Search results for ""Island Press""
Island Press Rights to Nature: Ecological, Economic, Cultural, and Political Principles of Institutions for the Environment
£38.00
Island Press Salmon Without Rivers: A History Of The Pacific Salmon Crisis
Explores the roots and evolution of the salmon crisis in the Pacific Northwest. The author describes the evolutionary history of the salmon as well as the geological history of the Pacific Northwest, before considering the multitude of factors, including historical, social, scientific and cultural, which have led to the salmon's decline. The book includes a clinical and critical assessment of why the numerous restoration efforts have failed. The book exposes the myths that have guided recent human-salmon interactions and explains the difficult choices facing the region, offering an insight into this chapter of America's environmental history.
£25.16
Island Press Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters
The Santa Cruz River that once flowed through Tucson, Arizona is today a sad mirage of a river. Except for brief periods following heavy rainfall, it is bone dry. What killed the Santa Cruz River and could devastate other surface waters across the United States - was ground pumping.
£22.25
Island Press The Clean Water Act 20 Years Later
£34.00
Island Press These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands: Revised and Expanded Edition
£32.41
Island Press Alien Species and Evolution: The Evolutionary Ecology of Exotic Plants, Animals, Microbes, and Interacting Native Species
In Alien Species and Evolution, biologist George W. Cox reviews and synthesizes emerging information on the evolutionary changes that occur in plants, animals, and microbial organisms when they colonize new geographical areas, and on the evolutionary responses of the native species with which alien species interact. The book is broad in scope, exploring information across a wide variety of taxonomic groups, trophic levels, and geographic areas. It examines theoretical topics related to rapid evolutionary change and supports the emerging concept that species introduced to new physical and biotic environments are particularly prone to rapid evolution. The author draws on examples from all parts of the world and all major ecosystem types, and the variety of examples used gives considerable insight into the patterns of evolution that are likely to result from the massive introduction of species to new geographic regions that is currently occurring around the globe. Alien Species and Evolution is the only state-of-the-art review and synthesis available of this critically important topic, and is an essential work for anyone concerned with the new science of invasion biology or the threats posed by invasive species.
£32.41
£32.41
Island Press Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation
Climate change is having an immediate and sometimes life-threatening impact, especially for older adults – generally speaking, people 65 or older. Older adults often face mobility, cognitive, and resource challenges, which contribute to a disproportionate number of deaths in the face of major disasters. But some challenges are less visible. Consider the grandparent who no longer can stand and wait at the bus stop because of the heat, or the retiree who lives in a home with black mould due to chronic flooding that she can’t afford to remediate or leave because of her limited fixed income. Our population is aging—by 2034, the US will have more people over 65 than under 18. Despite the evidence that climate change is severely impacting older adults, and the reality that communities will be confronted with more frequent and more severe disasters, we’re not prepared to address the needs of older adults and other vulnerable populations in the face of a changing climate. In Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation, community resilience and housing expert Danielle Arigoni argues that we cannot achieve true resilience until communities adopt interventions that work to meet the needs of their oldest residents. She explains that when we plan for those most impacted by climate, and for those with the greatest obstacles to opportunity and well-being, we improve conditions for all. Arigoni explores how to integrate age-friendly resilience into community planning and disaster preparedness efforts through new planning approaches—including an age-friendly process, and a planning framework dedicated to inclusive disaster recovery—to create communities that serve the needs of older adults better, not only during disasters but for all the days in between. Examples are woven throughout the book, including case studies of age-friendly resilience in action from New York State; Portland, Oregon and Multnomah County; and New Orleans. Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation will help professionals and concerned citizens understand how to best plan for both the aging of our population and the climate changes underway so that we can create safer, more liveable communities for all.
£23.99
Island Press Swamplands: Tundra Beavers, Quaking Bogs, and the Improbable World of Peat
America was built on white pine. From the 1600s through the Civil War and beyond, it was used to build the nation’s ships and houses, barns, and bridges. It became a symbol of independence, adorning the Americans’ flag at Bunker Hill, and an economic engine, generating three times more wealth than the California gold rush. Yet this popularity came at a cost: by the end of the 19th century, clear cutting had decimated much of America’s white pine forests. In White Pine: The Natural and Human History of a Foundational American Tree, ecologist and writer John Pastor takes readers on walk through history, connecting the white pine forests that remain today to a legacy of destruction and renewal. Since the clear-cutting era, naturalists, foresters, and scientists have taken up the quest to restore the great white pine forests. White Pine follows this centuries-long endeavor, illuminating how the efforts shaped Americans’ understanding of key scientific ideas, from forest succession to the importance of fire. With his keen naturalist’s eye, Pastor shows us why restoring the vitality of these forests has not been simple: a host of other creatures depend on white pine and white pine depends on them. In weaving together cultural and natural history, White Pine celebrates the way humans are connected to the forest—and to the larger natural world. Today, white pine forests have begun to recover, but face the growing threat of climate change. White Pine shows us that hope for healthy forests lies in understanding the lessons of history, so that iconic species survive as a touchstone for future generations.
£21.99
Island Press The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, Revised Edition
When The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change was first published in 2014, it offered something entirely new: a fun, illustrated guide to a planetary crisis. If that sounds like an oxymoron, you’ve never seen the carbon cycle demonstrated through yoga poses or a polar bear explaining evolution to her cubs. That creativity comes from the minds of Yoram Bauman, the world’s first and only “stand-up economist,” and award-winning illustrator Grady Klein. After seeing their book used in classrooms and the halls of Congress alike, the pair has teamed up again to fully update the guide with the latest scientific data from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). A lot has happened to the climate over the last decade, and the authors tackle the daunting statistics with their trademark humour. They realise it’s better to laugh than cry when confronting mind-blowing facts about our changing world. Readers will become familiar with critical concepts, but they’ll also smile as they learn about climate science, projections, and policy. Sociologists have argued that we don’t address climate change because it’s too big and frightening to get our heads around. The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change takes the intimidation and gloom out of one of the most important challenges of our time.
