Title: A bat man in the tropics: chasing El Duende
Author: Fleming, Theodore H
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Organismal Biology | Mammalogy | Autobiography | Ecology
Publisher's Description: The euphoria of discovery is the only motivation many scientists need for studying nature and its secrets. Yet euphoria is rarely expressed in scientific publications. This book, a personal account of more than thirty years of fieldwork by one of the world's leading bat biologists, wonderfully conveys the thrill of scientific discovery. Theodore Fleming's work to document the lives and ecological importance of plant-visiting bats has taken him to the tropical forests of Panama, Costa Rica, and Australia, and to the lush Sonoran Desert of northwest Mexico and Arizona. This book tells the story of his fascinating career and recounts his many adventures in the field. Fleming weaves autobiographical reflections together with information on the natural history and ecology of bats and describes many other animals and plants he has encountered. His book details the stresses and rewards of life in scientific field camps, gives portraits of prominent biologists such as Dan Janzen and Peter Raven, and traces the development of modern tropical biology. A witness to the destruction and development of many of the forests he has visited throughout his career, Fleming makes a passionate plea for the conservation of these wild places.   [brief]
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Title: Biodiversity conservation in Costa Rica: learning the lessons in a seasonal dry forest
Author: Frankie, G. W
Published: University of California Press,  2004
Subjects: EcologyEvolutionEnvironment | Ecology | Conservation | Latin American Studies
Publisher's Description: The beautiful tropical dry forest of northwest Costa Rica, with its highly seasonal rainfall and diversely vegetated landscape, is disappearing even more rapidly than Costa Rica's better-known rain forest, primarily because it has been easier to convert to agriculture. This book, based on more than thirty years of study, offers the first comprehensive look at the ecology, biodiversity, and conservation status of this endangered and fragile region. The contributors, from Costa Rica, Britain, Mexico, and the United States, and representing the fields of ecology, environmental education, policy, and the law, examine the major plant and animal groups living in the dry forest and present the first technical evaluation of Costa Rica's conservation efforts. As they assess the status of their area of specialty in the dry forest, the contributors also look beyond this particular region to show how its plants and animals are ecologically and evolutionarily connected to other geographic areas in Costa Rica and Central America. Their chapters cover topics such as watershed and coastal management, plant phenology, pollination, insects, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles. They also consider the socioeconomic, policy, legal, and political aspects of biodiversity conservation, giving the volume a wide-ranging perspective and making a unique contribution to our knowledge of the tropical dry forest. The book concludes with an important synthesis of the contributors' recommendations on future directions, policies, and actions that will better conserve biodiversity in Costa Rica and other neotropical forests as well.   [brief]
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Title: Birds of the Salton Sea: status, biogeography, and ecology
Author: Patten, Michael A
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Organismal Biology | Ecology | Ornithology | Animals | California and the West
Publisher's Description: The Salton Sea, California's largest inland lake, supports a spectacular bird population that is among the most concentrated and most diverse in the world. Sadly, this crucial stopover along the Pacific Flyway for migratory and wintering shorebirds, landbirds, and waterfowl is dangerously close to collapse from several environmental threats. This book is the first thoroughly detailed book to describe the birds of Salton Sea, more than 450 species and subspecies in all. A major contribution to our knowledge about the birds of western North America, it will also be an important tool in the struggle to save this highly endangered area. Synthesizing data from many sources, including observations from their long-term work in the area, the authors' species accounts discuss each bird's abundance, seasonal status, movement patterns, biogeographic affinities, habitat associations, and more. This valuable reference also includes general information on the region's fascinating history and biogeography, making it an unparalleled resource for the birding community, for wildlife managers, and for conservation biologists concerned with one of the most threatened ecosystems in western North America.   [brief]
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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 forests and woodlands: a natural history
Author: Johnston, Verna R
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Science | Ecology | Biology | California and the West
Publisher's Description: From majestic Redwoods to ancient Western Bristlecone Pines, California's trees have long inspired artists, poets, naturalists - and real estate developers. Verna Johnston's splendid book, illustrated with her superb color photographs and Carla Simmons's detailed black-and-white drawings, now offers an unparalleled view of the Golden State's world-renowned forests and woodlands.In clear, vivid prose, Johnston introduces each of the state's dominant forest types. She describes the unique characteristics of the trees and the interrelationships of the plants and animals living among them, and she analyzes how fire, flood, fungi, weather, soil, and humans have affected the forest ecology. The world of forest and woodland animals comes alive in these pages - the mating games, predation patterns, communal life, and the microscopic environment of invertebrates and fungi are all here.Johnston also presents a sobering view of the environmental hazards that threaten the state's trees: acid snow, ozone, blister rust, over-logging. Noting the interconnectedness of the diverse life forms within tree regions, she suggests possible answers to the problems currently plaguing these areas. Enriched by the observations of early naturalists and Johnston's many years of fieldwork, this is a book that will be welcomed by all who care about California's treasured forests and woodlands.   [brief]
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Title: California rivers and streams: the conflict between fluvial process and land use
Author: Mount, Jeffrey F 1954-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Environmental Studies | California and the West | Ecology | Geography
