- Table View
- List View
Understanding Ethiopia
by Frances M. WilliamsUnderstanding Ethiopia is a detailed description of Ethiopia's geological story and enables non-specialist readers to share the author's thrill at gaining a deeper insight into the processes which produced, and continue to shape, this amazing country. Ethiopia's spectacular landscapes, ranging from mountains over 4500m high to salt plains 150m below sea level, are a reflection of the geological processes that formed the country. Indeed, its history and the historical sites, for which it is renowned, are largely determined by geology. Readers learn why and how Ethiopia's geology is both unique and dynamic, as here the earth's crust is in the process of breaking apart.
Understanding Garden Design: The Complete Handbook for Aspiring Designers
by Vanessa Gardner Nagel APLDDesigning a garden is a complex task. Where do you start? What kind of skills do you need? What are the logical steps in creating a design? How do you communicate your ideas to a client, and how do you accommodate a client’s requests while maintaining the integrity of the project? The answers to these questions, and many more, can all be found in Understanding Garden Design.Most books on garden design focus on only one or a few aspects of garden design—choosing plants or creating a hardscape, for example. This comprehensive, accessible book lays out the entire process from start to finish in clear, precise language that avoids the pitfalls of “designspeak.” In fact, garden owners and clients of garden designers who want to understand more about the designer’s craft will be able to profit from the book’s lessons.Among the many topics covered are how to document a site, how to determine what a client needs and wants from the garden, how to take architectural features into consideration, how to think about circulation and lay out paths, how to use basic design principles, how to work with plants, and how to create a final design. Practical aspects are clearly laid out, including working with contractors and staying on top of the various phases of construction. This thorough handbook is profusely illustrated with helpful photographs and diagrams. A particularly interesting tool is the hypothetical garden plan that appears in each chapter to show how to apply the topics at hand. A practical, logical approach to the planning, design, and installation of a garden, this volume will be an invaluable resource for students, landscape professionals, and garden designers.
Understanding Global Climate Change: Modelling the Climatic System and Human Impacts
by Arthur P Cracknell Costas A VarotsosClimate change, a familiar term today, is far more than just global warming due to atmospheric greenhouse gases including CO2. In order to understand the nature of climate change, it is necessary to consider the whole climatic system, its complexity, and the ways in which natural and anthropogenic activities act and influence that system and the environment. Over the past 20 years since the first edition of Understanding Global Climate Change was published, not only has the availability of climate-related data and computer modelling changed, but our perceptions of it and its impact have changed as well. Using a combination of ground data, satellite data, and human impacts, this second edition discusses the state of climate research today, on a global scale, and establishes a background for future discussions on climate change. This book is an essential reference text, relevant to any and all who study climate and climate change. Features Provides a thought-provoking and original approach to the science of climate. Emphasises that there are many factors contributing to the causation of climate change. Clarifies that while anthropogenic generation of carbon dioxide is important, it is only one of several human activities contributing to climate change. Considers climate change responses needed to be undertaken by politicians and society at national and global levels. Totally revised and updated with state-of-the-art satellite data and climate models currently in operation around the globe.
Understanding Global Crises: From Covid to Climate Change and Economic Collapse
by Thomas R. SadlerUnderstanding Global Crises is an innovative and interdisciplinary text that investigates the key contemporary economic, social, and environmental crises and demonstrates their deep interconnection. Contributing to the discussion of large-scale crises, this book provides a conceptual framework to understand the current global landscape. Essential cascading crises topics, such as economic collapse, climate change, racial injustice, domestic violence, and epistemic oppression, are explored in order to equip readers with the clarity to understand global crises, assess policy interventions, and analyze social responses. To achieve future resilience, the book shows that society must recognize various forms of inequality and make policy changes. Each chapter showcases an international case study, covering real-life examples of topics such as climate disinformation, vaccine distribution disparities, environmental racism, and socioeconomic deprivation. Other features of the book include key terms, suggested further reading, and discussion questions, as well as online supplements comprising PowerPoint slides and an instructor’s guide. Understanding Global Crises will be a valuable text to support courses in economics, environmental studies, political science, public health, and social policy.
