Bøker utgitt av Island Press

In recyears, scientists have begun to focus on the idea that healthy, functioning ecosystems provide essential services to human populations, ranging from water purification to food and medicine to climate regulation. Lacking a healthy environment, these services would have to be provided through mechanical means, at a tremendous economic and social cost.Nature and the Marketplace examines the controversial proposition that markets should be designed to capture the value of those services. Written by an economist with a background in business, it evaluates the real prospects for various of nature's marketable services to "e;turn profits"e; at levels that exceed the profits expected from alternative, ecologically destructive, business activities. The author: describes the infrastructure that natural systems provide, how we depend on it, and how we are affecting it explains the market mechanism and how it can lead to more efficiresource use looks at key economic activities -- such as ecotourism, bioprospecting, and carbon sequestration -- where market forces can provide incentives for conservation examines policy options other than the market, such as pollution credits and mitigation banking considers the issue of sustainability and equity between generations .Nature and the Marketplace presents an accessible introduction to the concept of ecosystem services and the economics of the environment. It offers a clear assessmof how market approaches can be used to protect the environment, and illustrates that with a number of cases in which the value of ecosystems has actually been captured by markets.The book offers a straightforward business economic analysis of conservation issues, eschewing romantic notions about ecosystem preservation in favor of real-world economic solutions. It will be an eye-opening work for professionals, students, and scholars in conservation biology, ecology, environmental economics, environmental policy, and related fields.

MAmericans today do not live in discrete cities and towns, but rather in an aggregation of cities and suburbs that forms one basic economic, multi-cultural, environmental and civic entity. These "e;regional cities"e; have the potential to significantly improve the quality of our lives--to provide interconnected and diverse economic centers, transportation choices, and a variety of human-scale communities. In The Regional City, two of the minnovative thinkers in the field of land use planning and design offer a detailed look at this new metropolitan form and explain how regional-scale planning and design can help direct growth wisely and reverse currtrends in land use. The authors:•discuss the nature and underpinnings of this new metropolitan form•prestheir view of the policies and physical design principles required for metropolitan areas to transform themselves into regional cities•documthe combination of physical design and social and economic policies that are being used across the country•consider the main factors that are shaping metropolitan regions today, including the maturation of sprawling suburbs and the renewal of urban neighborhoodsFeaturing full-color graphics and in-depth case studies, The Regional City offers a thorough examination of the concept of regional planning along with examples of successful initiatives from around the country. It will be must reading for planners, architects, landscape architects, local officials, real estate developers, community developmprofessionals, and for students in architecture, urban planning, and policy.

In the late sixties, as the world awoke to a need for Earth Day, a pioneering group founded a small non-profit research and education organization they called the New Alchemy Institute. Their aim was to explore the ways a safer and more sustainable world could be created. In the ensuing years, along with scientists, agriculturists, and a hof enthusiastic amateurs and friends, they set out to discover new ways that basic human needs--in the form of food, shelter, and energy--could be met. A Safe and Sustainable World is the story of that journey, as it was and as it continues to be.The dynamics and the resilience of the living world were the Institute's model and inspiration for their research. Central to their efforts then and now is, along with science, a spiritual quest for a more harmonious human role in our planet's future. The results of this work have now entered mainstream science through the emerging discipline of ecological design.Nancy Jack Todd relates a fascinating journey from lofty ideals through the hard realities encountered in learning how to actually grow food, harness the energy of the sun and wind, and design green architecture. She also introduces us to some of the heroes and mentors who played a vital role in those efforts, from Buckminster Fuller to Margaret Mead.Successfully proving through the Institute's designs and investigations that basic land sustainability is achievable, John Todd and the author founded a second non-profit research group, Ocean Arks International. A Safe and Sustainable World demonstrates what has, can, and must be done to integrate human ingenuity and four billion years of evolutionary intelligence into healthy, decentralized, local dreams.

This is the result of an unprecedented effort among the world's largest environmental organizations, scientists, the business community, media, and international governments to address marine issues. It offers a broad strategy, with priorities and costs.

