Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters explores the intersection of the emerging field of “monster theory” within religious studies. With case studies from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary valleys of the Himalayas to ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia, the volume examines the variegated nature of the monstrous as well as the cultural functions of monsters in shaping how we see the world and ourselves. In this, the authors constructively assess the state of the two fiel...

As part of the Ecophyto II+ plan, INRAE and Ifremer were in 2020 commissioned to conduct a collective scientific assessment of the impacts of plant protection products on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The results, released in May 2022, confirm that plant protection products contaminate all types of terrestrial and aquatic environments, all of their compartments and most of their organisms.

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 multi-contributor, international volume synthesizes contributions from the world's leading soil scientists and ecologists, describing cutting-edge research that provides a basis for the maintenance of soil health and sustainability. The book covers these advances from a unique perspective of examining the ecosystem services produced by soil biota across different scales - from biotic interactions at microscales to communities functioning at regional and global scales. The book leads t...

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.

This new edition of Invasion Ecology provides a comprehensive and updated introduction to all aspects of biological invasion by non-native species. Highlighting important research findings associated with each stage of invasion, the book provides an overview of the invasion process from transportation patterns and causes of establishment success to ecological impacts, invader management, and post-invasion evolution. The authors have produced new chapters on predicting and preventi...

More than half the world's population now lives in cities. Creating sustainable, healthy and aesthetic urban environments is therefore a major policy goal and research agenda. This comprehensive handbook provides a global overview of the state of the art and science of urban forestry.It describes the multiple roles and benefits of urban green areas in general and the specific role of trees, including for issues such as air quality, human well-being and stormwater management. It rev...

Biodiversity observation systems are almost everywhere inadequate to meet local, national and international (treaty) obligations. As a result of alarmingly rapid declines in biodiversity in the modern era, there is a strong, worldwide desire to upgrade our monitoring systems, but little clarity on what is actually needed and how it can be assembled from the elements which are already present. This book intends to provide practical guidance to broadly-defined biodiversity observation networ...

This open access book explores a new conceptual framework for the sustainable management of the boreal forest in the face of climate change. The boreal forest is the second-largest terrestrial biome on Earth and covers a 14 million km2 belt, representing about 25% of the Earth’s forest area. Two-thirds of this forest biome is managed and supplies 37% of global wood production. These forests also provide a range of natural resources and ecosystem services essential to humanity. However, cli...

This book is about phylogenetic diversity as an approach to reduce biodiversity losses in this period of mass extinction. Chapters in the first section deal with questions such as the way we value phylogenetic diversity among other criteria for biodiversity conservation; the choice of measures; the loss of phylogenetic diversity with extinction; the importance of organisms that are deeply branched in the tree of life, and the role of relict species. The second section is composed by contri...

The aim of this book is to document for the first time the dimensions and requirements of effective integrated groundwater management (IGM). Groundwater management is a formidable challenge, one that remains one of humanity’s foremost priorities. It has become a largely non-renewable resource that is overexploited in many parts of the world. In the 21st century, the issue moves from how to simply obtain the water we need to how we manage it sustainably for future generati...

There has been a recent surge of interest in remote sensing and its use in ecology and conservation but this is the first book to focus explicitly on the NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index), a simple numerical indicator and powerful tool that can be used to assess spatio-temporal changes in green vegetation. The NDVI opens the possibility of addressing questions on scales inaccessible to ground-based methods alone; it is mostly freely available with global coverage over several d...