Understanding God’s World
by Dawn MerenessThe Author describes GOD's creation in his books, about Science, Insects, Plants, Birds, Water, Air, Weather, Sound and Hearing. Geology, Planet Earth, Oceanography, Wonders of the Sea and Astronomy.
Understanding Human Ecology: Knowledge, Ethics and Politics
by Geetha Devi T. V.This book examines the domain of human agency–environment interaction from a multidimensional point of view. It explores the human–environment interface by analysing its ethical, political and epistemic aspects – the value aspects that humans attribute to their environment, the relations of power in which the actions and their consequences are implicated and the meaning of human actions in relation to the environment. The volume delineates the character of this domain and works out a theoretical framework for the field of human ecology. This book will be a must-read for students, scholars and researchers of environmental studies, human ecology, development studies, environmental history, literature, politics and sociology. It will also be useful to practitioners, government bodies, environmentalists, policy makers and NGOs.
Understanding Human Ecology: A Systems Approach to Sustainability
by Robert Dyball Barry NewellUnderstanding Human Ecology offers a coherent conceptual framework for human ecology – a clear approach for understanding the many systems we are part of and for how we frame and understand the problems we face. Blending natural, social, and cognitive sciences with dynamical systems theory, this key text offers systems approaches that are accessible to all, from the undergraduate student to policymakers and practitioners across government, business, and community. In the first edition, road-tested and refined over a decade of teaching and workshops, the authors built a clear, inspiring, and important framework for anyone approaching the management of complex problems and the transition to sustainability. Fully updated for the second edition, the book now goes further in using systems-thinking principles to explain fundamental processes of change in social–ecological systems. Revised case examples provide a working application of these principles, whilst a new discussion of the hierarchical structure of complex systems is included to guide practical policymaking. This new edition is essential reading for students and scholars of human ecology, environmental ethics, and sustainability studies.
Understanding Human Ecology: A systems approach to sustainability
by Barry Newell Robert DyballWe are facing hugely complex challenges - from climate change to world poverty, our problems are part of an inter-related web of social and natural systems. Human Ecology provides an approach to address these complex challenges, a way to understand them holistically and to start to manage them more effectively. This textbook, which has been road-tested and refined through over a decade of teaching and workshops, offers a coherent conceptual framework for Human Ecology - a clear approach for understanding the many systems we are part of and how we frame and understand the problems we face. By giving rigorous definitions it guides readers out of the current 'conceptual swamp' that hinders communication and collaboration - with a particular focus on terms such as "sustainability" and "cultural adaptation", that need generally agreed definitions before they can support clear communication. It also clarifies the role of Human Ecology, and similar disciplines, by bringing ethical and justice considerations into the assessment of different interventions to promote sustainability. Blending natural, social and cognitive sciences with dynamical systems theory, the authors offer systems approaches that are accessible to all, from the undergraduate student in environmental studies to policy-makers and practitioners across government, business and community.
Understanding Human-Nature Practices for Environmental Management: Examples from Northern Europe (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)
by E. C. H. KeskitaloNature has often been understood in literature through a disjunction to human systems. This can be seen in the nature-culture binary, or even more clearly in the opposition of ‘wilderness’ to ‘civilization’.Drawing on historical and present-day examples and case studies from Northern Europe, this book critically examines the ways in which the use of such dichotomies can be transcended to respond to sustainability challenges. Using illustrative examples, the authors demonstrate how shared histories and development of land use continue to impact multiple practices today. The book explores the prerequisites for environmental management approaches that counterpose the nature-culture binaries that are present in existing governance mechanisms.This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental management, environmental law and policy and environmental anthropology.
