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The problem of ecosystem damage is extensive and international.A recent estimate suggests that 43% of the earth's terrestrial surface has a reduced capacity to supply benefits to humanity because of recent direct impacts of land use. The discipline of restoration ecology aims to provide a scientifically sound basis for the reconstruction of degraded or destroyed ecosystems and to produce self-supporting systems that are, to some degree, resilient to subsequent damage. This book looks at the main issues with a broad perspective, using case studies where appropriate, and considering the economic and social context in which restoration is carried out. It is essential to reverse current trends by developing and using our knowledge of how to restore ecosystems. The book is therefore important for scientists, professionals in ecological restoration, landscape architects, environmental engineers, and all those involved in sustainable development. ... Read more

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Sustainable management of ecosystems is a key issue in ecology and environmental science and aquatic ecosystems are high on international priorities for conservation. Ecology of Aquatic Management provides a comprehensive introduction to the exploitation and management of marine and freshwater systems from an ecological perspective.

This timely book explores current exploitation practices, discusses the underlying scientific principles, and provides case studies and references to enable students to study individual topics in more depth.

Part One covers water itself as a resource, and the ecological impacts of human exploitation of water. Part Two considers aquatic organisms as exploitable components of the environment and discusses sustainability issues in harvesting and farming (or culturing) them. Part Three looks at exploitation of the aquatic environment for waste disposal, mineral extraction and recreation. Finally, Part Four provides a synthesis of the various impacts and considers effective management strategies.

Features: Provides an overview of human interactions with aquatic ecosystems. Has an ecological perspective. Considers aquatic pollution in the context of waste disposal. Includes selected case studies and references. Discusses sustainable management and biodiversity issues based on an ecosystem approach. This book has been written primarily to meet the needs of undergraduate and masters students taking courses in aquatic biology, aquatic ecology, resource management, environmental science, environmental management, water resource management and introductory courses in fisheries and aquaculture.

Dr Chris Frid is Senior Lecturer in Marine Ecology at the Dove Marine Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Dr Mike Dobson is Senior Lecturer in Aquatic Ecology and Biogeography, in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University. ... Read more

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Industrialization, urbanization, agriculture, and resource exploitation are activities associated with a developing society. Geoenvironmental Sustainability focuses on such a society's geoenvironment and the natural capital that defines it. The book explains these elements in systematic detail, particularly with respect to their relationship to five thematic areas known as WEHAB: water and sanitation, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity - all factors identified as key areas of concern by the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).

This significant reference addresses topics that include land environment sustainability pertaining to its interaction with the impacts generated by industrial and urbanization activities - in particular with various waste discharges; the magnitude of the problem of urbanization and industries; nonrenewable natural resources, typical case histories, and examples of sustainability actions; and the geoenvironmental perspective of the present status of where we are in the geoenvironmental sustainability framework, with a view that points toward where we need to go.

Providing a geoenvironmental perspective on the sustainability of the environment, Geoenvironmental Sustainability is an essential resource for those who are poised to meet the challenge of mitigating manmade threats associated with development. ... Read more

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Encouraging students to engage in the challenges and complexity of sustainability, this text considers not only the theories underlying sustainability, but more importantly how theories are translated into practice and the difficulties of achieving this in the world in which we live. This pragmatic focus gives students a greater understanding of the practice of sustainability and highlights the challenges involved. Models and theories are illustrated throughout with real world examples to help students move away from the abstract and connect with genuine issues. The text begins by focusing on sustainable production and consumption and how they are related. The role of tools such as modelling and sustainability indicators are explored, and extended into the fields of stakeholder participation, livelihoods and evidence-based policy. The final chapter explores the interconnections between apparently disparate subjects and the importance of taking an interdisciplinary perspective. ... Read more

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This book presents ‘human ecology economics’ as a new and more comprehensive interdisciplinary framework for understanding ‘world conditions and human systems’. This book helps economists rethink the boundaries and methods of their discipline - so that they can participate more fully in debates over humankind’s present problems and on the ways that they can be solved.

