The authors present a conceptual framework for a more coherent view of ecology, showing how to link the various parts of ecology into a natural whole. Although abstract, the analysis is anchored in practice, emphasizing examples of what ecologists do and why they do it. For practicing and aspiring research ecologists and population biologists, as well as those in the management of wildlife and forests. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Toward a Unified Ecology

Science & Math

Allen, T. F. H.

Hoekstra, Thomas W.

Biological Sciences

Columbia Univ. Pr.

Offers the best general summary of the field, with a view toward fostering common disciplinary goals. Allen and Hoekstra begin with hierarchy theory as a basic premise and explain that the conventional 'levels' (ecosystems, landscapes, communities, populations, organisms) are not levels in themselves but criteria for observation.

Allen, Timothy F.H.

Columbia University Press

While environmentalists insist that lower rates of consumption of natural resources are essential for a sustainable future, many economists dismiss the notion that resource limits act to constrain modern, creative societies. The conflict between these views tinges political debate at all levels and hinders our ability to plan for the future.
 Supply-Side Sustainability offers a fresh approach to this dilemma by integrating ecological and social science approaches in an interdisciplinary treatment of sustainability. Written by two ecologists and an anthropologist, this book discusses organisms, landscapes, populations, communities, biomes, the biosphere, ecosystems and energy flows, as well as patterns of sustainability and collapse in human societies, from hunter-gatherer groups to empires to today's industrial world. These diverse topics are integrated within a new framework that translates the authors' advances in hierarchy and complexity theory into a form useful to professionals in science, government, and business.
The result is a much-needed blueprint for a cost-effective management regime, one that makes problem-solving efforts themselves sustainable over time. The authors demonstrate that long-term, cost-effective resource management can be achieved by managing the contexts of productive systems, rather than by managing the commodities that natural systems produce.

Supply-Side Sustainability

Business & Money

Allen, Professor Timothy F. H.

Tainter, Professor Joseph A.

Hoekstra, Professor Thomas W.

Tainter, Joseph A.

Economics

'As living systems change, so research priorities and decisions about resource management must change and adapt. By relating various kinds of ecological systems to the question of sustainability in arid lands, "Arid Lands Management" offers new directions for both research and management. The earth's surface currently is undergoing massive land-use changes as a component of human-accelerated environmental change. Loss of biodiversity, invasion of exotic species, global climate change, toxification of the biosphere, and stratospheric ozone depletion are the consequences of land-use changes that lead to a deterioration of vital resources. Fragile arid and semi-arid ecosystems are particularly vulnerable."Arid Lands Management" gathers the insights and expertise of an international consortium of scientists to assess the current status of ecological sciences and arid lands ecology. This volume provides an overview of the arid and semi-arid land situation in three major arid systems: the Negev of Israel, the Sonoran-Chiuahuan deserts of North America, and the arid lands of Australia. Contributors provide a framework for understanding ecological sustainability, assess progress toward it, and outline essential principles of arid lands management.They suggest promising areas of research as well as management approaches that take account of interactions among three ecological criteria or levels of organization: population, community, and ecosystem. They also address the implications for these criteria of human-induced local and global environmental changes and investigate how to expand the conventional definition of sustainability - the use of resources by humans with the intention of protecting those resources for future populations of humans - to encompass also the reliance of other organisms on these resources.

Arid Lands Management: TOWARD ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY

Shachak, Moshe

University of Illinois Press

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