Communities of microscopic plant life, or phytoplankton, dominate the Earth's aquatic ecosystems. This important new book by Colin Reynolds covers the adaptations, physiology and population dynamics of phytoplankton communities in lakes and rivers and oceans. It provides basic information on composition, morphology and physiology of the main phyletic groups represented in marine and freshwater systems and in addition reviews recent advances in community ecology, developing an appreciation of assembly processes, co-existence and competition, disturbance and diversity. Although focussed on one...

Systematic Conservation Planning provides a clear, comprehensive guide to the process of deriving a conservation area network for regions, which will best represent the biodiversity of regions in the most cost-effective way. The measurement of biodiversity, design of field sampling strategies, alongside different data treatment methods are detailed helping to provide a conceptual framework for identifying conservation area networks, underpinned by the concept of complementarity. Setting conservation targets and then multi-criteria analyses, using complementarity but bringing in other criteria...

Freshwater is a valuable resource for human populations, and has many uses such as water for drinking, hydroelectric power and recreation. This creates conflict between conservation and exploitation. This book explores various aspects of conservation evaluation, including the selection of important areas for protection, responding to threats from catchment development, and determining the restoration potential of degraded water bodies. Aimed at academic researchers, graduate students and professionals, chapters are written by pairs of UK and US authors, who compare methods used for evaluating...

Freshwater is a valuable resource for human populations, and has many uses such as water for drinking, hydroelectric power and recreation. This creates conflict between conservation and exploitation. This book explores various aspects of conservation evaluation, including the selection of important areas for protection, responding to threats from catchment development, and determining the restoration potential of degraded water bodies. Aimed at academic researchers, graduate students and professionals, chapters are written by pairs of UK and US authors, who compare methods used for evaluating...

First of its kind and unique in its blend of theoretical and practical approaches for mainstreaming biodiversity in impact assessment.

A critical examination of current knowledge and ideas on cave biology, with emphasis on evolution, ecology, and conservation.

Comprehensive summary of species distribution modeling methods integrating ecological and statistical models with spatial data, and a framework for implementation.

Biospeleology, the study of organisms that live in caves, has a tremendous potential to inform many aspects of modern biology; yet this area of knowledge remains largely anchored in neo-Lamarckian views of the natural world in both its approaches and jargon. Written for graduate students and academic researchers, this book provides a critical examination of current knowledge and ideas on cave biology, with emphasis on evolution, ecology, and conservation. Aldemaro Romero provides a historical analysis of ideas that have influenced biospeleology, discusses evolutionary phenomena in caves, from...

In the face of decreasing biodiversity and ongoing global changes, maintaining ecosystem functioning is seen both as a means to preserve biological diversity as well as for safeguarding human wellbeing by securing the services ecosystems provide. The concept today is prominent in many fields of ecology and conservation biology, such as biodiversity research, ecosystem management, or restoration ecology. Although the idea of ecosystem functioning is important, the concept itself remains rather vague and elusive. This book provides a novel analysis and integrated synthesis of different...

Native only to the California Channel Islands, the island fox is the smallest canid in North America. Populations on four of the islands were threatened to extinction in the 1990s due to human-mediated predation and disease. This is the first account of the natural history and ecology of the island fox, illustrating both the vulnerability of island ecosystems and the efficacy of cooperative conservation measures. It explains in detail the intense conservation actions required to recover fox populations, such as captive breeding and reintroduction, and large-scale ecosystem manipulation. These...