Showing results by publisher "--Tyson Hanks" in Ecosystems & Habitats

By 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than Greenland. The native Inuit had occupied the relatively accessible west coast for centuries. The east coast, however, was another story. In August 1930, Henry George Watkins (nicknamed “Gino”), a twenty-three-year-old British explorer, led thirteen scientists and explorers on an ambitious expedition to the east coast of Greenland and into its vast and forbidding interior to set up a permanent meteorological base on the icecap, 8,200 feet above sea level.

In this abridgement of River-Horse, the pre-eminent chronicler of American back roads - who has given us the classics Blue Highways and Prairyerth - recounts his singular voyage through American waters from sea to sea. Along the route, he offers a lyrical and ceaselessly fascinating shipboard perspective on the country and its rivers, lakes, canals, and landscapes.

Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they can teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered. It is the annual flood pulse—the brief time when the river occupies the floodplain—that gives a river its vitality, but it is human engineering that kills it, suppressing the flood pulse with dams, irrigation, siltation, dikes, and levees.

Ancient writers observed that forests always recede as civilizations develop and grow. The great Roman poet Ovid wrote that before civilization began, “even the pine tree stood on its own very hills” but when civilization took over, “the mountain oak, the pine were felled.” This happened for a simple reason: trees have been the principal fuel and building material of every society over the millennia, from the time urban areas were settled until the middle of the nineteenth century. To this day trees still fulfill these roles for a good portion of the world’s population.

Bushcraft and survival legend Ray Mears takes us on his own lifetime's journey through the natural world, into the British countryside and across continents, and shows us how to tune our senses, enhance our experience of nature, and understand our place within it. Guiding us through practical fieldcraft tips, Ray brings us up close with creatures we share our planet with, and reveals how we can learn from them, from the stealth of the leopard to the patience and stillness of the crocodile, and even the colour-changing camouflage of the octopus.

With evocative text, Cecilia shares the joys and challenges of adapting to an inhospitable climate along with advice and insight for anyone seeking to thrive in unusual living conditions. Whatever your location, Life on Svalbard will give you a deeper understanding of why people choose to live in extreme environments, and perhaps help you find the hidden magic of where you live, too.

Through a series of personal journeys, Dan Richards explores the appeal of far-flung outposts in mountains, tundra, forests, oceans and deserts. Following a route from the Cairngorms of Scotland to the fire-watch lookouts of Washington State; from Iceland's 'Houses of Joy' to the Utah desert; frozen ghost towns in Svalbard to shrines in Japan; Roald Dahl's writing hut to a lighthouse in the North Atlantic, Richards explores landscapes which have inspired writers, artists and musicians....

The Brilliant Abyss tells the story of our relationship with the deep sea – how we imagine, explore and exploit it. It captures the golden age of discovery we are currently in and looks back at the history of how we got here, while also looking forward to the unfolding new environmental disasters that are taking place miles beneath the waves, far beyond the public gaze.

At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett was looking forward to new motherhood and all that was to come. But when the telephone rang, the news she received changed everything. Her eldest sister had died in a canoeing accident. Five years later, struggling with grief, the demands of being a parent-carer for her young son, and the impact of deeper austerity, life feels very different to the future she had imagined. A move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria offers Victoria and her family a chance to rebuild their lives.

Acclaimed nature writer Susan Hand Shetterly opens a window into the world of this fascinating organism by providing an elegant, often poetic, look at life on the rugged shore of the Gulf of Maine. Shetterly offers a close look at the life cycle of seaweed and introduces us to the men and women who farm and harvest it - and their increasingly difficult task of protecting this critical natural resource against forces both natural and man-made.

Farming and ranching success comes from the freedom to fail because there is no silver bullet. Curiosity – Farmers Discovering What Works tells journeys farmers make to find solutions that are kinder to the environment, easier on the pocket and bring purpose, pride and confidence to those in the most complex profession there is. Each story has nuggets of inspiration and insight to stimulate observation and logic in farming matters.

Fifty Years on the Trail is the true story of John Young Nelson (1826-1903), an early frontiersman, military scout, interpreter, guide, and saloon owner. Nelson ran away from home as a young teenager to adventure in the west. He worked on farms, served as a cabin boy on a Mississippi steamer, and became an apprentice with a group of traders traveling west from Missouri. After meeting a band of Sioux, he got himself adopted into the tribe, learned how to live off the land and became a Sioux warrior.

On 5 June 2022, award-winning journalist Dom Phillips was working on this book, alongside the indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, when they were both brutally murdered. They are believed to have been assassinated by one of the criminal networks whose ecological exploitation they were working to expose. Blending in-depth reporting and encounters with indigenous activists, ecologists, farmers, and political figures, How to Save The Amazon is a dazzling account of how we can fight ecological destruction and stand in solidarity with the Earth's environmental defenders.

As a small boy, Bill François was frightened of deep water. Until a chance encounter with the elusive sardine set him on course for a life in marine science: a mission to better understand, and preserve, the underwater world, to find his place in that ecosystem and learn how to converse harmoniously with the ocean. In a series of exquisitely rendered vignettes of marine life, François invites us on a whistle-stop global tour to reveal the mysteries of the sea, beginning with the simple eloquence of the sardine.

Humanity can make short work of the oceans' creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller's sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It's a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail.

Zane Grey fished up to 300 days of the year. But, with all that time on the water, there was nothing more exciting or more compelling than the really big fish - the giants of the sea. In Zane Grey's day, blue fin tuna were pursued with harpoons and sometimes are even today. There is the story of a swordfish that was hooked at 10:30 in the morning and played until 11:30 that night - only to...! Tales of Swordfish and Tuna will dazzle and thrill any fishing heart.

Meadowland gives a unique and intimate account of an English meadow’s life from January to December, together with its biography. In exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn, and includes the biographies of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren, the skylark brood and the curlew pair, among others.

In April 2018, seasoned adventurer Ben Fogle and Olympic cycling gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, along with mountaineer Kenton Cool, took on their most exhausting challenge yet – climbing Everest for the British Red Cross to highlight the environmental challenges mountains face. It would be harrowing and exhilarating in equal measure as they walked the fine line between life and death 8,000 metres above sea level.

The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruptions and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecologic and economic disaster. In Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants to transform the West.

A riveting new exploration of the octopus from a world-leading expert, marine biologist David Scheel. Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none captivates us quite like the octopus. This highly intelligent master of disguise is one of our planet's most intriguing and enigmatic creatures. Marine biologist David Scheel's lifelong preoccupation with octopuses has led to a career of groundbreaking research, from finding previously unknown species to the discovery of signaling communication among octopuses.