Search results for ""Author Gretchen Daily""

Why shouldn't people who deplete our natural assets have to pay and those who protect them reap profits? Conservation-minded entrepreneurs and others around the world are beginning to ask just such a question, as the increasing scarcity of natural resources becomes a tangible threat to our own lives and our hopes for our children. This text brings together Gretchen Daily, an ecologist, with Katherine Ellison, a journalist, to offer an engaging and informative look at a new "new economy" - a system which recognizes the economic value of natural systems and the potential profist in protecting them. Through engaging stories from around the world, the authors introduce readers to a diverse group of people who are pioneering new approaches to conservation. We meet Adam Davis, an American business executive who dreams of establishing a market for buying and selling "ecosystem service units"; John Walmsley, a former maths professor in Australia who has found a way to play the stock market and protest native species at the same time; and Dan Janzen, a biologist working in Cost Rica who devised a controversial plan to sell a conservation area's natural waste-disposal services to a local orange juice producer. Readers also visit the Catskill Mountains, where the city of New York purchased undeveloped land instead of building an expensive new water treatment facility; and King Couny, Washington, where county executive Ron Sims has dedicated himself to finding ways of "making the market move" to protect the county's remaining open space. Daily and Ellison describe the dynamic interplay of science, economics, business and politics that is involved in establishing these new approaches and examine what will be needed to create successful models and lasting institutions for conservation.

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Intimate in size yet quietly breathtaking in scope, this graceful gift book will forever change how you think, and how you feel, about trees. In poetically sparse scientific observations, renowned conservation biologist Gretchen Daily narrates the evolution, impact, and natural wonder of trees. Alongside photographs by Chuck Katz, the text and images form a quiet and moving meditation on The Power of Trees. Twenty-six duotone black and white photographs illustrate the development of trees: how trunks were formed, what tree rings tell us about human societies, and how trees define the future of humanity. Pictures of trees threading through the landscape - dotting mountainsides, braiding along the sides of glassine rivers - bear witness to the lyrical force and clarity of Daily's observations. Recreating the authors' hike together through the landscape of the Skagit River in Washington State, the balletic movement between Daily's commentary and Katz's vision reaches out to readers, inviting them to enjoy the landscape through a scientific understanding of trees. At once emotional and intellectual, The Power of Trees is the first collection of nature photographs that invites the reader to not only delight in the gorgeous play between light and shadow, but also the fascinating natural mechanisms that create such striking natural beauty. An ecologist by training, Gretchen Daily is an internationally acclaimed conservancy advocate and scholar. Her role as a National Trustee for The Nature Conservancy will feature prominently in the national marketing campaign to bridge the gap between scientific educators and the general nature reader.

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An overview of the benefits and services that nature offers to people. The contributors present a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value.

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