From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Secret World of Weather and The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, learn to tap into nature and notice the hidden clues all around you Before GPS, before the compass, and even before cartography, humankind was navigating. Now this singular guide helps us rediscover what our ancestors long understood—that a windswept tree, the depth of a puddle, or a trill of birdsong can help us find our way, if we know what to look and listen for. Adventurer and navigation expert Tristan Gooley unlocks the directional clues hidden in the sun, moon, stars, clouds, weather patterns, lengthening shadows, changing tides, plant growth, and the habits of wildlife. Rich with navigational anecdotes collected across ages, continents, and cultures, The Natural Navigator will help keep you on course and open your eyes to the wonders, large and small, of the natural world.
Divided into ten chapters, The Living Deserts of Southern Africa details the biology of desert plants (biggest desert biodiversity hotspot in the world) and animals and discusses their conservation and future threats.
The desert islands in the Sea of Cortez are little known except to a few intrepid tourists, sailors, and fishermen. Though at first glance these stark islands may appear barren, they are a refuge for an astounding variety of plants and animals. While many of the species are typical of the greater Sonoran Desert region, some are endemic or unique to one or two islands. For example, Isla Santa Catalina is home to the worldÕs only rattlesnake that has lost its ability to grow a rattle. Other islands host nesting birds, such as Isla Rasa, a tiny, flat flow of basalt lava that attracts nearly half a million elegant and royal terns and HeermannÕs gulls each spring. The Desert Islands of MexicoÕs Sea of Cortez is one of the few books devoted to the biogeography of this remarkable part of the world. The book explores the geologic origin of the gulf and its islands, presents some of the basics of island biogeography, details insular lifeÑincluding residents of the intertidal zone Ñand provides a brief outlook for preserving this area. More than a simple guidebook, AitchisonÕs writing will take both actual and armchair travelers through a gripping tale of natural history. Like the rest of our fragile planet, the Sea of Cortez and its islands are threatened by humans. Overfishing has eliminated or greatly diminished many fish stocks, and dams on rivers that once flowed into the gulf prevent certain nutrients from reaching the sea. The tenuousness of this area makes the bookÕs extraordinary photographs and the firsthand descriptions by a well-known teacher, writer, and photographer all the more compelling.
A collection of reports from archaeological excavations and surveys carried out, some by the author himself, since the diverse Sinai desert was opened up to Israeli researchers in 1967. The excavations include Nabotean sites and fortresses, an Iron Age fortress and an 8th-century BCE Israelite settlement. There is also a landscape survey of the hills of Northwestern Sinai. The smaller second section contains studies of `Desert Kites', triangular hunting enclosures, in the Sinai and Southern Negev, Sinai rock inscriptions and past and present desert nomads.
As part of a global effort to identify those areas where conservation measures are needed most urgently, World Wildlife Fund has assembled teams of scientists to conduct ecological assessments of all five continents. Terrestrial Ecoregions of Africa and Madagascar is the latest contribution, presenting in a single volume the first comprehensive assessment of biodiversity patterns, threats to biodiversity, and resulting conservation priorities across the African continent and its islands. Looking at biodiversity and threats in terms of biological units rather than political units, the book offers a comprehensive examination of African biodiversity across all biomes and multiple taxonomic groups. In addition to the seven main chapters, the book includes twenty essays by regional experts that provide more depth on key issues, as well as nine detailed appendixes that present summary data used in the analyses, specific analytical methodologies, and a thorough text description for each of Africa's 119 terrestrial ecoregions. Terrestrial Ecoregions of Africa and Madagascar provides a blueprint for conservation action and represents an unparalleled guide for investments and activities of conservation agencies and donor organizations.
Concrete Boxes offers sustained reflection about Israeli reality rarely documented in scholarly work and a thought-provoking theoretical exploration of the ways in which individual agency encounters social restrictions and how social marginality is reproduced and challenged at the same time.
