Flame and Fortune in the American West creatively and meticulously investigates the ongoing politics, folly, and avarice shaping the production of increasingly widespread yet dangerous suburban and exurban landscapes. The 1991 Oakland Hills Tunnel Fire is used as a starting point to better understand these complex social-environmental processes. The Tunnel Fire is the most destructive fire—in terms of structures lost&mdash ...
Point Reyes National Seashore has a long history as a working landscape, with dairy and beef ranching, fishing, and oyster farming; yet, since 1962 it has also been managed as a National Seashore. <I>The Paradox of Preservation </I>chronicles how national ideals about what a park “ought to be” have developed over time and what happens when these ideals are implemented by the National Park Service (NPS) in its effo ...
A Geography of Digestion is a highly original exploration of the legacy of the Kellogg Company, one of America’s most enduring and storied food enterprises. In the late nineteenth century, company founder John H. Kellogg was experimenting with state-of-the-art advances in nutritional and medical science at his Battle Creek Sanitarium. Believing that good health depended on digesting the right foods in the right way, Kellogg thought tha ...
International Water Scarcity and Variability considers international water management challenges created by water scarcity and environmental change. Although media coverage and some scholars tend to cast natural resource shortages as leading inexorably toward armed conflict and war, Shlomi Dinar and Ariel Dinar demonstrate that there are many examples of and mechanisms for more peaceful dispute resolution regarding natural resources, even in the ...
"Many of the findings in the book . . . are classics of ecology. . . . A rare and delightful insight into timely science."—Jane Lubchenco, Nature "Estes's refreshing narrative deftly weaves rigorous science with personal reflection to create an absorbing and introspective read that is equal parts memoir, ecological textbook, and motivational guidebook for young ecologists."&mdash ...
If humans are to understand and discover ways of addressing complex social and ecological problems, we first need to find intimacy with our particular places and communities. Cultivating a relationship to place often includes a negotiating process that involves both science and sensibility. While science is one key part of an adaptive and resilient society, the cultivation of a renewed sense of place and community is essential as well.<BR /&g ...
Nitrogen is indispensable to all life on Earth. However, humans now dominate the nitrogen cycle, and nitrogen emissions from human activity have real costs: water and air pollution, climate change, and detrimental effects on human health, biodiversity, and natural habitats. Too little nitrogen limits ecosystem processes, while too much nitrogen transforms ecosystems profoundly.<BR />  <BR /><I>The California Nitrogen A ...
Common among moths is a mate-finding system in which females emit a pheromone that induces males to fly upwind along the pheromone plume. Since the chemical pheromone of the domesticated silk moth was identified in 1959, a steady increase in the number of moth species whose pheromone attractants have been identified now results in a rich base for review and synthesis.<BR />  <BR /><I>Pheromone Communication in Moths< ...
One of the most important hotspots of herpetological biodiversity in the United States, California is home to many endemic amphibians and reptiles found nowhere else on earth. Many of these taxa have unique ecological and morphological specializations, and their management is an important conservation challenge. Increasing climate change impacts, human development, and extreme drought mean many of these species face an ever-greater risk of extin ...
