times, however, only qualitative lists of taxa were available and/or sampling was unsystematic and spotty. More recent work has taken place in waterways that have been significantly impacted by erosion, other forms of water pollution, and impoundment in modern times. Thus, even the best modern studies could benefit from a better knowledge of ranges and community characteristics as they existed prehistorically, when human impact, though present, an to this end this work presents a robust synthesis of pre-industrial mussel distributions and relative abundances in the state.
This is the road from climate change to primate change. PRIMATE CHANGE is a wide-ranging, polemical look at how and why the human body has changed since humankind first got up on two feet. Spanning the entirety of human history – from primate to transhuman – Vybarr Cregan-Reid’s book investigates where we came from, who we are today and how modern technology will change us beyond recognition. In the last two hundred years, humans have made such a tremendous impact on the world that our geological epoch is about to be declared the ‘Anthropocene’, or the Age of Man. But while we have been busy changing the shape of the world we inhabit, the ways of living that we have been building have, as if under the cover of darkness, been transforming our bodies and altering the expression of our DNA, too. Primate Change beautifully unscrambles the complex architecture of our modern human bodies, built over millions of years and only starting to give up on us now.
Biogeography has renewed its concepts and methods following important recent advances in phylogenetics, macroecology, and geographic information systems. In parallel, the evolutionary ecology of host-parasite interactions has attracted the interests of numerous studies dealing with life-history traits evolution, community ecology, and evolutionary epidemiology. The Biogeography of Host-Parasite Interactions is the first book to integrate these two fields, using examples from a variety of host-parasite associations in various regions, and across both ecological and evolutionary timescales. Besides a strong theoretical component, there is a bias towards applications, specifically in the fields of historical biogeography, palaeontology, phylogeography, landscape epidemiology, invasion biology, conservation biology, human evolution, and health ecology. A particular emphasis concerns emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases linked to global changes.
Though biogeography may be simply defined--the study of the geographic distributions of organisms--the subject itself is extraordinarily complex, involving a range of scientific disciplines and a bewildering diversity of approaches. For convenience, biogeographers have recognized two research traditions: ecological biogeography and historical biogeography. This book makes sense of the profound revolution that historical biogeography has undergone in the last two decades, and of the resulting confusion over its foundations, basic concepts, methods, and relationships to other disciplines of comparative biology. Using case studies, the authors explain and illustrate the fundamentals and the most frequently used methods of this discipline. They show the reader how to tell when a historical biogeographic approach is called for, how to decide what kind of data to collect, how to choose the best method for the problem at hand, how to perform the necessary calculations, how to choose and apply a computer program, and how to interpret results.
Energy is the only universal currency. One of its many forms must be transformed into another in order for stars to shine, planets to rotate, living things to grow, and civilizations to evolve. Recognition of this universality was one of the great achievements of nineteenth-century science, yet even today there is little literature that tries to view the world broadly through the prism of energy.In this highly original book, ecologist Vaclav Smil takes the principle of universality seriously, presenting a comprehensive and integrated survey of all the forms of energy that shape our world, from the sun to the human body, from bread to microchips. Written in a scientifically sophisticated yet accessible style, Energies consists of eighty-two short essays organized under six headings: Sun and Earth, Plants and Animals, People and Food, Preindustrial Societies, Fossil-Fueled Civilization, and Motion and Information. Each essay explains the science of the energy form as well as its implications for the functioning of the universe, life, or human society. Cross-links and summary diagrams allow easy comparisons among the various levels and flows of energy.
Each year billions of animals are poisoned, dissected, displaced, killed for consumption, or held in captivity-usually for the benefit of humans. The animal world has never been under greater peril and this broad-ranging collection contributes to a much-needed, fundamental rethinking about our relation with it. Animal Geographies explores the diverse ways in which animals shape the formation of human identity. Essays on zoos and wolves, for example, reveal how animals figure in social constructions of race, gender, and nationality. From questions of identity and subjectivity, it moves to a consideration of the places where people and animals confront the realities of coexistence on an everyday basis, by way of case studies of species such as mountain lions and the golden eagle. It then examines the ways in which animals figure in the ongoing globalization of production and mass consumption-illustrated by essays on the US meatpacking industry and meat production in the Indian state of Rajasthan-and finally, takes up legal and ethical approaches to human-animal relations. Animal Geographies compels a profound rethinking of the nature of human-animal relations and offers a series of proposals for reconstituting this relationship on a progressive basis. Contributors: Kay Anderson, Glen Elder, Andrea Gullo, Unna Lassiter, William S. Lynn, Suzanne M. Michel, Chris Philo, James D. Proctor, Paul Robbins, Frances M. Ufkes, James L. Wescoat, Jr.
