Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

Travelling the circumference of the truly gigantic Pacific, Simon Winchester tells the story of the world's largest body of water and - in matters economic, political and military - the ocean of the future. The Pacific is a world of tsunamis and Magellan, of the Bounty mutiny and the Boeing Company. It is the stuff of the towering Captain Cook and his wide-ranging network of exploring voyages, Robert Louis Stevenson and Admiral Halsey.

Introducing "Wilderness Survival," your ultimate guide to thriving in the great outdoors! Packed with practical knowledge and essential skills, this comprehensive eBook is perfect for the adventurous soul seeking to navigate and conquer any environment with confidence. Dive into 25 meticulously organized chapters that cover crucial topics such as navigation, emergency communication, shelter-building, and foraging for food. Get equipped with lessons on desert, rainforest, mountain, arctic, and tropical island survival, as well as long-term strategies, decision-making, signaling for rescue, ...

Pairing in-depth journalism with historical perspectives, this book makes a compelling case for a natural solution to the growing problem of flooding. With Seek Higher Ground, environmental writer and former land-use planner Tim Palmer explores the legacy of flooding in America, taking a fresh look at the emerging climatic, economic, and ecological realities of our rivers and communities. Global warming is forecast to sharply intensify flooding, and this book urges that we reduce future damage in the most effective, efficient, and equitable ways possible.

From that first foray to the spread of early hominids who later became Homo sapiens, life has persisted, undaunted. A (Very) Short History of Life is an enlightening story of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life has always existed, and continues to exist today. It is our planet like you’ve never seen it before. Life teems through Henry Gee’s lyrical prose - colossal supercontinents drift, collide and coalesce, fashioning the face of the planet as we know it today.

Journalist Andrew Lewis chronicles the struggle of his New Jersey hometown to rebuild their ravaged homes in the face of the same environmental stresses and governmental neglect that are endangering coastal areas throughout the United States. Lewis grew up on the Bayshore, a 40-mile stretch of Delaware Bay beaches, marshland, and fishing hamlets at the southern end of New Jersey, whose working-class community is fighting to retain their place in a country that has left them behind.

In Still Waters, Curt Stager introduces us to the secret worlds hidden within lakes as he travels from the Adirondack wilderness to the wilds of Siberia, from Massachusetts to the Middle East. For him, lakes are both mirrors and windows into history, culture, and our primal connections to all life. Stager fills his narrative with strange and enchanting details about these submerged worlds - diving insects chirping underwater like crickets, African crater lakes that explode, the growing threats to Thoreau's cherished pond - while emphasizing how beautiful and precious our lakes are.

It is hard to imagine that the busy townscape of South London was once a great wood, stretching almost seven miles from Croydon to Deptford or that, scattered through the suburbs, from Dulwich to Norwood, a number of oak woodlands have survived since before the Norman Conquest. These woods were intensively managed for a thousand years, providing timber for construction, furniture and shipbuilding, and charcoal for London's blacksmiths, kilns and bakeries. Now they afford important green space, a vital habitat for small mammals, birds and insects.

Ben Law has lived as a woodsman in Prickly Nut Wood for over 20 years. His authentic, incredible sense of the land and the wildlife, and his respect for age-old traditions and how to sustain them offers a wonderful, inviting insight into the life and character of Prickly Nut Wood. Having travelled to Papua New Guinea and the Amazon, observing age-old techniques for living in, working in and preserving forests and woodland, Ben Law felt compelled to return home and apply his learning to a 400-year-old plot of woodland near where he grew up.

Politicians, ecologists, and government wildlife officials are fighting a desperate rearguard action to halt the onward reach of Asian carp, four troublesome fish now within a handful of miles from entering Lake Michigan. From aquaculture farms in Arkansas to the bayous of Louisiana; from marshlands in Indiana to labs in Minnesota; and from the Illinois River to the streets of Chicago where the last line of defense has been laid to keep Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes, Overrun takes us on a firsthand journey into the heart of a crisis.

In this refreshing collection, one of our best writers on desert places, Gary Paul Nabhan, challenges traditional notions of the desert. Beautiful, reflective, and at times humorous, Nabhan's extended essay also called "The Nature of Desert Nature" reveals the complexity of what a desert is and can be. He passionately writes about what it is like to visit a desert and what living in a desert looks like when viewed through a new frame, turning age-old notions of the desert on their heads.

An Irish Nature Year is a filled with plants, animals, birds and creepy-crawlies from all over the island of Ireland. With one short entry for every day of the year, nature columnist Jane Powers serves up five minutes worth of wonderment to enjoy on your coffee break, on your commute or to relax with at bedtime.

What would you do in a worldwide food shortage? Do you want to learn how to source organic-free food whilst enjoying time with friends and family? If you want to learn the number one most underrated survival skill, then keep listening….

Each year, more than 1,000 rhinoceroses are killed - in South Africa alone. There are fewer than 18,000 white rhinos and only 5,000 black rhinos left alive in the wild. The situation with regard to this corrupt, illegal war on wildlife is clearly critical. And what are rhinos killed for? Their horns - sold in shavings as a snake-oil 'cure' for colds or impotence. The going price is $16,000 a kilogram, but a rhino's horn is simply keratin, the same material as our fingernails, with no magical, medicinal properties.

In magisterial prose, Erling narrates his epic, record-making journey, probing the physical challenges and psychological motivations for embarking on such an epic expedition, the history of the territory’s exploration, its place in legend and art, and the thrilling adventures he experienced during the trek. It is another example of what bestselling author Robert MacFarlane has called “Kagge’s extraordinary life in wild places.”

What's the connection between a platter of jumbo shrimp at your local restaurant and murdered fishermen in Honduras, impoverished women in Ecuador, and disastrous hurricanes along America's Gulf coast? Mangroves. Many people have never heard of these salt-water forests, but for those who depend on their riches, mangroves are indispensable. In Let Them Eat Shrimp, Kennedy Warne takes listeners into the muddy battle zone that is the mangrove forest.

Like her 2011 book of a similarly-epic long trek around Lake Michigan, this grand hike on the shores of five magnificent bodies of freshwater explores the natural and human history of the Great Lakes, while raising important questions about preserving our wild places and protecting fragile ecosystems on which we all depend.

These modern dispatches from an ancient landscape tell the story of a deep-rooted attachment to place, describing a way of life that is little noticed and yet has profoundly shaped this landscape. In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through a shepherd's year, offering a unique account of rural life and a fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost.

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of Northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,000 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

The Garden Jungle is about the wildlife that lives right under our noses, in our gardens and parks, between the gaps in the pavement and in the soil beneath our feet. Wherever you are right now, the chances are that there are worms, woodlice, centipedes, flies, silverfish, wasps, beetles, mice, shrews and much, much more, quietly living within just a few paces of you.

Writing with the same mastery that has won him praise for his fiction, Richards takes us - even those unfamiliar with days spent in chilly waters - on an unforgettable journey to the famed Miramichi River. Casting new light on the mysterious and elegant world of fly fishing, it teems with lore and wisdom, humor, and most of all, passion.