How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers offers a simple and novel theoretical approach to understanding the history of the biosphere, including humanity’s place within it. It also helps to clarify what the possibilities and limitations are for future action. This is a subject of wide interest because today we are facing a great many environmental issues, many of which may appear unconnected. Yet all these issues are part of our biosphere. For making plans for the future and addressing our long-term survival and well-being, an integrated knowledge of our biosphere and its history is therefore indispensable. Key Features Documents what the biosphere is, and what our position as humans within it is today. Describes how the biosphere has become the way it is. Summarizes the novel simple theoretical model proposed in the book, and thus, how the biosphere functions. Predicts what the possibilities and limitations are for future human action Emphasizes how simple but careful observations can lead to far-reaching theoretical implications.

This book marks a milestone in Economics publishing. Sustainable Economics is *the* subject of the moment, as businesses across the globe face up to peak oil prices, climate instability, increasingly complex environmental legislation and the challenge of adapting to a new business landscape. Sustainable Economics: Context, Challenges and Opportunities for the 21st Century Practitioner debugs the language of sustainable development. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of the many and diverse schools of thought. The book enables the modern business student and practitioner to disentangle the complex, often convoluted debate relating to sustainability, and it provides the tools necessary to lead their organizations through the murky waters of current times and prepare for the challenges of the future. Eschewing the linear – take, make and waste – approach of current business and manufacturing thinking, this book revisits the ecological models underpinning recent economic sustainability theory, and re-examines the consequences of modern ecological thought upon business strategies relating to sustainability. A chapter is also dedicated to the "circular economy", already in common parlance at policy levels in the UK, and notably in China and other developing countries.Packed with the most recent research papers, Sustainable Economics is an essential resource for the 21st-century business practitioner and legislator.The book is supported with a large array of teaching and learning material, for both formal and informal use, ranging from role play to data analysis which are available on request with the purchase of this book.

Thermodynamics is used increasingly in ecology to understand the system properties of ecosystems because it is a basic science that describes energy transformation from a holistic view. In the last decade, many contributions to ecosystem theory based on thermodynamics have been published, therefore an important step toward integrating these theories and encouraging a more wide spread use of them is to present them in one volume. An ecosystem consists of interdependent living organisms that are also interdependent with their environment, all of which are involved in a constant transfer of energy and mass within a general state of equilibrium or dis-equilibrium. Thermodynamics can quantify exactly how "organized" or "disorganized" a system is - an extremely useful to know when trying to understand how a dynamic ecosystem is behaving. A part of the Environmental and Ecological (Math) Modeling series, Thermodynamics and Ecology is a book-length study - the first of its kind - of the current thinking on how an ecosystem can be explained and predicted in terms of its thermodynamical behavior. After the introductory chapters on the fundamentals of thermodynamics, the book explains how thermodynamic theory can be specifically applied to the "measurement" of an ecosystem, including the assessment of its state of entropy and enthalpy. Additionally, it will show economists how to put these theories to use when trying to quantify the movement of goods and services through another type of complex living system - a human society.

Profiles more than 150 scientists from around the world who made important contributions to the field of biology, including Claude Bernard, Alexander Fleming, Mary-Claire King, Ronald Ross, and Tetsuko Takabe.

Since 1971, UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme has embraced a number of principles that link the political, scientific and academic spheres. Biosphere Reserves and Sustainable Development Goals 2 is a reminder of the fundamental issues involved in governance. The diversity and multiplicity of stakeholders, and the complexity of the interplay between them, as well as their organization, are decisive factors in the proper management of resources and territories. The book also presents a number of case studies demonstrating that, between the strong development aspirations of their populations, the impact of human activities and the need to conserve their biological heritage, the biosphere reserves of the southern Mediterranean are facing major issues: agricultural pollution, forest fires, water use in a context of climate change, etc.

Environmental Justice as Social Work Practice places the natural environment as central to practice. Utilizing the Phases of Practice and micro to macro levels of practice, the book integrates neatly into a college semester course. Chapters cover important components of social work such as theory, ethics, conceptual foundations as well as distinct chapters on micro, mezzo, and macro practice. Each chapter expands the discipline's commitment to and applied efforts in the environmental movement while recognizing the unique contributions social work has to offer to ameliorate environmental inequities. Chapters include real-world stories from environmental social work practitioners, case studies, and boxed sections highlighting organizations and people who bridge the human and natural justice divide. Each chapter concludes with learning activities and critical thinking questions providing learning activities that map easily to a course syllabus. A matrix identifying the placement of educational competencies from the Council on Social Work Education is included. The textbook provides a framework for social work educators to bravely and competently teach environmental social work as a stand-alone college course or to incorporate into a traditional practice course.

David Christian, creator of Big History ('My favourite course of all time' Bill Gates), brings us the epic story of the universe and our place in it, from 13.8 billion years ago to the remote future 'Nails home the point: Life is a miracle ... A compelling history of everything' Washington Post 'Spectacular' Carlo Rovelli How did we get from the Big Bang to today's staggering complexity, in which seven billion humans are connected into networks powerful enough to transform the planet? And why, in comparison, are our closest primate relatives reduced to near-extinction? Big History creator David Christian gives the answers in a mind-expanding cosmological detective story told on the grandest possible scale. He traces how, during eight key thresholds, the right conditions have allowed new forms of complexity to arise, from stars to galaxies, Earth to homo sapiens, agriculture to fossil fuels. This last mega-innovation gave us an energy bonanza that brought huge benefits to mankind, yet also threatens to shake apart everything we have created. 'Rather like the Big Bang, the book is awe-inspiring ... Superb' The Times 'With fascinating ideas on every page and the page-turning energy of a good thriller, this is a landmark work' Sir Ken Robinson, author of The Element

Earth's astonishing diversity of life - in coral reefs, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, deep-sea hot springs, and many others - is amazing for its beauty and for the ecosystem services it provides. This book discusses how ecosystems must be set aside, habitats restored, and global warming thwarted.

The book discusses geoscience issues in Peru from a geoethical perspective, based on the leading experience of the Peruvian section of the International Association for Promoting Geoethics, in its seven years of activity. The introduction will present past and current activities to promote geoethics in Peru, such as the organization of the MinerLima exhibition (that has teaching purposes); the implementation of geoethics in georisk communication with vulnerable populations, as well as the promotion of adequate knowledge about national geological heritage. The other chapters will describe the main geoethical issues in Peru, related to georisk management and communication, mining, paleontology and geoheritage, geoducation. Some proposals for actions that should be taken to improve societal awareness and to make progress in problem-solving from a geoethical perspective will be discussed for each issue. In the final chapter Peruvian geoescience implications and new roles for geoscientists will be discussed, providing clues to their participation in the management of socio-environmental problems that affect Latin American region. It will be also underlined how geoethics represents a new theoretical and practical approach that may contribute in the current process to modernize geoscience education in Latin America. In this sense, this publication provides a solid base to apply the theoretical framework of Geoethics in Peru that may be suggested as an example to promote geoethics in other Latin American countries. As a result, the need to inform and prepare the population of growing countries such as Peru to face the problems of the modern world is evident. In order to attract more readers in Latin America, each chapter will be provided with a summary in Spanish.

Discover Biology helps students become biologically literate students--to progress from science to scientific literacy.