Seasonality has effects on a wide range of human functions and activities, and is important in the understanding of human environment relationships. In this volume, distinguished contributors, including human biologists, anthropologists, physiologists and nutritionists consider many of the different ways in which seasonality influences human biology and behaviour. Topics addressed include the influence of seasonality on hominid evolution, seasonal climatic effects on human physiology, fertility and physical growth, seasonality in morbidity, mortality and nutritional state, and seasonal factors in food production, modernisation and work organisation in Third World economics. This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in human biology, anthropology and nutrition.

This volume looks at the relationship between specific aspects of Third World cities and human health. Rapid and extensive urbanization of the less developed nations is perhaps the most dramatic demographic phenomenon of our times, but its impact on human biology is not well understood. Here, a cross-section of work is presented on this subject allowing human biologists, urban planners, public health workers and other specialists to assess our knowledge and the current approaches available to increase it. Contributions fall into two groups: studies of urban ecology including the social, economic and physical domains, and studies of biological responses to the urban environment. Health is not merely the absence of specific diseases, but is construed more broadly to include a wide range of biological parameters that are correlated with various states of sub-optimal health. These include patterns of child growth and development, frequencies of specific diseases, nutritional status, immunological characteristics and physiological parameters. This important volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and academics, including human biologists, anthropologists, healthcare professionals, human geographers, urban and regional planners, and economists.

A quiet French country district is the site of a nuclear waste-processing plant. Francoise Zonabend describes the ways in which those working in the plant, and living nearby, come to terms with the risks in their daily lives. She provides a superb sociology of the nuclear work-place, with its divisions and hierarchies, and explains the often unexpected responses of the workers to the fear of radiation and contamination. The work is described euphemistically in terms of women's tasks - cleaning, cooking, preparing a soup - but the male workers subvert this language to create a more satisfying self-image. They divide workers into the cautious ('rentiers') and the bold ('kamikazes') who relish danger. By analysing work practices and the language of the work-place, the author shows how workers and locals can recognise the possibility of nuclear catastrophe while, at the same time, denying that it could ever happen to them. This is a major contribution to the anthropology of modern life.

There are more than one-thousand species of threatened birds in the world, while many others are valued for sport and some are serious pests. All these bird populations require management of one kind or another. This volume reviews our current understanding of avian population dynamics and explores ways in which population studies can contribute to effective conservation and management. The earlier chapters review general questions such as estimation of demographic parameters, the role of mathematical modelling, and the special problems of island populations and seabird populations. The specific chapters are devoted to great tits, snow geese, white storks, puffins, flamingos, grey partridge, red grouse, common terns, herring gulls, lesser black-backed gulls, ducks, Florida scrub jays, and northern spotted owls. The emphasis throughout is on how bird populations are regulated under various constraints and conditions and on what changes we might expect under varying environmental regimes.

How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design, visual quality--aesthetics--is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. Efforts to understand environmental aesthetics have been undertaken by investigators from such diverse fields as landscape architecture, environmental psychology, geography, philosophy, architecture, and city planning. As a result the relevant information is scattered and not readily available to professionals and policy makers. The book brings together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in different disciplines. It explores theory and data on preferences in the visual environment, and also addresses the practical application of aesthetic criteria in design, planning and public policy. Promising directions for future research are identified.

This important new volume in the Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution examines the mechanism and action of natural selection in evolution. Williams offers his own synthesis of modern evolutionary theory - including discussions of the gene as the unit of selection, clade selection and macroevolution, diversity within and among populations, stasis, and other timely and provocative issues central to the study of evolution. Williams' preeminent position in the field ensures immediate and widespread interest in the book among evolutionary biologists, genericists, and their graduate students.

On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in then Soviet Ukraine. More than 3.5 million people in Ukraine alone, not to mention many citizens of surrounding countries, are still suffering the effects. "Life Exposed" is the first book to comprehensively examine the vexed political, scientific, and social circumstances that followed the disaster. Tracing the story from an initial lack of disclosure to post-Soviet democratizing attempts to compensate sufferers, Adriana Petryna uses anthropological tools to take us into a world whose social realities are far more immediate and stark than those described by policymakers and scientists. She asks: What happens to politics when state officials fail to inform their fellow citizens of real threats to life? What are the moral and political consequences of remedies available in the wake of technological disasters?