This assessment of the role of nitrogen fertilizer in the nitrogen cycle has a regional focus, emphasizing the need to maintain food and fiber production while minimizing environmental impacts where fertilizer is abundant, and the need to enhance fertilizer utilization in systems where nitrogen is limited.

Though many students and environmentalists shudder at even the thought of economics, a working knowledge of the basics can be a powerful ally. Economic arguments carry a great deal of weight, and putting them to work for environmental causes can be a deciding factor, especially in policy debates. The reverse is true as well, and an understanding of the possibly flawed, misleading, or overstated economics behind an opponent's case can be crucially important. Environmental Economics for Tree Huggers and Other Skeptics carefully explains the tools of economic analysis and shows how they can be used to help reveal the root causes of and potential solutions for environmental and natural resource problems. Jaeger's proven techniques and wonderfully conversational tone assume no economics training, and his presentation of the material is designed to facilitate clarity. His step-by-step approach unearths surprisingly simple, easy-to-remember principles and shows how to apply them to real-world environmental problems. Those with exposure to introductory microeconomics will find Environmental Economics for Tree Huggers and Other Skeptics to be a welcome refresher. Undergraduate and graduate students of environmental studies, resource management, law, policy, and related fields, as well as novices who are skeptical of how the field could possibly help them in their own efforts, will be pleasantly surprised.

Presents an overview of the history of transboundary conservation efforts and an introduction to various issues surrounding the subject. Examining the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA) and the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative (Y2Y), this book helps readers understand the benefits and challenges of landscape-scale protection.

The environmental impacts of sprawling developmhave been well documented, but few comprehensive studies have examined its economic costs. In 1996, a team of experts undertook a multi-year study designed to provide quantitative measures of the costs and benefits of differforms of growth. Sprawl Costs presents a concise and readable summary of the results of that study.The authors analyze the extof sprawl, define an alternative, more compact form of growth, project the magnitude and location of future growth, and compare what the total costs of those two forms of growth would be if each was applied throughout the nation. They analyze the likely effects of continued sprawl, consider policy options, and discuss examples of how more compact growth would compare with sprawl in particular regions. Finally, they evaluate whether compact growth is likely to produce the benefits claimed by its advocates.The book represents a comprehensive and objective analysis of the costs and benefits of differapproaches to growth, and gives decision-makers and others concerned with planning and land use realistic and useful data on the implications of various options and policies.

This work is an assessment of the state of current knowledge of the carbon cycle by a group of leading experts. It gives an introductory overview of the carbon cycle and covers both biophysical and human aspects of the cycle.

Describes sampling designs and survey methods for reliably estimating occupancy, abundance, and other population parameters of rare, elusive, or otherwise hard-to-detect plants and animals. It offers a mixture of theory and application, with actual examples from terrestrial, aquatic, and marine habitats around the world.

Assembly rules refer to the ecological principles that guide the 'assembly' of ecosystems. They offer guidance on planning which species should be restored first, and then which should be added in which order. This work explores the concepts and theories relating to assembly rules.

The final report of the first (1997-2000) phase of the Global Invasive Species Programme, in which research in over 30 countries has been brought together. This programme details the state of knowledge on what is now recognized as a worldwide environmental hazard.

From a mountain top where an eagle carries a salmon carcass to feed its young to the oceanic waters of the California current and the Alaskan Gyre, salmon have penetrated the Northwest to an extent unmatched by other animals. Since the turn of the twentieth century, natural productivity of salmon in Oregon, Washington, California, and Idaho has declined 80 percent. The decline of Pacific salmon to the brink of extinction is a sign of serious problems in the region.In Salmon Without Rivers, fisheries biologist Jim Lichatowich offers an eye-opening look at the roots and evolution of the salmon crisis in the Pacific Northwest. He describes the multitude of factors over the past century and a half that have led to the salmon's decline, and examines the failure of restoration efforts that have focused almost exclusively on hatcheries to return salmon stocks to healthy levels without addressing underlying causes of the decline.Lichatowich argues that the dominant worldview of our society -- a worldview that denies connections between humans and the natural world -- has created the conflict that characterizes the recent history of salmon; unless that worldview is challenged, there is little hope for recovery. Salmon Without Rivers exposes the myths that have guided recent human-salmon interactions. It explains the difficult choices facing citizens of the region, and provides unique insight into one of the most tragic chapters in our nation's environmental history.