£22.99
Island Press Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives
In 2019, mobility experts Melissa and Chris Bruntlett began a new adventure in Delft in the Netherlands. They had packed up their family in Vancouver, BC, and moved to Delft to experience the cycling city as residents rather than as visitors. A year earlier they had become unofficial ambassadors for Dutch cities with the publication of their first book Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality. In Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett chronicle their experience living in the Netherlands and the benefits that result from treating cars as visitors rather than owners of the road. They weave their personal story with research and interviews with experts and Delft locals to help readers share the experience of living in a city designed for people. In the planning field, little attention is given to the effects that a “low-car” city can have on the human experience at a psychological and sociological level. Studies are beginning to surface that indicate the impact that external factors, such as sound, can have on our stress and anxiety levels. Or how the systematic dismantling of freedom and autonomy for children and the elderly to travel through their cities is causing isolation and dependency. In Curbing Traffic, the Bruntletts explain why these investments in improving the built environment are about more than just getting from place to place more easily and comfortably. The insights will help decision makers and advocates to better understand and communicate the human impacts of low-car cities: lower anxiety and stress, increased independence, social autonomy, inclusion, and improved mental and physical wellbeing. The book is organised around the benefits that result from thoughtfully curbing traffic, resulting in a city that is: child-friendly, connected, trusting, feminist, quiet, therapeutic, accessible, prosperous, resilient, and age-friendly. Planners, public officials, and citizen activists should have a greater understanding of the consequences that building for cars has had on communities (of all sizes). Curbing Traffic provides relatable, emotional, and personal reasons why it matters and inspiration for exporting the low-car city.
£23.99
Island Press Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life
Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites--separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources--to support a soft city approach? In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions. Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society. Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond. Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.
£26.00
Island Press Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity
We have disrupted the natural water cycle for centuries in an effort to control water for our own prosperity. Yet every year, recovery from droughts and floods costs billions of dollars, and we spend billions more on dams, diversions, levees, and other feats of engineering. These massive projects not only are risky financially and environmentally, they often threaten social and political stability. What if the answer was not further control of the water cycle, but repair and replenishment? Sandra Postel takes readers around the world to explore water projects that work with, rather than against, nature’s rhythms. In New Mexico, forest rehabilitation is safeguarding drinking water; along the Mississippi River, farmers are planting cover crops to reduce polluted runoff; and in China, “sponge cities” are capturing rainwater to curb urban flooding. Efforts like these will be essential as climate change disrupts both weather patterns and the models on which we base our infrastructure. We will be forced to adapt. The question is whether we will continue to fight the water cycle or recognise our place in it and take advantage of the inherent services nature offers. Water, Postel writes, is a gift, the source of life itself. How will we use this greatest of gifts?
£22.25
Island Press Don't Be Such a Scientist, Second Edition: Talking Substance in an Age of Style
In Don’t Be Such a Scientist, Randy Olson recounts the lessons from his own hilarious—and at times humiliating—evolution from science professor to Hollywood filmmaker, sharing the secrets of talking substance in an age of style. The key, he argued, is to stay true to the facts while tapping into something more primordial, more irrational—and ultimately more human. Now, in this second edition of his provocative and groundbreaking book, Olson builds upon the lessons and storytelling of Don’t Be Such a Scientist, providing an epilogue to each chapter for the current times, and adding a fresh introduction and new chapter on the importance of listening for science communicators (and beyond).Don’t Be Such a Scientist, Second Edition is a cutting and irreverent manual to speaking out and making your voice heard in an age of attacks on science.Invaluable for anyone looking to break out of the boxes of academia or research, Olson’s writing will inspire readers to “make science human”—and to enjoy the ride along the way.
£19.34
Island Press Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality
In car-clogged urban areas across the world, the humble bicycle is enjoying a second life as a legitimate form of transportation. City officials are rediscovering it as a multi-pronged (or -spoked) solution to acute, 21st-century problems, including affordability, obesity, congestion, climate change, inequity, and social isolation. As the world’s foremost cycling nation, the Netherlands is the only country where the number of bikes exceeds the number of people, primarily because the Dutch have built a cycling culture accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ability, or economic means. Chris and Melissa Bruntlett share the incredible success of the Netherlands through engaging interviews with local experts and stories of their own delightful experiences riding in five Dutch cities. Building the Cycling City examines the triumphs and challenges of the Dutch while also presenting stories of North American cities already implementing lessons from across the Atlantic. Discover how Dutch cities inspired Atlanta to look at its transit-bike connection in a new way and showed Seattle how to teach its residents to realize the freedom of biking, along with other encouraging examples. Tellingly, the Dutch have two words for people who ride bikes: wielrenner (“wheel runner”) and fietser (“cyclist”), the latter making up the vast majority of people pedaling on their streets, and representing a far more accessible, casual, and inclusive style of urban cycling—walking with wheels. Outside of their borders, a significant cultural shift is needed to seamlessly integrate the bicycle into everyday life and create a whole world of fietsers. The Dutch blueprint focuses on how people in a particular place want to move.
£19.99
Island Press Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence
A leading plant scientist offers a new understanding of the botanical world and a passionate argument for intelligent plant life. Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and navigate their surroundings? For centuries, philosophers and scientists have argued that plants are unthinking and inert, yet discoveries over the past fifty years have challenged this idea, shedding new light on the complex interior lives of plants. In Brilliant Green, leading scientist Stefano Mancuso presents a new paradigm in our understanding of the vegetal world. He argues that plants process information, sleep, remember, and signal to one another- showing that, far from passive machines, plants are intelligent and aware. Part botany lesson, part manifesto, Brilliant Green is an engaging and passionate examination of the inner workings of the plant kingdom.