Authors contributing to this book agree that human ecology economics is a superior framework for responding to global sustainability concerns because, unlike traditional economics and other social sciences, it allows a long time run perspective, encourages use of the humanities, and effectively juxtaposes ‘sustainability’ and other interdisciplinary issues alongside traditional economic issues. The contributors explore the following types of questions: What drives innovation and evolution in the world economy? What allows the U.S. one-third of the world’s wealth and a leadership role going into the twenty-first century? How can we better understand and address the causes of poverty, inequality, social conflict and inadequate food and energy supplies? Will responding to climate change and other concerns require changes in our ways of being? The book is written for the non-specialist as well as the professional economist in order to advance shared understanding of these ‘challenges to humankind’.

This book is relevant to courses in Economics, International Relations, Environmental Science and Studies, Ecology and Political Economy among others, and will also benefit any professional audience interested in world conditions and global concerns, including business people, non-profit organisations and governments.

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Cultural landscapes are a product of the interactions between humans and natural settings. They are landscapes and seascapes that are shaped by human history and land use. Socioeconomic processes especially, but also environmental changes and natural disturbances, are some of the forces that make up landscape dynamics. To understand and manage such complex landscapes, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are necessary, emphasizing the integration of natural and social sciences and considering multiple landscape functions. The spatial patterns of Asian landscapes are strongly related to human activities and their impacts. Anthropogenic patterns and processes have created numerous traditional cultural landscapes throughout the region, and understanding them requires indigenous knowledge. Cultural landscape ecology from a uniquely Asian perspective is explored in this book, as are the management of landscapes and land-use policies. Human-dominated landscapes with long traditions, such as those described herein, provide useful information for all ecologists, not only in Asia, to better understand the human–environmental relationship and landscape sustainability.

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This digital document is a journal article from Forest Ecology and Management, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Planning management activities for a long-term sustainable forestry requires predictive tools designed for this kind of management. Many tools available today are either designed for planning periods that are too short to consider long-term sustainability, omit important parts of the forest ecosystem or are not capable of considering environmental changes. A long-term potential growth-limiting factor is the supply of available base cations as was demonstrated in an earlier study for a research area in southern Sweden. This paper presents the ForSAFE model, a computer implemented model system where four robust and well evaluated stand-alone models are combined to a dynamic model that considers vegetation and soil as well as the links between them. The system dynamics approach with causal loop diagrams (CLD) and feedback loop analysis (FLA) is presented as a useful tool for conceptualizing and constructing ecosystem models. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Technology in Society, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Transforming the use of materials in product manufacture from a linear to a cyclic mode is the conceptual framework of industrial ecology (IE), a field about fourteen years old. The core of industrial ecology-the industrial ecosystem model-has become a framework for studying the interactions of the modern technological society with the environment. As an emerging field, IE has grappled with challenges such as establishing itself as a unique field, gaining academic merit, developing quality standards, and guiding applications in industrial operations. Within the context of such challenges, distinct research branches have emerged: conceptual framework studies, development of operational tools (e.g. design for environment), and systemic studies (e.g. industrial symbiosis). The field began by conceptualizing industrial systems and has now made the transition to gathering the data that characterize such systems. One of the greatest challenges now facing IE is applying the knowledge gleaned from these endeavors to defining and setting goals for sustainable technological activity and development. ... Read more

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The relentless exploitation and unsustainable use of wildlife, whether for food, medicine or other uses, is a key concern for conservationists worldwide. Indeed, wildlife conservation and sustainable use have recently become centrepieces in conservation and development research. Assessment, interpretation and ultimate action in a scientific study of exploited species must consider numerous factors: from the biology, habitat requirements and population dynamics of the species in question to the relationships that people have with their environment and the species within it. Any long-term management plan must ensure that people and wildlife can coexist - otherwise it is doomed to failure.

Conservation and Sustainable Use provides a practical and integrated approach to carrying out research on the conservation of exploited species. It is relevant to both tropical and temperate biomes and is applicable to all exploited species, including mammals, fish and plants. It describes both the practical (field) and theoretical (modelling) techniques for obtaining and interpreting information, integrating biological, social, economic and institutional analyses. It also demonstrates how to translate information into effective action through appropriate interventions, from legislation to changing people's attitudes. This is the first time that all these issues have been covered together in a single, practically-orientated volume.

