Media are a powerful educational force that teaches about the relationship between humans and living systems while also physiologically impacting the environment. However, although long considered a tool for promoting critical thinking and cultural citizenship, media literacy does not adequately address environmental sustainability. Drawing on original research, Antonio Lopez demonstrates how common media literacy practices reinforce belief systems at the root of unsustainable behaviors. By combining emerging literacies from social media, networked activism, sustainability education, critical media literacy, and digital ecopedagogy, the author offers a solutions-oriented critique and paradigm-shifting reappraisal of media education by advocating "ecomedia literacy." This groundbreaking book builds on Lopez's previous two books, Mediacology and The Media Ecosystem, by offering a cutting-edge and radical reappraisal of conventional media literacy practices. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, this book is ideal for students and educators of media literacy, media studies, and cultural studies, and will also be vital to those advocating sustainability education, environmental studies, and social justice.

The first edition of the widely praised Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises, published in 2005, led to numerous new marine protected area proposals and a number of notable conservation successes around the world.

In this completely revised and expanded second edition, new developments in the Mediterranean, Caribbean and Pacific are described, as well as future directions for High Seas protection. New sections show how to design and manage Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) in an ever noisier ocean subject to climate change, increased shipping and hydrocarbon exploration. The process of protected area creation for cetaceans has been accelerated and more than 200 exciting new places are detailed in this edition. This book provides a route map for MPA managers, as well as countries, to meet the ambitious targets for highly protected MPA networks by 2012 and 2020.

Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises is a key conservation tool and a springboard for worldwide change in human attitudes toward the world ocean where all life originated and where the majority of life on Earth still lives.

Tree based production systems abound especially in the tropics. Despite the pervasiveness of such multipurpose trees-outside-forest resources, they have not attracted adequate attention in the development paradigms of many nation states. These multispecies production systems impact the ecosystem processes favourably. Yet, our understanding of the diversity attributes and carbon dynamics under agroforestry is not adequate. This book focuses on the role of multispecies production systems involving tree and crop species as a means for carbon sequestration and thereby reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Sixteen chapters organized into three broad sections titled: Measurement and Estimation, Agrobiodiversity and Tree Management, and Policy and Socioeconomic Aspects represent a cross section of the opportunities and challenges in current research and emerging issues in harnessing carbon sequestration potential of agroforestry systems. "

This book explores a collection of natural surfaces, their scientific characteristics and their unique engineering potential - demonstrating that engineering applications can be found in unexpected places. The surfaces covered range from botanical ones, like rice and lotus leaves, to insect surfaces, like butterfly and dragonfly wings. The variety of surfaces and numerous engineering potentials described show how biomimicry can be utilized to solve countless real-world problems.

Virus Variability and Impact on Epidemiology and Control of Diseases E. Kurstak and A. Hossain I. INTRODUCTION An important number of virus infections and their epidemic developments demonstrate that ineffec tiveness of prevention measures is often due to the mutation rate and variability of viruses (Kurstak et al., 1984, 1987). The new human immunodeficiency retroviruses and old influenza viruses are only one among several examples of virus variation that prevent, or make very difficult. the production of reliable vaccines. It could be stated that the most important factor limiting the effectiveness of vaccines against virus infections is apparently virus variation. Not much is, how ever, known about the factors influencing and responsible for the dramatically diverse patterns of virus variability. II. MUTATION RATE AND VARIABILITY OF HUMAN AND ANIMAL VIRUSES Mutation is undoubtedly the primary source of variation, and several reports in the literature suggest that extreme variability of some viruses may be a consequence of an unusually high mutation rate (Holland et al., 1982; Domingo et al., 1985; Smith and Inglis, 1987). The mutation rate of a virus is defined as the probability that during a single replication of the virus genome a particular nucleotide position is altered through substitution, deletion, insertion. or recombination. Different techniques have been utilized to measure virus mutation rates, and these have been noted in the extent of application to different viruses."

Atmospheric abudance of trace gases since the pre-industrial time has forced the earth's climate to change, threatening food security. Exchange of biogenic trace gases between the atmosphere and the biosphere is directly or indirectly influenced by the plants. This volume contains the latest findings on the correlation between the climate change and biogenic gas emission, plant response to elevated levels of carbon dioxide, temperature, ozone and UV-B in combination and alone, regulatory mechanism of methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia emission and their mitigating options. Ecologists, atmospheric scientists, plant physiologists, research scholars, teachers and post-graduate students will benefit from this book.

