Fragile Dominion

Author: Simon Levin
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780738203195
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
We all know that our planet is losing its biological diversity at an alarming rate, with frightening implications for our future. But when does an ecosystem hit the breaking point? In this important book, Princeton biologist Simon Levin offers general readers the first look at how the new science of complexity can help to solve our looming ecological crisis. Levin argues that our biosphere is the classic embodiment of what scientists call complex adaptive systems. By exploring how such systems work, we can determine how they might fail: How much loss can an ecosystem bear before it starts to collapse? How resilient are these systems? Do they in fact hover at the edge of chaos? A deeply original work on one of the most pressing issues of our time, Fragile Dominion is a powerful appeal to understand and protect the global “commons.”

Fragile Dominion

Author: Simon Levin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
How the science of complexity can help save the natural world from collapse.

G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology

Author: Nancy G. Slack
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300161387
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 477

Book Description
Slack enjoyed full access to Hutchinson's archives and conducted extensive interviews both with Hutchinson himself and with his students, colleagues, and friends. She evaluates his contributions to theoretical ecology, limnology (the study of fresh-water ecosystems), biogeochemistry, population ecology, and the creation of the new fields of systems ecology and radiation ecology, and she discusses his profound influence as a mentor. The book also looks into his personal life, which included three very different wives, a refugee baby under his care during World War II, friendships with such contemporaries as Rebecca West, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson, and a host of colleagues and friends on four continents. Filled with information available nowhere else, this book draws a vibrant portrait of a giant in the discipline of twentieth-century ecology who was also a man of remarkable personal appeal. --Book Jacket.

Water for Food Water for Life

Author: David Molden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113654853X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 664

Book Description
Managing water resources is one of the most pressing challenges of our times - fundamental to how we feed 2 billion more people in coming decades, eliminate poverty, and reverse ecosystem degradation. This Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, involving more than 700 leading specialists, evaluates current thinking on water and its interplay with agriculture to help chart the way forward. It offers actions for water management and water policy - to ensure more equitable and effective use. This assessment describes key water-food-environment trends that influence our lives today and uses scenarios to explore the consequences of a range of potential investments. It aims to inform investors and policymakers about water and food choices in light of such crucial influences as poverty, ecosystems, governance, and productivity. It covers rainfed agriculture, irrigation, groundwater, marginal-quality water, fisheries, livestock, rice, land, and river basins. Ample tables, graphs, and references make this an invaluable work for practitioners, academics, researchers, and policymakers in water management, agriculture, conservation, and development. Published with IWMI.

Food Webs (MPB-50)

Author: Kevin S. McCann
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691134189
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
This book synthesizes and reconciles modern and classical perspectives into a general unified theory.

Interactive Media for Sustainability

Author: Roy Bendor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319703838
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
Interactive Media for Sustainability presents a conceptually rich, critical account of the design and use of interactive technologies to engage the public with sustainability. Treating interactive technologies as forms of mediation, the book argues that these technologies advance multiple understandings of sustainability. At stake are the ways sustainability encodes the complexity of interrelated social and natural systems, and how it conveys the malleability of the future. The book’s argument is anchored in a diverse set of theoretical resources that include contemporary work in human-computer interaction (HCI), social theory, media studies, and the philosophy of technology, and is animated by a variety of examples, including interactive simulations, persuasive apps, digital games, art installations, and decision-support tools.

Business Strategies for Sustainability

Author: Helen Borland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429858973
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 835

Book Description
Business Strategies for Sustainability brings together important research contributions that demonstrate different approaches to business strategies for sustainability. Many corporate initiatives toward what firms perceive to be sustainability are simply efficiency drives or competitive moves – falling far short of actual strategies for ecological sustainability. To suggest true ecological sustainability strategies, this new research anthology adopts an interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary, approach to discern what business strategies might look like if they were underpinned by environmental and ecological science. The 23 chapters in this anthology reflect five main topic sections: (a) delineating sustainability challenges and visions; (b) contradiction, integration and transformation of business and sustainability logics; (c) innovating and developing strategic capabilities for sustainability; (d) assessing and valuing sustainability; and (e) toward multi-level engagement and collaboration.

The New Ecology of Leadership

Author: David K. Hurst
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231159714
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
David Hurst has a unique knowledge of organizationsÑtheir function and their failureÑboth in theory and in practice. He has spent twenty-five years as an operating manager, often in crises and turnaround conditions, and is also a widely experienced consultant, teacher, and writer on business. This book is his innovative integration of management practice and theory, using a systems perspective and analogies drawn from nature to illustrate groundbreaking ideas and their practical application. It is designed for readers unfamiliar with sophisticated management concepts and for active practitioners seeking to advance their management and leadership skills. HurstÕs objective is to help readers make meaning from their own management experience and education, and to encourage improvement in their practical judgment and wisdom. His approach takes an expansive view of organizations, connecting their development to humankindÕs evolutionary heritage and cultural history. It locates the origins of organizations in communities of trust and follows their development and maturation. He also crucially tracks the decline of organizations as they age and shows how their strengths become weaknesses in changing circumstances. HurstÕs core argument is that the human mind is rational in an ecological, rather than a logical, sense. In other words, it has evolved to extract cues to action from the specific situations in which it finds itself. Therefore contexts matter, and Hurst shows how passion, reason, and power can be used to change and sustain organizations for good and ill. The result is an inspirational synthesis of management theory and practice that will resonate with every readerÕs experience.

Physics of Self-organization Systems

Author: Shin'ichi Ishiwata
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812793372
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
This volume presents the new objectives of physics on self-organizing systems composed of multi-components, in order to create a new field and establish universal comprehension in physics. The book covers broad topics such as the thermodynamic time asymmetry in both transient and stationary nonequilibrium states, the seriousness of auxiliary conditions in physicochemical processes and biological systems, the quantum-classical and micro-macro interfaces which are familiar in mesoscopic physics, the purification scheme of quantum entanglement, topics on gamma-ray bursts, and the walking mechanism of single molecular motors. Sample Chapter(s). Bio-Physics Manifesto for the Futureof Physics and Biology (570 KB). Contents: Biophysics: Bio-Physics Manifesto OCo For the Future of the Physics and Biology (Y Oono); Single Molecule Force Measurement for Protein Synthesis on the Ribosome (S Uemura); A Rod Probe Reveals Gait of Myosin V (K Shiroguchi); Mechanism of Spontaneous Oscillation Emerging from Collective Molecular Motors (Y Shimamoto and S Ishiwata); Simulated Rotational Diffusion of F o Molecular Motor (H Yamasaki & M Takano); Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics and Related Topics: Thermodynamic Time Asymmetry and Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics (P Gaspard); A Measurement-Based Purification Scheme and Decoherence (H Nakazato); Quantum Fluctuation Theorem in the Existence of the Tunneling and the Thermal Activation (T Monnai); Statistical Properties of the Inter-Occurrence Times in the Two-Dimensional Stick-Slip Model of Earthquakes (T Hasumi & Y Aizawa); Second Harmonic Generation and Polarization Microscope Observations of Quantum Relaxor Lithium Doped Potasium Tantalate (H Yokota & Y Uesu); Thermoelectric Properties of Ni-Doped LaRh0 3 (S Shibasaki et al.); Collective Precession of Chiral Liquid Crystals Under Transmembrane Mass Flow (G Watanabe et al.); Interplay of Excitons with Free Carriers in Carrier Tunneling Dynamics (S Lu et al.); Astrophysics as Interdisciplinary Science: New View on Quantum Gravity: Micro-Structure of Spacetime and Origin of the Universe (B L Hu); Colliding Branes and Its Application to String Cosmology (Y Takamizu); One-Loop Corrections to Scalar and Tensor Perturbations During Inflation (Y Urakawa & K Maeda); Variational Calculation for the Equation of State of Nuclear Matter Toward Supernova Simulations (H Kanzawa et al.); Two Strong Radio Bursts at High and Medium Galactic Latitude (S Kida & T Daishido); Effects of QCD Phase Transition on the Ejected Elements from the Envelopes of Compact Stars (Y Yasutake et al.). Readership: Physicists, biologists and material scientists.

Navigating Social-Ecological Systems

Author: Fikret Berkes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139434799
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 419

Book Description
In the effort towards sustainability, it has become increasingly important to develop conceptual frames to understand the dynamics of social and ecological systems. Drawing on complex systems theory, this book investigates how human societies deal with change in linked social-ecological systems, and build capacity to adapt to change. The concept of resilience is central in this context. Resilient social-ecological systems have the potential to sustain development by responding to and shaping change in a manner that does not lead to loss of future options. Resilient systems also provide capacity for renewal and innovation in the face of rapid transformation and crisis. The term navigating in the title is meant to capture this dynamic process. Case studies and examples from several geographic areas, cultures and resource types are included, merging forefront research from natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities into a common framework for new insights on sustainability.