With over half of the global human population living in urban regions, urban ecosystems may now represent the contemporary and future human environment. Consisting of green space and the built environment, they harbour a wide range of species, yet are not well understood.This book aims to review what is currently known about urban ecosystems in a short and approachable text that will serve as a key resource for teaching and learning related to the urban environment. It covers both ...

The growth of cities poses ever-increasing challenges for the natural environment on which they impact and depend, not only within their boundaries but also in surrounding peri-urban areas. Landscape ecology – the study of interactions across space and time between the structure and function of physical, biological and cultural components of landscapes – has a pivotal role to play in identifying sustainable solutions.This book brings together examples of research at the cutting edg...

How does nature work in our human-created city, suburb, and exurb/peri-urb? Indeed how is ecology - including its urban water, soil, air, plant, and animal foundations - spatially entwined with this great human enterprise? And how can we improve urban areas for both nature and people? Urban Ecology: Science of Cities explores the entire urban area: from streets, lawns, and parks to riversides, sewer systems, and industrial sites. The book presents models, patterns, and examples from hundre...

Enlarged, enhanced and internationalized edition of the first restoration ecology textbook to be published, with foreword by Dr. Steven Whisnant of Texas A&M University and Chair of the Society of Ecological Restoration.Since 2006, when the first edition of this book appeared, major advances have taken place in restoration science and in the practice of ecological restoration. Both are now accepted as key components of the increasingly urgent search for sustainabil...

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...

What can ecological science contribute to the sustainable management and conservation of the natural systems that underpin human well-being? Bridging the natural, physical and social sciences, this book shows how ecosystem ecology can inform the ecosystem services approach to environmental management. The authors recognise that ecosystems are rich in linkages between biophysical and social elements that generate powerful intrinsic dynamics. Unlike traditional reductionist approaches, the h...

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.

CONSERVATION BIOGEOGRAPHYThe Earth’s ecosystems are in the midst of an unprecedented period of change as a result of human action. Many habitats have been completely destroyed or divided into tiny fragments, others have been transformed through the introduction of new species, or the extinction of native plants and animals, while anthropogenic climate change now threatens to completely redraw the geographic map of life on this planet. The urgent need to understand ...

Many mushrooms - or the 'fruits of fungi' - are extremely valuable, wild-gathered products which are utilised for both their medicinal properties and as food. In many of the world's tropical and temperate forests, they are the primary source of income for the people who live there.These forests range from temperate woodlands and small forests to high altitude forests in the Himalaya and tropical miombo woodlands in south-central Africa. In south-west China, over 200 species of wild ...

Coevolution—reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species driven by natural selection—is one of the most important ecological and genetic processes organizing the earth's biodiversity: most plants and animals require coevolved interactions with other species to survive and reproduce. The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution analyzes how the biology of species provides the raw material for long-term coevolution, evaluates how local coadaptation forms the basic module of coevolu...

In Flammable Australia: Fire Regimes, Biodiversity and Ecosystems in a Changing World, leading researchers in fire ecology and management discuss how fire regimes have shaped and will continue to shape the distribution and abundance of Australia’s highly diverse plants and animals. Central to this is the exploration of the concept of the fire regime – the cumulative pattern of fires and their individual characteristics (fire type, frequency, intensity, season) and how variation in regime comp...

In the face of ever-declining biodiversity, zoos have a major role to play in species conservation. Written by professionals involved in in situ conservation and restoration projects internationally, this is a critical assessment of the contribution of zoos to species conservation through evidence amassed from a wide range of sources. The first part outlines the biodiversity context within which zoos should operate, introducing the origins and global spread of zoos and exploring animal col...