The novelty of the book is a strong focus on perception, perspectives and prediction by scientists with profound insight into the ecology of ecosystems or into human demands and activity. The challenge is to bridge from empirical data and the knowledge of the past to the possibilities of the performance in the future. We assume that there is scope for more cooperation between the fields of ecology and practical philosophy or other social sciences in organising ecosystems and shaping the cultural future of humankind, and that such collaboration should be accorded considerably more priority. This book deals with environmental processes seen within a framework of the nature of ecosystems and human cultures. The future of the environment, the development of ecosystems and effective nature conservation management are the essentials of this book. Human nature and culture, and in particular their interactions, are interpreted as a set of rules and as given. The aim is not only to assess the significance of human influence on species composition and biodiversity but also to weigh up the subsequent potentials for action. In this book we will analyze the problems independently of one another, even if they are interconnected. This book focuses on perspectives and prognoses for the impacts of anthropogenic activity on ecosystems and thus on species conservation. Its goal is to improve assessments of the impacts of human activity on the environment. We are aware that prognoses have very often proven to be false. It is difficult to impossible to be able to predict with precision how evolution and ecosystems will change in future under anthropogenic influence. This strengthens our resolve to attempt to retain the highest possible degree of scientific integrity and professionalism and not to shy away from expressing the uncertainty of our own ideas and prognoses. We venture prognoses in this book and we will fail. However, we hope that we will be wrong on the right side.

Global warming and human-driven impacts are changing the World's ecological zones. This book applies the principles described in Bailey's Ecosystem Geography: From Ecoregions to Sites, 2nd ed. (Springer 2009, 1st ed. 1996) to describe and characterize the major terrestrial and aquatic ecological zones of the Earth. Bailey's system for classifying these zones has been adopted by major organizations such as the U.S. Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy and this book is a significant contribution to a long tradition of classifying and studying the world's ecological regions or ecoregions. It includes two color maps that show the major ecoregions of the continents and oceans. Also included are: - 106 illustrations with 55 in full color - A new chapter on mountains is included. - There are new sections that address concerns about how eco regions are changing under the relentless influence of humans and climate change - Another new feature is the discussion of using eco regional patterns to transfer research results and select sites for detecting climate change effects on ecosystem distribution - Use of ecoregional patterns to design monitoring networks and sustainable landscapes - Fire regimes in different regional ecosystems and their management implications.

Biopesticide: Volume Two, the latest release in the Advances in Bioinoculant series, provides an updated overview on the active substances utilized in current bioinsecticides, along with information on which of them can be used for integrated pest management programs in agro-ecosystems. The book presents a comprehensive look at the development of novel solutions against new targets, also introducing new technologies that enhance the efficacy of already available active substances. Finally, readers will find insights into the advanced molecular studies on insect microbial community diversity that are opening new frontiers in the development of innovative pest management strategies. This book will be valuable to those prioritizing agro biodiversity management to address optimal productizing and enhanced food security.

During the last 10 years, there has been a revolution' in ecosystem modelling. The generality and predictive power of our models have increased in a way that was inconceivable 10 years ago. This book describes a new generation of practically useful models that predict as well as one can measure - if one measures well. And yet, they are driven by readily available driving variables and have a general structure that applies to most types of pollutants in aquatic systems. The major reason for this development is, in fact, the Chernobyl accident. Large quantities of radiocesium were released in April/May 1986 as a pulse. To follow the pulse of radiocesium through ecosystem pathways has meant that important fluxes and mechanisms, i.e., ecosystem structures, have been revealed. It is important to stress that many of these new structures and equations are valid not just for radiocesium, but for most types of contaminants, e.g. for metals, nutrients and organics. This means that the models, methods (of building and testing models) and equations described in this book for lakes and coastal areas should be of great interest also to other ecosystem modellers. This book will be of considerable interest to: students in radioecology, geosciences and biology; environmental engineers; consultants; administrators and scientists interested in the spread, biouptake and ecosystem effects of chemical pollutants in aquatic ecosystems.

