Biodiversity and Earth History
Biodiversity and Earth History

Author: Jens Boenigk

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-03-31

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 3662463946

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This uniquely interdisciplinary textbook explores the exciting and complex relationship between Earth’s geological history and the biodiversity of life. Its innovative design provides a seamless learning experience, clarifying major concepts step by step with detailed textual explanations complemented by detailed figures, diagrams and vibrant pictures. Thanks to its layout, the respective concepts can be studied individually, as part of the broader framework of each chapter, or as they relate to the book as a whole. It provides in-depth coverage of: - Earth’s formation and subsequent geological history, including patterns of climate change and atmospheric evolution; - The early stages of life, from microbial ‘primordial soup’ theories to the fossil record’s most valuable contributions; - Mechanisms of mutual influence between living organisms and the environment: how life changed Earth’s history whilst, at the same time, environmental pressures continue to shape the evolution of species; - Basic ideas in biodiversity studies: species concepts, measurement techniques, and global distribution patterns; - Biological systematics, from their historical origins in Greek philosophy and Biblical stories to Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and to phylogenetics based on cutting-edge molecular techniques. This book’s four major sections offer a fresh cross-disciplinary overview of biodiversity and the Earth’s history. Among many other concepts, they reveal the massive diversity of eukaryotes, explain the geological processes behind fossilisation, and provide an eye-opening account of the relatively short period of human evolution in the context of Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history. Employing a combination of proven didactic tools, the book is simultaneously a reading reference, illustrated guide, and encyclopaedia of organismal biology and geology. It is aimed at school- and university-level students, as well as members of the public fascinated by the intricate interrelationship of living organisms and their environment.

Biodiversity
Biodiversity

Author: Laura Perdew

Publisher: Nomad Press (VT)

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781619307483

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It's a big world out there, and it's populated with millions of different species of plants, animals, and microorganisms! Available in paperback, Biodiversity: Explore the Diversity of Life on Earth with Science Activities for Kids introduces middle school readers to the evolution of life on Earth, beginning with the first single-celled organisms that emerged 3.8 billion years ago to the complex multi-celled organisms that exist today and make up the tree of life. Science-minded, hands-on experiments make this a book a fully immersive learning experience!

Investigating the History of Earth
Investigating the History of Earth

Author: Michael Anderson

Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc

Published: 2011-08-15

Total Pages: 89

ISBN-13: 1615304983

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Describes the geological history of the Earth, including how the planet was formed, the beginnings of life, the rise of the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Age, and the possible future of the Earth.

Eden's Endemics
Eden's Endemics

Author: Elizabeth Callaway

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0813944589

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In the past thirty years biodiversity has become one of the central organizing principles through which we understand the nonhuman environment. Its deceptively simple definition as the variation among living organisms masks its status as a hotly contested term both within the sciences and more broadly. In Eden’s Endemics, Elizabeth Callaway looks to cultural objects—novels, memoirs, databases, visualizations, and poetry— that depict many species at once to consider the question of how we narrate organisms in their multiplicity. Touching on topics ranging from seed banks to science fiction to bird-watching, Callaway argues that there is no set, generally accepted way to measure biodiversity. Westerners tend to conceptualize it according to one or more of an array of tropes rooted in colonial history such as the Lost Eden, Noah’s Ark, and Tree-of-Life imagery. These conceptualizations affect what kinds of biodiversities are prioritized for protection. While using biodiversity as a way to talk about the world aims to highlight what is most valued in nature, it can produce narratives that reinforce certain power differentials—with real-life consequences for conservation projects. Thus the choices made when portraying biodiversity impact what is visible, what is visceral, and what is unquestioned common sense about the patterns of life on Earth.

Earth History and Palaeogeography
Earth History and Palaeogeography

Author: Trond H. Torsvik

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1107105323

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This book provides a complete Phanerozoic story of palaeogeography, using new and detailed full-colour maps, to link surface and deep-Earth processes.

Abundant Earth
Abundant Earth

Author: Eileen Crist

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-01-17

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 022659680X

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In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls upon us to lower the global human population while working within a human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their habitats—normalizes and promotes humanity’s ongoing expansion, undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse of a biodiverse, living planet.

The Biodiversity Crisis
The Biodiversity Crisis

Author: Michael J. Novacek

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 9781565845701

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Leading experts explain the fastest mass extinction in Earth's history in an illustrated companion to the American Museum of Natural History's new permanent exhibit. 60 photos. Illustrations.

Biodiversity and Evolution
Biodiversity and Evolution

Author: Philippe Grandcolas

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 008102567X

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Biodiversity and Evolution includes chapters devoted to the evolution and biodiversity of organisms at the molecular level, based on the study of natural collections from the Museum of Natural History. The book starts with an epistemological and historical introduction and ends with a critical overview of the Anthropocene epoch. - Explores the study of natural collections of the Museum of Natural History - Examines evolution and biodiversity at the molecular level - Features an introduction focusing on epistemology and history - Provides a critical overview

Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy
Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy

Author: Sahotra Sarkar

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-09-19

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 113944669X

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This book explores the epistemological and ethical issues at the foundations of environmental philosophy, emphasising the conservation of biodiversity. Sahota Sarkar criticises attempts to attribute intrinsic value to nature and defends an anthropocentric position on biodiversity conservation based on an untraditional concept of transformative value. Unlike other studies in the field of environmental philosophy, this book is as much concerned with epistemological issues as with environmental ethics. It covers a broad range of topics, including problems of explanation and prediction in traditional ecology and how individual-based models and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology is transforming ecology. Introducing a brief history of conservation biology, Sarkar analyses the consensus framework for conservation planning through adaptive management. He concludes with a discussion of directions for theoretical research in conservation biology and environmental philosophy.

Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation
Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation

Author: Justice Ross & Roberto Adkins

Publisher: Scientific e-Resources

Published: 2018-10-09

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1839472464

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Biodiversity is the variety of all the genes, species and ecosystems which are found on our planet. It provides humanity with the cornucopia of goods and services, from food, energy and materials to the genes which protect our crops and cure our diseases. The loss of the earth's biological diversity is one of the most pressing environmental and development issues. Sustainability highlights the idea that the current use of natural resources should not diminish the options of future generations, and maintaining biodiversity is clearly one of the requirements for meeting this goal. Biodiversity conservation addresses the remarkable growth in concern at all levels for living things and the environment, and increased appreciation of the links between the state of ecosystems and the state of humankind. Building on a wealth of research and analysis by the conservation community worldwide, this book provides a comprehensive and accessible view of key global issues in biodiversity. It outlines some of the broad ecological relationships between humans and the rest of the material world and summaries information on the health of the planet. Biodiversity is beneficial to the local environment, and can also be a natural form of crop protection. In conventional agriculture, biodiversity is often eliminated by planting large tracts of fields with a single crop, and killing other species with herbicides, insecticides, pesticides, and fungicides. In the absence of biodiversity, the arrival of a single species can significantly affect crop production, and conventional farmers counter this with chemical killing agents that damage the environmental health of the area. Conservation is the protection, preservation, management, or restoration of wildlife and natural resources such as forests and water. Through the conservation of biodiversity and the survival of many species and habitats which are threatened due to human activities can be ensured. There is an urgent need, not only to manage and conserve the biotic wealth, but also restore the degraded ecosystems. This book will definitely serve as an excellent reference material and practical guide for teachers, research workers, students and environmentalists.