£16.34
Island Press Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Second Edition
The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Second Edition is based on the experience of the best cycling cities in the world. The designs in this book were developed by cities for cities, since unique urban streets require innovative solutions. To create the Guide, the authors conducted an extensive worldwide literature search from design guidelines and real-life experience. They worked closely with a panel of urban cycleway planning professionals from NACTO member cities and from numerous other cities worldwide, as well as traffic engineers, planners, and academics with deep experience in urban cycleway applications. The Guide offers substantive guidance for cities seeking to improve bicycle transportation in places where competing demands for the use of the right of way present unique challenges. Each of the treatments addressed in the Guide offers three levels of guidance: Required: elements for which there is a strong consensus that the treatment cannot be implemented without; Recommended: elements for which there is a strong consensus of added value; and, Optional: elements that vary across cities and may add value depending on the situation. First and foremost, the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Second Edition will help practitioners make good decisions about urban cycleway design. The treatments outlined in the Guide are based on real-life experience in the world's most bicycle friendly cities and have been selected because of their utility in helping cities meet their goals related to bicycle transportation. The Guide is an indispensable tool every planner must have for their daily transportation design work.
£37.00
Island Press How to Study Public Life: Methods in Urban Design
How do we accommodate a growing urban population in a way that is sustainable, equitable, and inviting? This question is becoming increasingly urgent as we face diminishing fossil-fuel resources and the effects of a changing climate while global cities continue to compete to be the most vibrant centres of culture, knowledge, and finance. Jan Gehl has been examining this question since the 1960s, when few urban designers or planners were thinking about designing cities for people. But given the unpredictable, complex and ephemeral nature of life in cities, how can we best design public infrastructure - vital to cities for getting for place to place, or staying in place - for human use? Studying city life and understanding the factors that encourage or discourage use is the key to designing inviting public space. In How to Study Public Life Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre draw from their combined experience of over 50 years to provide a history of public-life study as well as methods and tools necessary to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. This type of systematic study began in earnest in the 1960s, when several researchers and journalists on different continents criticized urban planning for having forgotten life in the city. City life studies provide knowledge about human behaviour in the built environment in an attempt to put it on an equal footing with knowledge about urban elements such as buildings and transport systems. Studies can be used as input in the decision-making process, as part of overall planning, or in designing individual projects such as streets, squares or parks. The original goal is still the goal today: to recapture city life as an important planning dimension. Anyone interested in improving city life will find inspiration, tools, and examples in this invaluable guide.
£31.00
Island Press The Architecture of Community
Leon Krier is one of the best-known - and most provocative - architects and urban theoreticians in the world. Until now, however, his ideas have circulated mostly among a professional audience of architects, city planners, and academics. In "The Architecture of Community", Krier has reconsidered and expanded writing from his 1998 book "Architecture: Choice or Fate". Here he refines and updates his thinking on the making of sustainable, humane, and attractive villages, towns, and cities. The book includes drawings, diagrams, and photographs of his built works, which have not been widely seen until now. With three new chapters, "The Architecture of Community" provides a contemporary road map for designing or completing today's fragmented communities. Illustrated throughout with Krier's original drawings, "The Architecture of Community" explains his theories on classical and vernacular urbanism and architecture, while providing practical design guidelines for creating livable towns. The book contains descriptions and images of the author's built and unbuilt projects, including the Krier House and Tower in Seaside, Florida, as well as the town of Poundbury in England. Commissioned by the Prince of Wales in 1988, Krier's design for "Poundbury in Dorset" has become a reference model for ecological planning and building that can meet contemporary needs.
£35.31
Island Press The Unnatural History of the Sea
Humanity can make short work of the oceans' creatures. As Callum M. Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the Sea, the oceans' bounty didn't disappear overnight. While today's fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the 11th century in medieval Europe.
£31.68
Island Press Ecology and Ecosystem Conservation
Meeting today?s environmental challenges requires a new way of thinking about the intricate dependencies between humans and nature. This book provides readers with a basic understanding of the fundamental principles of ecological science and their applications, offering an essential overview of the way ecology can be used to devise strategies to conserve the health and functioning of ecosystems.
£18.61
Island Press A Critique of Silviculture: Managing for Complexity
New ideas in ecology have implications for managing forest ecosystems. The discipline of silviculture is at a crossroads. Silviculturists are under increasing pressure to develop practices that sustain the full function and dynamics of forested ecosystems and maintain ecosystem diversity and resilience while still providing needed wood products. "A Critique of Silviculture" offers a penetrating look at the current state of the field and provides suggestions for its future development.The book includes an overview of the historical developments of silvicultural techniques and describes how these developments are best understood in their contemporary philosophical, social, and ecological contexts. It also explains how the traditional strengths of silviculture are becoming limitations as society demands a varied set of benefits from forests and as we learn more about the importance of diversity on ecosystem functions and processes.The authors go on to explain how other fields, specifically ecology and complexity science, have developed in attempts to understand the diversity of nature and the variability and heterogeneity of ecosystems. The authors suggest that ideas and approaches from these fields could offer a road map to a new philosophical and practical approach that endorses managing forests as complex adaptive systems."A Critique of Silviculture" bridges a gap between silviculture and ecology that has long hindered the adoption of new ideas. It breaks the mold of disciplinary thinking by directly linking new ideas and findings in ecology and complexity science to the field of silviculture. This is a critically important book that is essential reading for anyone involved with forest ecology, forestry, silviculture, or the management of forested ecosystems.
