High in the White Mountains near the border of California and Nevada, Bristlecone Pines (Pinus Longaeva) have lived and survived many more years than any other trees anywhere in the world. In these mountainous subalpine woodland groves, some of these trees have stood rooted into the ground for nearly 5,000 years. A span of time so long it is hard to comprehend that so many years of the earth's story has been written in their seemingly ageless wood with every season's passing.
The Oldest Living Things in the World is an epic journey through time and space. Over the past decade, artist Rachel Sussman has researched, worked with biologists, and traveled the world to photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Spanning from Antarctica to Greenland, the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback, the result is a stunning and unique visual collection of ancient organisms unlike anything that has been created in the arts or sciences before, insightfully and accessibly narrated by Sussman along the way. Her work is both timeless and timely, and spans disciplines, continents, and millennia. It is underscored by an innate environmentalism and driven by Sussman’s relentless curiosity. She begins at “year zero,” and looks back from there, photographing the past in the present. These ancient individuals live on every continent and range from Greenlandic lichens that grow only one centimeter a century, to unique desert shrubs in Africa and South America, a predatory fungus in Oregon, Caribbean brain coral, to an 80,000-year-old colony of aspen in Utah. Sussman journeyed to Antarctica to photograph 5,500-year-old moss; Australia for stromatolites, primeval organisms tied to the oxygenation of the planet and the beginnings of life on Earth; and to Tasmania to capture a 43,600-year-old self-propagating shrub that’s the last individual of its kind. Her portraits reveal the living history of our planet—and what we stand to lose in the future. These ancient survivors have weathered millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, yet climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Two of her subjects have already met with untimely deaths by human hands. Alongside the photographs, Sussman relays fascinating – and sometimes harrowing – tales of her global adventures tracking down her subjects and shares insights from the scientists who research them. The oldest living things in the world are a record and celebration of the past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future.
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.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.
"[A] gorgeously illustrated compendium."--Sunset This lavishly illustrated atlas takes readers off the beaten path and outside normal conceptions of California, revealing its myriad ecologies, topographies, and histories in exquisite maps and trail paintings. Based on decades of exploring the backcountry of the Golden State, artist-adventurer Obi Kaufmann blends science and art to illuminate the multifaceted array of living, connected systems like no book has done before. Kaufmann depicts layer after layer of the natural world, delighting in the grand scale and details alike. The effect is staggeringly beautiful: presented alongside California divvied into its fifty-eight counties, for example, we consider California made up of dancing tectonic plates, of watersheds, of wildflower gardens. Maps are enhanced by spirited illustrations of wildlife, keys that explain natural phenomena, and a clear-sighted but reverential text. Full of character and color, a bit larger than life, The California Field Atlas is the ultimate road trip companion and love letter to a place.
Interweaving lovely, meticulously drawn pictures with a story line that spans 5,000 years, Alexandra Siy invites young naturalists to explore the secrets of the world's oldest trees--secrets of the earth's climate, recorded in their tree rings, and secrets of the bristlecones' resilience, as a species that lives in the harshest of environments. Living for more than five thousand years, ancient bristlecone pines are the oldest trees on Earth. Recorded in their rings are "secrets"--scientific evidence of a changing planet. A volcano erupts in 2036 BC. In 775, a storm explodes on the sun. Lightning strikes in 1122. And during the 20th century, the temperature increases dramatically. What is the secret to the bristlecone's exceptionally long life? Alexandra Siy's lyrical text, paired with Marlo Garnsworthy's meticulously researched mixed media paintings, reveals the life cycle of the mysterious ancient bristlecone pine. "Still growing, safe and strong in its place in the sun, the bristlecone's secrets are waiting to be discovered by anyone who can read its rings."
In SLOW BOAT TO CUBA, the author wants to start his round the world trip by sailing to the Panama Canal before hurricane season. Unfortunately, a 50-year old embargo, wild currents, and adverse winds and waves stand in this American sailor's way. This is the story of how he overcame government road blocks and sailed offshore to the forbidden paradise of Cuba. He stops at the remote west coast and southern barrier islands fighting human and nautical obstacles to get a clear path to Panama.
