Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources, Volume 1
Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources, Volume 1

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Sound decisions about the use and conservation of natural resources require high-quality, independent scientific information accessible to all who need it. Provision of such information, particularly on the status and trends of the nation's biological resources, is central to the mission of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Biological Resources Division, formerly the National Biological Service (NBS). This report, The Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources, is a major contribution to meeting the nation's need for better information about our nation's living resources. This two-volume book provides the first large-scale assessment of the health of the nation's plants, animals, and ecosystems and is intended for use by managers, scientists, policy makers, and the general public. It synthesizes existing and new information about birds, mammals, fishes, plants, and other species and summarizes what is known about the status and trends of major U.S. ecosystems. The findings reported here offer valuable insight into both successes and failures in resource management and point the way to better management of biological resources in the future.

Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources, Volume 2
Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources, Volume 2

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Sound decisions about the use and conservation of natural resources require high-quality, independent scientific information accessible to all who need it. Provision of such information, particularly on the status and trends of the nation's biological resources, is central to the mission of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Biological Resources Division, formerly the National Biological Service (NBS). This report, The Status and Trends of the Nation's Biological Resources, is a major contribution to meeting the nation's need for better information about our nation's living resources. This two-volume book provides the first large-scale assessment of the health of the nation's plants, animals, and ecosystems and is intended for use by managers, scientists, policy makers, and the general public. It synthesizes existing and new information about birds, mammals, fishes, plants, and other species and summarizes what is known about the status and trends of major U.S. ecosystems. The findings reported here offer valuable insight into both successes and failures in resource management and point the way to better management of biological resources in the future.

The American West at Risk
The American West at Risk

Author: Howard G. Wilshire

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-06-05

Total Pages: 634

ISBN-13: 0199881669

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The American West at Risk summarizes the dominant human-generated environmental challenges in the 11 contiguous arid western United States - America's legendary, even mythical, frontier. When discovered by European explorers and later settlers, the west boasted rich soils, bountiful fisheries, immense, dense forests, sparkling streams, untapped ore deposits, and oil bonanzas. It now faces depletion of many of these resources, and potentially serious threats to its few "renewable" resources. The importance of this story is that preserving lands has a central role for protecting air and water quality, and water supplies--and all support a healthy living environment. The idea that all life on earth is connected in a great chain of being, and that all life is connected to the physical earth in many obvious and subtle ways, is not some new-age fad, it is scientifically demonstrable. An understanding of earth processes, and the significance of their biological connections, is critical in shaping societal values so that national land use policies will conserve the earth and avoid the worst impacts of natural processes. These connections inevitably lead science into the murkier realms of political controversy and bureaucratic stasis. Most of the chapters in The American West at Risk focus on a human land use or activity that depletes resources and degrades environmental integrity of this resource-rich, but tender and slow-to-heal, western U.S. The activities include forest clearing for many purposes; farming and grazing; mining for aggregate, metals, and other materials; energy extraction and use; military training and weapons manufacturing and testing; road and utility transmission corridors; recreation; urbanization; and disposing of the wastes generated by everything that we do. We focus on how our land-degrading activities are connected to natural earth processes, which act to accelerate and spread the damages we inflict on the land. Visit www.theamericanwestatrisk.com to learn more about the book and its authors.