£23.99
Island Press Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis
Much of what you’ve heard about plastic pollution may be wrong. Instead of a great island of trash, the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of manmade debris spread over hundreds of miles of sea—more like a soup than a floating garbage dump. Recycling is more complicated than we were taught: less than nine percent of the plastic we create is reused, and the majority ends up in the ocean. And plastic pollution isn’t confined to the open ocean: it’s in much of the air we breathe and the food we eat. In Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis, journalist Erica Cirino brings readers on a globe-hopping journey to meet the scientists and activists telling the real story of the plastic crisis. From the deck of a plastic-hunting sailboat with a disabled engine, to the labs doing cutting-edge research on microplastics and the chemicals we ingest, Cirino paints a full picture of how plastic pollution is threatening wildlife and human health. Thicker Than Water reveals that the plastic crisis is also a tale of environmental injustice, as poorer nations take in a larger share of the world’s trash, and manufacturing chemicals threaten predominantly Black and low-income communities. There is some hope on the horizon, with new laws banning single-use items and technological innovations to replace plastic in our lives. But Cirino shows that we can only fix the problem if we face its full scope and begin to repair our throwaway culture. Thicker Than Water is an eloquent call to reexamine the systems churning out waves of plastic waste.
£21.79
Island Press Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land
This is the first practical guidebook to give restorationists and would be restorationists with little or no scientific training or background the 'how to' information and knowledge they need to plan and implement ecological restoration activities. The first part of the book introduces the process of ecological restoration in simple, easily understood language through specific examples drawn from the authors' experience in restoring their own lands. The second half shows how that same 'thinking' and 'doing' can be applied to North America's major ecosystems and landscapes in any condition or scale. Cosponsored by the Society for Ecological Restoration International and Island Press, this series offers a foundation of practical knowledge and scientific insight that will help ecological restoration become the powerful reparative and healing tool that the world needs.
£44.00
Island Press Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land
This is the first practical guidebook to give restorationists and would be restorationists with little or no scientific training or background the 'how to' information and knowledge they need to plan and implement ecological restoration activities. The first part of the book introduces the process of ecological restoration in simple, easily understood language through specific examples drawn from the authors' experience in restoring their own lands. The second half shows how that same 'thinking' and 'doing' can be applied to North America's major ecosystems and landscapes in any condition or scale. Cosponsored by the Society for Ecological Restoration International and Island Press, this series offers a foundation of practical knowledge and scientific insight that will help ecological restoration become the powerful reparative and healing tool that the world needs.
£24.43
Island Press Seven Modern Plagues: and How We Are Causing Them
Every time we sneeze, there seems to be a new form of flu: bird flu, swine flu, Spanish flu, Hong Kong flu, H5N1, and most recently, H5N7. While these diseases appear to emerge from thin air, in fact, human activity is driving them. And the problem is not just flu, but a series of rapidly evolving and dangerous modern plagues. According to veterinarian and journalist Mark Walters, we are contributing to, if not overtly causing, some of the scariest epidemics of our time. Through human stories and cutting-edge science, Walters explores the origins of seven diseases: Mad Cow Disease, HIV/AIDS, Salmonella DT104, Lyme Disease, Hantavirus, West Nile, and new strains of flu. He shows that they originate from manipulation of the environment, from emitting carbon and clear-cutting forests to feeding naturally herbivorous cows "recycled animal protein." Readers will both learn how today's plagues first developed and discover patterns that could help prevent the diseases of tomorrow.
£20.06
Island Press Foundations of Restoration Ecology
The practice of ecological restoration, firmly grounded in the science of restoration ecology, provides governments, organisations, and landowners a means to halt degradation and restore function and resilience to ecosystems stressed by climate change and other pressures on the natural world. Foundational theory is a critical component of the underlying science, providing valuable insights into restoring ecological systems effectively and understanding why some efforts to restore systems can fail In turn on-the-ground restoration projects can help to guide and refine theory, advancing the field and providing new ideas and innovations for practical application. This new edition of Foundations for Restoration Ecology provides the latest emerging theories and ideas in the science of restoration ecology. Fully one-third longer than the first edition and comprehensive in scope it has been dramatically updated to reflect new research. Included are new sections devoted to Concepts critical to all restoration projects as we'll as restoration of specific ecosystem processes, including hydrology, nutrient dynamics and carbon.Also new to this edition are case studies that describe real-life restoration scenarios in North and South America, Europe, and Australia. They highlight supporting theory for restoration application and other details important for assessing the degree of success of restoration projects in a variety of contexts. Lists at the end of each chapter summarise new theory introduced in that chapter and its practical application. Written by acclaimed researchers in the field, this book provides practitioners as well as graduate and undergraduate students with a solid grounding in the newest advances in ecological science and theory.
£40.38
Island Press Connecting to Change the World: Harnessing the Power of Networks for Social Impact
This is the first comprehensive guide to creating and managing social-impact networks that tackle complex, unpredictable problems. Written by the three leading thinkers and practitioners in the non-profit field, this resource will help organisations enhance their reach and effectiveness. Something new and important is afoot. Non-profit and philanthropic organisations are under increasing pressure to do more and to do better to increase and improve productivity with fewer resources. Social entrepreneurs, community-minded leaders, non-profit organisations, and philanthropists now recognise that to achieve greater impact they must adopt a network-centric approach to solving difficult problems. Building networks of like-minded organisations and people offers them a way to weave together and create strong alliances that get better leverage, performance, and results than any single organisation is able to do. While the advantages of such networks are clear, there are few resources that offer easily understandable, field-tested information on how to form and manage social-impact networks. Drawn from the authors' deep experience with more than thirty successful network projects, Connecting to Change the World provides the frameworks, practical advice, case studies, and expert knowledge needed to build better performing networks. Readers will gain greater confidence and ability to anticipate challenges and opportunities. Easily understandable and full of actionable advice, Connecting to Change the World is an informative guide to creating collaborative solutions to tackle the most difficult challenges society faces.
£25.16
Island Press To Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg
To Heal the Earth provides a larger framework and a new perspective on McHarg's work that brings to light the growth and development of his key ideas over a forty year period. It is an important contribution to the literature, and will be essential reading for students and scholars of ecological planning, as well as for professional planners and landscape architects.
