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Books > Sport & Leisure > Natural history, country life & pets > Wild animals > Aquatic creatures > Freshwater life
Water names carry specific evidence of linguistic history. The
German Book of Water Names concentrates academic insight on German
names of lakes and rivers and associated place names, and for the
first time, makes available in a single reference work the findings
of the past 60 years of linguistic geographical research. It
presents water names in Germany and water names in neighboring
countries attributable to the German language.
A three-thousand-year history of China's Yellow River and the
legacy of interactions between humans and the natural landscape "No
other scholar has produced such a systematic, comprehensive account
of the long-term changes in the river's function and structure. I
consider it to be the definitive work on the topic of the Yellow
River to date."-Peter C. Perdue, author of China Marches West: The
Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia From Neolithic times to the
present day, the Yellow River and its watershed have both shaped
and been shaped by human society. Using the Yellow River to
illustrate the long-term effects of environmentally significant
human activity, Ruth Mostern unravels the long history of the human
relationship with water and soil and the consequences, at times
disastrous, of ecological transformations that resulted from human
decisions. As Mostern follows the Yellow River through three
millennia of history, she underlines how governments consistently
ignored the dynamic interrelationships of the river's varied
ecosystems-grasslands, riparian forests, wetlands, and deserts-and
the ecological and cultural impacts of their policies. With an
interdisciplinary approach informed by archival research and GIS
(geographical information system) records, this groundbreaking
volume provides unique insight into patterns, transformations, and
devastating ruptures throughout ecological history and offers
profound conclusions about the way we continue to affect the
natural systems upon which we depend.
Since its establishment as a federally protected wilderness in
1964, the Boundary Waters has become one of our nation's most
valuable-and most frequently visited-natural treasures. When Amy
and Dave Freeman learned of toxic mining proposed within the area's
watershed, they decided to take action-by spending a year in the
wilderness, and sharing their experience through video, photos, and
blogs with an audience of hundreds of thousands of concerned
citizens. This book tells the deeper story of their adventure in
northern Minnesota: of loons whistling under a moonrise, of ice
booming as it forms and cracks, of a moose and her calf swimming
across a misty lake. With the magic-and urgent-message that has
rallied an international audience to the campaign to save the
Boundary Waters, A Year in the Wilderness is a rousing cry of
witness activism, and a stunning tribute to this singularly
beautiful region.
This book is a field guide to the commonly encountered freshwater macroinvertebrates of southern Africa. It highlights the incredible variation and beauty of freshwater macroinvertebrates, which play a critical role in freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems.
The threat to these organisms is great as their habitats are increasingly threatened, either directly by human activities such as mining and agriculture, or by fluctuating water temperatures due to climate change. Christian Fry hopes that this book will create a greater understanding and interest in these tiny creatures and that there will be better care, enthusiasm and conservation of them.
This book is enabled to help with quick identification:
- Over 900 beautiful photographs
- Notes on the diversity, distribution, life cycle and taxonomic placement of each family
- Comprehensive maps, info on habitats, size and movement for each species
- Detailed family trees to assist with taxonomic placement and identifying features
- Distinguishing features between families, providing additional insight into identification of common freshwater macroinvertebrates
This book will appeal to all fisherman, students, children and nature enthusiasts as well as academics and ecologists, to introduce and expand their appreciation of life in freshwater.
This guide describes and illustrates in full color the plants and animals that live in or near ponds, lakes, streams, and wetlands. It includes surface-dwelling creatures as well as those of open water, the bottom, and the shore and tells how various animals and plants live together in a community. As well, it provides suggestions for:
· Where and when to look
· Observing and collecting specimens
· Making exciting discoveries
Using clear text and detailed illustrations, Golden Guides from St. Martin's Press present accurate information in a handy format for the beginner to the expert. These guides focus on what your students are really going to see. They are easy to use: detailed, full-color illustrations, text, and maps are all in one place. They are easy to understand: accurate, accessible information is simplified without being misrepresented. They are authoritative, containing up-to-date information written experts and checked by specialists. And they are portable: handy and lightweight, designed to fit in a pocket and be carried anywhere.
