Whether the fossil record should be read at face value or whether it presents a distorted view of the history of life is an argument seemingly as old as many fossils themselves. In the late 1700s, Georges Cuvier argued for a literal interpretation, but in the early 1800s, Charles Lyell's gradualist view of the earth's history required a more nuanced interpretation of that same record. To this day, the tension between literal and interpretive readings lies at the heart of paleontological re...

Filling a niche in the geomorphology teaching market, this introductory book is built around a 12 week course in fluvial geomorphology.‘Reading the landscape’ entails making sense of what a riverscape looks like, how it works, how it has evolved over time, and how alterations to one part of a catchment may have secondary consequences elsewhere, over different timeframes. These place-based field analyses are framed within their topographic, climatic and environmenta...

The Princeton Guide to Ecology is a concise, authoritative one-volume reference to the field's major subjects and key concepts. Edited by eminent ecologist Simon Levin, with contributions from an international team of leading ecologists, the book contains more than ninety clear, accurate, and up-to-date articles on the most important topics within seven major areas: autecology, population ecology, communities and ecosystems, landscapes and the biosphere, conservation biology, ecos...

Climate change biology is a new discipline, born of the recognition that human-induced climate change is resulting in wholesale shifts in the distributions of species and the timing of biological events. The evidence for biological upheaval in response to climate change is immense. Migratory species are arriving earlier in the year. Flowers are blooming earlier. Ranges of plants, mammals and insects are moving. Food chains are being disrupted. And, unfortunately, the first extinctions link...

Physical Geography: The Key Concepts is a thought-provoking and up-to-date introduction to the central ideas and debates within the field. It provides extended definitions of terms that are fundamental to physical geography and its many branches, covering topics such as:biogeographyecologyclimatologymeteorologygeomorphologyhydrologypedolog...

Presenting a global and interdisciplinary approach to plant ecology, this much-awaited new edition of the book Plants and Vegetation integrates classical themes with the latest ideas, models, and data. Keddy draws on extensive teaching experience to bring the field to life, guiding students through essential concepts with numerous real-world examples and full-colour illustrations throughout. The chapters begin by presenting the wider picture of the origin of plants and their impact on the ...

A plethora of different theories, models, and concepts make up the field of community ecology. Amid this vast body of work, is it possible to build one general theory of ecological communities? What other scientific areas might serve as a guiding framework? As it turns out, the core focus of community ecology—understanding patterns of diversity and composition of biological variants across space and time—is shared by evolutionary biology and its very coherent conceptual framework, populati...

This concise introductory text provides a complete overview of biodiversity - what it is, how it arose, its distribution, why it is important, human impact upon it, and what should be done to maintain it.Timely overview of the serious attempts made to quantify and describe biodiversity in a scientific wayActs as an easy entry point into the primary literatureProvides real-world examples of key issues, including illustrations of major tempo...

A definitive guide to the depth and breadth of the ecological sciences, revised and updatedThe revised and updated fifth edition of Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems – now in full colour – offers students and practitioners a review of the ecological sciences.The previous editions of this book earned the authors the prestigious ‘Exceptional Life-time Achievement Award’ of the British Ecological Society – the aim for the fifth edition is not on...

This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics.Helps the reader quantify and interpret patterns of ecological diversity, focusing on the measurement and estimati...

The biological composition and richness of most of the Earth's major ecosystems are being dramatically and irreversibly transformed by anthropogenic activity. Yet, despite the vast areal extent of our oceans, the mainstay of research to-date in the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning arena has been weighted towards ecological observations and experimentation in terrestrial plant and soil systems. This book provides a framework for extending these concepts to a variety of marine systems.

All life on earth occurs in natural assemblages called communities. Community ecology is the study of patterns and processes involving these collections of two or more species. Communities are typically studied using a diversity of techniques, including observations of natural history, statistical descriptions of natural patterns, laboratory and field experiments, and mathematical modelling. Community patterns arise from a complex assortment of processes including competition, predation, m...