£42.00
Island Press The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream
Highlighting both the challenges and the opportunities for urban development, The Option of Urbanism shows how the American Dream is shifting to include cities as well as suburbs and how the financial and real estate communities need to respond to build communities that are more environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable.
£20.06
Island Press Conservation by Proxy: Indicator, Umbrella, Keystone, Flagship, and Other Surrogate Species
Because of the scope of conservation problems, biologists and managers often rely on 'surrogate' species to act as proxies to represent larger conservation issues. In "Conservation by Proxy", conservation biologist and field researcher Tim Caro offers systematic definitions of surrogate species concepts, explores the theories behind them, considers how surrogate species are chosen, examines evidence for and against their utility, and makes recommendations for their continued use. "Conservation by Proxy" is a benchmark reference that provides clear definitions and common understanding of the evidence and theory behind surrogate species. It is the first book to review and bring together literature on more than fifteen types of surrogate species, enabling us to assess their role in conservation and offering guidelines on how they can be used most effectively.
£33.86
Island Press Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems
The book examines theories (models) of how systems (those of humans, nature, and combined humannatural systems) function, and attempts to understand those theories and how they can help researchers develop effective institutions and policies for environmental management. The fundamental question this book asks is whether or not it is possible to get beyond seeing environment as a sub-component of social systems, and society as a sub-component of ecological systems, that is, to understand human-environment interactions as their own unique system. After examining the similarities and differences among human and natural systems, as well as the means by which they can be accounted for in theories and models, the book examines five efforts to describe human-natural systems. The point of these efforts is to provide the means of learning about those systems so that they can be managed adaptively. The final section of the book uses case studies to examine the application of integrated theories/models to the real world.
£38.00
Island Press A Road Running Southward
Readers join the author on a journey through the natural wonders of the South, framed by John Muir's writings on the region to learn about the dangers posed to this uniquely biodiverse environment.
£17.99
Island Press Purified: How Recycled Sewage Is Transforming Our Water
In 2000, a transformative climate-driven “megadrought” swept over the Colorado River watershed. By the early 2020s, levels on the river’s two largest reservoirs were hitting record lows and threatening the water supply for forty million people. Outside the West, water stocks are stressed even in states with bountiful rainfall such as Florida. From coast to coast, conventional measures to sustain the most fundamental natural resource on earth—drinking water—are coming up short. Recycled water could help close that gap. In Purified: How Recycled Sewage Is Transforming Our Water, veteran journalist Peter Annin shows that wastewater has become a surprising weapon in America’s war against water scarcity. Annin probes deep into the water reuse movement in five water-strapped states—California, Texas, Virginia, Nevada, and Florida. He drinks beer made from purified sewage, visits communities where purified sewage came to the rescue, and examines how one of the nation’s largest wastewater plants hopes to recycle one hundred percent of its wastewater by 2035. At each stop, readers come face to face with the people who are struggling for, and against, recycled water. While the current filtration technology transforms sewage into something akin to distilled water—free of chemicals and safe to drink—water recycling’s challenge isn’t technology. It’s terminology. Concerns about communities being used as “guinea pigs,” sensationalist media coverage, and taglines like “toilet to tap” have repeatedly crippled water recycling efforts. Potable water recycling has become the hottest frontier in the race for expanded water supply options. But can public opinion turn in time to avoid the worst consequences? Purified’s fast-paced narrative cuts through the fearmongering and misinformation to make the case that recycled water is direly needed in the climate-change era. Water cannot be taken for granted anymore—and that includes sewage.
£20.99
Island Press Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate
There are few more powerful questions than, “Where are you from” or “Where do you live?” People feel intensely connected to cities as places and to other people who feel that same connection. In order to understand place – and understand human settlements generally – it is important to understand that places are not created by accident. They are created in order to further a political or economic agenda. Better cities emerge when the people who shape them think more broadly and consciously about the places they are creating. In Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate, urban planning expert William Fulton takes an engaging look at the process by which these decisions about places are made, how cities are engines of prosperity, and how place and prosperity are deeply intertwined. Fulton has been writing about cities over his forty-year career that includes working as a journalist, professor, mayor, planning director, and the director of an urban think tank in one of America’s great cities. Place and Prosperity is a curated collection of his writings with new and updated selections and framing material. Though the essays in Place and Prosperity are in some ways personal, drawing on Fulton’s experience in learning and writing about cities, their primary purpose is to show how these two ideas – place and prosperity – lie at the heart of what a city is and, by extension, what our society is all about. Fulton shows how, over time, a successful place creates enduring economic assets that don’t go away and lay the groundwork for prosperity in the future. But for urbanism to succeed, all of us have to participate in making cities great places for everybody. Because cities, imposing though they may be as physical environments, don’t work without us. Cities are resilient. They’ve been buffeted over the decades by White flight, decay, urban renewal, unequal investment, increasingly extreme weather events, and now the worst pandemic in a century, and they’re still going strong. Fulton shows that at their best, cities not only inspire and uplift us, but they make our daily life more convenient, more fulfilling – and more prosperous.
£26.00
Island Press A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
It’s falling from the sky and in the air we breathe. It’s in our food, our clothes, and our homes. It’s microplastic and it’s everywhere—including our own bodies. Scientists are just beginning to discover how these tiny particles threaten health, but the studies are alarming. In A Poison Like No Other, Matt Simon reveals a whole new dimension to the plastic crisis, one even more disturbing than plastic bottles washing up on shores and grocery bags dumped in landfills. Dealing with discarded plastic is bad enough, but when it starts to break down, the real trouble begins. The very thing that makes plastic so useful and ubiquitous – its toughness – means it never really goes away. It just gets smaller and smaller: eventually small enough to enter your lungs or be absorbed by crops or penetrate a fish’s muscle tissue before it becomes dinner. Unlike other pollutants that are single elements or simple chemical compounds, microplastics represent a cocktail of toxicity: plastics contain at least 10,000 different chemicals. Those chemicals are linked to diseases from diabetes to hormone disruption to cancers. A Poison Like No Other is the first book to fully explore this public health threat, following the intrepid scientists who travel to the ends of the earth and the bottom of the ocean to understand the consequences of our dependence on plastic. As Simon learns from these researchers, there is no easy fix. But we will never curb our plastic addiction until we begin to recognize the invisible particles all around us.
