Rocky Mountain Futures: An Ecological Perspective

Book Description

The Rocky Mountain West is largely arid and steep, with ecological scars from past human use visible for hundreds of years. Just how damaging were the past 150 years of activity? How do current rates of disturbance compare with past mining, grazing, and water diversion activities? In the face of constant change, what constitutes a "natural" ecosystem? And can a high quality of life be achieved for both human and natural communities in this region.

Rocky Mountain Futures presents a comprehensive and wide-ranging examination of the ecological consequences of past, current, and future human activities in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States and Canada. The book brings together 32 leading ecologists, geographers, and other scientists and researchers to present an objective assessment of the cumulative effects of human activity on the region's ecological health and to consider changes wrought by past human use. This combined view of past and present reveals where Rocky Mountain ecosystems are heading, and the authors project what the future holds based upon current economic and social trends and the patterns that emerge from them. The book:

examines the biogeographic and paleoenvironmental setting and historical climate that have shaped Rocky Mountain ecosystems
traces the direct human influences on landscapes and ecosystems over the past 150 years
explores the cumulative effects of past, present, and projected future human activities on tundra, subalpine and montane forests, valleys, grasslands, and waters
offers case studies that illustrate specific examples of human influence and current efforts to restore the environment

Case studies focus on northern New Mexico; Summit County, Colorado; Flathead Valley, Montana; and Alberta, Canada. Among the contributors are Craig D. Allen, N. Thompson Hobbs, Linda L. Joyce, Robert E. Keane, David Schindler, Timothy R. Seastedt, David Theobald, Diana Tomback, William Travis, Cathy Whitlock, and Jack Stanford.

The United Nations has proclaimed 2002 as the International Year of Mountains to increase international awareness of the global importance of mountain ecosystems. The case-based multidisciplinary approach of this book constitutes an important new model for understanding the implications of land-use practices and economic activity on mountains, and will serve a vital role in improving decisionmaking both in the Rocky Mountains and in other parts of the world that face similar challenges.

Customer Reviews:

A sober and comprehensive survey.......2003-02-10

Capably edited by Jill S. Baron (Ecosystem Ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, Fort Collins), and enhanced with an informative four-page Foreword by Paul R. Ehrlich (Bing Professor of Population Studies and President of the Center for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Science, Stanford University), Rocky Mountain Futures: An Ecological Perspective is a sober and comprehensive survey of the tremendous impact human influence has had on the Rocky Mountain ecosystems. Featuring case studies, cascading effects, human-driven changes and more, this seminal and authoritative compilation of researched essays by educated authors paints an accurate and documented picture of an ecology being pushed beyond its limits, and then offers succinct, practical, and occasionally inspired ideas on what to do about it before it's too late. Rocky Mountain Futures is an essential, fundamentally critical addition to any personal, professional, governmental, organizational, academic, or community library Environmental Studies reference collection and supplemental reading list.

Searching for Paradise: Economic Development and Environmental Change in the Mountain West.(Book Review): An article from: Journal of the American Planning Association

Average customer rating:

Searching for Paradise: Economic Development and Environmental Change in the Mountain West.(Book Review): An article from: Journal of the American Planning Association
Thomas Clark
Manufacturer: American Planning Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Natural Resources | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of the American Planning Association, published by American Planning Association on September 22, 2003. The length of the article is 1193 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Searching for Paradise: Economic Development and Environmental Change in the Mountain West.(Book Review)
Author: Thomas Clark
Publication: Journal of the American Planning Association (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2003
Publisher: American Planning Association
Volume: 69 Issue: 4 Page: 455(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Customer Reviews:

Delightfully amusing & informative gift for adults & kids!.......2003-01-05

Did you know that cacti have "personality"! A SMILE is what you'll get every time you pick up this gem - along with something new you've learned about our American deserts! It's a delightfully fun example of Jim Willoughby's artistic sense of humor in colaboration with wife, Sue. It's a great gift for locals and visitors to the southwest. I send it as a thank you gift to collectors of my husband's desert landscape paintings and hear back that it's enjoyed by the whole family!

