Ecosystems provide services that are crucial and beneficial to the human population. The management and conservation of these services can assure the wellbeing of the local population. Climate Change and Its Impact on Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in Arid and Semi-Arid Zones is an essential reference source that studies the effects of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services in dry regions and examines various strategic local, national, and international policy developments to help overcome these impacts. Featuring research on topics such as poverty reduction, climate change, and adaption policies, this book is ideally designed for environmentalists, policymakers, government officials, academicians, researchers, and technology developers who want to improve their understanding of climate change impact, vulnerability, and sustainability, and the strategic role of adaptation and mitigation.

Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, Volume 36 focuses on 20th-century Britain and 19th- and 20th-century France. Six essays on individual geographers are complemented by a group article which describes the building of a French school of geography. From Britain, the life of Sir Peter Hall, one of the most distinguished geographers of recent times and a man widely known outside the discipline, is set alongside memoirs of Bill Mead, who made the rich geography of the Nordic countries come alive to geographers and others in the Anglophone world; Michael John Wise and Stanley Henry Beaver, who made their mark through building up the institutions where academic geography was practised and through teaching; and Anita McConnell, whose geographical training shaped her museum curation and studies of the history of science. From France, the individual biography of Andre Meynier is juxtaposed with group article on the first five professors of geography at Clermont-Ferrand. These intellectual biographies collectively show geography and geographers profoundly affected by wider historical events: the effect of war, particularly the Second World War, and the shaping of post-war society. They show the value of geographical scholarship in elucidating local circumstances and in planning national conditions, and as a basis for local, national, and international friendship.

'This book, although relatively short, is a tour de force. The book is elegantly written, offering a persuasive narrative in which the arguments and the prose flow smoothly from one theme to another. The reader is pulled along various lines of argument running parallel, but ultimately these are brought back together in a concluding synthesis. This is a superb book. I know of no other recent volume with a similar broad scope, internal cohesion, and argumentative rigour, as well as persuasive writing style. I strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in global economic transformations and the expanded role of global city regions.' - Larry S. Bourne, Canadian Studies in Population This innovative volume offers an in-depth analysis of the many ways in which new forms of capitalism in the 21st century are affecting and altering the processes of urbanization. Beginning with the recent history of capitalism and urbanization and moving into a thorough and complex discussion of the modern city, this book outlines the dynamics of what the author calls the third wave of urbanization, characterized by global capitalism s increasing turn to forms of production revolving around technology-intensive artifacts, financial services, and creative commodities such as film, music, and fashion. The author explores how this shift toward a cognitive and cultural economy has caused dramatic changes in the modern economic landscape in general and in the form and function of world cities in particular. Armed with cutting-edge research and decades of expertise, Allen J. Scott breaks new ground in identifying and explaining how the cities of the past are being reshaped into a complex system of global economic spaces marked by intense relationships of competition and cooperation. Professors and students in areas such as geography, urban planning, sociology, and economics will find much to admire in this pioneering volume, as will journalists, policy-makers, and other professionals with an interest in urban studies.

A "New York Times" best-seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen-volume translation of "Arabian Nights"), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself.