Understanding biomes--the communities of nature that share a similar climate and plant and animal life--is key to a student's success in biology, geography, and environmental studies. This book provides a thorough and accessible description of the climate, plant and animal life, origins and human impacts, and history of the scientific exploration of every major biome in the world. Chapters on the "human-dominated" biomes--urban areas and agricultural regions--illustrate how these frequently ignored communities are also an important part of the global environment. More than 90 maps and photographs help the reader visualize the extent and characteristics of each biome. This book divides the world's biomes into four principal types: Terrestrial, Freshwater, Marine, and Human-dominated. Comprehensive discussions enable readers to obtain a thorough understanding of each biome, and the convenient one-volume format allows easy comparison between aspects of each region. For example, a student can compare the typical characteristics of flora and fauna of the Continental Shelf and Deep Sea biomes, or the climates of the Tropical Rainforest and the Tundra. Current references to the latest scientific research provide a convenient starting point for those interested in more intensive investigations on such issues as the human impact on the distribution of natural biomes and the loss of biodiversity in the world.

This text reports the more policy-oriented results of the Biodiversity programme of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Beijer Institute. The programme brought economists and ecologists together to consider where the problem in biodiversity loss really lies, what costs it has for society, and how it might best be addressed. The results are different from those reported in other works on the subject. Biodiversity loss matters for all ecosystems - not just the megadiversity tropical forests. And it matters because it compromises the resilience and so the productivity of those systems.

The annual cost of medical care in the U niled States is rapidly approaching a trillion dollars. Without doubt, much of the rise in costs is due to our health industry's concentration on high technology remediation and risk avoidance measures. From recent public discussions it is becoming in creasingly evident that to contain the costs and at the same time extend the benefits of health care without national bankruptcy will necessitate much greater attention to preventative medicine. The total cost of waste disposal by our health industry is well over a billion dollars. It is rising rapidly as we increasingly rely on high technol ogy remediation measures. Here, too, in the opinion of the authors of this work, it would be prudent to give much greater attention to preventative approaches. Incineration technology has largely been developed for disposing mu nicipal solid waste (MSW) and hazardous waste (HW). As a result of the multibillion dollar funding for the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), most experts believe that pollution control is the key to minimizing toxic emissions from incinerators. This view is now beginning to take hold in medical waste (MW) incineration as well. However, the authors contributing to this book have concluded that precombustion measures can be most effective in reducing the toxic products of medical waste incineration."

Ordinary citizens frequently organize around environmental issues on which little scientific evidence exists to back activists' claims. Should we then dismiss such claims as spurious? Or should we side with citizens against the polluters?

Uncertain Hazards takes neither path. In exploring the all-too-common problem of scientific uncertainty about links between pollution and public health, Sylvia Noble Tesh shows that much of the problem can be traced to the newness of the environmental movement. The inability of scientists to find data corroborating citizens' claims stems partly from the "pre-environmentalist" assumptions still influencing the environmental health sciences, Tesh says. On the other hand, the conviction of activists that industrial pollutants threaten their health results from the environmental movement's success in promoting new ideas about nature.

Tesh points to ways that environmentalist ideas have begun to affect science, thus making more likely the discovery of links between exposure to industrial pollutants and a community's health problems. Those ways include the expansion of diseases construed as environmental in cause, the study of society's most vulnerable citizens in determining safe levels of pollution, and a new focus on the effects of exposure to chemical mixtures.

This work examines the broad range of issues concerning energy and the environment. It deals with energy efficiency, fossil fuels, nuclear power, pollution problems and renewable energy. It also assesses the accuracy of established thinking which assumes that all change will be expensive.

The problem of pesticide contamination of running waters is one of concern in many different fields of human activity. A critical experimental approach is essential in trying to understand how individual stream fauna react and how integrated aquatic communities respond to these toxic chemicals, both over short periods and in the long term. This book, first published in 1987, deals with three aspects of pesticide contamination. First the origins of the pollutants are considered. Secondly, there follows a consideration of laboratory evaluation techniques, and thirdly, the final section of the book looks in detail at a selection of case studies in which the effects on streams of widely used pesticides are analysed. The account will be of value to freshwater biologists generally but especially to those directly involved in work with pesticides, freshwater fisheries and public health.