|
Showing 1 - 1 of
1 matches in All Departments
Over half of the world's population now lives in urban areas. Few
who live in cities understand that cities, too, are ecosystems, as
beholden to the laws and principles of ecology as are natural
ecosystems. Understanding Urban Ecology: An Interdisciplinary
Systems Approach introduces students at the college undergraduate
level, or those in advanced-standing college credit high school
courses, to cities as ecosystems. For graduate students it provides
an overview and rich literature base. Urban planners, educators,
and decision makers can use this book to help in designing a more
sustainable or "green" future. The authors use a systems approach
to explore the complexity and interactions of different components
of a city's ecology with an emphasis on the energy and materials
required to maintain such concentrated centers of human activity
and consumption. The book is written by seventeen specialized
contributors and includes ten accompanying detailed field exercises
to promote hands-on experience, observation, and quantification of
urban ecosystem structure and function.The chapters describe one by
one the different subsystems of the urban environment, their
individual components and functions, and the interactions among
them that create the social-ecological environments in which we
live. The book's emphasis on social-ecological metabolism provides
students with the knowledge and methods needed to evaluate proposed
policies for urban sustainability in terms of ecosystem capacity,
potential positive and negative feedbacks, the laws of
thermo-dynamics, and socio-cultural perception and adaptability.
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.