Science Ecology

Trees are both amazing and vital. Their intricate, complex processes benefit humanity in so many ways, especially in cities, where populations are on the rise. Why Trees? is a non-fiction book about how to keep our urban trees healthy. It is an engaging, pleasurable audiobook, packed with information about these endangered climate champions.

Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard along US Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound vacationers by the hedge at the edge of the road and by hulks of old cars and stacks of blown-out tires. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood tells how a childhood spent in rural isolation and steeped in religious fundamentalism grew into a passion to save the almost vanished longleaf pine ecosystem that once covered the South.

Finalist for the Washington State Book Award From the award-winning author of The Mushroom Hunters comes the story of an iconic fish, perhaps the last great wild food: salmon. For some, a salmon evokes the distant wild, thrashing in the jaws of a hungry grizzly bear on TV. For others...

For forty years, Bernd Heinrich has been ensconced in the woods of the northern, or boreal, forest, a vast sea of spruce, fir, and larch in the mountains of western Maine. All life confronts vast and occasionally rapid environmental changes, as one day, and one season, is to the next a completely different environment.

North America’s Galapagos: The Historic Channel Islands Biological Survey recounts the story of a group of researchers, naturalists, adventurers, cooks, immigrants, and scientifically curious teenagers who came together in the late 1930s to embark upon a series of ambitious expeditions never before, or since, attempted. Their mission: to piece together the broken shards of the Channel Islands’ history and evolution.

With health and sustainability at the forefront of our minds, more and more people are hitting the woodlands and foraging for edible goodies every day. But if you're new to the foraging game, you're probably a little nervous about how you can be sure you're finding the edible gold...and not the toxic imposters. Being able to identify mushrooms confidently and accurately is a crucial part of foraging—and it's only when you can do this that the real fun can begin.

Humans depend on soil for 95 percent of global food production, yet let it erode at unsustainable rates. In the United States, China, and India, vast tracts of farmland will be barren of topsoil within this century. The combination of intensifying erosion caused by climate change and the increasing food needs of a growing world population is creating a desperate need for solutions to this crisis.

Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over eighty visionaries, theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturalists, activists, and writers to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibility to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do.

Explore the awe, complexity, and enduring mystery of America’s last frontier. In A Fascination with Alaska: Beyond the Alaskan Cruise Naturalist, marine biologist William Stickle shares a lifetime of exploration, research, and teaching in Alaska’s wild and varied landscapes. With over sixty visits since 1967, Stickle offers a compelling portrait of the state’s dramatic geography, rich history, diverse ecosystems, and the effects of a changing climate.

The vivid account of a world-leading conservationist’s efforts to find, study, and protect snow leopards, revealing the challenges facing a beautiful, fragile world in the midst of a major transition Snow leopards have a special grip on the human imagination, a symbol of the mysteries that...

In October 2014, a group of mathematicians, physicists, ecologists, philosophers, and theologians gathered at a special conference in Berkeley, California, to present the results of a two-year research program dubbed “Project SATURN”. This program explored many of the rich avenues of thought found at the intersection of modern science and Christian theology. Chief among them is the possibility that certain processes in nature might be so complex that they do not have sufficient physical causes.

For many people, ecosystems may be a remote concept, yet we eat, drink, breathe and interface with them in every moment of our lives. In this engaging textbook, ecosystems scientist Dr. Mark Everard considers a diversity of "everyday things", including fascinating facts about their ecological origins: from the tea we drink, to the things we wear, read, and enjoy, to the ecology of communities and space flight, and the important roles played by germs and "unappealing creatures" such as slugs and wasps.

How deep do sharks swim? Have more people been into space than the deep ocean? And what effect are we having on the health of our seas? In Ask an Ocean Explorer, marine biologist of over 20 years and advisor for the BBC's Blue Planet II, Dr Jon Copley, explains the science and wonder of the deep ocean.

Bedbugs. Few words strike such fear in the minds of travelers. In cities around the world, lurking beneath the plush blankets of otherwise pristine-looking hotel beds, are tiny, bloodthirsty beasts just waiting for weary wanderers to surrender to vulnerable slumber. Though bedbugs today have infested the globe, the common bedbug is not a new pest at all. Indeed, as Brooke Borel reveals in this unusual history, this most-reviled species may date back over 250,000 years.

Read by the author, Tom Lathan. In Lost Wonders author and journalist Tom Lathan tells the powerful stories of ten species that have lived, died out and been declared extinct since the turn of the twenty-first century. Many scientists believe that we are currently living through the Earth’s...

The Wild East explores the social, political, and environmental changes in the Great Smoky Mountains during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although this national park is most often portrayed as a triumph of wilderness preservation, Margaret Lynn Brown concludes that the largest forested region in the eastern United States is actually a recreated wilderness—a product of restoration and even manipulation of the land.

In The Vanishing Earth, James Crawford, born into a landscape and family steeped in fossil fuels, takes listeners to the literal and ideological frontiers of extraction. Beginning with the story of humanity's decoupling from nature, Crawford embarks on an epic journey to five resource landscapes rapidly trending towards exhaustion: landscapes of rock, metal, sand, water and thought.

À l'heure du questionnement sur le retour à la nature et de la prééminence des enjeux écologiques, ce coffret propose pour la première fois un entretien avec le plus grand audio-naturaliste français ; Jean-Claude Roché, mis en perspective avec les extraits sonores de chants d'oiseaux et de biotopes, qu'il a collectés tout au long de sa vie.

In Greenwashed: The New Religion of Climate Guilt, the gloves come off. With biting wit, deep research, and a healthy dose of skepticism, this book dives into the modern environmental movement—unpacking its dogmas, hypocrisies, and unintended consequences. From carbon credits traded like poker chips on Wall Street, to plant-based meats wrapped in plastic and shipped thousands of miles, Greenwashed exposes how marketing, fear, and virtue-signaling have overtaken real solutions.

An experienced geologist with years of study in sedimentology, Chris Severson shares his passion for the Delta at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Introduced to the Delta as a young adult, the author ventures into this wild and fascinating region for many, many years. The stories herein tell of adventure, mishaps and perils while giving a view into the beauty of the delta and a geologic picture of the building and destructive forces at work to have created this ever changing, amazing landscape.