Force of Nature Pearson, Arthur Melville; Crane, Peter R
2017
eBook
Efforts to preserve wild places in the United States began with the allure of scenic grandeur: Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon. But what about the many significant natural sites too small or ...fragile to qualify as state or federal parks? George Fell was determined to save these places, too—prairie remnants, upland forests, sedge meadows and fens, ocean beaches, desert canyons, mountain creeks, bogs, caves and gorges, and the full spectrum of other habitats essential to biological diversity.
Force of Nature reveals how a failed civil servant, with few assets apart from his tenacity and vision, initiated the natural areas movement. In the boom years following World War II, as undeveloped lands were being mined, drained, or bulldozed, Fell transformed a loose band of ecologists into The Nature Conservancy, drove the passage of the influential Illinois Nature Preserves Act, and helped spark allied local and national conservation organizations in the United States and beyond.
Throughout much of human history, changes to forest ecosystems have come about through natural climatic changes occurring over long periods of time. But scientists now find changes in forest cover ...dramatically accelerated by such human activities as large-scale agriculture, the building of dams and roads, and the growth of cities with vast areas of asphalt. Changes that once took centuries now take only decades. Seeing the Forest and the Trees examines changes in land cover and land use in forested regions as major contributors to global environmental change. It investigates why some forested areas thrive even in the presence of high human densities and activity while others decline and disappear. The book brings together findings from an ongoing, large-scale, multidisciplinary research project undertaken by anthropologists, geographers, economists, sociologists, political scientists, environmental scientists, and biologists in more than twelve countries at over eighty locations. After addressing theory and methodology, including chapters on satellite remote sensing, geographic information systems, and modeling of land-cover change, the book presents case studies that compare data across sites and across temporal and spatial scales. It contributes to Human Dimensions in Global Change research and proposes new directions for this area of study.
Teniendo como punto de partida la contraposición entre dos principales definiciones de lo económico, una formal y otra material o sustantiva, y en un contexto de nuevos cercamientos sobre la ...naturaleza y la cultura, se retoman las conceptualizaciones tradicionales de la propiedad privada para confrontarlas con la tendencia contemporánea hacia una creación artificial de escasez en la producción inmaterial. Desde aquí, se propone discutir las nociones tradicionales sobre la propiedad privada y su relación con la definición de lo económico, con el objetivo de proveer elementos conceptuales que puedan contribuir a un análisis crítico de la propiedad en tanto que institución social.
In an era of climate change, deforestation and massive habitat loss, we can no longer rely on parks and protected areas as isolated 'islands of wilderness' to conserve and protect vital biodiversity. ...Increasing connections are being considered and made between protected areas and 'connectivity' thinking has started to expand to the regional and even the continental scale to match the challenges of conserving biodiversity in the face of global environmental change. This groundbreaking book is the first guide to connectivity conservation management at local, regional and continental scales. Written by leading conservation and protected area management specialists under the auspices of the World Commission on Protected Areas of IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, this guide brings together a decade and a half of practice and covers all aspects of connectivity planning and management The book establishes a context for managing connectivity conservation and identifies large scale naturally interconnected areas as critical strategic and adaptive responses to climate change. The second section presents 25 rich and varied case studies from six of the eight biogeographic realms of Earth, including the Cape Floristic Region of Africa, the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, the Australian Alps to Atherton Corridor, and the Sacred Himalayan Landscape connectivity area (featuring Mount Everest.) The remarkable 3200 kilometre long Yellowstone to Yukon corridor of Canada and the United States of America is described in detail. The third section introduces a model for managing connectivity areas, shaped by input from IUCN workshops held in 2006 and 2008 and additional research. The final chapter identifies broad guidelines that need to be considered in undertaking connectivity conservation management prior to reinforcing the importance and urgency of this work. This handbook is a must have for all professionals in protected area management, conservation, land m