£23.99
Island Press No Farms, No Food: Uniting Farmers and Environmentalists to Transform American Agriculture
America’s farms are key to the preservation of vital ecosystems and a stable climate. Yet farmers and environmentalists have not always seen eye-to-eye about the best ways to manage agricultural landscapes. Since 1980, American Farmland Trust (AFT) has been bringing people together to work for healthy land and a healthy food system. No Farms, No Food traces the development of this powerful coalition, responsible for landmark achievements in farmland preservation. It all began with Peggy Rockefeller’s determination to stop the inexorable urban sprawl that was threatening the nation’s agriculture. From this humble start grew a small but astute organisation, and more importantly, a formidable constituency of farmers and environmentalists united around a common cause. With leadership from AFT, that constituency drove through Congress the first “Conservation Title” in the history of the U.S. Farm Bill; oversaw the development of agriculture conservation easement programmes throughout the country; and continues to develop innovative approaches to sustainable agriculture. No Farms, No Food takes readers inside the political and policy battles that determine the fate of America’s farmland and it illustrates the tactics needed to unify fractured interest groups for the common good. No Farms, No Food is both an inspiring history of agricultural conservation, and a practical guide to creating an effective advocacy organisation. This is an essential read for everyone who cares about the future of our food, farms, and environment.
£22.99
Island Press City Forward: How Innovation Districts Can Embrace Risk and Strengthen Community
Innovation districts and anchor institutions, like hospitals, universities, and technology hubs, are celebrated for their ability to drive economic growth and employment opportunities. But the benefits often fail to reach the very neighbourhoods they are built in. As CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC), Matt Enstice took a different approach. Under Matt’s leadership, BNMC has supported entrepreneurship training programmes and mentorship for community members, creation of a community garden, bringing together diverse groups to explore transportation solutions, and more. Fostering participation and collaboration among neighbourhood leaders, foundations, and other organisations ensures that the interests of Buffalo residents are represented. Together, these groups are creating a new model for reenergising Buffalo, a model that has applications across the United States, and around the world. City Forward explains how BNMC works to promote a shared goal of equity among companies and institutions with often opposing motivations and intentions. When money or time is scarce, how can equitable community building remain a common priority? When interests conflict, and an institution’s expansion depends upon parking or development that would infringe upon public space, how can the decision-making process maintain trust and collaboration? Offering a candid look at BNMC’s setbacks and successes, along with efforts from other institutions nationwide, Enstice shares twelve strategies that innovation districts can harness to weave equity into their core work. From actively creating opportunities to listen to the community, to navigating compromise, to recruiting new partners, the book reveals unique opportunities available to create decisive large-scale change. Critically, Enstice also offers insight about how innovation districts can speak about equity in an inclusive manner and keep underrepresented and historically excluded voices at the decision-making table. Accessible, engaging, and packed with fresh ideas that are applicable to any city, this book is an invaluable resource. Institutional leadership, business owners, and professionals hoping to make equitable change within their companies and organisations will find experienced direction here. City Forward is a refreshing look at the brighter, more equitable futures that we can create through thoughtful and strategic collaboration—moving forward, together.
£26.00
Island Press The Good Garden: How to Nurture Pollinators, Soil, Native Wildlife, and Healthy Food--All in Your Own Backyard
What makes a garden good? For Chris McLaughlin, it’s about growing the healthiest, most scrumptious fruits and veggies possible, but it’s also about giving back. How can your little patch of Earth become a sanctuary for threatened wildlife, sequester carbon, and nurture native plants? McLaughlin gives you all the tricks and tips you need to grow the sustainable garden of your dreams. Drawing from established traditions, such as permaculture and French intensive gardening, and McLaughlin’s hard-earned experience, The Good Garden is a joyful guide for newbies and experienced gardeners alike. It will teach you the fundamentals, including how to choose the right plant varieties for your microclimate, and proven methods to fight pests without chemicals. You will also discover the nuances of developing a green thumb, from picking species to attract specific types of pollinators to composting techniques based on time available. Lovely four-colour photography will show you good gardening in action. Most importantly, The Good Garden will help you foster a sense of meaning in your garden. Maybe the goal is to reduce food miles and plastic waste by growing delicious berries. Maybe it’s to meet neighbours who also care about the planet through a seed-swap. Maybe it’s a quiet moment patting the bunny whose manure will replace toxic fertilisers in the soil. A good garden offers endless possibilities, and The Good Garden offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration.
£28.00
Island Press A Good Drink: In Pursuit of Sustainable Spirits
Shanna Farrell loves a good drink. As a bartender, she not only poured spirits, but learned their stories—who made them and how. Living in San Francisco, surrounded by farm-to-table restaurants and high-end bars, she wondered why the eco-consciousness devoted to food didn’t extend to drinks. The short answer is that we don’t think of spirits as food. But whether it's rum, brandy, whiskey, or tequila, drinks are distilled from the same crops that end up on our tables. Most are grown with chemicals that cause pesticide resistance and pollute waterways, and distilling itself requires huge volumes of water. Even bars are notorious for generating mountains of trash. The good news is that while the good drink movement is far behind the good food movement, it is emerging. In A Good Drink, Farrell goes in search of the bars, distillers, and farmers who are driving a transformation to sustainable spirits. She meets mezcaleros in Guadalajara who are working to preserve traditional ways of producing mezcal, for the health of the local land, the wallets of the local farmers, and the culture of the community. She visits distillers in South Carolina who are bringing a rare variety of corn back from near extinction to make one of the most sought-after bourbons in the world. She meets a London bar owner who has eliminated individual bottles and ice, acculturating drinkers to a new definition of luxury. These individuals are part of a growing trend to recognize spirits for what they are—part of our food system. For readers who have ever wondered who grew the pears that went into their brandy or why their cocktail is an unnatural shade of red, A Good Drink will be an eye-opening tour of the spirits industry. For anyone who cares about the future of the planet, it offers a hopeful vision of change, one pour at a time.
