Title: Burying uncertainty: risk and the case against geological disposal of nuclear waste 
Author: Shrader-Frechette, K. S. (Kristin Sharon)
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Science | Ecology | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: Shrader-Frechette looks at current U.S. government policy regarding the nation's high-level radioactive waste both scientifically and ethically.What should be done with our nation's high-level radioactive waste, which will remain hazardous for thousands of years? This is one of the most pressing problems faced by the nuclear power industry, and current U.S. government policy is to bury "radwastes" in specially designed deep repositories.K. S. Shrader-Frechette argues that this policy is profoundly misguided on both scientific and ethical grounds. Scientifically - because we cannot trust the precision of 10,000-year predictions that promise containment of the waste. Ethically - because geological disposal ignores the rights of present and future generations to equal treatment, due process, and free informed consent.Shrader-Frechette focuses her argument on the world's first proposed high-level radioactive waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Analyzing a mass of technical literature, she demonstrates the weaknesses in the professional risk-assessors' arguments that claim the site is sufficiently safe for such a plan. We should postpone the question of geological disposal for at least a century and use monitored, retrievable, above-ground storage of the waste until then. Her message regarding radwaste is clear: what you can't see can hurt you.   [brief]
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Title: California's salmon and steelhead: the struggle to restore an imperiled resource 
Author: Lufkin, Alan
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Ecology | California and the West | Marine and Freshwater Sciences
Publisher's Description: 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. But over the years, dams and irrigation diversions have reduced natural spawning habitat from an estimated 6,000 miles to fewer than 300. River pollution has also hit hard at fish populations, which within recent decades have diminished by 80 percent. One species, the San Joaquin River spring chinook, became extinct soon after World War II. Other species are nearly extinct.This volume documents the reasons for the decline; it also offers practical suggestions about how the decline might be reversed. The California salmon story is presented here in human perspective: its broad historical, economic, cultural, and political facets, as well as the biological, are all treated. No comparable work has ever been published, although some of the material has been available for half a century.In the richly varied contributions in this volume, the reader meets Indians whose history is tied to the history of the salmon and steelhead upon which they depend; commercial trollers who see their livelihood and unique lifestyle vanishing; biologists and fishery managers alarmed at the loss of river water habitable by fish and at the effects of hatcheries on native gene pools. Women who fish, conservation-minded citizens, foresters, economists, outdoor writers, engineers, politicians, city youth restoring streambeds - all are represented. Their lives - and the lives of all Californians - are affected in myriad ways by the fate of California's salmon and steelhead.   [brief]
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Title: Elephant seals: population ecology, behavior, and physiology 
Author: Le Boeuf, Burney J
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Science | Natural History | Biology | Ecology
Publisher's Description: The largest of all seals, elephant seals rank among the most impressive of marine mammals. They are renowned for their spectacular recovery from near-extinction at the end of the nineteenth century when seal hunters nearly eliminated the entire northern species. No other vertebrate has come so close to extinction and made such a complete recovery. The physiological extremes that elephant seals can tolerate are also remarkable: females fast for a month while lactating, and the largest breeding males fast for over one hundred days during the breeding seasons, at which times both sexes lose forty percent of their body weight. Elephant seals dive constantly during their long foraging migrations, spending more time under water than most whales and diving deeper and longer than any other marine mammal.This first book-length discussion of elephant seals brings together worldwide expertise from scientists who describe and debate recent research, including the history and status of various populations, their life-history tactics, and other findings obtained with the help of modern microcomputer diving instruments attached to free-ranging seals. Essential for all marine mammalogists for its information and its methodological innovations, Elephant Seals will also illuminate current debates about species extinctions and possible means of preventing them.   [brief]
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Title: The forgiving air: understanding environmental change 
Author: Somerville, Richard
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Ecology | Earth Sciences | Science
Publisher's Description: The Forgiving Air is an authoritative, up-to-date handbook on global change. Written by a scientist for nonscientists, this primer humanizes the great environmental issues of our time - the hole in the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and air pollution - and explains everything in accessible prose. A new preface takes into account developments in environmental policy that have occurred since publication. Highlighting the interrelatedness of human activity and global change, Richard Somerville stresses the importance of an educated public in a world where the role of science is increasingly critical.   [brief]
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Title: Global climate change and California: potential impacts and responses 
Author: Knox, Joseph B
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Ecology | California and the West
