Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

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.

Sally Coulthard explores the miraculous world of the earthworm, the modest little creature without whom life as we know it would not be possible. For Charles Darwin - who estimated every acre of land contained 53,000 earthworms - the humble earthworm was the most important creature on the planet. And yet, most people know almost nothing about these little engineers of the earth. We take them for granted but, without the earthworm, the world's soil would be barren and our gardens, fields and farms wouldn't be able to grow the food and support the animals we need to survive.

This audiobook includes both of Henry David Thoreau's most popular and enduring works, the book Walden and the essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience."

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.

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.

Every summer for two decades, Ted Leeson and a maverick group of close companions have returned to an old ranch house on the bench-land overlooking the Madison River. Trout and fly fishing may be at the heart of their ritual return, but their experience goes far beyond the fishing. Leeson contemplates both the human and natural landscape brilliantly....

All anglers want to catch record-size gamefish - author Robert Cunningham figured out how to do it. When the author hooks and fights a record-size tarpon in the Gulf of Mexico for more than eight hours, only to lose it at boat side, he is already many years into his 20-year effort to break as many IGFA rod and reel and fly rod records as he can. Follow him as his fishing quest takes him to the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast, the Bahamas, Florida, the backwaters of the Mobile Delta, and way offshore. His enthusiasm is catching and his angling ability well-honed - as proven by his setting 11 world records in one year!

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.

Barely inhabited, the Arctic is an alien world to most of us. It also holds critical clues about the future of our planet. In The Hidden Life of Ice, Marco Tedesco invites us to Greenland, where he and his fellow scientists are doggedly researching the dramatic changes afoot. Following the arc of his typical day at work, Tedesco unearths the secrets in the ice - from evidence of long-extinct "polar camels" to the fantastically weird microorganisms. Tedesco weaves together the bald facts on climate change with poetic reflections on this endangered landscape and more.

From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons - a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human.

A deft blend of science reporting and travel writing, The Journeys of Trees explores the evolving movements of forests by focusing on five trees: giant sequoia, ash, black spruce, Florida torreya, and Monterey pine.

From a 2017 Pulitzer-winning newspaperman, an unsentimental ode to America's heartland as seen in small-town Iowa—a story of reinvention and resilience, environmental and economic struggle, and surprising diversity and hope.

If you live on a rapidly changing planet, you'd be wise to learn how it works. The giant old forests on a skinny stretch of land on the far west coast of North America have a lot to say about living in a twitchy world.

Wild Isles is a celebration of the wildlife found on a relatively modest collection of islands positioned at a latitude so northerly to be unattractive to many animals and plants. Despite these unpromising foundations, the islands of Britain and Ireland, together with more than 6,000 lesser islets that make up our archipelago, contain some of the most diverse, beautiful and wildlife-rich landscapes and seas on our planet. This audiobook will explore the fascinating relationships within and between species who make their home on our beautiful isles.

Twilit and sinister, oozing with ague, bad airs, boggarts and other spirits: in the mind’s eye marshes, bogs and swamps are dangerous, crepuscular—and only partly of this world. For centuries, wetlands, have been the object of our distrust: we’ve drained away their demons, encroached upon and denuded them, ripping away not only their fragile beauty, botany and birdlife but also the carefully calibrated lives of those that have come to understand and thrive in them. In Swamp Songs, Tom Blass takes us on a journey through these strange lands and waterscapes.

In Tree Thieves, Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels and Indigenous communities along the way.

Ben Short has a successful career in advertising, a flat in a trendy part of London, a flashy motorbike. But after years of suffering with anxiety, he's a wreck. A drastic change is needed. For a time, he finds solace working with a forester, then as an apprentice to a Gypsy woodman, setting up home in a dilapidated wagon with just a rescue dog for company.