Landscapes have been fundamental to the human experience world-wide and throughout time, yet how did we as human beings evolve or co-evolve with our landscapes? By answering this question, we can understand our place in the complex, ever-changing world that we inhabit. This book guides readers on a journey through the concurrent processes of change in an integrated natural-cultural history of a landscape. While outlining the general principles for global application, a richly illustrated case is offered through the Mariana Islands in the northwest tropical Pacific and furthermore situated in a larger Asia-Pacific context for a full comprehension of landscape evolution at variable scales. The author examines what happened during the first time when human beings encountered the world's Remote Oceanic environment in the Mariana Islands about 3500 years ago, followed by a continuous sequence of changing sea level, climate, water resources, forest composition, human population growth, and social dynamics. This book provides a high-resolution and long-term view of the complexities of landscape evolution that affect all of us today.

This book was originally published in 1981 as a publication of the Cooper Ornithological Society and was based on the proceedings of a meeting of biologists and statisticians in Asilomar who gathered to examine the methods and assumptions used in estimating bird numbers. Counting birds has a long tradition. It is the currency of many ornithological studies. Bird counts have been seminal in our knowledge of bird migration, competition, ecology, population dynamics, environmental adaptation, impact of human alterations and island biogeography. Interest in estimating bird numbers remains high today but is often plagued by unasked or unanswered questions regarding sampling methods and treatment of the results. This book recorded the outcome of a meeting held to address these and other questions. It led to better understanding of what can and cannot be done with datasets. This volume remains a primary source of information on censusing of birds and other animals, and is frequently quoted in the primary literature of today. Since this volume went out of print some six years ago, demand has markedly increased for copies which are essentially unavailable, attesting to its currency today. C. John Ralph, received his Bachelors from the University of California, Berkeley and his doctorate from The Johns Hopkins University. Most of his early research was on bird migration and orientation. After a stint teaching at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, he moved to Hawaii in 1976 where he began work on endangered forest birds for the Forest Service as a Research Ecologist. In 1981 he and his family moved to Arcata to join the Forest Service's Redwood Sciences Laboratory. One of his principal research topics there has been on an old-growth dependent bird, the Marbled Murrelet, involving extensive research from Alaska to California. His other principal work is on landbird monitoring, especially involving census and constant effort mist netting. Since 1994 he has directed research at a bird monitoring station in Costa Rica, now one of the longest running stations in Latin America. Beginning in 1980 he conducted research on an island off New Zealand involving monitoring and reintroduction of native birds. He has published more than 150 scientific articles and edited several books on bird monitoring and the Marbled Murrelet.

This volume introduces an innovative tool for the development of sustainable cities and the promotion of the quality of life of city inhabitants. It presents a decision-support system to orient public administrations in identifying development scenarios for sustainable urban and territorial transformations. The authors have split the volume into five parts, which respectively describe the theoretical basis of the book, the policies in question and indicators that influence them, the decision-support system that connects indicators to policies, the case study of Ancona, Italy, and potential future directions for this work. This volume is based on transdisciplinary research completed in May 2016 that involved about 40 researchers at The University of Camerino, Italy and other European universities. With purchase of this book, readers will also have access to Electronic Supplementary Material that contains a database with groups of indicators of assessment of urban quality of life and a toolkit containing the data processing system and management information system used in the book's case study.

This book deals with the new concept of biodiversity offsets. The aim of offsetting schemes is to achieve no let loss or even net gain of biodiversity. Offsets obey a mitigation hierarchy and reflect the precautionary and polluter-pays principle in regard to project impacts. Readers gain insights into current debates on biodiversity policies, with top experts outlining theoretical principles and the latest research findings. At the same time the focus is on practical application and case studies. Today there is a lively international discussion among practitioners and scientists on the optimal legal framework, metrics and design of habitat banks to ensure the success of biodiversity offsets and to minimise the risks of failure or misuse. Contributing to the debate, this volume presents the activities and practices of biodiversity offsetting already implemented in Europe in selected EU member states, and the lessons that can be learnt from them. Readers may be surprised at how much experience already exists in these countries. A further aim of the book is to offer grounded insights on the road ahead, and foster a more intensive and fruitful discussion on how offsetting can be extended and improved upon, so that it becomes a key and effective component of Europe's biodiversity conservation policy framework.

