Books about Biodiversity from Amazon.com

The Earth's biodiversity-the rich variety of life on our planet-is disappearing at an alarming rate. And while many books have focused on the expected ecological consequences, or on the aesthetic, ethical, sociological, or economic dimensions of this loss, Sustaining Life is the first book to examine the full range of potential threats that diminishing biodiversity poses to human health.
Edited and written by Harvard Medical School physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, along with more than 100 leading scientists who contributed to writing and reviewing the book, Sustaining Life presents a comprehensive--and sobering--view of how human medicines, biomedical research, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and the production of food, both on land and in the oceans, depend on biodiversity. The book's ten chapters cover everything from what biodiversity is and how human activity threatens it to how we as individuals can help conserve the world's richly varied biota. Seven groups of organisms, some of the most endangered on Earth, provide detailed case studies to illustrate the contributions they have already made to human medicine, and those they are expected to make if we do not drive them to extinction. Drawing on the latest research, but written in language a general reader can easily follow, Sustaining Life argues that we can no longer see ourselves as separate from the natural world, nor assume that we will not be harmed by its alteration. Our health, as the authors so vividly show, depends on the health of other species and on the vitality of natural ecosystems.
With a foreword by E.O. Wilson and a prologue by Kofi Annan, and more than 200 poignant color illustrations, Sustaining Life contributes essential perspective to the debate over how humans affect biodiversity and a compelling demonstration of the human health costs..
Price: $23.39 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $18.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Corridor Ecology presents guidelines that combine conservation science and practical experience for maintaining, enhancing, and creating connectivity between natural areas with an overarching goal of conserving biodiversity. It offers an objective, carefully interpreted review of the issues and is a one-of-a-kind resource for scientists, landscape architects, planners, land managers, decision-makers, and all those working to protect and restore landscapes and species diversity. .
Price: $29.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Unweaving the Web of Destruction

The continuing devastation of the world’s tropical rain forest affects us all—spurring climate change, decimating biodiversity, and wrecking our environment’s resiliency. Millions of worried people around the world want to do whatever it takes to save the forest that is left.

But halting rain forest destruction means understanding what is driving it.

In Breakfast of Biodiversity, John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto insightfully describe the ways in which such disparate factors as the international banking system, modern agricultural techniques, rain forest ecology, and the struggles of the poor interact to bring down the forest. They weave an alternative vision in which democracy, sustainable agriculture, and land security for the poor are at the center of the movement to save the tropical environment.

This new, fully updated edition of Breakfast of Biodiversity discusses important new developments in our understanding of rain forest biology and assesses the impacts of a decade of "free" trade on the rain forest and on those who live in and around it..
Price: $10.13 [Notify me when price goes down.]

If every known species on Earth were a leaf on a tree, that tree would have 1 750 000 leaves. Since humans count for just one leaf on the tree, we have a lot to learn about the millions of other forms of life with which we share the world. A dazzlingly illustrated and child-friendly introduction to biodiversity, Tree of Life shows how living things are classified into five kingdoms -- and how each has much to tell us about all aspects of life on our planet..
Price: $11.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Among the major events in evolutionary history, few rival in importance the appearance of animals The Rise of Animals -- a significant reference providing a comprehensive synthesis of the early radiation of the animal kingdom -- fully captures this moment in geologic time.

Five of the world's leading paleontologists take us on a journey to the most important fossil sites that serve as unique windows to the earliest animal life -- including the Ediacara Hills of Australia, the Russian taiga and tundra, the deserts of southwest Africa, and the rugged coasts of Newfoundland. Each of these places holds a rich fossil record that reveals how the animal form came into existence and why some groups succeeded while others failed. The authors describe the diversification of the Kingdom Animalia into the familiar body plans of today: from simple animals such as sponges to complex groups like mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms, and chordates that appear explosively in the Cambrian.

This exquisitely illustrated book reveals the early moments of an evolutionary process that eventually resulted in our own species. An essential resource for paleontologists, biologists, geologists, and teachers, The Rise of Animals is the best single reference on one of earth's most significant events.

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Price: $56.01 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The conservation of biodiversity is now big business. Whether called conservation banking, species banking, habitat banking, biodiversity banking, biodiversity offsets, compensatory mitigation or ecological footprint offsetting, the idea of financially valuing biodiversity and using the market and businesses to promote conservation is growing rapidly.

This handbook is a comprehensive guide to conservation banking explaining: what it is and how it works. The book covers the origins of conservation banking; the pros and cons of this approach to conservation, how conservation banking works in reality; the legal, practical and financial aspects of setting up and running a conservation bank; and how biodiversity off-sets can be internationalized. Authored by leading experts in the field of ecosystem markets, the book provides practical guidance, tools, case studies, analysis and insights into conservation banking in the United States, its biodiversity banking namesake in Australia and other similar approaches internationally.

It is an essential one-stop reference manual for conservation organizations, private landowners, developers, complying industries, regulating agencies, policy makers, bank developers and investors in the US, Australia, Europe and elsewhere where market-based solutions to the loss of biodiversity and species extinction are being considered..
Price: $76.66 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book focuses on introduced plant species: their origins and impacts on native vegetation and ecosystems as well as the potential for their control. Aimed at advanced students and land managers concerned with plant community conservation, it includes practical explanations, case studies and an introduction to basic techniques for evaluating the impacts of invasive plants..
Price: $57.34 [Notify me when price goes down.]