'Panarchy' is a new term coined from the name of the Greek god Pan, a symbol of universal nature and associated with unpredictable change.It represents an alternative framework for managing the issues that emerge from the interaction between people and nature.That interaction generates countless surprises, often the result of slow changes that can accumulate and unexpectedly flip an ecosystem or an economy into a qualitatively differstate.That state may be not only impoverished, but also effectively irreversible.Thus, understanding how such change occurs is critical to achieving a sustainable society. Developed from the work of the Resilience Alliance, a worldwide group of leading organizations and individuals involved in ecological and economic research, Panarchy provides a framework to understand the cycles of change in complex systems and to gauge if, when, and how they can be influenced.This synopsis introduces lay readers and decision makers to this widely acclaimed line of inquiry and to the basic concept behind Panarchy, published by Island Press.

How to Save a River presents in a concise and readable format the wisdom gained from years of river protection campaigns across the United States. The book begins by defining general principles of action, including getting organized, planning a campaign, building public support, and putting a plan into action. It then provides detailed explanations of how to: form an organization and raise money develop coalitions with other groups plan a campaign and build public support cultivate the media and other powerful allies develop credible alternatives to damaging projects How to Save a River provides an important overview of the resource issues involved in river protection, and suggests sources for further investigation. Countless examples of successful river protection campaigns prove that ordinary citizens do have the power to create change when they know how to organize themselves.

Over 634 million acres of the United States -- nearly a million square miles -- are federally owned. These American Lands is both a history and a celebration of that inheritance. First published in 1986, the book was hailed by Wallace Stegner as "e;the only indispensable narrative history of the public lands."e; This completely revised and updated edition is an unsurpassed resource for everyone who cares about, visits, or works with public land in the United States. With over 75 pages of new material, the volume covers:*national parks*national forests*national resource lands*wildlife refuges*designated wildernesses*wild and scenic rivers*Alaska lands*national trailsEach chapter outlines the history of the unit of public lands under discussion, clarifies the resource use and policy conflicts that are currently besetting it, and provides a detailed agenda of management, expansion, and preservation goals.

To the uninitiated, water policy seems a complicated, hypertechnical, and incomprehensible subject: a tangle of engineering jargon and legalese surrounding a complex, delicate, and interrelated structure. Decisions concerning the public's waters involve scant public participation, and in such a context, reform seems risky at best.Searching Out the Headwaters addresses that precarious situation by providing a thorough and straightforward analysis of western water use and the outmoded rules that govern it. The authors begin by tracing the history and evolution of the uses of western water. They describe the demographic and economic changes now occurring in the region, and identify the many communities of interest involved in all water-use issues. After an examination of the central precepts of currwater policy, along with their original rationale and subsequevolution, they consider the reform movemthat has recently begun to emerge. In the end, the authors articulate the foundations for a water policy that can meet the needs of the new West and discuss the various means for effectively implementing such a policy, including market economics, regulation, the broad-based use of scientific knowledge, and open and full public participation.

Statewide Wetlands Strategies offers comprehensive strategies that draw upon all levels of governmand the private sector to focus and coordinate efforts to work toward the goal of no-net-loss of wetlands.

The stands of old-growth trees in the forests of western North America depend on periodic fires for their creation or survival. Forest ecologists Stephen Arno and Carl Fiedler present "restoration forestry" - an ecological approach that establishes forests in which fire can serve as a beneficial process rather than a destructive aberration.

Parks and Carrying Capacity is an important new work for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and researchers in outdoor recreation, park planning and management, and natural resource conservation and management, as well as for professional planners and managers involved with park and outdoor recreation related agencies and nongovernmental organizations.