This book focuses on the diversity of yeasts in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, including the association of yeasts with insects, invertebrate and vertebrate animals. It offers an overview of the knowledge accumulated in the course of more than 60 years of research and is closely connected with the volume Yeasts in Natural Ecosystems: Ecology by the same editors. In view of the rapid decline of many natural habitats due to anthropogenic activities and climate change, the need to study biodiversity is pressing. Rising temperatures threaten species inhabiting cold and aquatic environments, and species in terrestrial ecosystems are endangered by habitat fragmentation or loss. Most of our knowledge of intrinsic properties (autoecology) of yeasts reported throughout this book is derived from laboratory experiments with pure cultures. Accordingly, the importance of culture collections for ecological studies is highlighted by presenting an overview of worldwide available yeast strains and their origins. All of the chapters were written by leading international yeast research experts, and will appeal to researchers and advanced students in the field of microbial diversity.

It has often been said that generals prepare for the next war by re-fighting the last. The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill was unlike any previous - an underwater well blowout 1,500 meters deep. Much has been learned in the wake of DWH and these lessons should in turn be applied to both similar oil spill scenarios and those arising from "frontier" explorations by the marine oil industry. The next deep oil well blowout may be at 3,000 meters or even deeper. This volume summarizes regional (Gulf of Mexico) and global megatrends in marine oil exploration and production. Research in a number of key areas including the behavior of oil and gas under extreme pressure, impacts on biological resources of the deep sea, and the fate of oil and gas released in spills is synthesized. A number of deep oil spills are simulated with detailed computer models, and the likely effects of the spills and potential mitigation measures used to combat them are compared. Recommended changes in policies governing marine oil exploration and development are proposed, as well as additional research to close critical and emerging knowledge gaps. This volume synthesizes state-of-the-art research in deep oil spill behavior and response. It is thus relevant for government and industry oil spill responders, policy formulators and implementers, and academics and students desiring an in-depth and balanced overview of key issues and uncertainties surrounding the quest for deep oil and potential impacts on the environment.

With one volume each year, this series keeps scientists and advanced students informed of the latest developments and results in all areas of the plant sciences. The present volume includes reviews on plant physiology, biochemistry, ecology, and ecosystems.

This book contains the proceedings of the 3rd IUPAC International Conference on Biodiversity (ICOB-3), November 3-8, 2001, Antalya, Turkey. This book discusses the value of bioresources and the need for their conservation in terms of the biomolecular chemistry of naturally occurring molecular systems. The development of pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial products from bioresources can be used to promote incentives for conservation by providing an economic return to sustainable use of those sources. The 54 chapters inform readers on the search for insight into the species and documents how much of life remains to be scientifically identified. They also explore identification strategies and methods along with the implications for protecting biodiversity. In summary, biomolecular aspects of biodiversity and innovative utilization of bioresources are discussed from very diverse points of view ranging from their botanical, zoological, taxonomic and genomic expressions to their biomolecular, structural, mechanistic and functional aspects.

This book focuses on fluxes of energy, carbon dioxide and matter in and above a Central European spruce forest. The transition from a forest affected by acid rain into a heterogeneous forest occurred as a result of wind throw, bark beetles and climate change. Scientific results obtained over the last 20 years at the FLUXNET site DE-Bay (Waldstein-Weidenbrunnen) are shown together with methods developed at the site, including the application of footprint models for data-quality analysis, the coupling between the trunk space and the atmosphere, the importance of the Damkoehler number for trace gas studies, and the turbulent conditions at a forest edge. In addition to the many experimental studies, the book also applies model studies such as higher-order closure models, Large-Eddy Simulations, and runoff models for the catchment and compares them with the experimental data. Moreover, by highlighting processes in the atmosphere it offers insights into the functioning of the ecosystem as a whole. It is of interest to ecologists, micrometeorologists and ecosystem modelers.

