A Future with Natural Wood

Author: Erwin Thoma
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780987317285
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Bestselling Austrian author Dr. Erwin Thoma reveals a wealth of knowledge regarding trees, forests and wood. Through the illness of their sons, his family discovered that some modern building materials can cause serious health problems. On their quest to establish a healthy home environment, Erwin tried out his grandfather's traditional methods. He replaced all plywood and chipboard in their home with natural timber and the boys regained their health. In this, his first book translated into English, you will find interesting and amusing stories that reveal Erwin's wealth of knowledge regarding trees, forests and wood. Perhaps, for some readers, this book will contain more information than they imagined possible for such subjects. For others, this will be a welcome introduction to wood-related subjects and an inspiration for a future using natural wood. Written in a colloquial style, it offers an insight into his humble genius.

Wood

Author: Joachim Radkau
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745683614
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 591

Book Description
Ötzi the iceman could not do without wood when he was climbing his Alpine glacier, nor could medieval cathedral-builders or today's construction companies. From time immemorial, the skill of the human hand has developed by working wood, so much so that we might say that the handling of wood is a basic element in the history of the human body. The fear of a future wood famine became a panic in the 18th century and sparked the beginnings of modern environmentalism. This book traces the cultural history of wood and offers a highly original account of the connection between the raw material and the human beings who benefit from it. Even more, it shows that wood can provide a key for a better understanding of history, of the pecularities as well as the varieties of cultures, of a co-evolution of nature and culture, and even of the rise and fall of great powers. Beginning with Stone Age hunters, it follows the twists and turns of the story through the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution to the global society of the twenty-first century, in which wood is undergoing a varied and unexpected renaissance. Radkau is sceptical of claims that wood is about to disappear, arguing that such claims are self-serving arguments promoted by interest groups to secure cheaper access to, and control over, wood resources. The whole forest and timber industry often strikes the outsider as a world unto itself, a hermetically sealed black box, but when we lift the lid on this box, as Radkau does here, we will be surprised by what we find within. Wide-ranging and accessible, this rich historical analysis of one of our most cherished natural resources will find a wide readership.

The Cure for Catastrophe

Author: Robert Muir-Wood
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096476
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
We can't stop natural disasters but we can stop them being disastrous. One of the world's foremost risk experts tells us how. Year after year, floods wreck people's homes and livelihoods, earthquakes tear communities apart, and tornadoes uproot whole towns. Natural disasters cause destruction and despair. But does it have to be this way? In The Cure for Catastrophe, global risk expert Robert Muir-Wood argues that our natural disasters are in fact human ones: We build in the wrong places and in the wrong way, putting brick buildings in earthquake country, timber ones in fire zones, and coastal cities in the paths of hurricanes. We then blindly trust our flood walls and disaster preparations, and when they fail, catastrophes become even more deadly. No society is immune to the twin dangers of complacency and heedless development. Recognizing how disasters are manufactured gives us the power to act. From the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 to Hurricane Katrina, The Cure for Catastrophe recounts the ingenious ways in which people have fought back against disaster. Muir-Wood shows the power and promise of new predictive technologies, and envisions a future where information and action come together to end the pain and destruction wrought by natural catastrophes. The decisions we make now can save millions of lives in the future. Buzzing with political plots, newfound technologies, and stories of surprising resilience, The Cure for Catastrophe will revolutionize the way we conceive of catastrophes: though natural disasters are inevitable, the death and destruction are optional. As we brace ourselves for deadlier cataclysms, the cure for catastrophe is in our hands.

Surrounded by Wood

Author: Agata Toromanoff
Publisher: Braun Publishing
ISBN: 9783037682661
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Introducing the diversity of contemporary timber architecture for residential buildings to architects, interior designers, and builders.

London is a Forest

Author: Paul Wood
Publisher: Hardie Grant Publishing
ISBN: 1787138984
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
Exploring the rich diversity of London through a series of urban forest trails, this new, expanded edition of London is a Forest uncovers the fascinating stories and secrets the city holds. Through seven carefully devised paths, author Paul Wood explores the urban forest's geography, its past and future, and looks at the remarkable variety of life supported in this unique metropolitan ecosystem. For curious Londoners and anyone who’s fascinated by nature, a wealth of arboreal details, history, myth and anecdotes are revealed along the way. Complementing the trails, Wood looks in more detail at the fascinating stories of some of the iconic, and some of the less obvious species that define the urban forest. In London, 9 million people are crammed into just 600 square miles alongside 8.5 million trees. According to one UN definition, this makes the city a forest. The Forestry Commission agree, describing London as the world’s largest urban forest. And a particularly diverse and historic urban forest at that.