From spring-fed headwaters to quiet, marshy creeks and from
tannin-stained northern reaches to broad southern tributaries
winding through farmland, Wisconsin is home to 84,000 miles of
streams. This guide is the ultimate companion for learning about
Wisconsin stream life. Developed by Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources scientists, with information provided by dozens of
biologists and ecologists, Field Guide to Wisconsin Streams is
accessible to anglers, teachers and students, amateur naturalists,
and experienced scientists alike. More than 1,000 images illustrate
the species in this field guide, augmented by detailed descriptions
that include look-alikes, ecological and taxonomic notes, and
distribution maps. It identifies: more than 130 common plants; all
120 fishes known to inhabit Wisconsin streams; 8 crayfishes; 50
mussels; 10 amphibians; 17 reptiles; 70 families of insects; other
commonly found invertebrates.
The Great Lakes-Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior-hold
20 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water and provide
sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans.
But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are
spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great
Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan's compulsively readable
portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our
eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of
the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them
for generations to come.
The Nile, one of the world's great rivers, has long been an object
of fascination and obsession. From Alexander the Great and Nero, to
Victorian adventurers David Livingstone, John Hanning Speke, and
Henry Morton Stanley, the river has enticed many into wild
adventures. English writer, photographer, and explorer Levison Wood
continues that tradition, and Walking the Nile is the captivating
account of his remarkable and unparalleled Nile journey. Starting
in November 2013 in a forest in Rwanda, where a modest spring
spouts a trickle of clear, cold water, Wood set forth on foot,
aiming to become the first person to walk the entire length of the
fabled river. He followed the Nile for nine months, over 4,000
miles, through six nations--Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan,
the Republic of Sudan, and Egypt--to the Mediterranean coast. Like
his predecessors, Wood camped in the wild, foraged for food, and
trudged through rainforest, swamp, savannah, and desert, enduring
life-threatening conditions at every turn. He traversed sandstorms,
flash floods, minefields, and more, becoming a local celebrity in
Uganda, where a popular rap song was written about him, and a
potential enemy of the state in South Sudan, where he found himself
caught in a civil war and detained by the secret police. As well as
recounting his triumphs, like escaping a charging hippo and staving
off wild crocodiles, Wood's gripping account recalls the loss of
Matthew Power, a journalist who died suddenly from heat exhaustion
during their trek. As Wood walks on, often joined by local guides
who help him to navigate foreign languages and customs, Walking the
Nile maps out African history and contemporary life. An inimitable
tale of survival, resilience, and sheer willpower, Walking the Nile
is an inspiring chronicle of an epic journey down this lifeline of
civilization.
The Great Lakes are home to an impressive variety of fish. The
"Guide to Great Lakes Fishes" describes sixty-two of the region's
most commonly found species, from giants like the sturgeon all the
way down to the minnows and shiners, some of the Lakes' smallest
residents.
Beautiful color illustrations accompany color photographs and
line drawings to highlight distinguishing characteristics of each
fish alongside quick facts about distribution, diet, behavior, and
conservation status. Informative essays on the natural history,
adaptations, and characteristics of Great Lakes fishes are also
included, as well as detailed diagrams of the aquatic habitats and
food chains within the Lakes. This is a must-have guide for every
angler, fishery or wildlife professional, and conservationist. The
paperback edition is printed on waterproof paper.
Gerald R. Smith is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan and Curator
Emeritus of Fishes for the University of Michigan Museum of
Zoology. He is editor of "Fishes of the Great Lakes Region, Revised
Edition."The University of Michigan Press worked in collaboration
with Michigan Sea Grant on the development of this guidebook, the
second in a series of books about the Great Lakes coast.
Follow the winding ways of the Congaree, the Broad and the Saluda
through history, and learn how three splendid and historic
waterways shaped the industries and communities of Columbia.
The third full-length collection from physician and poet Jenna Le
blends traditional form and the current moment. In Manatee Lagoon,
sonnets, ghazals, pantoums, villanelles, and a "failed georgic"
weave in contemporary subject matter, including social-media
comment threads, Pap smears, eclipse glasses, and gun violence. A
recurring motif throughout the collection, manatees become a symbol
with meanings as wide-ranging as the book itself. Le aligns the
genial but vulnerable sea cow with mermaids, neurologists, the
month of November, harmful political speech, and even a family
photo at the titular lagoon. In these poems, Le also reflects on
the experience of being the daughter of Vietnamese refugees in
today's sometimes tense and hostile America. The morning after the
2016 election, as three women of color wait for the bus, one says,
"In this new world, we must protect each other." Manatee Lagoon is
a treasury of voices, bringing together the personal and the
persona, with poems dedicated to Kate Spade, John Ashbery, and
Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini. With this book, Le establishes
herself as a talented transcriber of the human condition-and as one
of the finest writers of formal verse today.