This book summarizes current advances in our understanding of how infectious disease represents an ecological interaction between a pathogenic microorganism and the host species in which that microbe causes illness. The contributing authors explain that pathogenic microorganisms often also have broader ecological connections, which can include a natural environmental presence; possible transmission by vehicles such as air, water, and food; and interactions with other host species, including vectors for which the microbe either may or may not be pathogenic. This field of science has been dubbed disease ecology, and the chapters that examine it have been grouped into three sections. The first section introduces both the role of biological community interactions and the impact of biodiversity on infectious disease. In turn, the second section considers those diseases directly affecting humans, with a focus on waterborne and foodborne illnesses, while also examining the critical aspect of microbial biofilms. Lastly, the third section presents the ecology of infectious diseases from the perspective of their impact on mammalian livestock and wildlife as well as on humans. Given its breadth of coverage, the volume offers a valuable resource for microbial ecologists and biomedical scientists alike.

Over the past several years, many investigators interested in the effects of man-made sounds on animals have come to realize that there is much to gain from studying the broader literature on hearing sound and the effects of sound as well as data from the effects on humans. It has also become clear that knowledge of the effects of sound on one group of animals (e.g., birds or frogs) can guide studies on other groups (e.g., marine mammals or fishes) and that a review of all such studies together would be very useful to get a better understanding of the general principles and underlying cochlear and cognitive mechanisms that explain damage, disturbance, and deterrence across taxa. The purpose of this volume, then, is to provide a comprehensive review of the effects of man-made sounds on animals, with the goal of fulfilling two major needs. First, it was thought to be important to bring together data on sound and bioacoustics that have implications across all taxa (including humans) so that such information is generally available to the community of scholars interested in the effects of sound. This is done in Chaps. 2-5. Second, in Chaps. 6-10, the volume brings together what is known about the effects of sound on diverse vertebrate taxa so that investigators with interests in specific groups can learn from the data and experimental approaches from other species. Put another way, having an overview of the similarities and discrepancies among various animal groups and insight into the "how and why" will benefit the overall conceptual understanding, applications in society, and all future research.

Evolution gave rise to a prominent insect diversity at every level of ecological niche. Since then, hordes of insects have threatened human and cattle health as well as most of all green lands and agricultural crops. Now, the insect problem expands from many mutant forms of yellow dengue fever mosquitoes to highly-resistant larvae of most all various phytophageous species. The tremendous expansion of insects is due not only to an increasing resistance capacity to insecticides, but also to a strong capacity for adapting to different climate and environmental changes, including global warming. Obviously insects display a number of rudimentary systems to build an extremely efficient organism to survive in a changing world. In many species, one pheromone molecule is enough to trigger mating behavior. Therefore, insects have become crucial models not only for evolutionary studies, but also for understanding specific mechanisms underlying sensory-based behaviors. Most of insect species such as ants, beetles, cockroaches, locusts, moths and mosquitoes largely rely on olfactory cues to explore the environment and find con-specifics or food sources. A conglomerate of renowned international scientific experts is gathered to expose the insect problem on the various continents of the planet and propose an alternative to the use of toxic insecticides. Sex pheromones, specific chemical signals necessary for reproduction, and pheromone detection in insects are described with full details of the olfactory mechanisms in the antennae and higher centers in the brain. Thus, new synthetic pheromones and/or plant odors with specific molecular target sites in the insect olfactory system are proposed for sustainable development in agricultural and entomological industries. Disrupting insect pheromone channels and plant odor detection mechanisms is solemnly envisioned as a unique way to control invasive insect pest species while preserving human and environment safety.