It is a well-known fact that eutrophication of coastal waters causes significant changes in the species composition of the primary producers. Usually a shift from an ecosystem dominated by sea grasses or large brown algae to an ecosystem dominated by fast-growing green algae or phytoplankton is observed. While this shift has been documented in a number of research papers and books, the consequences of this shift are less well known. This book focuses on the consequences of such changes for nutrient cycling.

The aim is to investigate how different types of primary producers influence nutrient cycling in coastal marine waters, and how nutrient cycling changes qualitatively and quantitatively as a consequence of the changes in the primary producer community caused by eutrophication. The various chapters address specific ecological processes such as grazing, decomposition, burial and export of biomass from the ecosystem. The book is intended for researchers and professionals working in the field of coastal marine ecology and estuarine ecology and for advanced students in this field.

This is the past as we've never seen it before. Otherlands is an epic, exhilarating journey into deep time, showing us the Earth as it used to exist, and the worlds that were here before ours.

Award-winning young palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday immerses us in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon is far brighter than ours today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits, and the age of the mammal dawns.

Otherlands is a staggering imaginative feat: an emotional narrative that underscores the tenacity of life - yet also the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, including our own. To read it is to see the last 500 million years not as an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but as a series of worlds, simultaneously fabulous and familiar.

Landscape Research has been established as an interdisciplinary field dealing with complex environmental processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. During the course of its history, various societal, technological and philosophical stimuli have shaped Landscape Research, e.g. the declaration of Landscape Ecology in the 1930s and contemporary global technological and societal developments.

Modern landscape research presently uses mathematics, statistics and advanced simulation techniques to combine empirical observations with known theories from ecology, physics, geography, social science and so on. Knowledge is thus updated and quantified via models that are used for estimation, hypothesis testing, prediction and assessment of scenarios. Advances in the computational sciences (e.g. fast computers and vast array of software), space science (e.g. remote sensing) and biological sciences (e.g. genetics) as well as new perspectives in the social sciences play important roles. Research findings are implemented in conservation management, urban planning and global change mitigation strategies.

This book identifies emerging fields and new challenges that are discussed within the framework of the a ~driving forcesa (TM) of Landscape Development. Rather than offering a comprehensive overview of all fields of Landscape Research, the book addresses a ~hot topicsa (TM) emphasizing major contemporary trends in these fields.

People have relied on medicinal products derived from natural sources for millennia, and animals have long been an important part of that repertoire; nearly all cultures, from ancient times to the present, have used animals as a source of medicine. Ingredients derived from wild animals are not only widely used in traditional remedies, but are also increasingly valued as raw materials in the preparation of modern medicines. Regrettably, the unsustainable use of plants and animals in traditional medicine is recognized as a threat to wildlife conservation, as a result of which discussions concerning the links between traditional medicine and biodiversity are becoming increasingly imperative, particularly in view of the fact that folk medicine is the primary source of health care for 80% of the world's population. This book discusses the role of animals in traditional folk medicine and its meaning for wildlife conservation. We hope to further stimulate further discussions about the use of biodiversity and its implications for wildlife conservation strategies.

1 2 Prof. Dr. Vladimir Mikhailovitsh Kolodkin, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Ruck 1 Institute of Natural and Technogenic Disasters, Udmurt State University, Izhevsk (Russia), 2 Institute of Ecology and Environmental Chemistry, University Luneburg (Germany) During the Cold War a whole arsenal of deadly chemical weapons was allowed to build up on both sides of the ideological divide. Happily, today the problems are reversed. Expertise is now required in the field of safe and environment-friendly disposal of chemical weapons and cleaning up of contaminated sites all around the world, but not least in the ex-Soviet-led countries. The participants and speakers to the NATO-Russia advanced research workshop on the "Ecological Risks Associated with the Destruction of nd th Chemical Weapons," hosted by the University of Luneburg on 22 - 26 October, 2003, therefore, came from many different parts of the world. Of the eight countries represented at the workshop, two were ex-Eastern- Block, and six were Western countries. Yet the West was by no means overrepresented. On the contrary, the Russian expert-speaker contingent, with 33 participants, did justice to the size of their country - and to their chemical-weapons problem - and provided the majority of active participants. In all, there were 57 participants, of which 11 dispatched from the TACIS project "The development of the chemical weapons" facility at the detached plant No 4 of OAO Khimprom, Novocheboksarsk."

