The scientific study of complex systems has transformed a wide range of disciplines in recent years, enabling researchers in both the natural and social sciences to model and predict phenomena as diverse as earthquakes, global warming, demographic patterns, financial crises, and the failure of materials.
Why seismologists still can't predict earthquakesAn earthquake can strike without warning and wreak horrific destruction and death, whether it's the catastrophic 2010 quake that took a devastating toll on the island nation of Haiti or a future great earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in California, which scientists know is inevitable.
The thrilling quest for subsurface life on Earth and other planetsDeep Life takes readers to uncharted regions deep beneath Earth's crust in search of life in extreme environments and reveals how astonishing new discoveries by geomicrobiologists are helping the quest to find life in the solar system.
Unraveling the mystery of the catastrophic age of extinctionsTwo hundred sixty million years ago, life on Earth suffered wave after wave of cataclysmic extinctions, with the worst wiping out nearly every species on the planet.
A global history of the climate catastrophe caused by the Tambora eruptionWhen Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years.
This concise, sophisticated introduction to planetary climates explains the global physical and chemical processes that determine climate on any planet or major planetary satellite--from Mercury to Neptune and even large moons such as Saturn's Titan.
A critical examination of James Lovelock's controversial Gaia hypothesisOne of the enduring questions about our planet is how it has remained continuously habitable over vast stretches of geological time despite the fact that its atmosphere and climate are potentially unstable.
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth, inducing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs.
The remarkable scientific story of how Earth became an oxygenated planetThe air we breathe is twenty-one percent oxygen, an amount higher than on any other known world.
As debates about the effects of fossil fuels on our climate and foreign policy intensify, the question of just how much longer we can depend on this finite source of energy becomes more and more pressing.
A gripping journey through the icy regions of our changing planetFrom the Arctic Ocean and ice sheets of Greenland, to the glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas, to the great frozen desert of Antarctica, The White Planet takes readers on a spellbinding scientific journey through the shrinking world of ice and snow to tell the story of the expeditions and discoveries that have transformed our understanding of global climate.
A concise guide to representing complex Earth systems using simple dynamic modelsMathematical Modeling of Earth's Dynamical Systems gives earth scientists the essential skills for translating chemical and physical systems into mathematical and computational models that provide enhanced insight into Earth's processes.
A must-have introduction to this fundamental driver of the climate systemThe Global Carbon Cycle is a short introduction to this essential geochemical driver of the Earth's climate system, written by one of the world's leading climate-science experts.
In The Medea Hypothesis, renowned paleontologist Peter Ward proposes a revolutionary and provocative vision of life's relationship with the Earth's biosphere--one that has frightening implications for our future, yet also offers hope.
The impact on climate from 200 years of industrial development is an everyday fact of life, but did humankind's active involvement in climate change really begin with the industrial revolution, as commonly believed?
An insider account of how researchers unraveled the mystery of the thawing ArcticIn the 1990s, researchers in the Arctic noticed that floating summer sea ice had begun receding.
ESSENTIALS OF OCEANOGRAPHY introduces you to the complexities and uncertainties involved in ocean use and the importance of oceans in nurturing and sustaining life.
A groundbreaking graphic novel-style cocktail book from world-renowned bar The Dead Rabbit in New York City The Dead Rabbit Grocery & Grog in lower Manhattan has won every cocktailaward there is to win, including being namedBest Bar in the World in 2016.
This book is volume 33 of the yearbook seriesPalaeoecology of Africa presenting the outcome of atribute conference to the internationally recognized South African researcher and palynologist Professor Louis Scott.
A revelatory, up-to-date account of everything we now know about dinosaur behavior, from a renowned global expertOur understanding of dinosaur behavior has long been hampered by the inevitable lack of evidence from animals that went extinct more than sixty-five million years ago and whose daily behaviors are rarely reflected by the fossil record.
Millions upon millions of salmon and steelhead once filled California streams, providing a plentiful and sustainable food resource for the original peoples of the region.
This book offers new research on urban policy innovations that promote the application of blue-green infrastructure in managing water resources sustainably.
This book shows that escalating climate destruction today is not the product of public indifference, but of the blocked democratic freedoms of peoples across the world to resist unwanted degrees of capitalist interference with their ecological fate or capacity to change the course of ecological disaster.
How fossilized reefs hold clues to the survival of corals in the AnthropoceneWith rising global temperatures, pollution, overfishing, ocean acidification, and other problems caused by humans, there's no question that today's coral reefs are in trouble.
A comprehensive survey of exemplary wetlands that highlights their importance for local livelihoods as well as for global biodiversity Covering 17 different regions, Wetlands of Tropical and Subtropical Asia and Africa provides detailed information on some of the world s most important wetlands and wetland types across those countries, as well as their current and potential biological resources.
This new edition of The Drinking Water Handbook is thoroughly revised and updated and includes a comprehensive discussion of "e;forever chemicals,"e; as well as the herbicide atrazine in drinking water.