This book presents study findings involving the Changjiang River estuary and Jiaozhou Bay, China, etc. It takes a large catchment as a combined ecosystem to study nutrients biogeochemistry and environmental aspects of the Changjiang River. Some of the findings have sparked new research directions, including systematic studies of nutrients in the Changjiang River; sources and control mechanisms of nitrogen and phosphorus in the Changjiang River and its estuary; removal and transport of nutrients in the turbidity maximum zone and upwelling area of the Changjiang estuary; long-term changes in nutrients and ecological responses in the Changjiang River estuary and Jiaozhou Bay; and a study on nutrient structure and nutrient composition of phytoplankton, which are topics at the forefront ofinternational marine The studies address different fields, such as biogeochemistry, marine chemistry, ecology, environmental science, oceanography and biology.

The aim of this edited volume is to introduce the scientific community to paleoenvironmental studies of estuaries, to highlight the types of information that can be obtained from such studies, and to promote the use of paleoenvironmental studies in estuarine management. Readers will learn about the the application of different paleoecological approaches used in estuaries that develop our understanding of their response to natural and human influences. Particular attention is given to the essential steps required for undertaking a paleoecological study, in particular with regard to site selection, core extraction and chronological techniques, followed by the range of indicators that can be used. A series of case studies are discussed in the book to demonstrate how paleoecological studies can be used to address key questions, and to sustainably manage these important coastal environments in the future. This book will appeal to professional scientists interested in estuarine studies and/or paleoenvironmental research, as well as estuarine managers who are interested in the incorporation of paleoenvironmental research into their management programs.

This edited volume is devoted to the examination of the implications of the inevitable changes wrought by global change on the welfare and livelihoods of tens of millions of people who live in dryland regions. Global change is more than just climate change and the ramifications of changing trade patterns (geopolitical and economic aspects), the shift to the market economy, demographic factors (population growth, urbanization and re-settlement), receive attention here. Land use change specialists, policy makers and natural resource management agencies will find the book very useful. Chapters focus on examples that are drawn from a number of sources including previously unpublished studies on the impact of climate change, markets and economics on pastoralist and dryland farming households. The key focus is to provide readers with insights into the real world implications of change (including an analysis of the drivers of change) on these vulnerable groups within dryland societies. The role of humans as agents of these changes is canvassed. A regional analysis of the world's drylands is also performed including those in Australia, Argentina, India, North America, China, North Africa, Central Asia and Southern Africa.

The paddy field is a unique agro-ecosystem and provides services such as food, nutrient recycling and diverse habitats. However, chemical contamination of paddy soils has degraded the quality of this important ecosystem. This book provides an overview of our current understanding of paddy soil pollution, addressing topics such as the major types of pollutants in contaminated paddy soil ecosystems; factors affecting the fate of pollutants in paddy soil; biomonitoring approaches to assess the contaminated paddy soil; the impact of chemicals on soil microbial diversity; and climate change. It also covers arsenic and heavy metal pollution of paddy soils and their impact on rice quality. Further, new emerging contaminants such as antibiotics and antibiotics resistance genes (ARGs) in paddy soil and their impact on environmental health are also discussed. The last chapters focus on the bioremediation approaches for the management of paddy soils.

This book is a part of the Sabkha Ecosystems series which was designed to provide information on sabkha ecosystems of different regions and to add to the collective knowledge available about saline ecosystems. The comprehensive coverage assists the reader gaining a thorough understanding of sabkha geology, hydrology, geomorphology, zoology, botany, ecology and ecosystem functioning, as well as sabkha conservation, utilization and development. Volume I focused on The Arabian Peninsula and Adjacent Countries, volume II was based on describing saline ecosystems of West and Central Asia , volume III referred to Africa and Southern Europe, while volume IV focused on Cash Crop Halophyte and Biodiversity Conservation. The present volume V focuses on Americans.

