This book focuses on recent advances in our understanding of wild edible mycorrhizal fungi, truffle and mushrooms and their cultivation. In addition to providing fresh insights into various topics, e.g. taxonomy, ecology, cultivation and environmental impact, it also demonstrates the clear but fragile link between wild edible mushrooms and human societies. Comprising 17 chapters written by 41 experts from 13 countries on four continents, it enables readers to grasp the importance of protecting this unique, invaluable, renewable resource in the context of climate change and unprecedented biodiversity loss. The book inspires professionals and encourages young researchers to enter this field to develop the sustainable use of wild edible mushrooms using modern tools and approaches. It also highlights the importance of protecting forested environments, saving species from extinction and generating a significant income for local populations, while keeping alive and renewing the link between humans and wild edible mushrooms so that in the future, the sustainable farming and use of edible mycorrhizal mushrooms will play a predominant role in the management and preservation of forested lands.

Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures critically interrogates the discursive framing of extinctions and how they relate to the systems that bring about biocultural loss. The chapters in this multidisciplinary volume examine ecological and social preservation movements from a variety of fields, including environmental studies, literary studies, political science, and philosophy. Grounded in a de-colonialist approach, the contributors advocate for discourses of renewal grounded in Indigenous, counter-hegemonic, and de-colonialist frameworks which shift the discursive focus from ruin to regeneration.

This book analyses the theoretical and methodological foundations of ecotourism and geotourism and examines the essence, content, factors, and models of ecotourism development. The authors conducted research to assess the tourist and recreational potential of ecotourism in Kazakhstan. The study analyses the current state and describes the problems of the long-term development of ecotourism. Besides, the authors also show the role of specially protected natural areas in ecotourism development, including a list of organizations that can create tourist products in the environmental direction. This book also defines the primary conditions necessary for ecotourism in protected natural and rural areas. The resulting cartographic material visualizes the geospatial potential of the regions of Kazakhstan, aiming a more targeted expenditure of financial resources allocated to tourism development. Thus, the presented book is relevant from a practical perspective to scientists and researchers and is of value to business structures and stakeholders.

In this book, an international team of leading marine mammal scientists, with a remarkably diverse set of backgrounds and areas of expertise, lead you through a synthesis of current knowledge on baleen whales. Baleen whales are the largest animals ever to have lived on this planet. They also have the lowest and most intense voices on Earth, most likely evolved to take advantage of ocean acoustic transmission conditions so as to be detectable across ocean basins. Some baleen whales can live to be 150-200 years old. They migrate many thousands of kilometers between feeding and breeding areas. They produce songs and calls that serve as behavioral foundations for establishing, maintaining and expanding their cultural identities. To conclude that we know the behavioral limits of these large brained, long-lived animals would be naive. As baleen whale scientists, we are still beginning to comprehend the enormous complexities and natural histories of these remarkable animals. Today, the fact that whales sing is known throughout much of the world. This awareness started 50 years ago with the publication and popularization of a collection of humpback song recordings that motivated research into baleen whale behavioral ethology. In this book's chapters, a reader's experiences will stretch from learning about baleen whale laryngeal anatomy associated with their different voices to learning about the vast ocean areas over which their voices can be heard and the emerging complexities of their culturally defined societies. These are accompanied by chapters on the fundamental ethological contexts of socializing, migrating, and foraging. Two common themes permeate the book. One theme highlights the phenomenal increase in scientific knowledge achieved through technological advancements. The other theme recognizes the impacts of human-made activities on ocean acoustic environments and the resultant influences on the health and survival of individual whales and their populations. Although the book is intentionally ambitious in its scope, as scientists, we fully recognize that baleen whale science is still in its infancy. Many profound revelations await discovery by cohorts of young, multi-talented explorers, some of whom are stretching their wings in this volume and some of whom are reading these scientific stories for the first time.

In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time-from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come-Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.