Through extensive research in state institutions, clinics, laboratories, and with affected families and workers of the so-called Zone, Petryna illustrates how the event and its aftermath have not only shaped the course of an independent nation but have made health a negotiated realm of entitlement. She tracks the emergence of a "biological citizenship" in which assaults on health become the coinage through which sufferers stake claims for biomedical resources, social equity, and human rights. "Life Exposed" provides an anthropological framework for understanding the politics of emergent democracies, the nature of citizenship claims, and everyday forms of survival as they are interwoven with the profound changes that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"My point of departure in this book is the momentous environmental challenge we face. But today's environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control. . . . As citizens we must now mobilize our spiritual and political resources for transformative change on all three fronts."-Gus Speth How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels-they are accelerating, dramatically-and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification. In this book Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Morning and a widely respected environmentalist, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline, to the point that we are now at the edge of catastrophe. Speth contends that this situation is a severe indictment of the economic and political system we call modern capitalism. Our vital task is now to change the operating instructions for today's destructive world economy before it is too late. The book is about how to do that.

This third edition has been comprehensively updated to reflect the large changes in scientific knowledge and policy debates on climate change since the previous edition in 2009. It provides a concise but thorough overview of the science, technology, economics, policy, and politics of climate change in a single volume. It explains how scientific and policy debates work, outlines the scientific evidence for the reality and seriousness of climate change and the basic atmospheric science that supports it, and discusses policy options and the current state of the policy debate. By pulling these elements together, the book explains why the issue can be so confusing and provides guidance on practical routes forward. Anyone interested in climate change, the global environment, or how science is used in policy debates should read this book. It is the ideal textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses in environmental policy and climate change.

This collection of reviews by leading investigators examines plant reproduction within a framework of evolutionary ecology. The contributors cover sex allocation; sexual selection and inclusive fitness; paternity and maternity; the evolution, maintenance, and loss of self-incompatibility in plants; and sex dimorphism. Together these studies focus on the complexities of plant life cycles and the distinctive reproductive biologies of these organisms, while showing the similarities between non-flowering plants and the more thoroughly documented flowering species.

This magisterial survey of the historical geography of the West Indies is at bottom concerned with the causes and consequences of three complex and inter-related phenomena: the rapid and total removal of a large aboriginal population; the development of plantation agriculture and the arrival of enforced labour, in the form of many thousands of African slaves; and the environmental, ecological and cultural changes that resulted. Dr Watts shows how the initial European vision of a land of plenty has been replaced by an awareness of the geographic and ecological fragiliaty of the area, and explains how the exploitative agricultural systems of the colonial and recent West Indies have not adjusted to the demands of the environment. An enormous array of historical, biological and literary sources are marshalled in support of Dr Watts' analysis, which is likely to remain the standard work on the subject for many years to come.

Why are we caught up in a spiral of ever-increasing violence and environmental destruction while simultaneously calling ourselves rational and intelligent? Can religion, science, capitalism, psychology, politics and education help us to change our behaviour, or is our destructive behaviour in fact deeply entrenched in these very institutions? How free and democratic are we really, in South Africa and in the rest of the world? Why did Jesus say, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”? What does it mean to become like a child? In From intellect to intelligence, the author combines his wealth of experience and insight with the wisdom of many others to penetrate into the heart of the crisis of humanity and planet earth. He critically explores and questions the very foundations of Western civilization and its interaction with Africa and the rest of the world, demonstrating how ‘wisdom of the most conventional kind’ has often created nothing less than a highly dysfunctional society. A society in which many of us may be very clever, but few act with intelligence. The famous historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: “An increase in man’s spiritual potentiality is now the only change in the biosphere against the biosphere being destroyed. ”Using these words as his theme, the author points out that our spiritual potentiality has nothing to do with religion, but is ultimately our capacity to be fully and openly human: our crisis is essentially the loss of our common humanity. There is another way, and it is deceptively simple: a return to natural intelligence. This happens spontaneously when we integrate the head with the heart: when we are natural instead of normal. We can learn much from indigenous cultures, including African cultures, but only if Africa reclaims its own spiritual heritage.

Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. In "The Next Catastrophe," he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new way of thinking about disaster preparedness.

Perrow argues that rather than laying exclusive emphasis on protecting targets, we should reduce their size to minimize damage and diminish their attractiveness to terrorists. He focuses on three causes of disaster--natural, organizational, and deliberate--and shows that our best hope lies in the deconcentration of high-risk populations, corporate power, and critical infrastructures such as electric energy, computer systems, and the chemical and food industries. Perrow reveals how the threat of catastrophe is on the rise, whether from terrorism, natural disasters, or industrial accidents. Along the way, he gives us the first comprehensive history of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and examines why these agencies are so ill equipped to protect us.

"The Next Catastrophe" is a penetrating reassessment of the very real dangers we face today and what we must do to confront them. Written in a highly accessible style by a renowned systems-behavior expert, this book is essential reading for the twenty-first century. The events of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina--and the devastating human toll they wrought--were only the beginning. When the next big disaster comes, will we be ready? In a new preface to the paperback edition, Perrow examines the recent (and ongoing) catastrophes of the financial crisis, the BP oil spill, and global warming.

Discover what you can do to save the planet from plastic. Start now. All it takes is 2 minutes of your time. 'I read this book yesterday and I've done three things today and that is testament to Martin's brilliant vision and ideas. Now it's your turn!' Chris Packham 'Once, plastic was the miracle material. Now it's the monster. We all need to cut down our plastic consumption and join Martin's #2minutesolution anti-plastic movement. I'm in.' Julia Bradbury Open this book with your children, give it to your friends. Share your #2minutesolution on twitter and instagram and inspire others. Martin Dorey, anti-plastics expert, has been working to save our beaches from plastic for the past 10 years. His Beach Clean Foundation and global call to arms #2minutebeachclean has been taken up by people all over the world, and has proven that collective small actions can add up to a big difference. Together we can fix this.

Attending to the 'Cry of the Earth' requires a critical appraisal of how we conceive our relationship with the environment, and a clear vision of how to apprehend it in law and governance. Addressing questions of participation, responsibility and justice, this collective endeavour includes marginalised and critical voices, featuring contributions by leading practitioners and thinkers in Indigenous law, traditional knowledge, wild law, the rights of nature, theology, public policy and environmental humanities.Such voices play a decisive role in comprehending and responding to current global challenges. They invite us to broaden our horizon of meaning and action, modes of knowing and being in the world, and envision the path ahead with a new legal consciousness. A valuable reference for students, researchers and practitioners, this book is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.

Attending to the 'Cry of the Earth' requires a critical appraisal of how we conceive our relationship with the environment, and a clear vision of how to apprehend it in law and governance. Addressing questions of participation, responsibility and justice, this collective endeavour includes marginalised and critical voices, featuring contributions by leading practitioners and thinkers in Indigenous law, traditional knowledge, wild law, the rights of nature, theology, public policy and environmental humanities.Such voices play a decisive role in comprehending and responding to current global challenges. They invite us to broaden our horizon of meaning and action, modes of knowing and being in the world, and envision the path ahead with a new legal consciousness. A valuable reference for students, researchers and practitioners, this book is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.

New Approaches to the Archaeology of Beekeeping aims to take a holistic view of beekeeping archaeology (including honey, wax, and associated products, hive construction, and participants in this trade) in one large interconnected geographic region, the Mediterranean, central Europe, and the Atlantic Facade. Current interest in beekeeping is growing because of the precipitous decline of bees worldwide and the disastrous effect it portends for global agriculture. As a result, all aspects of beekeeping in all historical periods are coming under closer scrutiny. The volume focuses on novel approaches to historical beekeeping but also offers new applications of more established ways of treating apicultural material from the past. It is also keenly interested in helping readers navigate the challenges inherent in studying beekeeping historically. The volume brings together scholars working on ancient, medieval, early modern, and ethnographic evidence of beekeeping from a variety of perspectives. In this sense it will serve as a handbook for current researchers in this field and for those who wish to undertake research into the archaeology of beekeeping.

