Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Ecosystems & Habitats

On October 1, 2015, the SS El Faro, a cargo ship tall as a hundred-story building that made a regular run between Jacksonville, Florida, and Puerto Rico, delivering everything from razor blades to new Chevrolet cars, disappeared in Hurricane Joaquin, a category 4 storm. The ship, her hundreds of shipping containers, and her entire crew sank to the bottom of the ocean, three miles down. The sinking was the greatest seagoing US merchant marine shipping disaster since World War II.

There is a saying in Russian jails. Ne ver ne boysya ne prosi: don't trust, don't fear, don't beg. Don't trust because life here will always disappoint you. Don't fear because whatever you're scared of, you are powerless to prevent it. And don't beg because nobody ever begged their way out of a Russian prison cell. The plan was to attach a Greenpeace pod to Gazprom's platform and launch a peaceful protest against oil being pumped from the icy waters of the Arctic.

Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive - and massively controversial - wildlife rescue mission is underway.

Master naturalist Nancy Lawson takes listeners on a fascinating tour of the vibrant web of nature outside our back door—where animals and plants perceive and communicate using marvelous sensory abilities we are only beginning to understand. Organized into chapters investigating each of their five senses, Lawson's exploration reveals a remarkable world of interdependent creatures with amazing capabilities.

With humor and easy-to-understand language, marine scientist Ellen Prager and meteorologist Dave Jones use frequently asked and zany questions about the ocean and atmosphere to combat misinformation and make science engaging and understandable for all. From dangerous marine life, coral reefs, and the deep sea to lightning, hurricanes, weather forecasting, the Sun, and climate change, they reveal what's fact, what's fiction, and how to find science-based answers.

Throughout history, trees have determined the tools we use, the boats we build, the stories we tell about the world and ourselves, the songs we sing, and some of our most important rituals. As such, our lives are intertwined with those of the trees and woodlands around us. In this journey deep into the woods, Wyl Menmuir travels the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland to meet the people who plant trees, the ecologists who study them, those who shape beautiful objects and tools from wood, and those who use them to help others.

With Mountain Madness, Clinton Crockett Peters chronicles his travels and personal transformation from a West Texas evangelical to mountain guide to humbled humanist after a near-fatal injury in Japan's Chichibu Mountains. From 2007 to 2010, Peters lived in Kosuge Village, nestled in central Japan's peaks, where he was the only foreigner in town. This essay collection profiles who he was before Japan, why he became obsessed with mountains, and his fallout from mountain obsession. Ultimately, the collection asks, how can landscape create and end identities?

Smokescreen cuts through years of misunderstanding and misdirection to make an impassioned, evidence-based argument for a new era of forest management for the sake of the planet and the human race. Scientist and activist Chad T. Hanson explains how natural alarm over wildfire has been marshaled to advance corporate and political agendas, notably those of the logging industry. He also shows that, in contrast to the fear-driven narrative, contemporary research has demonstrated that forests in the US, North America, and around the world have a significant deficit of fire.

As more and more of our planet is urbanised, we humans still feel that primal pull to connect with our wilder roots. This gorgeously lyrical book invites us to celebrate the natural world, while also offering a clear-eyed glimpse into the challenges faced by urban plants and animals as cities grow and sprawl. Wild City proposes a compelling manifesto for city wildlife, suggesting how we might take action to protect the often-overlooked residents who live alongside us.

Seit Jahrzehnten steigende Temperaturen sind eine unabweisbare Tatsache: Der Klimawandel kommt nicht - wir sind bereits mittendrin. Bernhard Kegel geht in seinem Hörbuch der Frage nach, wie sich unsere Umwelt in den nächsten Jahren verändern wird. Welche Migration von Flora und Fauna wird es geben - und was bedeutet dies für unser Leben? Was passiert, wenn natürliche Zyklen kollabieren, wenn etwa Fische schlüpfen, weil die Wassertemperatur ansteigt, aber kein Futter vorhanden ist, weil sich Phytoplankton erst vermehrt, wenn die Tage länger werden?

In seinen dreiundneunzig Lebensjahren hat David Attenborough einschneidende Veränderungen unserer natürlichen Lebensbedingungen miterlebt. Als er zur Welt kam, gab es noch auf allen Kontinenten Wildnis. Heute hingegen hat die Spezies Mensch sich vervierfacht, die entlegensten Winkel des Planeten erobert und drängt Fauna und Flora immer weiter zurück. Dadurch hat sich die Aussterberate im Vergleich zu ruhigeren erdgeschichtlichen Zeiten um das 100- bis 1000fache erhöht.

First, a dream of escaping the city...and then a century-old cottage to match the dream. Moving to a small village in the heart of the Irish countryside was the start of a new life for Philip Judge - the beginning of life in sight of Yellow Mountain. Philip describes the season-by-season charms and frustrations that he, his beloved and, eventually, his two growing boys experience as they adapt to life in the countryside.

A compelling history of seashells and the animals that make them, revealing what they have to tell us about nature, our changing oceans, and ourselves. Seashells have been the most coveted and collected of nature's creations since the dawn of humanity. They were money before coins, jewelry before gems, art before canvas. In The Sound of the Sea, acclaimed environmental author Cynthia Barnett blends cultural history and science to trace our long love affair with seashells and the hidden lives of the mollusks that make them.

In this poetic audiobook, hear the words of legendary outdoorsman John Muir's entreaty to the American people imploring them to develop, as he did, a connection to their national parks. An ardent outdoorsman, a gifted writer, a dedicated preservationist, and a spiritual beacon, John Muir worked in his life and in his writing to inspire everyone to find a love for the wilderness and to become invested in its preservation.

How deep do sharks swim? Have more people been into space than the deep ocean? And what effect are we having on the health of our seas? In Ask an Ocean Explorer, marine biologist of over 20 years and advisor for the BBC's Blue Planet II, Dr Jon Copley, explains the science and wonder of the deep ocean.

When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.

For centuries, fishermen have launched their pirogues from the Senegalese port of Joal, where the fish used to be so plentiful a man could dip his hand into the grey-green ocean and pull one out as big as his thigh. But in an Atlantic decimated by overfishing and climate change, the fish are harder and harder to find. Here, Badkhen discovers, all boundaries are permeable - between land and sea, between myth and truth, even between storyteller and story. Fisherman's Blues immerses us in a community navigating a time of unprecedented environmental, economic, and cultural upheaval.

In the final book in her Great Lakes Adventure trilogy, Loreen Niewenhuis launches off the shoreline to explore the islands of the Great Lakes Basin. From hiking the rugged wilderness of Isle Royale in Lake Superior to strolling the metropolis on Montreal Island in the St. Lawrence River, Niewenhuis explores key islands in each of the five Great Lakes and their connecting waterways.

Like her 2011 book of a similarly-epic long trek around Lake Michigan, this grand hike on the shores of five magnificent bodies of freshwater explores the natural and human history of the Great Lakes, while raising important questions about preserving our wild places and protecting fragile ecosystems on which we all depend.

The fault in modernity lies in the ever -ncreasing feeling of security. This has been brought about by various technological advancements which, albeit having made life much easier, have consequently resulted in lenience. A lax mindset is a precursor for accidents and incurs greater losses during disasters due to insufficiently managed risk. Disasters are sudden catastrophic events, either natural or human-instigated, that result in a grave disruption of normal day-to-day life.