Globalization is not a new phenomenon, but it is posing new challenges to humans and natural ecosystems in the 21st century. From climate change to increasingly mobile human populations to the global economy, the relationship between humans and their environment is being modified in ways that will have long-term impacts on ecological health, biodiversity, ecosystem goods and services, population vulnerability, and sustainability. These changes and challenges are perhaps nowhere more evident than in island ecosystems. Buffeted by rising ocean temperatures, extreme weather events, sea-level rise, climate change, tourism, population migration, invasive species, and resource limitations, islands represent both the greatest vulnerability to globalization and also the greatest scientific opportunity to study the significance of global changes on ecosystem processes, human-environment interactions, conservation, environmental policy, and island sustainability. In this book, we study islands through the lens of Land Cover/Land Use Change (LCLUC) and the multi-scale and multi-thematic drivers of change. In addition to assessing the key processes that shape and re-shape island ecosystems and their land cover/land use changes, the book highlights measurement and assessment methods to characterize patterns and trajectories of change and models to examine the social-ecological drivers of change on islands. For instance, chapters report on the results of a meta-analysis to examine trends in published literature on islands, a satellite image time-series to track changes in urbanization, social surveys to support household analyses, field sampling to represent the state of resources and their limitations on islands, and dynamic systems models to link socio-economic data to LCLUC patterns. The authors report on a diversity of islands, conditions, and circumstances that affect LCLUC patterns and processes, often informed through perspectives rooted, for instance, in conservation, demography, ecology, economics, geography, policy, and sociology.

Our Environmental Handprints: Recover the Land, Reverse Global Warming, Reclaim the Future is the first book to fully explore your “Handprint” – how you can create sustainability in your life and in the world. Your Handprint is limited only by yourimagination. The good you do can be greater than your Footprint. It is time to put more energy into your Handprint! The smart beauty of the Handprint is that it can be self-perpetuating. Take planting a tree as an example. You put a seedling into the ground, water it, and then leave it alone. That tree will then grow itself and pull carbon dioxide from the air and create oxygen for us to breathe for as long as it lives. And, seeds from that tree create more trees. Our Environmental Handprints: Recover the Land, Reverse Global Warming, Reclaim the Future draws our attention to proven strategies across the spectrum. We make a difference with intelligent clothing and investments. We can promote environmental justice and sustainable development. We can teach environmental literacy and eat earth-friendly foods. Handprint Thinking applies to shelter (eco-remodeling and LEED buildings), motion (electric cars and living without a car), and earth-friendly energy. We create Collective Handprints whenever we set aside a park, recover a toxic waste site, revive a river, or ban plastic bags. Spending our money intentionally sets the stage for a Circular Economy. We are finding creative ways to make the Paris Climate Change Agreement work. Our Environmental Handprints: Recover the Land, Reverse Global Warming, Reclaim the Future makes the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals personal. The final chapters show how you can become a hero in your own story – while creating twelve Collective Future Handprints.

'Systemic management' describes a holistic, objective and universally applicable form of management, providing a framework for addressing environmental challenges such as global warming, emergent diseases, deforestation, overpopulation, the extinction crisis, pollution, over-fishing, and habitat destruction. Its goals are the consistently sustainable relationships between humans and ecosystems, between humans and other species, and between humans and the biosphere. This book presents a convincing argument that these goals, and the means to achieve them, can be inferred from empirical information. It describes how comparisons between humans and other species reveal patterns that can serve to guide management toward true sustainability i.e. ways that are empirically observed to work in natural systems. This objective approach has rarely been possible in conventional management because sustainability is invariably undermined by conflicting human values.
'Systemic management' is presented as a specialized process of pattern-based decision-making that avoids the inconsistency, subjectivity and error in current management practice. It clearly demonstrates how mimicking nature's empirical examples of sustainability can circumvent anthropocentric tendencies to overuse/misuse human values in management, and illustrates the science best suited for achieving sustainability through examples of research that address specific management questions.

Environmental, Ethics and the Corporation synthesizes the perspectives of corporate environmental strategy, urban planning, international environmental diplomacy and ethics in a single, wide-ranging volume. Providing a unique analysis of the growing social and environmental responsibility within the corporate sector, this book discusses corporate innovation and entrepreneurial governmental organizations. A wide range of case studies and examples are presented which include both developed and non-developing countries.

This monograph examines contemporary environmental challenges facing Nepal, this landlocked country's representativeness in the wider South Asian context is both distinct and generalizable. In large part, this is because of its extremes of physiographical structure- plains, hill ranges, mountainous massifs - and wide range of altitudinal terrains, which represent and replicate South Asian and East Asian continental conditions differing as markedly as humid tropical lowlands, sub-tropical hill ranges and temperate to sub-arctic mountainous environments. Associated forest regimes, in which deforestation and reforestation patterns have evolved in recent times, and differing densities of settlement and cleared agricultural landscapes in each of these altitudinal zones, add to the environmental diversity of Nepal. Associated fauna and exotic species are in various states of endangerment especially Bengal tigers, one horned rhinos, wild elephants, crocodile, musk deer, and peasants, to name a few- so that their forested and mountainous habitats as 'Wild Life Reserves' also deserve our attention, and are featured in this monograph's remit.

