An enchanting guide for turning the art of gardening into opportunities for reflection and meditation.Contemplative Gardening makes the connection between tending to the earth and tending to our own souls, between caring for the planet and caring for one another. Pamela Dolan explores the myriad relationships between all living things that come to light when we dig in the soil. Whether you’re an experienced gardener or one just beginning, you will be fed b...

The rapidly increasing human pressure on the biosphere is pushing biodiversity into the sixth mass extinction event in the history of life on Earth. The organisms being exterminated are integral working parts of our planet's life support system, and their loss is permanent. Like climate change, this irreversible loss has potentially devastating consequences for humanity. As we come to recognise the many ways in which we depend on nature, this can pave the way for a new ethic that acknowled...

This is an integrated textbook on the endocrine system, covering the anatomy, physiology and biochemistry of the system, all presented in a clinically relevant context appropriate for the first two years of the medical student course. - One of the seven volumes in the Systems of the Body series. - Concise text covers the core anatomy, physiology and biochemistry in an integrated manner as required by system- and problem-based medical courses. - The basic science is presented in the clinica...

It has long been recognized that plants and animals profoundly affect one another’s characteristics during the course of evolution. However, the importance of coevolution as a dynamic process involving such diverse factors as chemical communication, population structure and dynamics, energetics, and the evolution, structure, and functioning of ecosystems has been widely recognized for a comparatively short time. Coevolution represents a point of view about the structure of nature that only...

Now expanded and updated: Californians’ favorite reference book to trees in our everyday lives."Anyone who is curious about trees is sure to find education and inspiration in these pages."—David Allen Sibley, author of The Sibley Guide to Trees and The Sibley Guide to BirdsFor more than ten years, A Californian’s Guide to the Trees among Us has taught Californians the what, why, and how of trees in our cities and ...

The Systems of the Body series has established itself as a highly valuable resource for medical and other health science students following today's systems-based courses. Now thoroughly revised and updated in this third edition, each volume presents the core knowledge of basic science and clinical conditions that medical students need, providing a concise, fully integrated view of each major body system that can be hard to find in more traditionally arranged textbooks or other resources. M...

The late Navjot Sodhi conceived this book as a way of bringing to the forefront of our conservation planning for the tropics the views of people who were actually working and living there. In its 31 chapters, 55 authors present their views on the conservation problems they face and how they deal with them.Effective long term conservation in the tropics requires the full participation of local people, organizations and governments. The human population of tropical countries is expec...

The collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates around fifty million years ago profoundly altered earth’s geography and regional climates. The rise of the Himalaya led to intensification of the monsoon, the birth of massive glaciers and turbulent rivers, and an efflorescence of ecosystems along the most extreme elevational gradient on Earth. When the Ice Age ended, humans became part of this mix, and today nearly one quarter of the world’s population inhabits its river basins, from Afghani...

The most extensive guide to identifying the flowering plants in California's richly diverse Sierra Nevada mountains.This photographic guide to the wildflowers of the Sierra Nevada has been over twenty-five years in the making, drawing together spectacular images by Stephen Sharnoff, the photographer of the acclaimed Lichens of North America, and informative text by botanist Joanna Clines, who has decades of field experience and is a top authority on the re...

This timely collection of 15 original essays written by expert scientists the world over addresses the relationships between human population growth, the need to increase food supplies to feed the world population, and the chances for avoiding the extinction of a major proportion of the world's plant and animal species that collectively makes our survival on Earth possible. These relationships are highly intertwined, and changes in each of them steadily decrease humankind’s chances to achi...

Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest provides a global context for what is happening in the Pacific Northwest, analyzing the remaining ancient forest and the threats to it from atmospheric changes and logging. It shows how human tampering affects an ecosystem, and how the Pacific Northwest could become a model for sustainable forestry worldwide.

The Sentinels of Tzurac is an action sci- fi story written in the spirit of George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry productions, which stimulates the imagination and brings back the emotional excitement experienced by those of all ages who followed the Star Wars and Star Trek sagas. The year is 2055. Earth’s natural resources have been ravaged and the planet is slowly dying. MERIC, the mining company owned by Samuel Jensen that employs new recruit engineer Kyron, is now mining a newly discovered...