A riveting portrait of a rural Pennsylvania town at the center of the fracking controversy Shale gas extraction-commonly known as fracking-is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet-whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet-is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent. The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend "up to heaven and down to hell," which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates to petroleum companies. Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living with rural communities outside of Williamsport as they confronted the tension between property rights and the commonwealth. In this deeply intimate book, he reveals how the decision to lease brings financial rewards but can also cause irreparable harm to neighbors, to communal resources like air and water, and even to oneself. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell casts America's ideas about freedom and property rights in a troubling new light, revealing how your personal choices can undermine your neighbors' liberty, and how the exercise of individual rights can bring unintended environmental consequences for us all.

What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization-in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics-which have transformed the way we live. Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments. Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition-environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming-will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for assessing the science related to climate change. It provides policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of human-induced climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. This IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate is the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the observed and projected changes to the ocean and cryosphere and their associated impacts and risks, with a focus on resilience, risk management response options, and adaptation measures, considering both their potential and limitations. It brings together knowledge on physical and biogeochemical changes, the interplay with ecosystem changes, and the implications for human communities. It serves policymakers, decision makers, stakeholders, and all interested parties with unbiased, up-to-date, policy-relevant information. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The studies show how the Himalayan pastoral nomads islanders and other people folow the spirit of the natural world, in continuation of the primal vision, by delineating their belief systems.

There is a growing concern that many important ecosystems, such as coral reefs and tropical rain forests, might be at risk of sudden collapse as a result of human disturbance. At the same time, efforts to support the recovery of degraded ecosystems are increasing, through approaches such as ecological restoration and rewilding. Given the dependence of human livelihoods on the multiple benefits provided by ecosystems, there is an urgent need to understand the situations under which ecosystem collapse can occur, and how ecosystem recovery can best be supported. To help develop this understanding, this volume provides the first scientific account of the ecological mechanisms associated with the collapse of ecosystems and their subsequent recovery. After providing an overview of relevant theory, the text evaluates these ideas in the light of available empirical evidence, by profiling case studies drawn from both contemporary and prehistoric ecosystems. Implications for conservation policy and practice are then examined.

The biggest challenge of the twenty-first century is to bring the effects of public life into relation with the intractable problem of global atmospheric change. Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics explains how we came to think of the climate as something abstract and remote rather than a force that actively shapes our existence. The book argues that this separation between climate and sensibility predates the rise of modern climatology and has deep roots in the era of colonial expansion, when the American tropics were transformed into the economic supplier for Euro-American empires. The book shows how the writings of American travellers in the Caribbean registered and pushed forward this new understanding of the climate in a pivotal period in modern history, roughly between 1770 and 1860, which was fraught with debates over slavery, environmental destruction, and colonialism. Offering novel readings of authors including J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Leonora Sansay, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James McCune Smith in light of their engagements with the American tropics, this book shows that these authors drew on a climatic epistemology that fused science and sentiment in ways that citizen science is aspiring to do today. By suggesting a new genealogy of modern climate thinking, Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics thus highlights the urgency of revisiting received ideas of tropicality deeply ingrained in American culture that continue to inform current debates on climate debt and justice.

How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and try to handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This groundbreaking environmental history examines medieval relationships with the natural world from the perspective of social ecology, viewing human society as a hybrid of the cultural and the natural. Richard Hoffmann's interdisciplinary approach sheds important light on such central topics in medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, urbanization and technology, as well as key environmental themes, among them energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. Revealing the role of natural forces in events previously seen as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, the 'tragedy of the commons', agricultural clearances and agrarian economies. By introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, it brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the relationship between tourism and earthquakes through all stages of a disaster. It discusses the measures available to manage tourism after earthquakes and examines the means to mitigate the potential impacts of earthquakes on tourism. The chapters address important questions such as 'are tourists who come to earthquake regions immediately after an earthquake a benefit or a burden for recovery?' and 'should priority be given to evacuate tourists after an earthquake hits?'. The volume provides insights into the ethical, commercial and socioeconomic issues facing tourism after a major earthquake. It will be useful to students and researchers in tourism studies, tourism planning and marketing, natural hazards, and destination and disaster management.