Controversy surrounding environmental issues is not a recent development in American history. Since the time of the early settlers, issues concerning the environment have plagued certain groups of Americans. In this exhaustively researched study, primary documents support different sides of various questions, such as the use of water as an energy source, deforestation, gold mining in California, and the emergence of wildlife conservation. High school and college students will not only find this book extremely comprehensive, but will also find its heated discussions exceptionally engaging. Some of the major topics covered include: BLDifferences between the way Native Americans and early settlers treated the land BLThe Land Ordinance of 1785 BLThomas Jefferson's views about the land BLThe commercial progress of New England river valleys BLAct establishing the Adirondack Forest Preserve in 1885 BLTheodore Roosevelt's thoughts on forest conservation BLThe pros and cons of hydraulic gold mining BLThe near-extinction of the North American bison BLThe Lacey Act Magoc's book will prove an essential asset for all American history students.

The Juan Fernandez Archipelago is located in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile at 33 Degrees S latitude. Robinson Crusoe Island is 667 km from the continent and approximately four million years old; Alejandro Selkirk Island is an additional 181 km west and only one million years old. The natural impacts of subsidence and erosion have shaped the landscapes of these islands, resulting in progressive changes to their subtropical vegetation. The older island has undergone more substantial changes, due to both natural causes and human impacts. After the discovery of Robinson Crusoe Island in 1574, people began cutting down forests for lumber to construct boats and homes, for firewood, and to make room for pastures. Domesticated plants and animals were introduced, some of which have since become feral or invasive, causing damage to the local vegetation. The wealth of historical records on these activities provides a detailed chronicle of how human beings use their environment for survival in a new ecosystem. This book offers an excellent case study on the impacts that people can have on the resources of an oceanic island.

Of the world's seven continents, Asia is the largest. Its physical landscapes, political units, and ethnic groups are both wide-ranging and many. Southwest, South and Middle Asia are highly populated regions which, as a whole, cover an extremely large area of varied geography. In total, this domain is unique in its plant diversity and large vegetation zones with different communities and biomes. It is rich in endemics, with specific and intraspecific diversity of fruit trees and medicinal plants, including a number of rare, high value, species. At the same time, much of the land in the region is too dry or too rugged, with many geographical extremes. Overgrazing, oil and mineral extraction, and poaching are the major threats in the area. This two-volume project focuses on the dynamic biodiversity of the region with in-depth analysis on phytosociology, plants, animals and agroecology. There are also chapters that explore new applications as well as approaches to overcome problems associated with climate change. Much of the research and analysis are presented here for the first time. We believe this work is a valuable resource for professionals and researchers working in the fields of plant diversity and vegetation, animal diversity and animal populations, and geo-diversity and sustainable land use, among others. The first volume guides our readers to West Asia and the Caucasus region, while volume two focuses on issues unique to South and Middle Asia.

Now in its second edition, Global Capitalism and Climate Change: The Need for an Alternative World System examines anthropogenic climate change in the context of global capitalism, a political economy that emphasizes profit-making, is committed to on-going economic growth, results in massive social inequality, fosters a treadmill of production and consumption, and is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Looking ahead, Hans A. Baer explores the systemic changes necessary to create a more socially just, democratic, and environmentally sustainable world system capable of moving humanity toward a safer climate. This book is recommended for readers interested in anti-systemic efforts, including eco-anarchism, eco-feminism, the de-growth perspective, Indigenous voices, and the climate justice movement.

Confronting harsh ecological realities and the multiple cascading crises facing our world today, An Inconvenient Apocalypse argues that humanity’s future will be defined not by expansion but by contraction. For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—and yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress—the dream of a future of endless bounty—are no longer tenable. The climate crisis has already progressed beyond simple or nondisruptive solutions. The end result will be apocalyptic; the only question now is how bad it will be. Jackson and Jensen examine how geographic determinism shaped our past and led to today’s social injustice, consumerist culture, and high-energy/high-technology dystopias. The solution requires addressing today’s systemic failures and confronting human nature by recognizing the limits of our ability to predict how those failures will play out over time. Though these massive challenges can feel overwhelming, Jackson and Jensen weave a secular reading of theological concepts—the prophetic, the apocalyptic, a saving remnant, and grace—to chart a collective, realistic path for humanity not only to survive our apocalypse but also to emerge on the other side with a renewed appreciation of the larger living world.