This book was very informative and funny, too!.......1999-09-20

I bought this book at the museum gift shop at the White Sands Nat'l. Monument and enjoyed every moment of reading! My husband and I moved to Alamogordo, NM from Laramie, WY 1 1/2 years ago and did not know what the cacti were. Your book helped tremendously! Now we can pick out quite a few on our travels. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!! Chris Mendoza

Cactus Country, Friendly introduction to Cacti of the Southwest Deserts

Average customer rating:

Cactus Country, Friendly introduction to Cacti of the Southwest Deserts
Jim & Sue Willoughby
Manufacturer: Golden West Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NDH60Q

Cactus Country/a Friendly Introduction to Cacti of the Southwest Deserts

Average customer rating:

Cactus Country/a Friendly Introduction to Cacti of the Southwest Deserts
Jim Willoughby , and Sue Willoughby
Manufacturer: Golden West Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Book Description

INTRODUCTION

Nepal forms the very watershed of Asia. Landlocked between India and Tibet, it spans terrain from subtropical jungle to the icy Himalaya, and contains or shares eight of the world's ten highest mountains. Its cultural landscape is every bit as diverse: a dozen major ethnic groups, speaking as many as fifty languages and dialects, coexist in this narrow, jumbled buffer state, while two of the world's great religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, overlap and mingle with older tribal practices.

Yet it's a testimony to Nepali tolerance and good humour that there's no tradition of ethnic or religious strife. Unlike India, Nepal was never colonized, a fact which comes through in fierce national pride and other, more idiosyncratic ways. Founded on trans-Himalayan trade, the dense, medieval cities display unique pagoda-style architecture, not to mention an astounding flair for festivals and pageantry. Above all, though, Nepal is a nation of unaffected villages and terraced countryside - more than eighty percent of the population lives off the land - and whether you're trekking, biking or bouncing around in packed buses, sampling this simple lifestyle is perhaps the greatest pleasure of all.

But it would be misleading to portray Nepal as a fabled Shangri-la. One of the world's poorest countries, it suffers from many of the pangs and uncertainties of the developing world; development is coming in fits and starts, and not all of it is being shared equitably. Heavily reliant on its big-brother neighbours, Nepal was, until 1990, run by one of the last remaining absolute monarchies, a regime that combined China's repressiveness and India's bureaucracy in equal measure. It's now a democracy, but a very precarious one. Political freedom has done little to improve the lot of the average family, while corruption and frequent changes of government have led to widespread disillusion and spawned an intractable Maoist insurgency.

Travel within Nepal isn't straightforward or predictable. Certain tourist areas are highly developed, even overdeveloped, but facilities elsewhere are rudimentary; getting around is time-consuming and often uncomfortable. Nepalis are well used to shrugging off such inconveniences with the all-purpose phrase, Ke garne? (What to do?). Nepal is also a more fragile country than most - culturally as well as environmentally - so it's necessary to be especially sensitive as a traveller.

Customer Reviews:

excellent travelling companion.......2001-06-25

great guidebook. Describes in detail the good, the bad and the ugly of Nepal. The language section was extremely useful. A few hours spent learning some useful greetings and phrases will pay off tenfold upon arrival in Nepal. Being able to bargain or ask for directions in the native language is a lot of fun and much appreciated, especially since most travellers do not take the time to learn anything more than "Namaste."

Wonderfully comprehensive and thorough. Written with heart.......2000-04-29

This book has given me comfort and a wealth of information about what I would like to do and see in Nepal. Having a well planned trip in advance is smart and this book will probably tell you everything you need to know about anything, and more. Food, health issues, places to stay, sights, special points, etc. Definitely worth the investment.

Excellent, Practical Guide.......2000-03-20

I just returned from Nepal using this guide. The book was very well-written with lots of practical advice-- everything from how to book an airline to what kind of diahrrea you may have picked up. Very accurate information re. hotels, modes of transportation, etc. Useful vocabulary list.

Wonderfully useful book for travels in Nepal.......1999-01-09

The best thing about this book is its vast coverage; especially those places off the beaten track. It has a lot of practical information and despite being 2 years old now, it was still fairly accurate. Other travel books attempt to be encyclopedic about Nepal,... documenting everything without prioritizing the places that people actually do visit. David's book goes into a lot of detail about places of interest, both historical and practical info. For example, the book had an excellent section on Chitwan national park. In fact, on our recent trip it saved us from getting a guide. I thoroughly recommend this book. The author even keeps a website to update the readers. Great.

Absolutely Accurate.......1998-01-22

While in Nepal last year I found this book to be exactly what I needed to get around as easily as possible. I usually use Lonely Planet Guides when traveling, but in this case - the Rough Guide is superior. Now if I can only get it back from my friend....