£22.99
Island Press New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies
New transportation technologies can expand our world. During the last century, motorised modes increased our mobility by an order of magnitude, providing large benefits, but also imposing huge costs on individuals and communities. Faster and more expensive modes were favoured over those that are more affordable, efficient, and healthy. As new transportation innovations become available, from e-scooters to autonomous cars, how do we make decisions that benefit our communities? In New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies, transportation expert Todd Litman examines 12 emerging transportation modes and services that are likely to significantly affect our lives: bike- and carsharing, micro-mobilities, ride hailing and micro-transit, public transit innovations, telework, autonomous and electric vehicles, air taxis, mobility prioritisation, and logistics management. These innovations allow people to scoot, ride, and fly like never before, but can also impose significant costs on users and communities. Planners need detailed information on their potential benefits and impacts to make informed choices. Litman critically evaluates these new technologies and services and provides practical guidance for optimising them. He systematically examines how each New Mobility is likely to affect travel activity (how and how much people travel); consumer costs and affordability; roadway infrastructure design and costs; parking demand; land use development patterns; public safety and health; energy and pollution emissions; and economic opportunity and fairness. Public policies around New Mobilities can either help create heaven, a well-planned transportation system that uses new technologies intelligently, or hell, a poorly planned transportation system that is overwhelmed by conflicting and costly, unhealthy, and inequitable modes. His expert analysis will help planners, local policymakers, and concerned citizens to make informed choices about the New Mobility revolution.
£26.00
Island Press Building Community Food Webs
Our current food system has decimated rural communities and confined the choices of urban consumers. Even while America continues to ramp up farm production to astounding levels, net farm income is now lower than at the onset of the Great Depression, and one out of every eight Americans faces hunger. But a healthier and more equitable food system is possible. In Building Community Food Webs, Ken Meter shows how grassroots food and farming leaders across the U.S. are tackling these challenges by constructing civic networks. Overturning extractive economic structures, these inspired leaders are engaging low-income residents, farmers, and local organisations in their quest to build stronger communities. Community food webs strive to build health, wealth, capacity, and connection. Their essential element is building greater respect and mutual trust, so community members can more effectively empower themselves and address local challenges. Farmers and researchers may convene to improve farming practices collaboratively. Health clinics help clients grow food for themselves and attain better health. Food banks engage their customers to challenge the root causes of poverty. Municipalities invest large sums to protect farmland from development. Developers forge links among local businesses to strengthen economic trade. Leaders in communities marginalised by our current food system are charting a new path forward. Building Community Food Webs captures the essence of these efforts, underway in diverse places including Montana, Hawai‘i, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Minnesota. Addressing challenges as well as opportunities, Meter offers pragmatic insights for community food leaders and other grassroots activists alike.
£28.00
Island Press Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood
Happy has lived at the Bronx Zoo for most of her 48 years, and for more than a decade has remained largely isolated and lonely. Like all elephants, Happy has a complex mind and a deep social, intellectual, and emotional life; she desires to make choices and has a sense of self-recognition. But like all non-human animals, Happy is considered a thing in the eye of the law, with no fundamental rights. Due to a series of ground-breaking legal cases, however, this is beginning to change, and Happy’s liberation is at the forefront. A vibrant and personal graphic novel, Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood traces this moving story and makes the legal and scientific case for animal personhood. Led by lawyer Steven M. Wise and aided by some of the world’s most respected animal behaviour and cognition scientists, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed cases on behalf of non-human animals like Happy since 2013. Through this work, they have forced courts to consider the evidence of their clients’ cognitive abilities and their legal arguments for personhood, opening the door for similar cases worldwide. In Thing, comic artists Sam Machado and Cynthia Sousa Machado bring together Wise’s ground-breaking work and their powerful illustrations in the first graphic nonfiction book about the animal personhood movement. Beginning with Happy’s story and the central ideas behind animal rights, Thing then turns to the scientists that are revolutionising our understanding of the minds of non-human animals such as great apes, elephants, dolphins, and whales. As we learn more about these creatures’ inner lives and autonomy, the need for the greater protections provided by legal rights becomes ever more urgent. With cases like Happy’s growing in number and spanning from Argentina to India, nations around the world are beginning to recognise the rights of animals. Combining legal and social history, innovative science, and illustrated storytelling, Thing presents a visionary new way of relating to the nonhuman world.
£23.99
Island Press Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America
The face of the pedestrian safety crisis looks a lot like Ignacio Duarte-Rodriguez. The 77-year old grandfather was struck in a hit-and-run crash while trying to cross a high-speed, six-lane road without crosswalks near his son's home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was one of the more than 6,000 people killed while walking in America in 2018. In the last ten years, there has been a 50 percent increase in pedestrian deaths. The tragedy of traffic violence has barely registered with the media and wider culture. Disproportionately the victims are like Duarte-Rodriguez--immigrants, the poor, and people of color. They have largely been blamed and forgotten. In Right of Way, journalist Angie Schmitt shows us that deaths like Duarte-Rodriguez's are not unavoidable "accidents." They don't happen because of jaywalking or distracted walking. They are predictable, occurring in stark geographic patterns that tell a story about systemic inequality. These deaths are the forgotten faces of an increasingly urgent public-health crisis that we have the tools, but not the will, to solve. Schmitt examines the possible causes of the increase in pedestrian deaths as well as programs and movements that are beginning to respond to the epidemic. Her investigation unveils why pedestrians are dying--and she demands action. Right of Way is a call to reframe the problem, acknowledge the role of racism and classism in the public response to these deaths, and energize advocacy around road safety. Ultimately, Schmitt argues that we need improvements in infrastructure and changes to policy to save lives. Right of Way unveils a crisis that is rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities. It challenges us to imagine and demand safer and more equitable cities, where no one is expendable.