Understanding Imperiled Earth: How Archaeology and Human History Can Inform Our Planet's Future
by Todd J. BrajeA unique introduction to how understanding archaeology can support modern-day sustainability efforts, from restoring forested land to developing fire management strategiesAn essential and hopeful book for climate-conscious readersThe world faces an uncertain future with the rise of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, overfishing, and other threats. Understanding Imperiled Earth meets this uncertainty head-on, presenting archaeology and history as critical guides to addressing the modern environmental crisis.Anthropologist Todd J. Braje draws connections between deep history and today's hot-button environmental news stories to reveal how the study of the ancient past can help build a more sustainable future. The book covers a diverse array of interconnected issues, including: how modern humans have altered the natural world conservation work of Indigenous communitiesextinction of megafauna like dire wolves and woolly rhinocerosthe risk of deforestation highlighted by Notre Dame's destructionthe extinction crisis reflected by endangered bird species in Hawai'ifish scarcity driving demand and price, like the single blue-fin tuna fish that sold for three million dollarsimportance of "action archaeology" Braje examines how historical roots offer a necessary baseline for a healthier Earth, because understanding how the planet used to be is fundamental to creating effective restoration efforts moving forward through urban forests, sustainable food webs, and more. Understanding Imperiled Earth offers an illuminating, hopeful, and actionable approach to some of the world's most urgent problems.
Understanding Invasive Species in the Galapagos Islands: From The Molecular To The Landscape (Social And Ecological Interactions In The Galapagos Islands Ser.)
by María de Lourdes Torres Carlos F. MenaThis book investigates the introduction of invasive species and their behavior in oceanic islands. How can we define invasive species? What is their history? How did they come to dominate and transform ecosystems? These are relevant questions when trying to understand the behavior of invasive species—primarily in fragile ecosystems such as islands—and to understand the biological, ecological, social and economic impacts of invasions.We chose the Galapagos Islands, a place well-known to be unique in the study of evolution, as a laboratory to analyze the interactions between invasive and endemic species, to understand the makeup of the ecosystems emerging after invasions have occurred, to describe the relationships of invasives with the people that live in these islands, and to try to develop comprehensive analyses on this topic from multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary points of view. For a long time, the discussion has been about how proper management of the species could achieve two main goals: the eradication of the species to recover affected ecosystems and the conservation of endemic species. The discussion has taken on other nuances, including the suggestion that an invasive species, when it is already adapted to an ecosystem, forms an integral part of it, and thus eradication would in itself go against conservation. On the other hand, some invasive species are not only part of the biological compound of the island ecosystems, but they also form part of the social and cultural history of the inhabited islands. Some of these identified by the local inhabitants are species of real or potential economic value.
Understanding Just Sustainabilities from Within: A Case Study of a Shared-Use Commercial Kitchen in Connecticut (Routledge Equity, Justice and the Sustainable City series)
by Phoebe GodfreyWritten by the co-founder and former board president of a non-profit shared-use commercial kitchen, Understanding Just Sustainabilities from Within presents an intersectional analysis of CLiCK (Commercially Licensed Co-operative Kitchen), in order to explore what just sustainabilities can look and feel like from within and without. Through a unique combination of auto ethnography, participant observation, surveys and secondary research, this book offers insights into CLiCK’s micro and macro successes, failures, and unknowns in relation to its attempt to put the concept of just sustainabilities into daily practice, and praxis. Developing its practical analyses from a theoretical basis, this book does not focus on definitive answers, recognizing instead that the closest we can get to understanding just sustainabilities in praxis is through long-term collective struggle and ultimately love. Researchers and educators who are interested in linking theory with practice, especially in relation to just Sustainabilities and intersectionality, will appreciate the theoretical grounding, making it desirable for multiple social science classes. Additionally, those involved with the social justice, food justice and just sustainabilities movements will benefit from the book’s insights into best practices to address issues of social inequalities on the micro level, while also offering the benefits of a macro intersectional analysis.
Understanding Life in School: From Academic Classroom to Outdoor Education
by John QuayAttending school is an experience that most people share but this leads us to accept rather than question the experience. Using the philosophies of Heidegger and Dewey, John Quay explores life in schools and juxtaposes the environment of a school camp with that of an academic classroom.