From endless sand dunes and prickly cacti to shimmering mirages and green oases, deserts evoke contradictory images in us. They are lands of desolation, but also of romance, of blistering Mojave heat and biting Gobi cold. Covering a quarter of the earth’s land mass and providing a home to half a billion people, they are both a physical reality and landscapes of the mind. The idea of the desert has long captured Western imagination, put on display in films and literature, but these portrayals often fail to capture the true scope and diversity of the people living there. Bridging the scientific and cultural gaps between perception and reality, The Desert celebrates our fascination with these arid lands and their inhabitants, as well as their importance both throughout history and in the world today. Covering an immense geographical range, Michael Welland wanders from the Sahara to the Atacama, depicting the often bizarre adaptations of plants and animals to these hostile environments. He also looks at these seemingly infertile landscapes in the context of their place in history—as the birthplaces not only of critical evolutionary adaptations, civilizations, and social progress, but also of ideologies. Telling the stories of the diverse peoples who call the desert home, he describes how people have survived there, their contributions to agricultural development, and their emphasis on water and its scarcity. He also delves into the allure of deserts and how they have been used in literature and film and their influence on fashion, art, and architecture. As Welland reveals, deserts may be difficult to define, but they play an active role in the evolution of our global climate and society at large, and their future is of the utmost importance. Entertaining, informative, and surprising, The Desert is an intriguing new look at these seemingly harsh and inhospitable landscapes.
One of the most recognizable animals of the Southwest, the desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) makes its home in both the Sonoran and Mohave Deserts, as well as in tropical areas to the south in Mexico. Called by Tohono O'odham people "komik'c-ed," or "shell with living thing inside," it is one of the few desert creatures kept as a domestic pet—as well as one of the most studied reptiles in the world. Most of our knowledge of desert tortoises comes from studies of Mohave Desert populations in California and Nevada. However, the ecology, physiology, and behavior of these northern populations are quite different from those of their southern, Sonoran Desert, and tropical cousins, which have been studied much less. Differences in climate and habitat have shaped the evolution of three races of desert tortoises as they have adapted to changes in heat, rainfall, and sources of food and shelter as the deserts developed in the last ten million years. This book presents the first comprehensive summary of the natural history, biology, and conservation of the Sonoran and Sinaloan desert tortoises, reviewing the current state of knowledge of these creatures with appropriate comparisons to Mohave tortoises. It condenses a vast amount of information on population ecology, activity, and behavior based on decades of studying tortoise populations in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, and also includes important material on the care and protection of tortoises. Thirty-two contributors address such topics as tortoise fossil records, DNA analysis, and the mystery of secretive hatchlings and juveniles. Tortoise health is discussed in chapters on the care of captives, and original data are presented on the diets of wild and captive tortoises, the nutrient content of plant foods, and blood parameters of healthy tortoises. Coverage of conservation issues includes husbandry methods for captive tortoises, an overview of protective measures, and an evaluation of threats to tortoises from introduced grass and wildfires. A final chapter on cultural knowledge presents stories and songs from indigenous peoples and explores their understanding of tortoises. As the only comprehensive book on the desert tortoise, this volume gathers a vast amount of information for scientists, veterinarians, and resource managers while also remaining useful to general readers who keep desert tortoises as backyard pets. It will stand as an enduring reference on this endearing creature for years to come.
The southwestern deserts stretch from southeastern California to west Texas and then south to central Mexico. The landscape of this region is known as basin and range topography featuring to “sky islands” of forest rising from the desert lowlands which creates a uniquely diverse ecology. The region is further complicated by an international border, where governments have caused difficulties for many animal populations. This book puts a spotlight on individual research projects which are specific examples of work being done in the area and when they are all brought together, to shed a general light of understanding the biological and cultural resources of this vast region so that those same resources can be managed as effectively and efficiently as possible. The intent is to show that collaborative efforts among federal, state agency, university, and private sector researchers working with land managers, provides better science and better management than when scientists and land managers work independently.
Revolutions in the Desert investigates the development of pastoral nomadism in the arid regions of the ancient Near East, challenging the prevailing notion that such societies left few remains appropriate for analytic study. Few prior studies have approached the deeper past of desert nomadic societies, which have been primarily recognized only as a complement to the study of sedentary agricultural societies in the region. Based on decades of archaeological field work in the Negev of southern Israel, both excavations and surveys, and integrating materials from adjacent regions, Revolutions in the Desert offers a deeper and more dynamic view of the rise of herding societies beyond the settled zone. Rosen offers the first archaeological analysis of the rise of herding in the desert, from the first introduction of domestic goats and sheep into the arid zones, more than eight millennia ago, to the evolution of more recent Bedouin societies. The adoption of domestic herds by hunter-gatherer societies, contemporary with and peripheral to the first farming settlements, revolutionized all aspects of desert life, including subsistence, trade, cult, social organization, and ecology. Inviting processual comparison to the agricultural revolution and the secondary spread of domestication beyond the Near East, this volume traces the evolution of nomadic societies in the archaeological record and examines their ecological, economic and social adaptations to the deserts of the Southern Levant. With maps and illustrations from the author’s own collection, Revolutions in the Desert is a thoughtful and engaging approach to the archaeology of desert nomadic societies.