This book explores the interactions of local inhabitants and environmental systems in the Protected Natural Areas of Mexico. Its goal is to help understand how social groups contextualize ecological knowledge, how human activities contribute to modifying the environmental matrix, how cultural and economic aspects influence the use, management and conservation of their ecological environment, and how social phenomena are to be viewed against the backdrop of ecological knowledge. The book reviews the epistemological and historical bases of the socio-ecological relationship, and addresses the evolution of human-natural systems. From a methodological standpoint, it assesses the tools required for the integration of "human" and "natural" dimensions in the management of the environmental matrix. Further, in the case studies section, it reviews valuable recent experiences concerning the retro-interactions of local inhabitants with their environmental matrix. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable asset for researchers and professionals all over the world, especially those working in Latin American countries.

Social and economic systems worldwide are changing rapidly. These changes are accompanied by an increasing demand for natural resources, including land, water, minerals, energy sources, food and timber. Today's foremost challenge lies in finding the tools to address the complexity of these interrelated trends, and in implementing strategies to balance environmental and socioeconomic needs. This volume contributes to this search by presenting original research, topical case studies and emerging best practice from a range of key stakeholders to examine the interface between ape conservation and industrial agriculture. In assessing the drivers behind agricultural expansion and land investments, it sheds light on governance challenges and legal frameworks that shape land use. Intended for policy makers, industry experts, decision makers, academics, researchers and NGOs, it is designed to inform debate, practice and policy to help reconcile the goals of industrial agriculture with those of ape conservation and welfare, and social and economic development. This title is also available as Open Access via Cambridge Books Online.

Human well-being depends in many ways on maintaining the stock of natural resources which deliver the services from which human's benefit. However, these resources and flows of services are increasingly threatened by unsustainable and competing land uses. Particular threats exist to those public goods whose values are not well-represented in markets or whose deterioration will only affect future generations. As market forces alone are not sufficient, effective means for local and regional planning are needed in order to safeguard scarce natural resources, coordinate land uses and create sustainable landscape structures. This book argues that a solution to such challenges in Europe can be found by merging the landscape planning tradition with ecosystem services concepts. Landscape planning has strengths in recognition of public benefits and implementation mechanisms, while the ecosystem services approach makes the connection between the status of natural assets and human well-being more explicit. It can also provide an economic perspective, focused on individual preferences and benefits, which helps validate the acceptability of environmental planning goals. Thus linking landscape planning and ecosystem services provides a two-way benefit, creating a usable science to meet the needs of local and regional decision making. The book is structured around the Driving forces-Pressures-States-Impacts-Responses framework, providing an introduction to relevant concepts, methodologies and techniques. It presents a new, ecosystem services-informed, approach to landscape planning that constitutes both a framework and toolbox for students and practitioners to address the environmental and landscape challenges of 21st century Europe.

Why does ethics only weakly contribute to the most crucial problems of the current world? Relational Agency and Environmental Ethics: A Journey Beyond Humanism as We Know It explores how the concept of moral agency embedded in modern humanist ethics, in its reliance on environmentally harmful and scientifically implausible presuppositions, prevents ethics from efficiently supporting a sustainability transition. The modernist individualist notion of agency includes conceptual dichotomies between moral agency and human nature, mind and body, reason and emotion, and knowledge and will, yet it should be revised without dismissing responsibility, normativity, and a shared ground for critical assessment. Suvielise Nurmi proposes an agential shift resting on a relational concept of agency, combining ecofeminist and evolutionary criticisms of modernism together with various interdisciplinary discussions involving philosophy of mind, cognitive science, anthropology, social ontology, and developmental biology and psychology. This book argues that the relational shift can resolve the dilemma and bring environmental relationships to the core of ethical discourse: there is no ethics distinct from environmental ethics. Environmental responsibilities can be justified as responsibilities for one’s relationally considered agency.