The Future of Nature

Author: Libby Robin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300188471
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 585

Book Description
This anthology provides an historical overview of the scientific ideas behind environmental prediction and how, as predictions about environmental change have been taken more seriously and widely, they have affected politics, policy, and public perception. Through an array of texts and commentaries that examine the themes of progress, population, environment, biodiversity and sustainability from a global perspective, it explores the meaning of the future in the twenty-first century. Providing access and reference points to the origins and development of key disciplines and methods, it will encourage policy makers, professionals, and students to reflect on the roots of their own theories and practices.

The Age of Wood

Author: Roland Ennos
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982114754
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
A “smart and surprising” (Booklist) “expansive history” (Publishers Weekly) detailing the role that wood and trees have played in our global ecosystem—including human evolution and the rise and fall of empires—in the bestselling tradition of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and Mark Kurlansky’s Salt. As the dominant species on Earth, humans have made astonishing progress since our ancestors came down from the trees. But how did the descendants of small primates manage to walk upright, become top predators, and populate the world? How were humans able to develop civilizations and produce a globalized economy? Now, in The Age of Wood, Roland Ennos shows for the first time that the key to our success has been our relationship with wood. “A lively history of biology, mechanics, and culture that stretches back 60 million years” (Nature) The Age of Wood reinterprets human history and shows how our ability to exploit wood’s unique properties has profoundly shaped our bodies and minds, societies, and lives. Ennos takes us on a sweeping journey from Southeast Asia and West Africa where great apes swing among the trees, build nests, and fashion tools; to East Africa where hunter gatherers collected their food; to the structural design of wooden temples in China and Japan; and to Northern England, where archaeologists trace how coal enabled humans to build an industrial world. Addressing the effects of industrialization—including the use of fossil fuels and other energy-intensive materials to replace timber—The Age of Wood not only shows the essential role that trees play in the history and evolution of human existence, but also argues that for the benefit of our planet we must return to more traditional ways of growing, using, and understanding trees. A brilliant blend of recent research and existing scientific knowledge, this is an “excellent, thorough history in an age of our increasingly fraught relationships with natural resources” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Carving Out a Future

Author: Brian Belcher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136570160
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
Very little has yet been written about the cultural or economic contributions of woodcarving to people's livelihoods or the consequences of felling hardwood and softwood trees for the international woodcarving trade. Carving Out a Future is the first examination of this trade and its critical links to rural livelihoods, biodiversity, conservation, forestry and the international trade regime. A range of case studies from Australia, Bali, India,Africa and Mexico provides a lens for examining the critical issues relating to the significant impacts of woodcarving on forests, conservation efforts, the need to promote sustainable rural livelihoods and efforts to promote trade so that skilled artisans in developing countries get a fair economic return. Livelihoods, Carving and Conservation * Global Overview * The Case of Woodcarving in Kenya * Drums and Hornbills * Sculpture and Identity * Carving Wood in Southern Zimbabwe * The Kiaat Woodcrafters of Bushbuckridge, South Africa * Carvers, Conservation and Certification in India * Colour, Sustainability and Market Sense in Bali * Aboriginal Woodcarvers in Australia * BurseraWoodcarving in Oaxaca, Mexico * Linaloe Wood Handicrafts * Learning from a Comparison of Cases * Carving, Sustainability and Scarcity * Certification of Woodcarving * Planning for Woodcarving in the 21st Century *

A Walk in the Woods

Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0385674546
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail. The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas. With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey. An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.

Forest Ecosystem Management and Timber Production

Author: Russell Warman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429941161
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
Timber sourcing is shifting from extraction from natural forests to forms of cultivation that are increasingly agricultural in nature. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach to examine the socio-political, biophysical and discursive dimensions of this divergence of wood production from forests. This analysis challenges the historical integration of wood production and forest ecosystem management exemplified by the institutions of forestry with their inherent wood/forest connection. This has significant implications for how wood and forest socio-ecological systems confront change and challenge ideas about how to achieve sustainability. Historically, the institutions of stewardship forestry were founded on ideals of sustainable systems in long-term equilibrium. However, these occur within rapidly evolving social and technological contexts that constantly challenge the maintenance of any equilibrium. This creates considerable tension within wood and forest socio-ecological systems and their institutions and governance. Moving beyond adaptation to transformation, however, requires a willingness to consider post-forestry conditions, such as integration of emerging wood cultivation systems into agricultural and landscape approaches, and increasing management of extensive forest ecosystems for non-wood values in the absence of wood production. This book includes four case studies: a global modelling of shifts in wood production and three national case studies (Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand), each analysing shifts in resilience in wood and forest socio-ecological systems using a different disciplinary approach. This book will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and professionals in forestry, land use, conservation, rural studies and geography.