The dialogic essence of Action Research (AR) poses a challenge of scope when attempting to achieve large-scale change. One way of addressing said challenge is through connectivity, an approach to the ...external validity of action research that focuses on the workability of new knowledge in other contexts. In this paper we propose bridging between different action research (AR) communities as a pathway to connectivity. We identify the conditions that facilitate connectivity in bridging spaces between different AR communities, and show that change can ripple beyond the group where AR takes place, maintaining its contextual nature. Our research method is comparative case studies based on semi-structured interviews with two AR communities: one in Europe and the other in Latin America. Keywords: action research, connectivity, validity, bridging, action research communities La naturaleza dialogica de la Investigacion Accion (IA) supone un desafio cuando se trata de lograr un cambio a gran escala. Una forma de abordar dicho desafio es a traves de la conectividad, un enfoque de la validez externa de la IA orientado a la viabilidad, en la practica, de conocimiento nuevo en otros contextos. En este documento proponemos el concepto de espacio de encuentro entre diferentes comunidades de IA como un camino hacia la conectividad. Identificamos las condiciones que facilitan la conectividad en dichos espacios de encuentro entre diferentes comunidades de IA y mostramos que el cambio puede extenderse mas alla del grupo donde tiene lugar el proceso de IA, manteniendo su naturaleza contextual. Nuestro metodo de investigacion consiste en estudios de caso comparativos basados en entrevistas semiestructuradas a dos comunidades de IA: una en Europa y la otra en America Latina. Palabras clave: investigacion accion, conectividad, validez, espacio de encuentro, comunidades de investigacion accion
Nature on the Doorstep reveals the simple pleasures of paying attention to the natural world in one's own backyard over the course of a year. In weekly letters, Angela Douglas shares the joys and ...curiosities of a decidedly ordinary patch of green in upstate New York cultivated through the art of strategic neglect—sometimes taking a hand to manage wildlife, more often letting nature go its own way. From the first flowers of spring to cardinals singing in the winter, Douglas shows us the magic of welcoming unexpected plant and animal life into one's backyard. A paean to the richness we find when we stop to look and let be, Nature on the Doorstep celebrates the role humble backyards play both in conservation efforts and in an expanded appreciation of the living world.
The Chicago metropolitan area is home to far more protected nature than most people realize. Over half a million acres of protected land known as the Chicago Wilderness are owned and managed by ...county forest preserve districts and other public and private sector partners. But there's a critical factor of the Chicago Wilderness conservation effort that makes it unique: a pioneering grassroots volunteer community, thousands strong, has worked for decades alongside agency staff to restore these nearby natural areas, learning how to manage biodiversity in an altered and ever-changing urban context. A Healthy Nature Handbook captures hard-earned ecological wisdom from this community in engaging and highly readable chapters, each including illustrated restoration sequences. Restoration leaders cover large-scale seeding approaches, native seed production, wetland and grassland bird habitat restoration, monitoring, and community building. Contributions from local artists bring the region's beauty to life with vibrant watercolors, oil paintings, and sketches. A Healthy Nature Handbook is packed with successful approaches to restoring nature and is a testament to both the Chicago region's surprising natural wealth and the stewards that are committed to its lasting health.
The conviction that Nature was God's second revelation played a crucial role in early modern Dutch culture. This book offers a fascinating account on how Dutch intellectuals contemplated, ...investigated, represented and collected natural objects, and how the notion of the 'Book of Nature' was transformed.
Newton's philosophical views are unique and uniquely difficult to categorise. In the course of a long career from the early 1670s until his death in 1727, he articulated profound responses to ...Cartesian natural philosophy and to the prevailing mechanical philosophy of his day. Newton as Philosopher presents Newton as an original and sophisticated contributor to natural philosophy, one who engaged with the principal ideas of his most important predecessor, René Descartes, and of his most influential critic, G. W. Leibniz. Unlike Descartes and Leibniz, Newton was systematic and philosophical without presenting a philosophical system, but over the course of his life, he developed a novel picture of nature, our place within it, and its relation to the creator. This rich treatment of his philosophical ideas will be of wide interest to historians of philosophy, science, and ideas.
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