Understanding Nature: Ecology for a New Generation
by Louise M. WeberUnderstanding Nature is a new kind of ecology textbook: a straightforward resource that teaches natural history and ecological content, and a way to instruct students that will nurture both Earth and self. While meeting the textbook guidelines set forth by the Ecological Society of America, Understanding Nature has a unique ecotherapy theme, using a historical framework to teach ecological theory to undergraduates. This textbook presents all the core information without being unnecessarily wordy or lengthy, using simple, relatable language and discussing ecology in ways that any student can apply in real life. Uniquely, it is also a manual on how to improve one’s relationship with the Earth. This is accomplished through coverage of natural history, ecology, and applications, together with suggested field activities that start each chapter and thinking questions that end each chapter. The book includes traditional ecological knowledge as well as the history of scientific ecological knowledge. Understanding Nature teaches theory and applications that will heal the Earth. It also teaches long-term sustainability practices for one’s psyche. Professor Louise Weber is both an ecologist and a certified ecopsychologist, challenging ecology instructors to rethink what and how they teach about nature. Her book bridges the gap between students taking ecology to become ecologists and those taking ecology as a requirement, who will use the knowledge to become informed citizens.
Understanding Owls: Biology, Management, Breeding, Training
by Jemima Parry-JonesThe only guide to every aspect of living and working with owls, wirtten by one of the world's top experts in the field of birds of prey: Jemima Parry-Jones, owner of the world-famous National Birds of Prey Centre. Owls have become increasingly popular as pets, as birds that specialists want to breed, or that people want to fly for pleasure, or to train and fly for demonstrations at zoos and bird of prey centres, and even as birds to use for hunting. It will help you understand owls to assure your own owl of the best possible situation in captivity. Jemima Parry-Jones covers everything to help you learn more about owls, either to keep them, breed them, or to train and fly one: taxonomy, biology; owl anatomy, morphology and behavior, housing and equipment, breeding owls, incubation, rearing, maintaining and managing your owls, training and hunting.
Understanding Poverty and the Environment: Analytical frameworks and approaches
by Fiona NunanDoes poverty lead to environmental degradation? Do degraded environments and natural resources lead to poverty? Or, are there other forces at play? Is the relationship between poverty and the environment really as straightforward as the vicious circle portrayal of ‘poverty leading to environmental destruction leading to more poverty’ would suggest? Does it matter if the relationship is portrayed in this way? This book suggests that it does matter. Arguing that such a portrayal is unhelpful and misleading, the book brings together a diverse range of analytical frameworks and approaches that can enable a much deeper investigation of the context and nature of poverty-environment relationships. Analytical frameworks and approaches examined in the book include political ecology, a gendered lens, Critical Institutionalism, the Environmental Entitlements framework, the Institutional Analysis and Development approach, the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, wellbeing analysis, social network analysis and frameworks for the analysis of the governance of natural resources. Recommended further reading draws on published material from the last thirty years as well as key contemporary publications, giving readers a steer towards essential texts and authors within each subject area. Key themes running through the analytical frameworks and approaches are identified and examined, including power, access, institutions and scale.
Understanding Risks and Uncertainties in Energy and Climate Policy: Multidisciplinary Methods And Tools For A Low Carbon Society
by Haris Doukas Alexandros Flamos Jenny LieuThis open access book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn, it discusses the development of alternative policy pathways and the identification of optimal switching points, drawing on concrete examples to do so. Lastly, it discusses climate change mitigation policies’ implications for the agricultural, food, building, transportation, service and manufacturing sectors.
