How individuals and the government are changing life in China's polluted citiesOver the past thirty years, even as China's economy has grown by leaps and bounds, the environmental quality of its urban centers has precipitously declined due to heavy industrial output and coal consumption.
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.
Brazil is the world's sixth-largest economy, and for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century was one of the fastest-growing countries in the world.
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.
Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries.
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.
Wild Profusion tells the fascinating story of biodiversity conservation in Indonesia in the decade culminating in the great fires of 1997-98--a time when the country's environment became a point of concern for social and environmental activists, scientists, and the many fishermen and farmers nationwide who suffered from degraded environments and faced accusations that they were destroying nature.
The Politics of Precaution examines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often regulated a wide range of similar risks differently.
The mysterious and remarkable ways that animals navigateWe know that animals cross miles of water, land, and sky with pinpoint precision on a daily basis.
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.
The Periplus Maris Erythraei, "e;Circumnavigation of the Red Sea,"e; is the single most important source of information for ancient Rome's maritime trade in these waters (i.
This book provides a first synthetic view of an emerging area of ecology and biogeography, linking individual- and population-level processes to geographic distributions and biodiversity patterns.
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 comprehensive introduction to tropical ecologyThis full-color illustrated textbook offers the first comprehensive introduction to all major aspects of tropical ecology.
Ancient lessons for sustainable citizenshipAn ecologically sustainable society cannot be achieved without citizens who possess the virtues and values that will foster it, and who believe that individual actions can indeed make a difference.
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.
A nonpartisan plan of action for fixing the global economy from fifteen of the world's leading economistsIn the fall of 2008, fifteen of the world's leading economists-representing the broadest spectrum of economic opinion-gathered at New Hampshire's Squam Lake.
Millions of years ago in the Cretaceous period, the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex--with its dagger-like teeth for tearing its prey to ribbons--was undoubtedly the fiercest carnivore to roam the Earth.
The major subdisciplines of ecology--population ecology, community ecology, ecosystem ecology, and evolutionary ecology--have diverged increasingly in recent decades.
What the struggle over the Indonesian rainforests can teach us about the social frictions that shape the world around usRubbing two sticks together produces heat and light while one stick alone is just a stick.
The idea of a balance of nature has been a dominant part of Western philosophy since before Aristotle, and it persists in the public imagination and even among some ecologists today.
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.
Until now there has been no single, comprehensive resource on the status of North America's most threatened birds and what people can do to help protect them.
During the 1990s, the United States underwent a dramatic transformation: investing in stocks, once the province of a privileged elite, became a mass activity involving more than half of Americans.
"e;Economists agree about many things--contrary to popular opinion--but the majority agree about culture only in the sense that they no longer give it much thought.