Publisher's Description: California Rivers and Streams provides a clear and informative overview of the physical and biological processes that shape California's rivers and watersheds. Jeffrey Mount introduces relevant basic principles of hydrology and geomorphology and applies them to an understanding of the differences in character of the state's many rivers. He then builds on this foundation by evaluating the impact on waterways of different land use practices - logging, mining, agriculture, flood control, urbanization, and water supply development.Water may be one of California's most valuable resources, but it is far from being one we control. In spite of channels, levees, lines and dams, the state's rivers still frequently flood, with devastating results. Almost all the rivers in California are dammed or diverted; with the booming population, there will be pressure for more intervention.Mount argues that Californians know little about how their rivers work and, more importantly, how and why land-use practices impact rivers. The forceful reconfiguration and redistribution of the rivers has already brought the state to a critical crossroads. California Rivers and Streams forces us to reevaluate our use of the state's rivers and offers a foundation for participating in the heated debates about their future.   [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: Called by the wild: the autobiography of a conservationist
Author: Dasmann, Raymond Fredric 1919-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Ecology | Autobiography
Publisher's Description: A pioneer in international conservation and wildlife ecology, Raymond Dasmann published his first book, the influential text Environmental Conservation, when the term "environment" was little known and "conservation" to most people simply meant keeping or storing. This delightful memoir tells the story of an unpretentious man who helped create and shape today's environmental movement. Ranging from Dasmann's travels to ecological hotspots around the world to his development of concepts such as bioregionalism and ecotourism, this autobiography is a story of international conservation action and intrigue, a moving love story, and a gripping chronicle of an exceptional life. Dasmann takes us from his boyhood days in San Francisco in the early 1920s to his action-packed military service in Australia during World War II, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth. After returning to the United States, Dasmann received his doctorate as a conservation biologist when the field was just being developed. Dasmann left the safety of academia to work with conservation organizations around the world, including the United Nations, and has done fieldwork in Africa, Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, and California. This book is both a memoir and an account of how Dasmann's thinking developed around issues that are vitally important today. In engaging conversational language, he shares his thoughts on issues he has grappled with throughout his life, such as population growth and the question of how sustainability can be measured, understood, and regained. Called by the Wild tells the story of an inspirational risk taker who reminds us that "the earth is the only known nature reserve in the entire universe" and that we must learn to treat it as such.   [brief]
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Title: Changing fortunes: biodiversity and peasant livelihood in the Peruvian Andes
Author: Zimmerer, Karl S
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | Geography | Ecology | Latin American Studies
Publisher's Description: Two of the world's most pressing needs - biodiversity conservation and agricultural development in the Third World - are addressed in Karl S. Zimmerer's multidisciplinary investigation in geography. Zimmerer challenges current opinion by showing that the world-renowned diversity of crops grown in the Andes may not be as hopelessly endangered as is widely believed. He uses the lengthy history of small-scale farming by Indians in Peru, including contemporary practices and attitudes, to shed light on prospects for the future. During prolonged fieldwork among Peru's Quechua peasants and villagers in the mountains near Cuzco, Zimmerer found convincing evidence that much of the region's biodiversity is being skillfully conserved on a de facto basis, as has been true during centuries of tumultuous agrarian transitions.Diversity occurs unevenly, however, because of the inability of poorer Quechua farmers to plant the same variety as their well-off neighbors and because land use pressures differ in different locations. Social, political, and economic upheavals have accentuated the unevenness, and Zimmerer's geographical findings are all the more important as a result. Diversity is indeed at serious risk, but not necessarily for the same reasons that have been cited by others. The originality of this study is in its correlation of ecological conservation, ethnic expression, and economic development.   [brief]
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Title: The conquest of Ainu lands: ecology and culture in Japanese expansion, 1590-1800
Author: Walker, Brett L 1967-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: History | Japan | Ethnic Studies | Ecology
Publisher's Description: This model monograph is the first scholarly study to put the Ainu - the native people living in Ezo, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago - at the center of an exploration of Japanese expansion during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the height of the Tokugawa shogunal era. Inspired by "new Western" historians of the United States, Walker positions Ezo not as Japan's northern "frontier" but as a borderland or middle ground. By framing his study between the cultural and ecological worlds of the Ainu before and after two centuries of sustained contact with the Japanese, the author demonstrates with great clarity just how far the Ainu were incorporated into the Japanese political economy and just how much their ceremonial and material life - not to mention disease ecology, medical culture, and their physical environment - had been infiltrated by Japanese cultural artifacts, practices, and epidemiology by the early nineteenth century. Walker takes a fresh and original approach. Rather than presenting a mere juxtaposition of oppression and resistance, he offers a subtle analysis of how material and ecological changes induced by trade with Japan set in motion a reorientation of the whole northern culture and landscape. Using new and little-known material from archives as well as Ainu oral traditions and archaeology, Walker poses an exciting new set of questions and issues that have yet to be approached in so innovative and thorough a fashion.   [brief]
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Title: Contesting Earth's future: radical ecology and postmodernity