Dave Foreman is one of North America's mcreative and effective conservation leaders, an outspoken proponof protecting and restoring the earth's wildness, and a visionary thinker. Over the past 30 years, he has helped set direction for some of our minfluential conservation organizations, served as editor and publisher of key conservation journals, and shared with readers his unique style and outlook in widely acclaimed books including The Big Outside and Confessions of an Eco-Warrior.In Rewilding North America, Dave Foreman takes on arguably the biggest ecological threat of our time: the global extinction crisis. He not only explains the problem in clear and powerful terms, but also offers a bold, hopeful, scientifically credible, and practically achievable solution.Foreman begins by setting out the specific evidence that a mass extinction is happening and analyzes how humans are causing it. Adapting Aldo Leopold's idea of ecological wounds, he details human impacts on species survival in seven categories, including direct killing, habitat loss and fragmentation, exotic species, and climate change. Foreman describes recdiscoveries in conservation biology that call for wildlands networks instead of isolated protected areas, and, reviewing the history of protected areas, shows how wildlands networks are a logical next step for the conservation movement. The final section describes specific approaches for designing such networks (based on the work of the Wildlands Project, an organization Foreman helped to found) and offers concrete and workable reforms for establishing them. The author closes with an inspiring and empowering call to action for scientists and activists alike.Rewilding North America offers both a vision and a strategy for reconnecting, restoring, and rewilding the North American continent, and is an essential guidebook for anyone concerned with the future of life on earth.

How can each of us live Cooler Smarter? While the routine decisions that shape our days-what to have for dinner, where to shop, how to get to work-may seem small, collectively they have a big effect on global warming. But which changes in our lifestyles might make the biggest difference to the climate? This science-based guide shows you the meffective ways to cut your own global warming emissions by twenty percor more, and explains why your individual contribution is so vital to addressing this global problem.Cooler Smarter is based on an in-depth, two-year study by the experts at The Union of Concerned Scientists. While other green guides suggest an array of tips, Cooler Smarter offers proven strategies to cut carbon, with chapters on transportation, home energy use, diet, personal consumption, as well as how best to influence your workplace, your community, and elected officials. The book explains how to make the biggest impact and when not to sweat the small stuff. It also turns many eco-myths on their head, like the importance of locally produced food or the superiority of all hybrid cars.The advice in Cooler Smarter can help save you money and live healthier. But its central purpose is to empower you, through low carbon-living, to confront one of society's greatest threats.

Presents an overview of the silicon cycle and issues associated with it. This book summarizes the major outcomes of the project Land-Ocean Interactions: Silica Cycle, initiated by the Scientific Community on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU).

Today, there is a growing demand for designed landscapes-from public parks to backyards-to be not only beautiful and functional, but also sustainable. Sustainability means more than just saving energy and resources. It requires integrating the landscapes we design with ecological systems. With Principles of Ecological Landscape Design, Travis Beck gives professionals and students the first book to translate the science of ecology into design practice. This groundbreaking work explains key ecological concepts and their application to the design and management of sustainable landscapes. It covers biogeography and plant selection, assembling plant communities, competition and coexistence, designing ecosystems, materials cycling and soil ecology, plant-animal interactions, biodiversity and stability, disturbance and succession, landscape ecology, and global change. Beck draws on real world cases where professionals have put ecological principles to use in the built landscape. The demand for this information is rising as professional associations like the American Society of Landscape Architects adopt new sustainability guidelines (SITES). But the need goes beyond certifications and rules. For constructed landscapes to perform as we need them to, we must get their underlying ecology right. Principles of Ecological Landscape Design provides the tools to do just that.

Bridges the gap between those scientists who study landscapes and the planners and conservationists who must then decide how best to preserve and build environmentally-sound habitats. The authors explain specific tools and concepts to measure a landscape's structure, form, and change over time.

Is it possible for a group of the world's most respected environmental scientists to truly practice what they preach? This title tells a story that is suitable for those who has ever thought about doing a 'green' rehab, has tried to build green, or just wonders what's actually possible.