Average customer rating:

A must buy!
Neat and useful, but out of date

The Rough Guide History of India
Dilip Hiro
Manufacturer: Rough Guides
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

Rough Guide | Guidebook Series | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Rough Guide to India 6 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

ASIN: 1858288428

Book Description

INTRODUCTION

The word `India' derives from Sindhu, the Sanskrit name of the great river - known in English as the Indus - that flows into the Arabian Sea from its source in the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. The ancient Persians, unable to pronounce the initial `S', used the word Hindu to denote both the land and the people beyond the river's eastern bank. The term then passed to the Greeks and into Europe generally, resulting in the word Indu, which in turn became `India' in English. Muslim invaders from Afghanistan and beyond adopted the term Hindustan (meaning `Place of Hindus') - a sobriquet sometimes applied by British and other European interlopers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It is appropriate that India's modern name should derive from the Sindhu/Indus, for it was in the fertile watershed of that river that an agrarian civilization, the Indus Valley Civilization, developed in prehistoric times - in much the same way as other such civilizations germinated along the banks of the Nile in Egypt, the Euphrates in Mesopotamia and the Yellow River in China. On modern atlases, of course, the Indus flows through Pakistan, which came into existence in 1947. Before that year, however, `India' - or what is meant by `India' in most of this book - was a vast subcontinent, bounded by the jungles and hills of Myanmar (Burma) in the east, the Himalayas to the north, Persia and other central Asian empires to the northwest and west, and by the apron of the Indian Ocean to the south. Within this frame, a rich diversity of peoples and cultures, empires, kingdoms and republics, have flourished - not just in the luxuriant northern plains, but also in the peninsular southern plateau.

Even in prehistoric times India's population was ethnically diverse, ranging from Negritos (dwarfish negroid peoples who must originally have come from Africa by sea) to Proto-Australoids, Mongoloids and what is sometimes called the `Mediterranean type'. Each of these groups, all members of the species homo sapiens sapiens, has survived into the present day - pockets of Negritos, for instance, can still be found in the far south. At the dawn of prehistory, the Proto-Australoids formed the core element in the subcontinent, speaking tongues belonging to the widely diffused Austronesian language family - among them Munda, still spoken by the eponymous Munda tribes of east-central India. On the northeastern and northern fringes of India were Mongoloid peoples, whose speech forms part of the Sino-Tibetan group. But while Mongoloids and Proto-Australoids are likely to have arrived at approximately the same time - from 70,000 BC onwards - it is the later Mediterranean type that is most closely associated with the Indus Valley Civilization and the subcontinent's Dravidian culture. Following later conquests these races were joined by Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Huns, Afghans, Turks, Mongols and some modern Europeans. The result is a melting-pot of unrivalled complexity.

Indo-Aryans achieved major conquests from around 1500 BC onwards. They were followed by Muslim tribes, who arrived from the Arabian peninsula and then Central Asia from the 8th century AD onwards; then by the Muslim Mughals (the term used for Mongols in Central Asia), who appeared in the 16th century. The last major invaders were the British, whose 1757 military victory at Plassey, Bengal, opened the way for a political dominance that lasted nearly two centuries.

The Aryans were decisive in shaping the religious makeup of the Indian subcontinent. They brought with them their customs and their religion, Vedism or Brahmanism, which, over a period of two thousand years, transmuted into Hinduism. This transformation occurred against the background of the emergence of two major religions, Buddhism and Jainism, around the turn of the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Under Emperor Ashoka (r. 273-232 BC) - India's first great ruler, whose domains included modern Afghanistan as well as most of the subcontinent - Buddhism became the state religion. Facing the rising popularity of Buddhism, Vedic brahmins (priests) simplified and reformed their elaborate rituals - if only for their political survival. In the end they were so successful that while Buddhism spread successfully to China and other parts of Asia, it became a minority faith in India and remains so; some four-fifths of Indians are Hindu.

While this first recorded wave of invaders resulted in an amalgamation of beliefs, no such synthesis occurred in the case of the next ones - the Muslim Arabs from the Arabian peninsula, and later Muslim tribes from Afghanistan and beyond. Pantheistic Hinduism and monotheistic Islam were antithetical, and remain so. Nonetheless, cultural amalgamation occurred - most notably in architecture, painting, music and dance. This reached a high point in the 16th and 17th centuries during the reign of Mughal emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan.

Customer Reviews:

A must buy!.......2005-06-07

Though the Rough Guide to India maintains the Aryan Invasion theory, the rest of it is a tribute to the study of India. Being Indian means that I belong to a people who have existed, in one form or another, for over 5,000 years of known history. Though invaders and new religious have come and left their mark on my homeland, India is always India and has shown that it will change and adapt.

