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Books in Ecosystems communities and organisms

  • Mountain Biodiversity

    Pattern, Process and Challenges to our World's High-Altitude Areas
    • 1st Edition
    • August 1, 2026
    • Robert Marchant
    • English
    Mountain Biodiversity: Pattern, Process and Challenges to our World's High-Altitude Areas explores the highly biodiverse, culturally rich, and often threatened mountain regions that comprise a quarter of the world's continental land surface. These complex areas play a fundamental role in shaping continental-scale climates and have long been recognized as globally important centers of biodiversity. Mountains cover only 25% of global continental land surface yet are home to more than 85% of the world’s amphibians, birds, and mammals, many of which are entirely restricted to mountains. Despite their importance as stores of biodiversity and drivers of global sustainability, high altitude areas are particularly vulnerable to climate change and human interventions.Writte... by a leading expert in tropical mountain ecology, this book explores the processes that define the world's high-altitude areas in an easily digestible manner. Early chapters characterize high-altitude areas according to topography, fire regime, and climate. Dr. Marchant collates palaeoecological, archaeological, and historical insights to synthesize the intersection between mountain societies, ecosystems, and climate. Middle chapters examine the relationship between mountain climates and insect, bird, and mammalian biodiversity. Final chapters describe the future of land use, climate, and biodiversity, and explore opportunities to combine insights from different disciplines to enable pathways for more sustainable futures in sustainable mountain development.High-alt... regions are not adequately protected, and many mountain ranges remain completely unprotected. The status of these important storehouses of biodiversity is under increasing threat via population growth, climatic extremes, and land use change. High-Altitude Biodiversity will present current biodiversity across the world's mountains and use this information to identify priorities for new ways to understand, value, protect, and conserve high altitude areas. By taking a novel interdisciplinary approach that combines temporally and spatially diverse datasets from high altitude areas around the world, this can be used to inform future development.

  • Water Security for Ecosystems

    Metrics and Pathways for a Sustainable Future
    • 1st Edition
    • July 1, 2026
    • Amit Kumar + 3 more
    • English
    Water Security for Ecosystems: Metrics and Pathways for a Sustainable Future explores the mechanisms to support sustainable management of aquatic resources in the context of rising global water demand, global change, and population growth. By identifying resource consumption indicators such as fishing load capacity and virtual water trade, this book sets a clear framework for assessing the ecological footprint of extractive industries. It then proposes pathways to establish largescale water security via integrated aquatic resource management, water-efficient technologies, and sustainable policy intervention.Written by a renowned team of water resource managers, early chapters in this book define ecological footprints and explore the global policies, industries, and climate forces driving water insecurity. Central chapters explore novel and innovative water conservation techniques, advances in water resource management, and emerging technologies for sustainable water use. Final chapters explore global water policies and the role of international cooperation and propose a roadmap for minimizing aquatic ecological footprints.Water Security for Ecosystems acknowledges the increased strain placed on global aquatic ecosystems due to unsustainable water use, extractive fisheries and agricultural practices, pollution, and inefficient governance. Addressing these challenges will necessitate a multidisciplinary approach centered on sustainable water management, strengthened transboundary water governance, responsible consumption policies, and global investment to reduce our aquatic ecological footprint. By integrating science, policy, and community engagement in multidisciplinary management recommendations, this book positions itself as an essential resource for water resource managers, researchers, and policymakers alike.

  • Mangrove Ecosystem Dynamics

    • 1st Edition
    • June 1, 2026
    • Daniel M Alongi
    • English
    Mangrove Ecosystem Dynamics presents a comprehensive account of the various functions of mangrove habitats, from spatial dynamics of intertidal ecosystems to nutrient and biogeochemical cycling in sediments, tidal and coastal waters, and dependent species. This process-oriented approach is necessary to further understand the role of these dynamic habitats in the coastal ocean, and as a next step towards developing adequate strategies for mangrove conservation, management, and sustainable use.Written by a leading expert in mangrove biology and tropical marine ecology, this book takes an energetics approach to summarize the latest developments and knowledge in the field of mangrove ecology. Initial chapters discuss the fundamentals of intertidal environments and the spatial and temporal dynamics of mangrove habitats. Latter chapters address recent advances in food web energetics in tidal waters, exploring benthic invertebrate, planktonic, fish, and arboreal food webs. Final sections detail decomposition of organic matter, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration.Mangro... Ecosystem Dynamics addresses rapidly emerging and vital issues of climate change, blue carbon, sustainable management and restoration, and the connectivity and interdependence between mangroves and other coastal habitats and species. This new work offers a comprehensive functional view of the current and future state of mangrove ecosystems that will greatly benefit coastal and marine biologists, resource managers, conservationists, and students alike.