This book will be essential reading for graduate level students and researchers in conservation biology, human ecology, sociology and resource economics. It will also provide an important reference for anyone who is interested in carrying out a scientifically-based conservation programme for an exploited species, including field biologists, wildlife managers and practitioners in the fields of conservation and international development. ... Read more

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This is a compilation of some of the best research papers of students from the MSc (Environmental Management) programme at the National University of Singapore from 2001-2006. They have been edited for brevity and cover a wide range of topics encompassing Corporate Environmental Management, the Conservation of Biological Diversity, Land use Planning, the Marine Environment, the Environment and Economic Development, Energy Sustainability, as well as Urban Pollution and Waste Management. These issues are examined in the context of different Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. This book provides perspectives of the many challenges that confront environmental managers, and ventures to suggest some solutions. ... Read more

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This comprehensive 2nd edition provides an up-to-date introduction to the nature of ecological degradation in a world of dramatic environmental changes.

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The increasing urbanisation of the world, coupled with the global issues of environmental pollution, resources shortage and economic restructuring, demand that we make our cities places worth living in. However, problems of environmental management and planning are not restricted to urban areas. Environments such as rural areas, forests, coastal regions and mountains face their own problems that require urgent solutions in order to avoid irreversible damage. The use of modern technologies in planning gives us new potential to monitor and prevent environmental degradation.With papers presented at the 3rd International Conference on Sustainable Development and Planning, this book addresses the subjects of sustainable development and regional planning in an integrated way keeping in mind that present generations have to find the appropriate way to satisfy their needs without compromising the ability of future generations. It has become apparent that planners, environmentalists, architects, engineers, policy makers and economists have to work together in order to ensure that sustainable development and planning can be achieved. The increase in spatial problems that can be seen in many countries has lead to planning crises. Planning problems are often connected with uneven development, deterioration of the quality of urban life and environmental pollution. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Forest Ecology and Management, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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For over a century, the negative exponential relationship of tree density to diameter has been observed and considered an indicator of equilibrium forest structure, especially at the stand level. More recent studies have suggested that other forms of diameter distributions should be considered ''balanced''. Some of these seemingly contradictory findings can be resolved by understanding the impacts of scale and sampling area on the possibility of observing a negative exponential distribution. We calculated the minimum area required to sample the smallest number of trees necessary to produce hypothetical negative exponential distributions. The minimum area is influenced greatly by the maximum diameter and the exponential decrease rate of the distribution. It is also influenced by the width of diameter classes used to summarize the data, and the basal area per hectare of the sample. These differences in minimum required sampling area are important considerations because some recent studies that suggest a rotated sigmoid distribution, rather than negative exponential, is more characteristic of old-growth forests may have used sampling schemes that were insufficient to observe a negative exponential distribution even if one existed. Others have used criteria in selecting sampling locations that ensure a high density of large trees, thereby precluding them from observing a negative exponential distribution even if one existed. Our review suggests that within-stand sampling areas for testing diameter distribution in temperate forests typically need to exceed 1ha, especially in mature to old-growth stages, though mortality rate, diameter class width, and total stand basal area all affect the area or number of prism points needed. Diameter distributions have rarely been assessed at the landscape scale. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to expect that landscape distributions may generally be negative exponential and the slope of the line (i.e. the mortality rate) may be an important measure of landscape dynamics. Old-growth landscapes where natural disturbances are typically small patches will have a lower mortality rate than those where disturbances are more frequent and widespread. ... Read more

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Throughout the world people are concerned about the demise of tropical forests and their wildlife. Hunting by forest-dwelling people has a dramatic effect on wildlife in many tropical forests, frequently driving species to local extinction, with devastating implications for other species and the health of the forests themselves. But wildlife is an important source of protein and cash for rural peoples. Can hunting be managed to conserve biological communities while meeting human needs? Are hunting rates as practiced by tropical forest peoples sustainable? If not, what are the biological, social, and cultural implications of this failure? Answering these questions is ever more important as national and international agencies seek to integrate the development of local peoples with the conservation of tropical forest systems and species. This book presents a wide array of studies that examine the sustainability of hunting as practiced by rural peoples. Comprising work by both biological and social scientists, Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests provides a balanced viewpoint on the ecological and human aspects of this hunting. The first section examines the effects of hunting on wildlife in tropical forests throughout the world. The next section looks at the importance of hunting to local communities. The third section looks at institutional challenges of resource management, while the fourth draws on economic perspectives to understand both hunting and sustainability. A final section provides synthesis and summary of the factors that influence sustainability and the implications for management. Drawing on examples from Ecuador to Congo-Zaire to Sulawesi, Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests will be a valuable resource to policymakers, conservation organizations, and students and scholars of biology, ecology, and anthropology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good introduction and conclusion, but otherwise less than the sum of its parts