Stretching along 156 miles of Florida's East Coast, the Indian
River Lagoon contains the St. Lucie estuary, the Mosquito Lagoon,
Banana River Lagoon, and the Indian River. It is a delicate
ecosystem of shifting barrier islands and varying salinity levels
due to its many inlets that open and close onto the ocean. The
long, ribbon-like lagoon spans both temperate and subtropical
climates, resulting in the most biologically diverse estuarine
system in the United States. Nineteen canals and five man-made
inlets have dramatically reshaped the region in the past two
centuries, intensifying its natural instability and challenging its
diversity. Indian River Lagoon traces the winding story of the
waterway, showing how humans have altered the area to fit their
needs and also how the lagoon has influenced the cultures along its
shores. Now stuck in transition between a place of labor and a
place of recreation, the lagoon has become a chief focus of public
concern. This book provides a much-needed bigger picture as debates
continue over how best to restore this natural resource.
In Immersion: The Science and Mystery of Freshwater Mussels, Abbie
Gascho Landis brings readers to a hotbed of mussel diversity, the
American Southeast, to seek mussels where they eat, procreate, and,
too often, perish. Accompanied often by her husband, a mussel
scientist, and her young children, she learned to see mussels on
the creekbed, to tell a spectaclecase from a pigtoe, and to worry
what vanishing mussels, 70 percent of North American species are
imperilled, will mean for humans and wildlife alike. In Immersion,
Landis shares this journey, travelling from perilous river surveys
to dry streambeds and into laboratories where endangered mussels
are raised one precious life at a time. Mussels have much to teach
us about the health of our watersheds if we step into the creek and
take a closer look at their lives. In the tradition of writers like
Terry Tempest Williams and Sy Montgomery, Landis gracefully
chronicles these untold stories with a veterinarian's careful eye
and the curiosity of a naturalist.In turns joyful and sobering,
Immersion is an invitation to see rivers from a mussel's
perspective, a celebration of the wild lives visible to those who
learn to search.
The Colorado River Basin's importance cannot be overstated. Its
living river system supplies water to roughly forty million people,
contains Grand Canyon National Park, Bears Ears National Monument,
and wide swaths of other public lands, and encompasses ancestral
homelands of twenty-nine Native American tribes. John Wesley
Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, explorer, scientist, and
adept federal administrator, articulated a vision for Euro-American
colonization of the "Arid Region" that has indelibly shaped the
basin-a pattern that looms large not only in western history, but
also in contemporary environmental and social policy. One hundred
and fifty years after Powell's epic 1869 Colorado River Exploring
Expedition, this volume revisits Powell's vision, examining its
historical character and its relative influence on the Colorado
River Basin's cultural and physical landscape in modern times. In
three parts, the volume unpacks Powell's ideas on water, public
lands, and Native Americans-ideas at once innovative, complex, and
contradictory. With an eye toward climate change and a host of
related challenges facing the basin, the volume turns to the
future, reflecting on how-if at all-Powell's legacy might inform
our collective vision as we navigate a new "Great Unknown."
A writer's travels along the legendary yet contested Jordan
River-exploring the long conflict over water supply Access to water
has played a pivotal role in the Israel-Palestine dispute. Israel
has diverted the River Jordan via pipes and canals to build a
successful modern state. But this has been at the expense of the
region's cohabitants. Gaza is now so water-stressed that the United
Nations has warned it could soon become uninhabitable; its
traditional water source has been ruined by years of
over-extraction and mismanagement, the effects exacerbated by years
of crippling blockade. Award-winning author and journalist James
Fergusson travels to every corner of Israel and Palestine telling
the story of the River Jordan and the fierce competition for water.
Along the way, he meets farmers, officials, soldiers, refugees,
settlers, rioting youth, religious zealots, water experts, and
engineers on both sides of the Green Line. Fergusson gives voice to
the fears and aspirations of the region's inhabitants and
highlights the centrality of water in negotiating future peace.
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