The Rough Guide to India displays this complex history in a easy to follow format, as well as focusing on key peoples, subjects, and events. Excellent as stepping stool for further research or for learning about Indian History for the first time.

Neat and useful, but out of date.......2003-09-25

The small size of this book, and a chornological organisation of key events makes it a very handy reference tool to India's history, especially for last 2000 years or so. You could also carry it around and dip into it whenever you have the time.

But you also need to be careful. The presentation is out of touch with archaelogical findings and interpretations of the last 50 years or so. For instance, it refers to Aryan invasion theory, which has been abandoned by every historian, because there is no evidence of a massacre at the sites. The extent of the Sindhu-Saraswati civilation (Indus Civilation), 2.5 million square kilometres, mapped by the ASI is not mentioned.

It also makes some religious booboos. For instance, talking of the Shiva Linga, it tells us that Hindus worshipped a 'phallus' at Somnath. Shiva Linga actually refers to an oblong stone, which symolises Shiva, as any Hindu scriputre will tell you.

So buy it, but read it with caution.

Average customer rating:
Spirit of America: Our Cultural Heritage, Set (Spirit of America: Our Cultural Heritage) (Spirit of America: Our Cultural Heritage)
C. Ann Fitterer , Lucia Raatma , and Vicky Franchino
Manufacturer: Childs World
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Explore the World | People & Places | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1567663184

Book Description

Greatly revised, the Second Edition presents an extended survey of this rapidly growing field. The book reviews the effects of industrial and pharmaceutical chemicals on human behavior, cognitive function, and emotional status. Features include two new chapters addressing key forensic issues and recent views on multiple chemical sensitivity, sick building syndrome, and psychosomatic disorders; current data on NIOSH and OSHA exposure levels for industrial toxins; and enhanced coverage of testing methods; studies of PET, SPECT, and BEAM imaging applied to neurotoxic exposure.

Average customer rating:
Catalytic polymerization of olefins: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Future Aspects of Olefin Polymerization, Tokyo, Japan, 4-6 July 1985 (Studies in surface science and catalysis)

Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General & Reference | Chemistry | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Organic | Chemistry | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0444418016

Book Description

At once the strangest and most marvelous of Ivy Compton-Burnett's fictions, Manservant and Maidservant has for its subject the domestic life of Horace Lamb, sadist, skinflint, and tyrant. But it is when Horace undergoes an altogether unforeseeable change of heart that the real difficulties begin. Is the repentant master a victim along with the former slave? And how can anyone endure the memory of the wrongs that have been done?"

Customer Reviews:

A one-of-a-kind author.......2001-04-26

No one writes novels quite like Ivy Compton-Burnett: they're really more like novelized plays than anything else, and as Diane Johnson notes in her extremely intelligent foreword to this edition, Compton-Burnett's antecedents are more with Oscar Wilde than anyone else, in her love of savage epigrams and wordplay. her novels are almost impossibly stylized: almost all her characters speak in the same style, so small children and uneducated coooks speak with the same level of sophistication as wealthy educated homeowners. Still, for all of its artificiality, you'd be hardpressed to beat MANSERVANT AND MAIDSERVANT as a superior exercise in style. Compton-Burnett's witty and troubling vision of the effect of a wicked Victorian paterfamilias's repentance is exceptionally striking and thought-provoking, and though this novel is not quite up to the level of A HOUSE AND ITS HEAD (also recently reissued by NYRB Press in a stunning paperback edition), it is one of her best works nonetheless.

Average customer rating:

Manservant and Maidservant
I. Compton-Burnett
Manufacturer: Victor Gollancz Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IRUGK4

Average customer rating:

Manservant and Maidservant
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Manufacturer: Victor Gollancz Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JCAQPI

REISSUE OF WORKS BY I COMPTON BURNETT, MANSERVANT AND MAIDSERVANT

Average customer rating:

REISSUE OF WORKS BY I COMPTON BURNETT, MANSERVANT AND MAIDSERVANT
I COMPTON-BURNETT
Manufacturer: V GOLLANCZ
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000SHL63K

Average customer rating:

Manservant and Maidservant
I. Compton-Burnett
Manufacturer: Victor Gollancz
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LF0N2E

Average customer rating:

Manservant and Maidservant
Ivy Burnett-Compton
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000J0D6QG

Average customer rating:

Manservant and Maidservant
Compton-Burnett I.
Manufacturer: Victor Gollancz Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UIS7L6

Average customer rating:

Manservant and Maidservant
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Manufacturer: Panther Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IX54EQ

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books