Understanding Society and Natural Resources
by Michael J. Manfredo Jerry J. Vaske Andreas Rechkemmer Esther A. DukeIn this edited volume leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds wrestle with social science integration opportunities and challenges. This book explores the growing concern of how best to achieve effective integration of the social science disciplines as a means for furthering natural resource social science and environmental problem solving. The chapters provide an overview of the history, vision, advances, examples and methods that could lead to integration. The quest for integration among the social sciences is not new. Some argue that the social sciences have lagged in their advancements and contributions to society due to their inability to address integration related issues. Integration merits debate for a number of reasons. First, natural resource issues are complex and are affected by multiple proximate driving social factors. Single disciplinary studies focused at one level are unlikely to provide explanations that represent this complexity and are limited in their ability to inform policy recommendations. Complex problems are best explored across disciplines that examine social-ecological phenomenon from different scales. Second, multi-disciplinary initiatives such as those with physical and biological scientists are necessary to understand the scope of the social sciences. Too frequently there is a belief that one social scientist on a multi-disciplinary team provides adequate social science representation. Third, more complete models of human behavior will be achieved through a synthesis of diverse social science perspectives.
Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture: DESERTEC and Beyond (SpringerBriefs in Energy)
by Michael DürenThis book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book focuses on the global cycles of energy, water and carbon, which are not only the essentials of our main energy carriers, the fossil fuels, but are also the building blocks of life. The book offers an overview of the basic scientific facts and relationships that are needed to understand today’s energy generation and use, how they relate to global climate, the water cycle and other resources, and the complexities of energy policy. Building on the work of the Desertec project, it presents the main technological options that we will have in a world after the “Energiewende” and presents the possible future solutions for a sustainable world. The book is written in an engaging, descriptive style that can be understood by those without specific knowledge of science or economics and allows readers to form their own conclusions. Controversy rages over energy problems, climate change and their possible solutions. Expressions like “climate deniers”, “renaissance of nuclear energy”, “stop the war on coal”, and “Energiewende now” represent a diversity of opinions that divide our society and political leaders. This book shows the reader the whole energy picture and how it is part of the wider global problems of overpopulation and uncontrolled economies in a world of limited resources.
Understanding the Energy Transition: Civil society, territory and inequality in Italy
by Natalia Magnani Giovanni CarrosioThe transformation of the dominant model of centralized energy production from fossil fuels to renewable energies is at the center of the public and scientific debate, as well as the subject of national and European policies, as it is connected to highly topical issues such as climate change, emissions reduction and natural disasters, security of supply and sustainability of the current economic development model.Up to now this topic has been mainly addressed by the economic and engineering sciences, with a research focus on the hardware rather than on the human and social software.However, energy systems, and the possibilities of change, are not only economic or technological but involve also patterns of social life, representations, organizational models and relational structures. In order to generate the social preconditions for the transition to a low-emission society, focused on a growing production of energy from renewable sources and on a greater sustainability of consumption, it is therefore urgent to reaffirm the centrality of a sociological approach to energy.This book focused on three core research areas which are crucial to understand what is at stake with the energy transition: conflicts over the construction and location of renewable energy production plants; collective action on renewable sources that promote a new model of energy system in which consumers are also producers; and the social-territorial impact of energy policies.
Understanding the environment and social policy (Understanding Welfare: Social Issues, Policy and Practice)
by Tony FitzpatrickBringing together leading experts, this textbook explores the key social, political, economic and moral challenges that environmental problems pose for social policy in a global context. Combining theory and practice with an interdisciplinary approach, the book reviews the current strategies and policies and provides a critique of proposed future developments in the field. Understanding the environment and social policy guides the reader through the subject in an accessible way using chapter summaries, further reading, recommended webpages, a glossary and questions for discussion. Providing a much-needed overview, the book will be invaluable reading for students, teachers, activists, practitioners and policymakers.
Understanding the Long-Term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-Human Coastal System: The Future Of The U. S. Gulf Coast
by National Academies of Sciences Engineering MedicineThe U.S. Gulf Coast provides a valuable setting to study deeply connected natural and human interactions and feedbacks that have led to a complex, interconnected coastal system. The physical landscape in the region has changed significantly due to broad-scale, long-term processes such as coastal subsidence and river sediment deposition as well as short-term episodic events such as hurricanes. Modifications from human activities, including building levees and canals and constructing buildings and roads, have left their own imprint on the natural landscape. This coupled natural-human coastal system and the individual aspects within it (physical, ecological, and human) are under increased pressure from accelerating environmental stressors such as sea level rise, intensifying hurricanes, and continued population increase with its accompanying coastal development. Promoting the resilience and maintaining the habitability of the Gulf Coast into the future will need improved understanding of the coupled natural-human coastal system, as well as effective sharing of this understanding in support of decision-making and policies. Understanding the Long-term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-Human Coastal System presents a research agenda meant to enable a better understanding of the multiple and interconnected factors that influence long-term processes along the Gulf Coast. This report identifies scientific and technical gaps in understanding the interactions and feedbacks between human and natural processes, defines essential components of a research and development program in response to the identified gaps, and develops priorities for critical areas of research.