Arthropods are invertebrates that constitute over 90% of the animal kingdom, and their bio-ecology is closely linked with global functioning and survival. Arthropods play an important role in maintaining the health of ecosystems, provide livelihoods and nutrition to human communities, and are important indicators of environmental change. Yet the population trends of several arthropods species show them to be in decline. Arthropods constitute a dominant group with 1.2 million species influencing earth's biodiversity. Among arthropods, insects are predominant, with ca. 1 million species and having evolved some 350 million years ago. Arthropods are closely associated with living and non-living entities alike, making the ecosystem services they provide crucially important. In order to be effective, plans for the conservation of arthropods and ecosystems should include a mixture of strategies like protecting key habitats and genomic studies to formulate relevant policies for in situ and ex situ conservation. This two-volume book focuses on capturing the essentials of arthropod inventories, biology, and conservation.Further, it seeks to identify the mechanisms by which arthropod populations can be sustained in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and by means of which certain problematic species be managed without producing harmful environmental side-effects. This edited compilation includes chapters contributed by over 80 biologists on a wide range of topics embracing the diversity, distribution, utility and conservation of arthropods and select groups of insect taxa. More importantly, it describes in detail the mechanisms of sustaining arthropod ecosystems, services and populations. It addresses the contribution of modern biological tools such as molecular and genetic techniques regulating gene expression, as well as conventional, indigenous practices in arthropod conservation. The contributors reiterate the importance of documenting and understanding the biology of arthropods from a holistic perspective before addressing conservation issues at large. This book offers a valuable resource for all zoologists, entomologists, ecologists, conservation biologists, policy makers, teachers and students interested in the conservation of biological resources.

This is the only English-language publication devoted exclusively to extensive reviews and synthesis of topics on the biology of birds. The current volume includes articles on sibling competition, predation and the limitation of bird numbers, and population trends in birds of eastern North America.

Over the last two decades, the topic of forest ecosystem services has attracted the attention of researchers, land managers, and policy makers around the globe. The services rendered by forest ecosystems range from intrinsic to anthropocentric benefits that are typically grouped as provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural. The research efforts, assessments, and attempts to manage forest ecosystems for their sustained services are now widely published in scientific literature. This volume focuses on broad-scale aspects of forest ecosystem services, beyond individual stands to large landscapes. In doing so, it illustrates the conceptual and practical opportunities as well as challenges involved with planning for forest ecosystem services across landscapes, regions, and nations. The goal here is to broaden the scope of land use planning through the adoption of a landscape-scale approach. Even though this approach is complex and involves multiple ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions, the landscape perspective appears to offer the best opportunity for a sustained provision of forest ecosystem services.

This synopsis covers evidence for the effects of conservation interventions for native farmland wildlife. It is restricted to evidence captured on the website www.conservationevidence.com. It includes papers published in the journal Conservation Evidence, evidence summarized on our database and systematic reviews collated by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence. It is the thrid volume in the series Synopses of Conservation Evidence. Evidence was collected from all European countries west of Russia, but not those south of France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary and Romania. A list of interventions to conserve wildlife on farmland was developed collaboratively by a team of thirteen experts. A number of interventions that are not currently agri-environment options were added during this process, such as 'Provide nest boxes for bees (solitary or bumblebees)' and 'Implement food labelling schemes relating to biodiversity-friendly farming'. Interventions relating to the creation or management of habitats not considered commercial farmland (such as lowland heath, salt marsh and farm woodland) were removed. The list of interventions was organized into categories based on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifications of direct threats and conservation actions. Interventions that fall under the threat category 'Agriculture' are grouped by farming system, with separate sections for interventions that apply to arable or livestock farms, or across all farming types.

Researchers now recognize that above- and belowground communities are indirectly linked to one another, often by plant-mediated mechanisms. To date, however, there has been no single multi-authored edited volume on the subject. This book remedies that gap, and offers state-of-the art insights into basic and applied research on aboveground-belowground interactions and their functional consequences. Drawing on a diverse pool of global expertise, the authors present diverse approaches that span a range of scales and levels of complexity. The respective chapters provide in-depth information on the current state of research, and outline future prospects in the field of aboveground-belowground community ecology. In particular, the book's goal is to expand readers' knowledge of the evolutionary, community and ecosystem consequences of aboveground-belowground interactions, making it essential reading for all biologists, graduate students and advanced undergraduates working in this rapidly expanding field. It touches on multiple research fields including ecology, botany, zoology, entomology, microbiology and the related applied areas of biodiversity management and conservation.

