This book unravels the deep-time story of the Baltic Sea’s ancient shores—landscapes shaped by the retreat of the last Ice Age and still visible today in raised beaches across Fennoscandia. Relict coastal plant species, surviving for millennia in habitats that mirror long-vanished shorelines, reveal how climate, soil and sunlight once allowed pioneer vegetation to flourish on emerging land. Using luminescence and radiocarbon dating, the authors determine the ages of prehistoric shorelines ...

The Palaeozoic or Primary Era spans a period of time ranging from 542 million to 251 million years ago. The name Paleozoic, derives from the fact that, in the past, it was considered the first geological age. The Paleozoic covers a range of about 300 million years, giving rise to many forms of life, until the appearance of thecodonts, commonly believed to be the ancestors of dinosaurs.

*Winner of the Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability******Named a Best Book of the Year by Scientific American*This timely and captivating look at the hidden impact of light pollution is “rich in revelation and insight…lyrical” (The Wall Street Journal) and urges us to cherish natural darkness for the sake of the environment, our own well-being, and all life on earth.How much ...

Follow this multi-disciplinary, scientific study as it examines the evidence of a great global catastrophe that occurred only 11,500 years ago. Crustal shifting, the tilting of Earth's axis, mass extinctions, upthrusted mountain ranges, rising and shrinking land masses, and gigantic volcanic eruptions and earthquakes--all indicate that a fateful confrontation with a destructive cosmic visitor must have occurred. The abundant geological, biological, and climatological evidence from this dir...

For readers of Entangled Life and The Hidden Life of Trees, a fascinating journey into the world of plants and animals, and the ways they communicate with each other.In forests, fields, and even gardens, there is a constant exchange of information going on. Animals and plants must communicate with one another to survive, but they also tell lies, set traps, talk to themselves, and speak to each other in a variety of unexpected ways.Here, be...

From the mysterious depths of Lake Vostok, Antarctica, to tropical floodplain lakes, inland seas, hydro-reservoirs and the variety of waterbodies in our local environment, lakes encompass a huge diversity of shapes, sizes, depths, colours, and even salinities. Often very large and very deep, they sustain important and unique ecosystems which can be hotspots of biodiversity, and are used by humans as sources of drinking water and food, in particular, fish. What is the origin of differences ...

Journey through Earth’s most extreme, seemingly hostile environments—and marvel at the remarkable creatures that call them home.From scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths of the oceans, there are habitats on this Earth that appear hostile to life—yet where, nevertheless, life flourishes. In North American forests, wood frogs awaken each spring from solid blocks of ice. Under the Saharan sun, shielded by silv...

There are more coral species in deep, cold-waters than in tropical coral reefs. This broad-ranging treatment is the first to synthesise current understanding of all types of cold-water coral, covering their ecology, biology, palaeontology and geology. Beginning with a history of research in the field, the authors describe the approaches needed to study corals in the deep sea. They consider coral habitats created by stony scleractinian as well as octocoral species. The importance of corals ...

A comprehensive monograph of the beautiful Snowy Owl, famed for its elegant, all-white plumage.The Snowy Owl needs little introduction. This massive white owl breeds throughout the Arctic, wherever there are voles or lemmings to hunt, from Scandinavia through northern Russia to Canada and Greenland. Southerly movements in winter see North American birds travel as far south as the northern United States, while infrequent vagrants on the Shetlands and other northern ...

First published in 1977, the second volume of Climate: Present, Past and Future covers parts 3 and 4 of Professor Hubert Lamb’s seminal and pioneering study of climatology. Part 3 provides a survey of evidence of types of climates over the last million years, and of methods of dating that evidence. Through the earlier stages of the Earth’s development the book traces what is known of the various geographies presented by the drifting continents and indicates what can be learnt abou...

Nothing new from the Ice Age? Far from it! Barely ten years have passed since the first edition of this book was published, but in that time researchers around the world have developed new methods and published their findings in scientific journals. Consequently, ideas about the course of the Ice Age have changed dramatically. The sequence of the individual ice advances, the direction of ice movement and the direction of meltwater drainage are only partially known, but they can be reconstr...

This open access book presents the proceedings volume of the YOUMARES 8 conference, which took place in Kiel, Germany, in September 2017, supported by the German Association for Marine Sciences (DGM). The YOUMARES conference series is entirely bottom-up organized by and for YOUng MARine RESearchers. Qualified early career scientists moderated the scientific sessions during the conference and provided literature reviews on aspects of their research field. These reviews and the presenters’ c...