Understanding Trust in Government: Environmental Sustainability, Fracking, and Public Opinion in American Politics (Routledge Studies in Public Administration and Environmental Sustainability)
by Arnold Vedlitz James W. Stoutenborough Scott E. RobinsonGrowing disenfranchisement with political institutions and policy processes has generated interest in trust in government. For the most part, research has focused on trust in government as a general attitude covering all political institutions. In this book, Scott E. Robinson, James W. Stoutenborough, and Arnold Vedlitz argue that individual agencies develop specific reputations that may contrast with the more general attitudes towards government as a whole. Grounded in a treatment of trust as a relationship between two actors and taking the Environmental Protection Agency as their subject, the authors illustrate that the agency’s reputation is explained through general demographic and ideological factors – as well as policy domain factors like environmentalism. The book presents results from two approaches to assessing trust: (1) a traditional attitudinal survey approach, and (2) an experimental approach using the context of hydraulic fracturing. While the traditional attitudinal survey approach provides traditional answers to what drives trust in the EPA, the experimental results reveal that there is little specific trust in the EPA across the United States. Robinson, Stoutenborough, and Vedlitz expertly point the way forward for more reliable assessments of trust, while demonstrating the importance of assessing trust at the agency level. This book represents a much-needed resource for those studying both theory and methods in Public Administration and Public Policy.
Understanding Urban Cycling: Exploring the Relationship Between Mobility, Sustainability and Capital (Routledge Equity, Justice and the Sustainable City series)
by Justin SpinneyAcademic interest in cycling has burgeoned in recent years with significant literature relating to the health and environmental benefits of cycling, the necessity for cycle-specific infrastructure, and the embodied experiences of cycling. Based upon primary research in a variety of contexts such as London, Shanghai and Taipei, this book demonstrates that recent developments in urban cycling policy and practice are closely linked to broader processes of capital accumulation. It argues that cycling is increasingly caught up in discourses around Smart cities that emphasise technological solutions to environmental problems and neoliberal ideas on individual responsibility and biopolitical conduct, which only results in solutions that prioritise those who are already mobile. The central argument of the book is not that the popularisation of cycling is inherently bad, but that the manner in which cycling is being popularised gives cause for social and environmental concern. Ultimately the book argues that cycling has now become a vehicle for sustaining pro-growth agendas rather than subverting them or shifting to sustainable no-growth/de-growth and less technologically driven visions of modernity. This book makes an innovative contribution to the fields of Cycling Studies, Mobilities and Transport and will be of interest to students and academics working in Human Geography, Transport Studies, Urban Studies, Urban Planning, Public Policy, Sociology and Sustainability.
Understanding Water Security at Local Government Level in South Africa
by Richard Meissner Nikki Funke Karen Nortje Maronel SteynThis book provides unique insights into the complex issue of water security in South Africa. Based on qualitative research conducted through face-to-face structured interviews and focus group discussions with individuals, traditional leaders, municipal officials, researchers, businesspeople and farmers in the two local governments – the Sekhukhune District and eThekwini Metropolitan Municipalities – it focuses on the peoples’ understanding of the concept of water security and whether they believe that the municipalities have achieved water security for all. The research is supported by water security-related statistics, particularly those pertaining to water quality and quantity, and an extensive literature review for the concept of water security. In addition to assessing the state of water security in both municipalities, the book presents a new water security definition and typology, and offers valuable recommendations for future research.