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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Conservation of the environment
A wonderland of sky, water, grass, and birdsong, the Ibera
marshlands of Corrientes Province are the preeminent wildlife
habitat in Argentina and a globally important natural treasure.
Esteros del Ibera, a landmark volume celebrating a peerless place,
invites the reader to experience this spectacle of nature. One of
the largest freshwater wetlands in South America, comprising more
than 2.5 million acres, the Ibera was forged from ancient
geological forces and the long-ago wanderings of the mighty Parana
River. Today the landscape is a locus of conservation activity
including a campaign to create a new national park to protect the
biodiversity of this striking region. Increasingly a destination
for nature lovers, the marshlands attract birdwatchers from across
the Earth, who come to see some 360 avian species that are found
here. A native son of Corrientes, world-class nature photographer
Juan Ramon Diaz Colodrero has spent years documenting the region's
birdlife and other wild creatures. In Esteros del Ibera, his
dazzling images put the reader into the heart of the Ibera's
life-affirming beauty. Supporting essays by leading regional
conservationists and other experts illuminate the Ibera's diverse
natural communities and distinctive human culture. While the area
is remarkably unspoiled, innovative conservation projects are
augmenting wildlife populations and returning missing native
species such as the giant anteater and the jaguar to their rightful
homes in the landscape of shining waters. The Ibera presents a
stark contrast to the modern world, a place where the trajectory of
land health is moving toward integrity and wildness.
This book comprises 41 s dealing various issues, prospects and
importance of conservation agriculture practices followed across
different regions with special emphasis on rainfed regions. We hope
this book on conservation agriculture will be highly useful to
researchers, scientists, students, farmers and land managers for
efficient and sustainable management of natural resources.
Over the last five centuries, North-East England's River Tyne went
largely with the flow as it rode with us on a rollercoaster from
technologically limited early modern oligarchy, to large-scale
Victorian 'improvement', to twentieth-century deoxygenation and to
twenty-first-century efforts to expand the river's biodiversity. By
studying five centuries of Tyne conservatorship, we can see that
1855 to 1972 was a blip on the graph of environmental concern,
preceded and followed by more sustainable engagement and a fairer
negotiation with the river's forces and expressions as a whole and
natural system, albeit driven by different motivations. Even during
this blip, however, many people expressed environmental concern.
Several organisations, including the Tyne Salmon Conservancy
(1866-1950), local governors, the Tyne's anglers and the Standing
Committee on River Pollution's Tyne Sub-Committee (1921-1939),
tried to protect the river's environmental health from harm, as
they perceived it. This Tyne study offers a template for a future
body of work on British rivers that shakes off the straitjacket of
the Thames as the river of choice in British environmental history.
And it undermines traditional socio-cultural approaches which
reduce rivers to passive backdrops of human activities. Departing
from progressive narratives that equated change with improvement,
and declensionist narratives that equated change with loss and
destruction, it moves away from morally loaded notions of better or
worse, and even dead, rivers. This book refocuses on the production
of new and different rivers and fully situates the Tyne's fluvial
transformations within their political, economic, cultural, social
and intellectual contexts. Let us sit with the Tyne itself, some of
its salmon, a seventeenth-century Tyne River Court Juror, some
nineteenth-century Tyne Improvement Commissioners, a 1920s
biologist, a twentieth-century Tyne angler, shipbuilder and council
planner and some twenty-first-century Tyne Rivers Trust volunteers.
What would they disagree about? Would they agree on anything? How
would they explain their conceptualisation of what the river is for
and how it should be used and regulated? This book takes you to the
heart of such virtual debates to revive, reconnect and reinvigorate
the severed bonds and flows linking riparian places, issues and
people across five centuries. By analysing the Tyne's past
conservatorships, we can objectify ourselves through our
descendants' eyes, reconnecting us not only to our past, but also
to our future.
LiDAR Principles, Processing and Applications in Forest Ecology
introduces the principles of LiDAR technology and explains how to
collect and process LiDAR data from different platforms based on
real-world experience. The book provides state-of the-art
algorithms on how to extract forest parameters from LiDAR and
explains how to use them in forest ecology. It gives an
interdisciplinary view, from the perspective of remote sensing and
forest ecology. Because LiDAR is still rapidly developing,
researchers must use programming languages to understand and
process LiDAR data instead of established software. In response,
this book provides Python code examples and sample data. Sections
give a brief history and introduce the principles of LiDAR, as well
as three commonly seen LiDAR platforms. The book lays out
step-by-step coverage of LiDAR data processing and forest structure
parameter extraction, complete with Python examples. Given the
increasing usefulness of LiDAR in forest ecology, this volume
represents an important resource for researchers, students and
forest managers to better understand LiDAR technology and its use
in forest ecology across the world. The title contains over 15
years of research, as well as contributions from scientists across
the world.
