This book provides a unique overview of the impacts of railways on biodiversity, integrating the existing knowledge on the ecological effects of railways on wildlife, identifying major knowledge gaps and research directions and presenting the emerging field of railway ecology. The book is divided into two major parts: Part one offers a general revi...
This title meets a great demand for training in spatial analysis tools accessible to a wide audience. Landscape ecology continues to grow as an exciting discipline with much to offer for solving pressing and emerging problems in environmental science. Much of the strength of landscape ecology lies in its ability to address challenges over large are...
Some European lands have been progressively alleviated of human pressures, particularly traditional agriculture in remote areas. This book proposes that this land abandonment can be seen as an opportunity to restore natural ecosystems via rewilding. We define rewilding as the passive management of ecological successions having in mind the long-term...
The first book of its kind, this work discusses the global extent of ranaviruses, principles of ranavirus ecology and evolution. The research included provides guidance on designing ranavirus surveillance studies to determine risk. Ranaviruses are are double-stranded DNA viruses that cause hemorrhagic disease in amphibians, reptiles, and fish. Rana...
How can we design more sustainable industrial and urban systems that reduce environmental impacts while supporting a high quality of life for everyone? What progress has been made towards reducing resource use and waste, and what are the prospects for more resilient material-efficient economies? What are the environmental and social impacts of glob...
This book aims to provide case studies and a general view of the main processes involved in the ecosystem shifts occurring in the high mountains, and to analyse the implications for nature conservation. Although case studies from the Pyrenees are preponderant, conclusions are aimed at any mountain range surrounded by highly populated lowland areas....
This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses t...
This book shows how to use sensitivity analysis in demography. It presents new methods for individuals, cohorts, and populations, with applications to humans, other animals, and plants. The analyses are based on matrix formulations of age-classified, stage-classified, and multistate population models. Methods are presented for linear and nonlinear,...
This book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among ...
This book summarizes peer-reviewed articles and the abstracts of oral and poster presentations given during the YOUMARES 9 conference which took place in Oldenburg, Germany, in September 2018. The aims of this book are to summarize state-of-the-art knowledge in marine sciences and to inspire scientists of all career stages in the development of fur...
This open access book summarizes the multi-disciplinary results of one of China's main primatological research projects on the endemic Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana), which had continued for over 30 years, but which had never been reported on systematically. Dedicated to this exceptional Old World monkey, this book makes the work of Chines...
Biodiversity observation systems are almost everywhere inadequate to meet local, national and international (treaty) obligations. As a result of alarmingly rapid declines in biodiversity in the modern era, there is a strong, worldwide desire to upgrade our monitoring systems, but little clarity on what is actually needed and how it can be assembled...
This book focuses on central themes related to the conservation of bats. It details their response to land-use change and management practices, intensified urbanization and roost disturbance and loss. Increasing interactions between humans and bats as a result of hunting, disease relationships, occupation of human dwellings, and conflict over fruit...
This manuscript discusses the potentials of the approaches as mentioned below to monitor the AIVs in WMW. Molecular diagnostic platforms enable for accurate detection of the AIVs in the feces of infected birds. Similar technologies can be used to determine the bird species through DNA barcoding, enabling non-invasive research on the epidemiology of...
This book identifies and discusses biodiversity's contribution to physical, mental and spiritual health and wellbeing. Furthermore, the book identifies the implications of this relationship for nature conservation, public health, landscape architecture and urban planning – and considers the opportunities of nature-based solutions for climate...
This volume presents new insights on marginality, i.e. the situation of people living on the edge of socio-economic and ecological systems. The marginality concept leads to different development policies. While the prevalence of poverty declined by about 50 percent in the past two decades, any further reduction of poverty will be more difficult, be...
This book advocates for the Social Sciences and Humanities to be more involved in energy policymaking. It forms part of the European platform for energy-related Social Sciences and Humanities' activities, and works on the premise that crossing disciplines is essential. All of its contributions are highly interdisciplinary, with each chapter gr...
This book presents the proceedings volume of the YOUMARES 8 conference, which took place in Kiel, Germany, in September 2017, supported by the German Association for Marine Sciences (DGM). The YOUMARES conference series is entirely bottom-up organized by and for YOUng MARine RESearchers. Qualified early career scientists moderated the scientific se...
This book facilitates an integrative understanding of the development, genetics and evolution of butterfly wing patterns. To develop a deep and realistic understanding of the diversity and evolution of butterfly wing patterns, it is essential and necessary to approach the problem from various kinds of key research fields such as "evo-devo,&quo...
The average person can name more bird species than they think, but do we really know what a bird "species" is? This book takes up several fascinating aspects of bird life to elucidate this basic concept in biology. From genetic and physiological basics to the phenomena of bird song and bird migration, it analyzes various interactions of b...
This book presents the results from the Japanese Fisheries Research Agency's 3-year intensive monitoring of radionuclides in a variety of fish, plankton, benthos, and their living environments after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) accident in March 2011. The book reveals the dynamics of contamination processes in marine and fr...
To understand how the world's ecosystems are changing we need to understand cities, and to create better cities we need to understand the ecosystems they depend on. The failure of most markets, government policies and even urban studies to take these relations into account has put cities, and increasingly the whole world, in a difficult positi...
"Dr Cassidy draws pertinent general conclusions about generating policy and mediating the role of the expert in today's science-sceptic and increasingly polarised society... It is both a useful and original contribution, specifically to the history of zoonotic disease policy, and policy history more generally."—Helen Bynum, Author ...
This open access volume presents a comprehensive account of all aspects of biological invasions in South Africa, where research has been conducted over more than three decades, and where bold initiatives have been implemented in attempts to control invasions and to reduce their ecological, economic and social effects. It covers a broad range of the...
This open access book offers the first comprehensive account of the pan-genome concept and its manifold implications.
The realization that the genetic repertoire of a biological species always encompasses more than the genome of each individual is one of the earliest examples of big data in biology that opened biology to the unbounded. The study ...
Evolutionary Research in Archaeology seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of contemporary evolutionary research in archaeology. The book will provide a single source for introduction and overview of basic and advanced evolutionary concepts and research programs in archaeology. Content will be organized around four areas of critical research in...
Living Earth Community: Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing is a celebration of the diversity of ways in which humans can relate to the world around them, and an invitation to its readers to partake in planetary coexistence. Innovative, informative, and highly accessible, this interdisciplinary anthology of essays brings together scholars, writers a...
This open book describes the serious threat of invasive species to native ecosystems. Invasive species have caused and will continue to cause enormous ecological and economic damage with ever increasing world trade. This multi-disciplinary book, written by over 100 national experts, presents the latest research on a wide range of natural science an...
This open volume aims to methodologically improve our understanding of biodiversity by linking disciplines that incorporate remote sensing, and uniting data and perspectives in the fields of biology, landscape ecology, and geography. The book provides a framework for how biodiversity can be detected and evaluated - focusing particularly on plants -...
This edited volume explores new engagements with the life sciences in contemporary fiction, poetry, comics and performance. The gathered case studies investigate how recent creative work reframes the human within microscopic or macroscopic scales, from cellular biology to systems ecology, and engages with the ethical, philosophical, and political i...
In this edited open access book leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds wrestle with social science integration opportunities and challenges. This book explores the growing concern of how best to achieve effective integration of the social science disciplines as a means for furthering natural resource social science and environment...
The aim of this book is to review and analyse the goods and services of bivalve shellfish. How they are defined, what determines the ecological functions that are the basis for the goods and services, what controversies in the use of goods and services exist, and what is needed for sustainable exploitation of bivalves from the perspective of the va...