Publisher's Description: California's extraordinary ecological and economic diversity has brought it prosperity, pollution, and overpopulation. These factors and the state's national and international ties make California an essential test case for the impact of global climate change - temperature increases, water shortages, more ultraviolet radiation. The scientists in this forward-looking volume give their best estimates of what the future holds.Beginning with an overview by Joseph Knox, the book discusses the greenhouse effect, the latest climate modeling capabilities, the implications of climate change for water resources, agriculture, biological ecosystems, human behavior, and energy.The warning inherent in a scenario of unchecked population growth and energy use in California applies to residents of the entire planet. The sobering conclusions related here include recommendations for research that will help us all prepare for potential climate change.   [brief]
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Title: The green fuse: an ecological odyssey 
Author: Harte, John 1939-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Natural History | Ecology
Publisher's Description: A widely respected ecological scientist and activist draws on the poet's image and his own environmental research to demonstrate the many interconnections among the world's ecosystems. John Harte takes us from Alaskan salmon runs and the Florida everglades to South Pacific coral reefs and the bleak Tibetan plateau. The result is that rare book that bridges the cultures of science and art. Lyrical, vivid portraits of natural wonders and the threats to them are combined with precise scientific accounts of natural processes and their disturbances. The Green Fuse will show nonscientists the fascination of ecological detective work and renew scientists' love for the beauty of the world under their microscopes.Harte's stories illuminate, without sermonizing, the damage to natural systems brought about by technological hubris and calculated political ruthlessness. "The green fuse" symbolizes the basic unity behind natural diversity. But a fuse may also be the weak link in an overloaded system or the slow burning wick on an ecological bomb. As The Green Fuse reminds us, the energies that created human liberation from nature can also be those that lead to the human destruction of nature.   [brief]
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Title: In our own hands: a strategy for conserving California's biological diversity 
Author: Jensen, Deborah B
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Ecology | Public Policy | California and the West
Publisher's Description: "Biodiversity." As argument over environmental and conservation policy grows more heated in California and throughout the nation, the term has become a buzzword. But what does biodiversity really mean? What really threatens it? Why should we care? In Our Own Hands offers a readable, scientifically sound view of California's biological diversity and what must be done to preserve it. The book will be an invaluable resource for environmental and natural resource specialists, educators, and general readers.Local and global forces threaten California's wetlands, dunes, oak woodlands, and riparian forest habitats - all declining habitats in a rapidly urbanizing, culturally heterogeneous, and politically turbulent state. Always a bellwether, California will be a model for the rest of the United States in its scientific and political solutions to conservation problems. This book proposes the first steps toward a unified national conservation policy for the twenty-first century.   [brief]
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Title: A little corner of freedom: Russian nature protection from Stalin to Gorbachëv 
Author: Weiner, Douglas R 1951-
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Russian and Eastern European Studies | Environmental Studies | Politics | History | History and Philosophy of Science | Ecology
Publisher's Description: While researching Russia's historical efforts to protect nature, Douglas Weiner unearthed unexpected findings: a trail of documents that raised fundamental questions about the Soviet political system. These surprising documents attested to the unlikely survival of a critical-minded, scientist-led movement through the Stalin years and beyond. It appeared that, within scientific societies, alternative visions of land use, resrouce exploitation, habitat protection, and development were sustained and even publicly advocated. In sharp contrast to known Soviet practices, these scientific societies prided themselves on their traditions of free elections, foreign contacts, and a pre-revolutionary heritage.Weiner portrays nature protection activists not as do-or-die resisters to the system, nor as inoffensive do-gooders. Rather, they took advantage of an unpoliced realm of speech and activity and of the patronage by middle-level Soviet officials to struggle for a softer path to development. In the process, they defended independent social and professional identities in the face of a system that sought to impose official models of behavior, ethics, and identity for all. Written in a lively style, this absorbing story tells for the first time how organized participation in nature protection provided an arena for affirming and perpetuating self-generated social identities in the USSR and preserving a counterculture whose legacy survives today.   [brief]
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Title: Natural history of the White-Inyo Range, eastern California 
Author: Hall, Clarence A
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Ecology | Earth Sciences | California and the West | Natural History
Publisher's Description: The White-Inyo Range - rising sharply from the eastern edge of Owens Valley - is one of the most extraordinary landscapes in the world. High, dry, and amazingly diverse, it boasts an expansive alpine tundra and features the oldest living species on earth - the 4,000-year-old Bristlecone Pines. This colorful and authoritative volume assembles a wealth of information of deep interest to the hikers and scientists attracted to White-Inyo's altitude and isolation.The nearly two dozen contributors to the volume are leading experts on the flora and fauna, the geology, geomorphology, meteorology, anthropology, and archaeology of the area. The book offers descriptions of more than 650 kinds of living organisms, from the handful of fish to the abundance of reptile, amphibian, bird and plant species. (It provides descriptions of hundreds of flowering plants.) It contains an 8-color geologic map and a roadside guide that enables the visitor to make sense of the area's complex geological history. Readers will also learn about air currents that make the range a delight for sailplane pilots and create strange cloud formations. And a special chapter tells what is known of the Native Americans who moved up and down the mountain slopes in response to seasonal changes.For anyone who wishes to visit this astonishing area or to do research there, this volume will be a unique, comprehensive resource.   [brief]
