Seed conservation and the doomsday vault
Ideas can come in many shapes and sizes. As I was contemplating a suitable blog topic, I was handed a copy of Life After People – a movie based on the simple notion of what would remain of our structures if we were to suddenly disappear. Around this time I was reading articles on seed conservation and so the two melded. I’m not so much concerned about what happens after us but what happens to us if anything else goes […]
Environment Online
Environment Online – from their website: “Environment Online – ENO is a global virtual school and network for sustainable development. Environmental themes are studied throughout the school year and campaigns arranged simultaneously around the world”
The Global Casino
Rating: Nick Middleton. 2013. The Global Casino: an introduction to environmental issues.5e. Routledge. ISBN. 978 1 4441 4662 2 At a time when there are so many specialist texts on matters dealing with environmental issues (usually with only one topic in mind) it’s good to see one that tackles so many different ones and impressive to see it through 5 editions and 18 years. Having seen a few of these earlier incarnations, a new arrival always piques interest. The basic […]
Urban Ecology
Rating: Niemela J, Breuste JH, Elmqvist T, Gunterspergen G, James P and NE Macintyre. (eds). 2012. Urban Ecology: patterns, processes and applications. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978 0 19 964395 0. It’s always interesting to see how perspectives change in any field and ecology is no exception. Twenty years ago, the words ‘urban’ and ‘nature’ would only be seen together if they were in opposition. No-one would suggest the towns and cities could create environments or modify habitats. It’s not […]
Atlas of Living Australia
Atlas of Living Australia is a detailed an multi-disciplinary site which is the local node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Its aim is to act as a collator of information from a range of organisations so that the complexity of Australian flora and fauna can be more easily accessed. In practice, this is a very ambitious project. Leaving aside the traditional information such as species and species maps, this site has open source software to collect field data, a […]
Biodiversity in Agriculture
Rating: Gepts P, Famula TR, Bettinger RL, Brush SB, Damania AB, McGuire PE and Qualset CO. (eds). 2012. Biodiversity in Agriculture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 0 521 17087 1. Many years ago when interest in environmental science started one of our key texts was Ucko and Dimbleby’s “Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals”. This was a set of conference proceedings whose basic tenet was to examine how we came to have our modern set of plants and […]
Global Environment Facility
Global Environment Facility – a group of 182 nations plus institutions etc. combining to tackle global issues on pollution, biodiversity etc. In May 2012 it released this useful guide to biodiversity conservation
IPBES
Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services a brand new international committee trying to do for biodiversity what the IPCC does for climate
Applied Urban Ecology
Rating: Matthias Richter and Ulrike Weiland. (eds). 2012. Applied Urban Ecology. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978 1 4443 3340 4. Given that urban areas frequently degrade ecosystem processes and that, as urban areas expand this problem will only get worse, it follows that we need to consider ways to improve existing conditions. The aim of this text is to show how it might be done. It is very clear that tackling urban ecological problems is not the same as doing the same […]
Ecological and Economic Foundations
Rating: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, ed Pushpam Kumar. 2010 Ecological and Economic foundations. UNEP/Earthscan. ISBN 978 1 84971 212 5 This is one text where context is crucial. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) was set up by the UNEP in 2007. It was started became of the concern that current economics was either not valuing nor not valuing sufficiently, our ecosystem services and, by extension, the biodiversity that keeps it functioning. This perspective would be similar […]