This book gives a current overview of all facets of urban soils. Different urban land-use types in a number of examples worldwide are introduced. Many examples in different countries are provided in order to illustrate the situation in detail. The contaminant sources of urban soils (e.g., dust deposition, contamination along roadsides, contamination of floodplains, application of wastewater, anthropogenic deposits) are comprehensively presented. For practical application purposes a key with which to identify technogenic materials during field work is presented. Features like reductomorphic conditions in landfill soils, acidification of coal mining heaps and the impact of physical characteristics such as sealing are taken into consideration in the context of the contamination problem. The mobility of contaminants in the soils under consideration is introduced and discussed. The content of the book, however, is not limited to the description of contaminated urban soils. Different methods of assessment (classification, functional assessment, assessment focused on pathways with reference to standardized exposure scenarios) are introduced. Finally, quality standards for contaminated land in a number of countries are listed, compared and discussed. The book links up the contamination problem of urban soils with geographical aspects such as the historical development of city growth, the process of urbanization and the urban-to-rural gradients. Accordingly, the reader will be able to understand the specific problems of contaminated urban soils and will find sensible approaches to assessment.

Although ?biodiversity? is a relatively new coinage, scientists have been studying the subject it describes long before the word's first appearance in the language in the mid-1980s. In 1973, for instance, the UK Systematics Association held a symposium on ?The Changing Flora and Fauna of Britain? which concluded that not enough attention was being paid to the conservation of rarities, a conclusion also reached, said the symposium, at a meeting of the Linnaean Society some forty years earlier. By 1980, the Global 2000 Report to the President published by the US Council on Environmental Quality starkly warned of a diminution of up to one-fifth of all species by the turn of the century, and there is now a growing consensus that the world faces a ?biodiversity crisis a potentially catastrophic global loss of genetic, ecosystem, and, most obviously, species diversity. Indeed, especially since the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was promulgated in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, conserving biodiversity has become the principal focus of the global conservation movement. Indeed, the study of the origins, maintenance, and protection of diversity has become perhaps the most vibrant offshoot of ecology and conservation studies. It is increasingly taught and studied in universities?and other research institutions?around the world.

Addressing the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of this rapidly growing subject, and its ever more complex and multidisciplinary corpus of scholarly literature, Biodiversity and Conservation is a new title in the Routledge series, Critical Concepts in the Environment. Edited by Richard Ladle of Oxford University's Centre for the Environment, this new Major Work brings together in five volumes the foundational and the very best cutting-edge scholarship to provide a synoptic view of all the key issues and current debates.

The first volume in the collection (?History, Background, and Concepts?) brings together the most important scholarship covering all the major themes that have come to define the scope of the subject. For example, what is biodiversity and how is it measured? Also, what are the geographic and temporal patterns of biodiversity? And what are its values? Volumes II and III, meanwhile, collect the vital research on topics such as: population growth and development; habitat loss and fragmentation; pollution; invasive species; terrestrial, freshwater, and marine biomes; and climate change.

The scope of the materials in Volume IV (?Responses to Biodiversity Loss?) includes international legal frameworks for conservation biodiversity; protected areas and networks; conservation planning; restoration and rewilding; reintroductions and translocations; and ex-situ conservation (via, for instance, zoos, seed and gene banks); conservation education; and community conservation.

The scholarship assembled in the final volume (?Future Directions in Biodiversity Conservation?) collects the best and most influential work on themes such as paleo-ecology (or how to use the past to understand the future); the emergence of conservation biogeography; conservation outside protected areas (or ?reconciliation ecology?); and the effects of the revolution in IT. Also gathered here is the finest research on the idea of a converging agenda around sustainable development, poverty, and biodiversity, as well as the crucial work on economics and market-led conservation.

Biodiversity and Conservation is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. The collection's fresh and explicitly interdisciplinary approach provides a unique insight into the development of the subject from a predominantly science-based topic to a vibrant interdisciplinary concern, with an increasing appreciation of the social obligations of conservation. Biodiversity and Conservation is an essential reference collection and is destined to be valued by scholars and students?as well as conservation policy-makers and practitioners?as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.