This book examines the potential for sustainable hunting in tropical rainforests.It's an important question, since these forests face the threat of being cut down, their wildlife hunting out of existence, and their people turned into urban slum-dwellers.Though the editors give it the old college try, however, this book doesn't really succeed in telling us how to improve the prospects for sustainable hunting in such cases, to say nothing of dealing with the external threats such as deforestation, global warming, and urbanization and industrialization.

The introduction is really very good, and usefully explores the key question of sustainable hunting.The authors are very careful to think about analytical categories and definitions, and they make a strong case that we need to consider the social context of hunting: traditional hunting versus hunting with modern technology, sport hunting versus hunting out of necessity, and subsistence hunting versus commercial hunting.

The conclusion, also written by the editors, also makes a very helpful contribution.The core of the conclusion summarizes in about 50 points the main conclusions of the contributors.These are organized by categories such as the social-cultural, institutional, and economic influences on sustainable hunting in tropical forests.

Unfortunately, what makes the conclusion helpful is what weakens the book as a whole.It lacks a strong analytical framework or theory, which forces the authors to cobble everything together at the end.It consists overwhelmingly of single cases, with no apparent attention to case selection issues.The authors of each chapter give no evidence of having read the other chapters, even those on the same topic. The editors work valiantly to summarize the findings, but these are pure summaries of facts not attempts to bring them together and make sense of the patterns.

The book also does not make many concessions to other scholars who don't do the same kind of work, whether biological or economic modeling for example.The book is very ethnographic and anthropological in its sensibility, even in those chapters written by biologists.In addition, most of the chapters are not very policy oriented, despite the apparent focus of the book.(In fairness, some studies of the Congo explicitly consider possible policy responses, as do a few other chapters.)

In sum, I was impressed by the editors' written contributions but it's evident that they were unable to whip their contributors into shape.There are a *lot* of contributors - - 1000 pages spread among 25 chapters - - so that makes much of the book a long slog in details about this or that forest scattered around the world.

Beyond Arm Chair Conservation
For anyone interested in wildlife conservation and habitat destruction - this book is a must read!The crisis in bushmeat in Africa is mounting - and among other things this book gives the reader a view from the inside, on the ground in Africa. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Geoforum, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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This paper responds to challenges made by Castree [Castree, N., 2004. Environmental issues: signals in the noise? Progress in Human Geography 28 (1), 79-90] and Sneddon [Sneddon, C., 2000. 'Sustainability' in ecological economics, ecology and livelihoods: a review. Progress in Human Geography 24 (4), 521-549] for human geography to clarify its contribution to environmental debates and engage with recent formulations of sustainability as informed by the 'new ecology'. This approach focuses on resilience, functional diversity, flexibility and complexity, here used to examine housing sustainability within an industrialised sub/urban context in terms of design philosophy, ownership, management bases, community engagement and funding mechanisms. This framework highlights areas of concern for enhancing the functional diversity of housing systems, echoing recent assertions that challenges for sustainability arise more from trust and power sharing issues, than from physical design and maintenance issues. It is argued that it is precisely human geography's place-by-place consideration of power, embeddedness, scale and politics that can lend new ecology the social relevance it requires. ... Read more

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Full title is, "Planning for Sustainability: Final International Report on Project "Transnational safeguard and improvement of the sustainability of natural resources in the field of agriculture, forestry and water management by using common spatial planning focusing on underforested areas of The Lowlands and Hills of Central and Southeast Europe". ... Read more

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Prepared in cooperation with the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future (ULSF), this book presents a number of case studies and experiences which illustrate how higher education institutions (e.g. universities and colleges) may pursue sustainability. A wide range of views and perspectives illustrate how, via projects, networks, academic programmes, curriculum greening initiatives and student involvement, higher education institutions in various countries (for example the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France) are trying to bring sustainability closer to their institutional lives. ... Read more