£20.99
Island Press Swamplands: Tundra Beavers, Quaking Bogs, and the Improbable World of Peat
In a world filled with breathtaking beauty, we have often overlooked the elusive charm and magic of certain landscapes. A cloudy river flows into a verdant Arctic wetland where sandhill cranes and muskoxen dwell. Further south, cypress branches hang low over dismal swamps. Places like these–collectively known as swamplands or peatlands–often go unnoticed for their ecological splendor. They are as globally significant as rainforests, and function as critical carbon sinks for addressing our climate crisis. Yet, because of their reputation as wastelands, they are being systematically drained and degraded to make way for oilsands, mines, farms, and electricity. In Swamplands, journalist Edward Struzik celebrates these wild places, venturing into windswept bogs in Kauai and the last remnants of an ancient peatland in the Mojave Desert. The secrets of the swamp aren’t for the faint of heart. Ed loses a shoe to an Arctic wolf and finds himself ankle-deep in water during a lightning storm. But, the rewards are sweeter for the struggle: an enchanting Calypso orchid; an elusive yellow moth thought to be extinct; ancient animals preserved in lifelike condition down to the fur. Swamplands highlights the unappreciated struggle being waged to save peatlands by scientists, conservationists, and landowners around the world. An ode to peaty landscapes in all their offbeat glory, the book is also a demand for awareness of the myriad threats they face. It urges us to see the beauty and importance in these least likely of places. Our planet’s survival might depend on it.
£23.99
Island Press Overtourism: Lessons for a Better Future
Before COVID-19 hit, the biggest problem in the world of travel was overtourism. Crowds threatened to spoil natural environments and make daily life unbearable for residents of popular travel destinations. Then, seemingly overnight, tourism nearly ceased. Yet there is no question that travel will resume; the only question is, when it does, what will it look like? Will we return to a world of overrun monuments, littered beaches, and gridlocked city streets? Or can we do things differently this time? Overtourism: Lessons for a Better Future charts a path toward tourism that is not only sustainable but regenerative for the places we love and the people who live there. Bringing together tourism officials, city council members, travel journalists, consultants, scholars, and trade association members, this practical book explores overcrowding from a variety of perspectives. After examining the causes and effects of overtourism, it turns to management approaches in five distinct types of tourism destinations: 1. historic cities; 2. national parks and protected areas; 3. World Heritage Sites; 4. beaches and coastal communities; and 5. destinations governed by regional and national authorities. While each location presents its own challenges, common mitigation strategies are emerging. Visitor education, traffic planning, and redirection to lesser-known sites are among the measures that can protect the economic benefit of tourism without overwhelming local communities. As tourism revives around the world, these innovations will guide government agencies, parks officials, site managers, civic groups, environmental NGOs, tourism operators, and others with a stake in protecting our most iconic places.
£28.78
Island Press Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Effective Engagement
At a community fire day in a northern California town several years ago, author Faith Kearns gave a talk on building fire-safe houses able to withstand increasingly common wildfires. Much to her surprise, Kearns was confronted by an audience member whose house had recently burned. What she thought was straightforward, helpful scientific information had instead retraumatised audience members, forcing Kearns to re-evaluate her approach. Like Kearns, scientists today working on controversial issues from climate change to drought to COVID-19 are finding themselves more often in the middle of deeply traumatising or polarized conflicts. It is no longer enough for scientists to communicate a scientific topic clearly. They must not only be experts in their fields of study, but also experts in navigating the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of members of the public they engage with, and with each other. And the conversations are growing more fraught. In Getting to the Heart of Science Communication, Faith Kearns has penned a succinct guide for navigating the human relationships critical to the success of practice-based science. Using interviews and personal anecdotes, as well as her own insights as a field scientist, Kearns walks readers through the evolution of science communication and how emotional and high-stakes issues have shaped communication. The meat of the book lies in the middle chapters, where Kearns offers key tools for communicators: listening, working with conflict, and understanding trauma, loss, and healing. She concludes the book with a substantive discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences, and advice to readers for handling their own emotional needs in an unpredictable career landscape. This meticulously researched volume takes science communication to the next level, helping scientists see the value of listening as well as talking, understanding power dynamics in relationships, and addressing the roles of trauma, loss, grief, and healing. This book will particularly resonate with early to mid-career scientists, graduate students, and researchers, especially those in applied sciences who work closely with the public.
£22.99
Island Press Designing Streets for Kids
Making a city that works for children creates a city that better serves all of its residents, across ages and abilities. Yet we have created unsafe street conditions for children in cities around the world. Every day more than 500 children die in road crashes globally. The physical and mental health benefits of walking and biking are challenged by speeding traffic and unsafe pedestrian rights of way. Streets that are designed with the needs of children and their caregivers in mind have been shown to improve road safety, health, and quality of life. Building on the success of their Global Street Design Guide, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)-Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI) Streets for Kids program has developed child-focused design guidance to inspire leaders, inform practitioners, and empower communities around the world to consider their city from the eyes of a child. The guidance in Designing Streets for Kids captures international best practices, strategies, programs, and policies that cities around the world have used to design streets and public spaces that are safe and appealing to children from their earliest days. The guidance also highlights tactics for engaging children in the design process, an often-overlooked approach that can dramatically transform how streets are designed and used. From addressing the lack of mobility options to noise and air pollution, this graphics-rich guide will help to design better streets, and thereby better cities, for kids of all ages and their caregivers. Designing Streets for Kids provides both inspiration and application. By focusing speci?cally on children and caregivers, this book fills a significant void in physical urban design guidance.
£44.00