Texas Range Plants offers a handy and attractive identification guide for the soil conservationist, range ecologist, amateur botanist, land appraiser, college or high school student, 4-H member or leader, and rangeland manager. The book describes and illustrates the 140 grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees that are economically important on Texas rangelands because of their important forage characteristics, poisonous attributes, or "weedy" or aggressive nature. Each plant is described in detail, in both technical and lay terminology, and depicted with a line drawing that clearly shows the plant's gross morphology and the characteristics necessary for identification. Latin and common names, habitat, longevity, season, origin, value to wildlife and livestock, and growth characteristics are listed for each plant. In addition, any poisonous properties are included, along with items of special interest and folklore about the plants. Additional illustrations detailing various types of plant parts and characteristics and a complete glossary to the technical terminology make this book a valuable learning tool for the interested lay person and the student of botany alike. Stephan L. Hatch is professor of grass systematics and curator of the S. M. Tracy Herbarium, Texas A&M University.Jennifer Pluhar, who lives in Canyon Texas, is a range management consultant, with interests in cattle feeding and livestock investments, and a 4-H leader who has worked extensively with 4-H and FFA youth plant-identification teams. Hatch and Pluhar are in charge of the University Plant Identification Contest at the annual meetings of the international Society for Range Management.
Geoarchaeology is traditionally concerned with reconstructing the environmental aspects of past societies using the methods of the earth sciences. The field has been steadily enriched by scholars from a diversity of disciplines and much has happened as the importance of global perspectives on environmental change has emerged. Carlos Cordova, provides a fully up-to-date account of geoarchaeology that reflects the important changes that have occurred in the past four decades. Innovative features include: the development of the human-ecological approach and the impact of technology on this approach; how the diversity of disciplines contributes to archaeological questions; frontiers of archaeology in the deep past, particularly the Anthropocene; the geoarchaeology of the contemporary past; the emerging field of ethno-geoarchaeology; the role of geoarchaeology in global environmental crises and climate change.
Over the last decade, molecular studies carried out on the Australasian biota have revealed a new world of organic structure that exists from submicroscopic to continental scale. Furthermore, in studies of global biogeography and evolution, DNA sequencing has shown that many large groups, such as flowering plants, passerine birds and squamates, have their basal components in this area. Using examples ranging from kangaroos and platypuses to kiwis and birds of paradise, the book examines the patterns of distribution and evolution of Australasian biodiversity and explains them with reference to tectonic and climatic change in the region. The surprising results from molecular biogeography demonstrate that an understanding of evolution in Australasia is essential for understanding the development of modern life on Earth. A milestone in the literature on this subject, this book will be a valuable source of reference for students and researchers in biogeography, biodiversity, ecology and conservation.
Graph theory can be applied to ecological questions in many ways, and more insights can be gained by expanding the range of graph theoretical concepts applied to a specific system. But how do you know which methods might be used? And what do you do with the graph once it has been obtained? This book provides a broad introduction to the application of graph theory in different ecological systems, providing practical guidance for researchers in ecology and related fields. Readers are guided through the creation of an appropriate graph for the system being studied, including the application of spatial, spatio-temporal, and more abstract structural process graphs. Simple figures accompany the explanations to add clarity, and a broad range of ecological phenomena from many ecological systems are covered. This is the ideal book for graduate students and researchers looking to apply graph theoretical methods in their work.
Remote sensing is becoming an increasingly important tool for
agriculturalists, ecologists, and land managers for the study of
Earth's agricultural and natural vegetation, and can be applied to
further our understanding of key environmental issues, including
climate change and ecosystem management.
This book is part of a two-volume set that offers an innovative approach towards developing methods and tools for assigning conservation categories of threatened taxa and their conservation strategies by way of different phases of eco-restoration in the context of freshwater river systems of tropical bio-geographic zones. The set provides a considerable volume of research on the biodiversity component of river ecosystems, seasonal dynamics of physical chemical parameters, geo-hydrological properties, types, sources and modes of action of different types of pollution, river restoration strategies and methodologies for the ongoing ecological changes of river ecosystems. Volume 1 provides an in-depth analysis of different theories with international relevance pertaining to the functioning of river ecosystems, shaping their structure and contributing ecological services, and includes the principles of riverine ecology such as biogeochemical cycles, physiography, hydrogeology, and physico-chemical parameters. It covers the basic concepts and principles of water within riverine ecosystems, and the underlying ecological principles operating to ensure ecological stability and sustainability of the fluvial ecosystem. The book explains the ecofunctionality of different geo-morphological, geo-hydrological and physico-chemical factors and processes in changing time scales and spaces, with special emphasis on the tropical fresh water rivers in India.
Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction ? In our age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into islandlike fragments by human activity, the implications of this question are more urgent than ever. Over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed the threads of island biogeography on a globe-encircling journey of discovery. 'Not since Gerald Durrell's books 30 years ago have I encountered such writing about the natural World. The witty, pithy, modest prose and the clever interweaving of science and storytelling are of a quality unrivalled in the field' Matt Ridley, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH. 'Quammen's heroic, demanding book is a monument to scholarly rigour and scientific accuracy. Scientists are raving about it in the States, yet the lay reader too will be borne along by his engaging intelligence, his good-natured mix of learning and humour.' Alexander Frater, OBSERVER. 'This book is vital.' John Fowles, SUNDAY TIMES.
This book provides a rich and illuminating account of the peripheries of urban, regional, and transnational development in South Korea. Engaging with the ideas of "core location," a term coined by Baik Young-seo, and "Asia as method," a concept with a century-old intellectual lineage in East Asia, each chapter in the volume discusses the ways in which a place can be studied in an increasingly globalized world. Examining cases set in the Jeju English Education City, anti-poverty and community activist sites, rural areas home to large numbers of migrant women, and Korea's Chinatowns, greenbelts, and textile factories, the collection develops a relational understanding of a place as a constellation of local and global forces and processes that interact and contradict in particular ways. Each chapter also explores multiple modes of urban marginality and discusses how understanding them shapes the methods of academic praxis for social justice causes and decolonialized scholarship. This book is the outcome of several years of interdisciplinary collaborations and dialogues among scholars based in geography, architecture, anthropology, and urban politics.
Animals have played a fundamental role in shaping human history, and the study of their remains from archaeological sites - zooarchaeology - has gradually been emerging as a powerful discipline and crucible for forging an understanding of our past. The Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology offers a cutting-edge compendium of zooarchaeology the world over that transcends environmental, economic, and social approaches, seeking instead to provide a holistic view of the roles played by animals in past human cultures. Incisive chapters written by leading scholars in the field incorporate case studies from across five continents, from Iceland to New Zealand and from Japan to Egypt and Ecuador, providing a sense of the dynamism of the discipline, the many approaches and methods adopted by different schools and traditions, and an idea of the huge range of interactions that have occurred between people and animals throughout the world and its history. Adaptations of human-animal relationships in environments as varied as the Arctic, temperate forests, deserts, the tropics, and the sea are discussed, while studies of hunter-gatherers, farmers, herders, fishermen, and even traders and urban dwellers highlight the importance that animals have had in all forms of human societies. With an introduction that clearly contextualizes the current practice of zooarchaeology in relation to both its history and the challenges and opportunities that can be expected for the future, and a methodological glossary illuminating the way in which zooarchaeologists approach the study of their material, this Handbook will be invaluable not only for specialists in the field, but for anybody who has an interest in our past and the role that animals have played in forging it.
"The Biogeography of the Australian North West Shelf "provides the first assembly of existing information of the North West Shelf in terms of geological, oceanographic and climatological history and current understanding of such issues as biodiversity, connectivity, larval dispersal and speciation in the sea that determine the distribution patterns of its invertebrate fauna. It is intended as a source of information and ideas on the biota of the shelf and its evolutionary origins and affinities and the environmental drivers of species ecology and distribution and ecosystem function. Regulators and industry environmental managers worldwide, but
especially on the resource-rich North West Shelf, are faced with
having to make decisions without adequate information or
understanding of conservation values or the factors that drive
ecosystem processes and resilience in the face of increasing
anthropogenic and natural change. This book will provide a resource
of information and ideas and extensive references to issues of
primary concern. It will provide a big-picture narrative, putting
the marine biota into a geological, evolutionary, and regional
biodiversity context. - The first book to cover the major benthic habitats and physical and ecological condition of the North West Shelf of Australia - Covers new information on geomorphology and biota of coral reefs and other invertebrate habitats that are key species and functional groups of the North West Shelf - Introduces new ideas on biogeographic processes and patterns in tropical seas" |
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