This volume describes and explores the emerging discipline of conservation paleobiology, and addresses challenges faced by established and young Conservation Paleobiologist's alike. In addition, this volume includes applied research highlighting how conservation paleobiology can be used to understand ecosystem response to perturbation in near and deep time. Across 10 chapters, the book aims to (1) explore the goals of conservation paleoecology as a science, (2) highlight how conservation paleoecology can be used to understand ecosystems' responses to crises, (3) provide case studies of applications to modern ecosystems, (4) develop novel applications of paleontological approaches to neontological data, and (5) present a range of ecosystem response and recovery through environmental crises, from high-resolution impacts on organism interactions to the broadest scale of responses of the entire marine biosphere to global change. The volume will be of interest to paleoecologists, paleobiologists, and conservation biologists.

The international perspective for this book is the unprecedented level of concern over deforestation, recognized by the meeting of world leaders at the 1992 Earth Summit, in Rio do Janeiro, and culminating in the appoint ment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), under the auspices of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The wide range of issues covered by the authors in this volume reflects the breadth of the interna tional debate, from national policies and activist campaigning, through eco nomic and social objectives, to the sustainable management of forest and soil resources. Since the conservation campaigns of the 1980s, the focus of international concern has widened from tropical rain forests to all forest formations, in all regions, with increased recognition of global values and common responsibil ities. However, while forest cover in some temperate countries is increasing, irrational deforestation, at historically unprecedented levels of damage to biodiversity and to other environmental values, remains most acute in tropi cal countries, where the need to use the natural resources for sustainable development is greatest, and the capability weakest. While accepting the urgency of the situation, and the need for greater coherence of action at a global level, the 1997 report of the IPF to the UN Commission emphasized the powers and responsibilities of national governments, and the importance of National Forest Programmes, but with the fuller participation of local communities, and with enhanced access to international assistance."

Living Deep Ecology: A Bioregional Journey is an exploration of our evolving relationship with a specific bioregion. It is set in Humboldt County in northwestern California, in the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion. By focusing on a specific bioregion and reflecting on anthropogenic changes in this bioregion over three decades, Bill Devall engages the reader in asking deeper questions about the meaning we find in Nature. He addresses questions such as how do we relate the facts and theories presented by science with our feelings, our intimacy, and our sense of Place as we dwell in a specific bioregion. This book engages the reader to consider our place in Nature. Devall approaches the bioregion not from the perspective of agencies and government, but from the perspective of the landscape itself.

Global climate change requires the development of programs that consider the active restoration of degraded forests and the use of native trees in afforestation to preserve the natural environment. International commitments like the UN REDD program, the Montreal Process and the Convention on Biological Diversity call for the breeding of species rarely contemplated by large industrial companies. Low-intensity breeding is the most rational strategy for those species: simple but robust, and not dependent on continuously increasing funding, and therefore effective even with a relatively small budget. It commonly focuses on high genetic diversity rather than improving economic traits and adaptability rather than productivity. Controlled crosses with full pedigrees typical of high-intensity breeding are replaced by open pollination. This book presents state-of-the-art breeding strategies from the last two decades for several forest tree species of prime importance in the natural forests of Argentina. They are distributed in the three main forestry ecoregions of the country: the subtropical dry forest (Chaco), the subtropical rain forests (Yungas and Alto Parana rainforests) and the temperate forests of Patagonia. The book also discusses the genetic patterns of the selected species defined using genetic markers together with the analysis of the variation in quantitative traits. Further, it examines the crucial features of their reproductive biology, such as the mating system and gene flow and describes the current breeding programs. Lastly, it presents the latest developments in genetic resources and their emerging applications, concluding with some reflections and perspectives related to the conditioning imposed by climate change.

Ice humanities is a pioneering collection of essays that tackles the existential crisis posed by the planet's diminishing ice reserves. By the end of this century, we will likely be facing a world where sea ice no longer reliably forms in large areas of the Arctic Ocean, where glaciers have not just retreated but disappeared, where ice sheets collapse, and where permafrost is far from permanent. The ramifications of such change are not simply geophysical and biochemical. They are societal and cultural, and they are about value and loss. Where does this change leave our inherited ideas, knowledge and experiences of ice, snow, frost and frozen ground? How will human, animal and plant communities superbly adapted to cold and high places cope with less ice, or even none at all? The ecological services provided by ice are breath-taking, providing mobility, water and food security for hundreds of millions of people around the world, often Indigenous and vulnerable communities. The stakes could not be higher. Drawing on sources ranging from oral testimony to technical scientific expertise, this path-breaking collection sets out a highly compelling claim for the emerging field of ice humanities, convincingly demonstrating that the centrality of ice in human and non-human life is now impossible to ignore. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13, Climate action -- .