The cryosphere stands for environments where water appears in a frozen form. It includes permafrost, glaciers, ice sheets, and sea ice and is currently more affected by Global Change than most other regions of the Earth. In the cryosphere, limited water availability and subzero temperatures cause extreme conditions for all kind of life which microorganisms can cope with extremely well. The cryosphere's microbiota displays an unexpectedly large genetic potential, and taxonomic as well as functional diversity which, however, we still only begin to map. Also, microbial communities influence reaction patterns of the cryosphere towards Global Change. Altered patterns of seasonal temperature fluctuations and precipitation are expected in the Arctic and will affect the microbial turnover of soil organic matter (SOM). Activation of nutrients by thawing and increased active layer thickness as well as erosion renders nutrient stocks accessible to microbial activities. Also, glacier melt and retreat stimulate microbial life in turn influencing albedo and surface temperatures. In this context, the functional resilience of microbial communities in the cryosphere is of major interest. Particularly important is the ability of microorganisms and microbial communities to respond to changes in their surroundings by intracellular regulation and population shifts within functional niches, respectively. Research on microbial life exposed to permanent freeze or seasonal freeze-thaw cycles has led to astonishing findings about microbial versatility, adaptation, and diversity. Microorganisms thrive in cold habitats and new sequencing techniques have produced large amounts of genomic, metagenomic, and metatranscriptomic data that allow insights into the fascinating microbial ecology and physiology at low and subzero temperatures. Moreover, some of the frozen ecosystems such as permafrost constitute major global carbon and nitrogen storages, but can also act as sources of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide. In this book we summarize state of the art knowledge on whether environmental changes are met by a flexible microbial community retaining its function, or if the altered conditions also render the community in a state of altered properties that affect the Earth's element cycles and climate. This book brings together research on the cryosphere's microbiota including permafrost, glaciers, and sea ice in Arctic and Antarctic regions. Different spatial scales and levels of complexity are considered, spanning from ecosystem level to pure culture studies of model microbes in the laboratory. It aims to attract a wide range of parties with interest in the effect of climate change and/or low temperatures on microbial nutrient cycling and physiology.

Vertebrates and Invertebrates of European Cities: Selected Non-Avian Fauna is the first known account of the vertebrate and invertebrate fauna of several cities in Europe and throughout the rest of the world. It excludes birds, which are described in a companion volume. The book contains eleven chapters about nine cities distributed throughout Europe. The chapters start with the history of the cities, which is followed by a description of the abiotic features such as geology, climate, air and water quality and then a brief account of the habitats. The vertebrate chapters describe the fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals that are known to occur in each city together with their status and the habitats in which they occur, for example housing, industrial areas, parks, transport routes and rivers. The invertebrate chapters contain an account of the presence, status and habitats occupied by 6 - 8 of the major invertebrate groups including butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies, crickets and grasshoppers, beetles, molluscs, spiders, mites and springtails. This volume has been written and edited to be accessible to a wide range of interests and expertise including academic biologists, urban ecologists, landscape architects, planners, urban designers, undergraduates, other students and people with a general interest in natural history (especially cities) - not only in Europe but throughout the world.

This book integrates the different prospective, scientific and practical experience of researchers as well as beneficiaries and stakeholders in the field of forest conservation in Southeast Europe. The book stresses the importance of improving the adaptability of these ecosystems to the impacts of climate change. Gathered around a common idea, the book presents the latest results in forest genetic resources conservation at national and regional level. The chapters are written by experts from: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia. The book presents the current state, legal and institutional framework for conservation and management of forest genetic resources, case studies and best practices in the application of different conservation methods and techniques (in situ and ex situ) as well as climate change aspects in this area. This book will be of particular interest to scientists and experts in the field of forestry, environmental protection and rural development, bachelor, master and doctoral students, as well as for anyone interested in the conservation issues fuelled by ethical and economic motives.

This book consolidates the information, results, experience and perspectives of different research groups working on Chilean Saltmarshes. Some aspects of these ecosystems such as their bio-geographical connectivity, flora and faunal components, the interaction between ecosystem components and especially the response of this kind of ecosystems to human and natural perturbations defines the Chilean Saltmarshes as an attractive systems for future studies, focused into test the theoretical and experimental aspects of saltmarshes and general ecology.