The Baltic Sea area is an old cultural landscape with a well developed international framework for monitoring, assessing and managing its marine ecosystems. It provides a good case study for other regions where such management is being set up. The chapters in this book are based on lectures given at a summer school on the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm in the summer of 2009. They cover a range of topics, spanning from detailed descriptions of political agreements that protect the marine env...

An interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere's stores of living matter, from prehistoric hunting to modern energy production.The biosphere—the Earth's thin layer of life—dates from nearly four billion years ago, when the first simple organisms appeared. Many species have exerted enormous influence on the biosphere's character and productivity, but none has transformed the Earth in so many ways and on such a scale as Homo sapien...

As a consequence of recent increased awareness of the social and political dimensions of climate, many non-specialists discover a need for information about the variety of available climate models. A Climate Modelling Primer, Fourth Edition is designed to explain the basis and mechanisms of all types of current physically-based climate models.A thoroughly revised and updated edition, this book will assist the reader in understanding the complexities and applicabilities of ...

Population ecology has matured to a sophisticated science with astonishing potential for contributing solutions to wildlife conservation and management challenges. And yet, much of the applied power of wildlife population ecology remains untapped because its broad sweep across disparate subfields has been isolated in specialized texts. In this book, L. Scott Mills covers the full spectrum of applied wildlife population ecology, including genomic tools for non-invasive genetic sampling, pre...

CONSERVATION BIOGEOGRAPHYThe Earth’s ecosystems are in the midst of an unprecedented period of change as a result of human action. Many habitats have been completely destroyed or divided into tiny fragments, others have been transformed through the introduction of new species, or the extinction of native plants and animals, while anthropogenic climate change now threatens to completely redraw the geographic map of life on this planet. The urgent need to understand ...

Biological invasions are one of the strongest drivers of global environmental change, and invasive species are now often in the public discourse. At the same time, economists have begun to take a real interest in determining how invasive species interact with economic systems, and how invaders should be controlled to optimize societal wealth. Although the work from ecologists and economists have both greatly expanded our understanding of the drivers and impacts of invasions, little integra...

The climate of the Earth is always changing. As the debate over the implications of changes in the Earth's climate has grown, the term climate change has come to refer primarily to changes we've seen over recent years and those which are predicted to be coming, mainly as a result of human behavior. This book serves as a broad, accessible guide to the science behind this often political and heated debate by providing scientific detail and evidence in language that is clear to both the non-s...

Decisively cutting through the hyperbole on both sides of the debate, distinguished NASA climatologist Claire L. Parkinson brings much-needed balance and perspective to the highly contentious issue of climate change. Offering a deeply knowledgeable overview of global conditions past and present, the author lays out a compelling argument that our understandings and models are inadequate for confident predictions of the intended and unintended consequences of various projects now under consi...

Howard T. Odum possessed one of the most innovative minds of the twentieth century. He pioneered the fields of ecological engineering, ecological economics, and environmental accounting, working throughout his life to better understand the interrelationships of energy, environment, and society and their importance to the well-being of humanity and the planet.This volume is a major modernization of Odum's classic work on the significance of power and its role in society, bringing hi...

Model development is of vital importance for understanding and management of ecological processes. Identifying the complex relationships between ecological patterns and processes is a crucial task. Ecological modelling—both qualitatively and quantitatively—plays a vital role in analysing ecological phenomena and for ecological theory. This textbook provides a unique overview of modelling approaches. Representing the state-of-the-art in modern ecology, it shows how to construct and work wit...

The environmental impacts of acid rain: on human health, on buildings and materials, on forests, freshwaters, crops and biodiversity and on global warming have been well-documented. Less is known about the extent and economic costs of these impacts. This book describes the first major implementation of an integrated scientific and economic assessment of the consequences of acid rain. It provides an extensive data review and examines how this unique approach to assessment modelling can be c...

This concise introductory text provides a complete overview of biodiversity - what it is, how it arose, its distribution, why it is important, human impact upon it, and what should be done to maintain it.Timely overview of the serious attempts made to quantify and describe biodiversity in a scientific wayActs as an easy entry point into the primary literatureProvides real-world examples of key issues, including illustrations of major tempo...