  • Freshwater Ecology

    Concepts and Environmental Applications of Limnology
    • 3rd Edition
    • April 3, 2019
    • Walter K. Dodds + 1 more
    • English
    Freshwater Ecology, Third Edition, covers everything from the basic chemical and physical properties of water, to the advanced and unifying concepts of community ecology and ecosystem relationships found in continental waters. Giving students a solid foundation for both courses and future fieldwork, and updated to include key issues, including how to balance ecological and human health needs, GMOs, molecular tools, fracking, and a host of other environmental issues, this book is an ideal resource for both students and practitioners in ecology and related fields.

  • Thorp and Covich's Freshwater Invertebrates

    Volume 3: Keys to Neotropical Hexapoda
    • 4th Edition
    • August 30, 2018
    • Neusa Hamada + 2 more
    • English
    Thorp and Covich’s Freshwater Invertebrates, Fourth Edition: Keys to Neotropical Hexapoda, Volume Three, provides a guide for identifying and evaluating a key subphylum, hexapoda, for Central America, South America and the Antarctic. This book is essential for anyone working in water quality management, conservation, ecology or related fields in this region, and is developed to be the most modern and consistent set of taxonomic keys available. It is part of a series that is designed to provide a highly comprehensive, current set of keys for a given bioregion, with all keys written in a consistent style. This series can be used for a full spectrum of interested readers, from students, to university professors and government agencies.

  • Networks of Invasion: A Synthesis of Concepts

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 56
    • January 19, 2017
    • English
    Networks of Invasion bridges a conceptual gap between ecological network studies and invasion biology studies. This book contains chapters detailing pressing concerns regarding invasive species in food webs, but also extends the idea of networks of invasion to other systems, such as mutualistic networks or even the human microbiome. Chapters describe the tools, models, and empirical methods adapted for tackling invasions in ecological networks.

  • Animal Vigilance

    Monitoring Predators and Competitors
    • 1st Edition
    • June 29, 2015
    • Guy Beauchamp
    • English
    Animal Vigilance builds on the author’s previous publication with Academic Press (Social Predation: How Group Living Benefits Predators and Prey) by developing several other themes including the development and mechanisms underlying vigilance, as well as developing more fully the evolution and function of vigilance. Animal vigilance has been at the forefront of research on animal behavior for many years, but no comprehensive review of this topic has existed. Students of animal behavior have focused on many aspects of animal vigilance, from models of its adaptive value to empirical research in the laboratory and in the field. The vast literature on vigilance is widely dispersed with often little contact between models and empirical work and between researchers focusing on different taxa such as birds and mammals. Animal Vigilance fills this gap in the available material.

  • Ecological Networks in an Agricultural World

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 49
    • November 22, 2013
    • English
    The theme of this volume is to discuss the Ecological Networks in an Agricultural World. The volume covers important topics such Networking Agroecology, Construction and Validation of Food-webs using Logic-based Machine Learning and Text-mining and Eco-evolutionary dynamics in agricultural networks.

  • Ecosystem Services

    Global Issues, Local Practices
    • 1st Edition
    • October 11, 2013
    • Sander Jacobs + 2 more
    • English
    Ecosystem Services: Global Issues, Local Practices covers scientific input, socioeconomic considerations, and governance issues on ecosystem services. This book provides hands-on transdisciplinary reflections by administrators and sector representatives involved in the ecosystem service community. Ecosystem Services develops shared approaches and scientific methods to achieve knowledge-based sustainable planning and management of ecosystem services. Professionals engaged in ecosystem service implementation have two options: de-emphasize the ecological and socioeconomic complexity and advance in the theoretical, abstract field, or try to develop research that is policy relevant and inclusive in an uncertain environment. This book provides a wide overview of issues at stake, of interest for any professional wishing to develop a broader view on ecosystem service science and practice.

  • Fundamentals of Ecosystem Science

    • 1st Edition
    • December 5, 2012
    • Kathleen C. Weathers + 2 more
    • English
    Fundamentals of Ecosystem Science provides a compact and comprehensive introduction to modern ecosystem science. This book covers major concepts of ecosystem science, biogeochemistry, and energetics. It addresses, contrasts, and compares both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. It combines general lessons, concepts, frameworks, and challenges in highly accessible synthesis chapters. It presents firsthand case studies, written by leaders in the field, offering personal insights into how adopting an ecosystem approach led to innovations, new understanding, management changes, and policy solutions. This book is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who have had a general biology course, but not further training in ecosystems as well as researchers and professionals in ecology and environmental sciences.