Ecospatiality

"John Steinbeck's Salinas Valley. Richard Wright's Chicago. Leslie Marmon Silko's New Mexico. Readers often have strong connections with literary places like these. And some works of literature can even change our understanding of the world we live in. But can place also change our view of literature? Site-Reading advances a place-based approach to literature, reading classic texts through the twin lenses of geographical awareness and environmental thought. This book highlights recent developments in ecocriticism and geocriticism to argue for a theory of "ecospatiality" with nature, space, and story as the three elements of place. Site-Reading reconsiders well-known works of twentieth-century American prose and shows how social and environmental issues always overlap. Travel writer William Least Heat-Moon, whose work embodies the ecospatial perspective, portrays his experiences with place on the local, regional, and continental scales. Classic novels by Silko, Willa Cather, and Ana Castillo-usually discussed in isolation-converge in a way that maps diverse cultural perspectives and environmental threats onto the shared geography of Central New Mexico. A reading of Steinbeck's Salinas Valley Watershed texts investigates the impacts of literary tourism in "Steinbeck Country" before drilling down into Steinbeck's portrayals of spatial development and environmental history. And an innovative analysis of Native Son shows how Richard Wright uses cartographic details to decry the spatial/racial politics of South Side Chicago in the 1930s. In this book, Lowell Wyse shows how place provides the grounds for both human experience and critical practice. By bringing together concepts like literary cartography, deep mapping, and bioregionalism in an "ecospatial" approach, Site-Reading not only maps new terrain between ecocriticism and geocriticism, but also shows why place matters-in the world and in the text"--

Engl.

Foundations of Biogeography provides facsimile reprints of seventy-two works that have proven fundamental to the development of the field. From classics by Georges-Louis LeClerc Compte de Buffon, Alexander von Humboldt, and Charles Darwin to equally seminal contributions by Ernst Mayr, Robert MacArthur, and E. O. Wilson, these papers and book excerpts not only reveal biogeography's historical roots but also trace its theoretical and empirical development. Selected and introduced by leading biogeographers, the articles cover a wide variety of taxonomic groups, habitat types, and geographic regions. Foundations of Biogeography will be an ideal introduction to the field for beginning students and an essential reference for established scholars of biogeography, ecology, and evolution. List of Contributors John C. Briggs, James H. Brown, Vicki A. Funk, Paul S. Giller, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Lawrence R. Heaney, Robert Hengeveld, Christopher J. Humphries, Mark V. Lomolino, Alan A. Myers, Brett R. Riddle, Dov F. Sax, Geerat J. Vermeij, Robert J. Whittaker

This book provides a snapshot of representative modeling analyses of coastal hypoxia and its effects. Hypoxia refers to conditions in the water column where dissolved oxygen falls below levels that can support most metazoan marine life (i.e., 2 mg O2 l-1). The number of hypoxic zones has been increasing at an exponential rate since the 1960s; there are currently more than 600 documented hypoxic zones in the estuarine and coastal waters worldwide. Hypoxia develops as a synergistic product of many physical and biological factors that affect the balance of dissolved oxygen in seawater, including temperature, solar radiation, wind, freshwater discharge, nutrient supply, and the production and decay of organic matter. A number of modeling approaches have been increasingly used in hypoxia research, along with the more traditional observational and experimental studies. Modeling is necessary because of rapidly changing coastal circulation and stratification patterns that affect hypoxia, the large spatial extent over which hypoxia develops, and limitations on our capabilities to directly measure hypoxia over large spatial and temporal scales. This book consists of 15 chapters that are broadly organized around three main topics: (1) Modeling of the physical controls on hypoxia, (2) Modeling of biogeochemical controls and feedbacks, and, (3) Modeling of the ecological effects of hypoxia. The final chapter is a synthesis chapter that draws generalities from the earlier chapters, highlights strengths and weaknesses of the current state-of-the-art modeling, and offers recommendations on future directions.

Prominent scholars and practitioners in the field of global environmental politics consider the ecological and political realities of life on the new earth, and probe the field's deepest and most enduring questions at a time of increasing environmental stress. Arranged in complementary pairs, included are - reflections on environmental pedagogy, analysis of new geopolitical realities, reflections on the power of social movements and international institutions, and calls for more compelling narratives to promote environmental action.

This volume provides a detailed description of a wide range of numerical, statistical or modeling techniques and novel instrumentation separated into individual chapters written by paleontologists with expertise in the given methodology. Each chapter outlines the strengths and limitations of specific numerical or technological approaches, and ultimately applies the chosen method to a real fossil dataset or sample type. A unifying theme throughout the book is the evaluation of fossils during the prologue and epilogue of one of the most exciting events in Earth History: the Cambrian radiation.

Having no competitive works, this unique publication presents a single structure for the analysis, explanation and solution of environmental problems, regardless of their location, nature or scale. In this problem-oriented approach, a coherent framework interconnects the study of facts and values, environmental systems, social causes and ethical premises. Counterbalancing current biases, the author emphasizes the fundamental, normative, economic and social-scientific aspects of truly interdisciplinary environmental science. For instance, the normative side of environmental problems are often neglected, resulting in policy designs and evaluations containing inefficient mixtures of sophisticated models and poorly grounded normative premises; this is the first major study to enrich the field with more normative consistency and groundedness. It is also the first text to consistently identify the social causes of environmental problems, rather than focusing on the physical-scientific aspects, and thus design deeper and more effective policies. Furthermore, a tinge of post-modern thinking runs throughout the book, with special care being taken, however, to constantly keep in view the practical relevance of theory for problem-oriented work. The book will be of interest to environmental scientists and managers wishing to improve the consistency and depth of their work, to social scientists and geographers wishing to connect their discipline to the environmental problems field, and to general scientists interested in the connections between philosophy and practice.

This book looks at some key economic aspects of the environment. Our planet is threatened by a wrong belief in a wrongly formulated growth. The term “economic growth” can only mean an increase in welfare but is often wrongly identified with production growth that may be destructive to the environment. The figure of standard national income (NI) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is useful for many purposes but inadequate for environmental policy making. This book develops the concept of an environmentally Sustainable National Income (eSNI). eSNI is defined as the maximally attainable level of production, using the technology of the year under review, whereby the vital environmental functions (possible uses) of the not-human-made physical surroundings remain available for future generations. Judgement of environmental sustainability requires that both NI and eSNI are looked at jointly, alongside each other. The distance eΔ = NI – eSNI provides the relevant information about environmental sustainability. Calculations for the Netherlands for 1990-2015 provide a proof of concept. National statistical bureaus around the world are advised to provide this information for their own countries, so that policy making around the world can use sound information about the national economies and the global environment. Dr Roefie Hueting (1929) is an economist and was head of the department of environmental statistics at CBS Statistics Netherlands. Ir Bart de Boer (1947) is an electrotechnical engineer who applied systems analysis to environmental issues and sustainability.