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Title: Oil age Eskimos 
Author: Jorgensen, Joseph G 1934-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Anthropology | Ecology | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: In a book made especially timely by the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill in March 1989, Joseph Jorgensen analyzes the impact of Alaskan oil extraction on Eskimo society. The author investigated three communities representing three environments: Gambell (St. Lawrence Island, Bering Sea), Wainwright (North Slope, Chukchi Sea), and Unalakleet (Norton Sound). The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which facilitated oil operations, dramatically altered the economic, social, and political organization of these villages and others like them. Although they have experienced little direct economic benefit from the oil economy, they have assumed many environmental risks posed by the industry. Jorgensen provides a detailed reminder that the Native villagers still depend on the harvest of naturally-occurring resources of the land and sea - birds, eggs, fish, plants, land mammals and sea mammals. Oil Age Eskimos should be read by all those interested in Native American societies and the policies that affect those societies.   [brief]
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Title: Plant migration: the dynamics of geographic patterning in seed plant species 
Author: Sauer, Jonathan D
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Geography | Ecology | Botany
Publisher's Description: Using cases of plant migration documented by both historical and fossil evidence, Jonathan D. Sauer provides a landmark assessment of what is presently known, and not merely assumed, about the process.
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Title: Pollution in a promised land: an environmental history of Israel 
Author: Tal, Alon 1960-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: EcologyEvolutionEnvironment | Jewish Studies | Ecology | Geography | Conservation
Publisher's Description: Virtually undeveloped one hundred years ago, Israel, the promised "land of milk and honey," is in ecological disarray. In this gripping book, Alon Tal provides--for the first time ever--a history of environmentalism in Israel, interviewing hundreds of experts and activists who have made it their mission to keep the country's remarkable development sustainable amid a century of political and cultural turmoil. The modern Zionist vision began as a quest to redeem a land that bore the cumulative effects of two thousand years of foreign domination and neglect. Since then, Israel has suffered from its success. A tenfold increase in population and standard of living has polluted the air. The deserts have bloomed but groundwater has become contaminated. Urban sprawl threatens to pave over much of the country's breathtaking landscape. Yet there is hope. Tal's account considers the ecological and tactical lessons that emerge from dozens of cases of environmental mishaps, from habitat loss to river reclamation. Pollution in a Promised Land argues that the priorities and strategies of Israeli environmental advocates must address issues beyond traditional green agendas.   [brief]
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Title: Sea cliffs, beaches, and coastal valleys of San Diego County: some amazing histories and some horrifying implications 
Author: Kuhn, Gerald G
Published: University of California Press,  1984
Subjects: Geography | California and the West | Marine and Freshwater Sciences | Geology | Ecology
Publisher's Description: California's coastal zones are areas of extreme vulnerability, subject to the vicissitudes of weather and prone to erosion, landslides, and flooding. Gerald Kuhn and Francis Shepard examine and analyze these threats to coastal stability in a thought-provoking and detailed study of the coastal area of San Diego County from the nineteenth century to the present. An invaluable resource for oceanographers, geologists, meteorologists, coastal engineers, property owners, developers, and planning and regulatory agencies.   [brief]
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Title: Secure from rash assault: sustaining the Victorian environment 
Author: Winter, James H 1925-
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: History | Victorian History | Ecology | Geography | Technology and Society
Publisher's Description: Nineteenth-century Britain led the world in technological innovation and urbanization, and unprecedented population growth contributed as well to the "rash assault," to quote Wordsworth, on Victorian countrysides. Yet James Winter finds that the British environment was generally spared widespread ecological damage.Drawing from a remarkable variety of sources and disciplines, Winter focuses on human intervention as it not only destroyed but also preserved the physical environment. Industrial blight could be contained, he says, because of Britain's capacity to import resources from elsewhere, the conservative effect of the estate system, and certain intrinsic limitations of steam engines. The rash assault was further blunted by traditional agricultural practices, preservation of forests, and a growing recreation industry that favored beloved landscapes. Winter's illumination of Victorian attitudes toward the exploitation of natural resources offers a valuable preamble to ongoing discussions of human intervention in the environment.   [brief]
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Title: Shady practices: agroforestry and gender politics in the Gambia 
Author: Schroeder, Richard A
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Geography | Anthropology | Ecology | African Studies | Social Problems
Publisher's Description: Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops.This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions of power and social justice at the community level need to enter the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and development planning.   [brief]
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