Most livestock in the United States currently live in cramped and
unhealthy confinement, have few stable social relationships with
humans or others of their species, and finish their lives by being
transported and killed under stressful conditions. In Livestock,
Erin McKenna allows us to see this situation and presents
alternatives. She interweaves stories from visits to farms,
interviews with producers and activists, and other rich material
about the current condition of livestock. In addition, she mixes
her account with pragmatist and ecofeminist theorizing about
animals, drawing in particular on John Dewey's account of
evolutionary history, and provides substantial historical
background about individual species and about human-animal
relations. This deeply informative text reveals that the animals we
commonly see as livestock have rich evolutionary histories,
species-specific behaviors, breed tendencies, and individual
variation, just as those we respect in companion animals such as
dogs, cats, and horses. To restore a similar level of respect for
livestock, McKenna examines ways we can balance the needs of our
livestock animals with the environmental and social impacts of
raising them, and she investigates new possibilities for humans to
be in relationships with other animals. This book thus offers us a
picture of healthier, more respectful relationships with livestock.
"Curlews give their liquid, burbling call, a call of pure
happiness, the music of the fells." Ella Pontefract, 1936,
Wensleydale The North of England abounds with beauty, from
unspoiled beaches in Northumberland to the dramatic Lakeland Fells,
for so long celebrated by writers and artists. Wide estuaries,
winding rivers, sheer cliffs, rushing waterfalls, ancient woodland,
limestone pavements, and miles of hedgerows and drystone walls
sustainably built and rebuilt over centuries - all form part of its
rich heritage. But these are, too, contested and depleted
landscapes. Today the curlew's call is isolated, and many other
species are in decline. Industry, urban sprawl and climate chaos
threaten our environment on a previously unimagined scale. And
while stereotypes persist - of dark satanic mills or "bleak"
moorland - the imperative of conservation is all too often
overlooked for short-term economic interests. This essential volume
reminds us how and why Northern people have risen to the challenge
of defending their open spaces, demanding action on pollution and
habitat loss. Contemporary writers including Sarah Hall, Lee
Schofield, Benjamin Myers and Lemn Sissay take their place
alongside those who wrote in previous centuries. Together, the
voices in this one-of-a-kind anthology testify that North Country
is a place apart.
Decision Consequence Analysis (DCA) is a framework for improving
the quality of decision results. The framework is a systematic,
multi-criteria quantification of uncertainties and the
opportunities for managing and reducing the potential negative
consequences of such uncertainties. DCA is demonstrated throughout
Sustainable Land Development and Restoration for each stage of
system based management of environmental issues. DCA links
disciplines and incorporates components of risk modelling,
probability modelling and the psychology of decision making. Its
goal is to provide a comprehensive unbiased decision making
framework. Its foundation is accurately defining your problem
statement and clearly vetting your objectives to build a structure
for meaningful analysis of data. Employment of DCA consistently
throughout the environmental industry can reduce decibel-driven,
agenda-laden decision making, streamline expenditure of resources
(financial, human, natural), and provide a clear path to the
sustainable maintenance of balanced environmental systems as the
penultimate objective. Sustainable Land Development and Restoration
provides a toolbox to both the novice and experienced environmental
practitioner of valuable techniques for addressing site specific
environmental issues, as well as managing a portfolio of
liabilities on an international scale. Ultimately, the authors are
addressing the critical issue of balancing environmental asset
balance sheets, whether on the scale of an individual project,
across a company's portfolio, or for a community. The environmental
manager who adopts the principles in this book will have greater
confidence that environmental protection or restoration activities
are providing measurable utility. The goal is that, through
multidimensional resource management analysis and practices
companies and societies can achieve sustainable maintenance of a
balanced environmental system. Descriptions of technical,
contracting and implementation processes are supported by detailed
case studies to provide real world context rather than an academic
exchange of theories.
Time and Methods in Environmental Interfaces Modelling: Personal
Insights considers the use of time in environmental interfaces
modeling and introduce new methods, from the global scale (e.g.
climate modeling) to the micro scale (e.g. cell and nanotubes
modeling), which primarily arise from the personal research
insights of the authors. As the field of environmental science
requires the application of new fundamental approaches that can
lead to a better understanding of environmental phenomena, this
book helps necessitate new approaches in modeling, including
category theory, that follow new achievements in physics,
mathematics, biology, and chemistry.
Shivalik ranges cover an area of about 2.14 million ha in Himachal
Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Haryana States
of north-west India. Over exploitation of the resources in the
region had lead to soil erosion resulting in the rise of riverbeds,
siltation of tanks, reservoirs and other natural water bodies. Soil
erosion greater than 80 t ha-1 yr-1 have been recorded from denuded
hills at places. More than 70 per cent people of the region are
dependent on agriculture, however, only 18 per cent of the
cultivated area is irrigated. Agroforestry where tree and crops are
integrated with each other had been recommended worldwide to check
soil erosion and simultaneously achieve production goals. Adoption
of scientifically proven agroforestry systems in Shivaliks can
reverse the degradation and improve the economic status of the
farmers of the region. Extensive research had been done till date
on role of agroforestry in resource conservation and livelihood
security in the region. The book is an attempt to compile the
available knowledge on the subject. There are 20 s in the book
covering various topics relating agroforestry systems with soil and
water conservation, livelihood security, slope protection through
mechanical and vegetative measures, fertility build up, mine spoil
rehabilitation, bamboos, climate change and carbon sequestration.
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