Author: Zimmerman, Michael E 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Philosophy | Social and Political Thought | Natural History | Ecology | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work - the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement - that is the subject of Contesting Earth's Future .The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches - deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism. He also situates radical ecology within the complex cultural and political terrain of the late twentieth century, showing its relation to Martin Heidegger's anti-technological thought, 1960s counterculturalism, and contemporary theories of poststructuralism and postmodernity.An early and influential ecological thinker, Zimmerman is uniquely qualified to provide a broad overview of radical environmentalism and delineate its various schools of thought. He clearly describes their defining arguments and internecine disputes, among them the charge that deep ecology is an anti-modern, proto-fascist ideology. Reflecting both the movement's promise and its dangers, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with the worldwide ecological crisis.   [brief]
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Title: Earth's insights: a survey of ecological ethics from the Mediterranean basin to the Australian outback
Author: Callicott, J. Baird
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Philosophy | Anthropology | Ethics | Ecology
Publisher's Description: The environmental crisis is global in scope, yet contemporary environmental ethics is centered predominantly in Western philosophy and religion. Earth's Insights widens the scope of environmental ethics to include the ecological teachings embedded in non-Western worldviews. J. Baird Callicott ranges broadly, exploring the sacred texts of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism, as well as the oral traditions of Polynesia, North and South America, and Australia. He also documents the attempts of various peoples to put their environmental ethics into practice. Finally, he wrestles with a question of vital importance to all people sharing the fate of this small planet: How can the world's many and diverse environmental philosophies be brought together in a complementary and consistent whole?   [brief]
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Title: Ecology of the Southern California Bight: a synthesis and interpretation
Author: Dailey, Murray D
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Science | Environmental Studies | Ecology | Biology
Publisher's Description: Here is a benchmark study of one significant stretch of the Pacific Ocean, the Southern California Bight. Extending from Point Conception to the Mexican border and out to the 200-mile limit, these waters have never before been investigated in such detail, from so many points of view, by such an eminent group of scientists. The twenty-five expert contributors summarize everything known about the physical, chemical, geological, and biological characteristics of the area in individual chapters; the volume concludes with a synthesis of the information presented. In addition, chapters are devoted to the influence of humans on the marine environment and to the various laws and governmental agencies concerned with protecting it. Because Southern California is so heavily populated and because the ocean is a major recreational area for its people, the information in this unique volume will be invaluable for the region's planners and decisionmakers as well as for all those who study the globe's marine resources and ecology.   [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: Even in Sweden: racisms, racialized spaces, and the popular geographical imagination
Author: Pred, Allan Richard 1936-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Geography | Ecology | Consumerism | Urban Studies | Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Allan Pred writes compellingly about the reawakening of racism throughout Europe at the end of the twentieth century - even in Sweden, a country widely regarded as the very model of social justice and equality. Many thousands of non-European and Muslim immigrants and refugees who took advantage of Sweden's generous immigration policies now find themselves the object of discrimination and worse. Through the cascading juxtaposition of many voices, including his own, Pred describes the intensifying cultural racism of the 1990s, the proliferation of negative ethnic stereotypes, and the spatial segregation of the non-Swedish. He quotes the newspaper Dagens Nyheter: "It is high time that Sweden reconsider its self-image as the stronghold of tolerance" (July 21, 1998), and analyzes the strategies that allow people to maintain that self-image. Perhaps the greatest strength of Even in Sweden is that Pred gives to the social consequences of global economic restructuring some very specific faces and places and a multitude of expressions of human will, both ill and good.   [brief]
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Title: Families of the forest: the Matsigenka Indians of the Peruvian Amazon
Author: Johnson, Allen W
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Anthropology | Ecology | Latin American Studies
Publisher's Description: The idea of a family level society, discussed and disputed by anthropologists for nearly half a century, assumes moving, breathing form in Families of the Forest. According to Allen Johnson's deft ethnography, the Matsigenka people of southeastern Peru cannot be understood or appreciated except as a family level society; the family level of sociocultural integration is for them a lived reality. Under ordinary circumstances, the largest social units are individual households or small extended-family hamlets. In the absence of such "tribal" features as villages, territorial defense and warfare, local or regional leaders, and public ceremonials, these people put a premium on economic self-reliance, control of aggression within intimate family settings, and freedom to believe and act in their own perceived self-interest. Johnson shows how the Matsigenka, whose home is the Amazon rainforest, are able to meet virtually all their material needs with the skills and labor available to the individual household. They try to raise their children to be independent and self-reliant, yet in control of their emotional, impulsive natures, so that they can get along in intimate, cooperative living groups. Their belief that self-centered impulsiveness is dangerous and self-control is fulfilling anchors their moral framework, which is expressed in abundant stories and myths. Although, as Johnson points out, such people are often described in negative terms as lacking in features of social and cultural complexity, he finds their small-community lifestyle efficient, rewarding, and very well adapted to their environment.   [brief]
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Title: Fish: an enthusiast's guide
Author: Moyle, Peter B
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Marine and Freshwater Sciences | Ecology | Sports | Biology
Publisher's Description: Engagingly written, with both learning and humor, Fish bridges the gap between purely pictorial books and scholarly texts, and provides a succinct summary of fish biology and conservation for students and fish enthusiasts.
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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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