Nature has presented us with a gift of incalculable value: astounding diversity of plant and animal life and interwoven biological and physical systems of intricate complexity and beauty. We are faced today with an existential environmental and moral challenge: can we find common purpose in protecting and cherishing these masterpieces and in restoring a sense of shared responsibility for stewarding our endowment?Forging a Sustainable Southwest introduces readers to four co...

A landscape of great natural beauty, Utah’s red rock country is a place where the passage from deep time to the present is revealed in stunningly sculpted and colorful geological strata that span 350 million years of Earth’s history. At the heart of this dramatic landscape is the Greater San Rafael Swell—a land of both geologic and human tumult.Natural and human history come together in The Greater San Rafael Swell, which spans much of Emery County in Utah. Authors Stephen...

Far to the south of Arizona’s sprawling metropolises, a rolling savanna of grass, oak, and mesquite rises above the surrounding deserts. The Sonoita Plain is a basin of a thousand square miles bracketed by mountains, a land once the domain of cowboys that is now more and more the focus of exurban development. These southwestern grasslands are both typical of and distinct from those of the Great Plains—similarly shaped by drought, grazing, and fire, but with a different flo...

With its clear skies and low humidity, the southwestern United States is an astronomer’s paradise where observatories like Kitt Peak have redefined the art of skywatching. The region is unique in its loose federation of like-minded research outposts and in the quantity and diversity of its observatories—places captured in this unique guidebook.Douglas Isbell and Stephen Strom, both intimately involved in southwestern astronomy, have written a practical guide to the major observator...

Nearly five billion years ago, Earth and Mars were born together as planetary siblings orbiting a young, emerging Sun. Yet today, one planet is water rich and life bearing, while the other is seemingly cold, dry, and forbidding.Earth and Mars is a fusion of art and science, a blend of images and essays celebrating the successful creation of our life-sustaining planet and the beauty and mystery of Mars. Through images of terrestrial landscapes and photographs selected from ...

In late 2016, President Barack Obama designated 1.35 million acres of public lands in southeastern Utah as Bears Ears National Monument. On December 4, 2017, President Donald Trump shrank the monument by 85 percent. A land rich in human history and unsurpassed in natural beauty, Bears Ears is at the heart of a national debate over the future of public lands.Through the stories of twenty individuals, and informed by interviews with more than seventy people, Voices from Bears Ear...

Portraits of the deep sky and of local astronomical phenomena taken by the world's renowned astrophotographers—with a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson.To gaze at the stars is one thing; to capture that gaze in photographs is something else, a tantalizing scientific art that many attempt and few master. That rare mastery is on full display in this beautiful volume of space photography from thirty of the most accomplished astrophotographers in the world, both professi...

The Everything Astronomy Book, by noted SETI Institute scientist Dr. Cynthia Phillips, helps you stargaze with authority. The book not only provides clear descriptions of all the theories of the origins of the universe, it explains the facts about the planets, moons, and stars in language anyone can understand-completely free of the usual astro-jargon. In addition, common myths are debunked: Find out why the Big Dipper is not an actual constellation, and that a shooting star isn’t...

An entertaining and accessible trip to the most interesting stops in the cosmos. Accompanied by dramatic visuals, Your Ticket to the Universe is a hybrid coffee-table book and field guide.Beginning with our home planet, Your Ticket to the Universe embarks on an entertaining and accessible trip to the most interesting stops known in the cosmos. Learn about objects nearby within our Solar System (our backyard in space, so to speak) as well as wonders that are found ...

Fear of bears seems almost to be part of what it is to be human. Our species emerged out of the depths of time into a world already populated by these great carnivores. Before we mastered iron and later developed firearms, we had few defences against bears—only watchful caution and elaborate ceremonies and sacrifices to ward off fear.Where human populations grow, bears have traditionally dwindled or disappeared. But when we return to the wild, to places where bears still survive, a...

“YOU HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE” is a common refrain in the emails Walter Lewin receives daily from fans who have been enthralled by his world-famous video lectures about the wonders of physics. “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes,” wrote one such fan. When Lewin’s lectures were made available online, he became an instant YouTube celebrity, and The New York Times declared, “Walter Lewin delivers his lectures with the pana...

Recommended for viewing on a colour tablet.In Wonders of the Solar System – the book of the acclaimed BBC TV series – Professor Brian Cox will take us on a journey of discovery where alien worlds from your imagination become places we can see, feel and visit.The Wonders of the Solar System – from the giant ice fountains of Enceladus to the liquid methane seas of Titan and from storms twice the size of the Earth to the tortured moon of Io with its giant super-volcanoes – is ...