Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

Barely inhabited, the Arctic is an alien world to most of us. It also holds critical clues about the future of our planet. In The Hidden Life of Ice, Marco Tedesco invites us to Greenland, where he and his fellow scientists are doggedly researching the dramatic changes afoot. Following the arc of his typical day at work, Tedesco unearths the secrets in the ice - from evidence of long-extinct "polar camels" to the fantastically weird microorganisms. Tedesco weaves together the bald facts on climate change with poetic reflections on this endangered landscape and more.

There are few more beautiful places than Scotland’s winter mountains. But even when most of the snow has melted, isolated patches can linger well into summer and beyond. In The Vanishing Ice, Iain Cameron chronicles these remarkable and little-seen relics of the Ice Age, describing how they have fascinated travelers and writers for hundreds of years and reflecting on the impact of climate change. Iain was nine years old when snow patches first captured his imagination, and they have been inextricably bound with his life ever since.

A vivid portrait of the American prairie, which rivals the rainforest in its biological diversity and, with little notice, is disappearing even faster “This book describes—in loving, living prose—one of the world’s greatest and most important landscapes. And it does so while there’s...

Paleolake Flixton is an extinct lake in North Yorkshire. Human occupation of the site dates back thousands of years to prehistoric times. Over the millennia, the vast lake disappeared, turning to wetland and peaty fields. Today all that is left of it is a watermark. Wendy Pratt brings the listener on a pilgrimage around the ghost lake, to locations that have acted as journey markers in her own life.

It is hard to imagine that the busy townscape of South London was once a great wood, stretching almost seven miles from Croydon to Deptford or that, scattered through the suburbs, from Dulwich to Norwood, a number of oak woodlands have survived since before the Norman Conquest. These woods were...

From Pulitzer Prize-winning design critic Alexandra Lange, a beguiling look at the waste-not architecture of the 1970s—and the consequences of leaving it behind. In 1977, Jimmy Carter sat by a fire and urged Americans to lower their thermostats, “live thriftily,” and help their neighbors...

Detective stories from the natural world, from the author of the Wainwright and Rathbones Folio Prize-longlisted Ghost Trees. In 1913 all the musk plants in the world stopped smelling. Unable to resist the lure of this mystery, Bob Gilbert turns detective, determined to find the truth in the...

Water scarcity is on everyone's mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people's food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts - even as a swath of California farmland has been left fallow and extremist groups worldwide exploit the desperation of people losing livelihoods to desertification - many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, and climate change.

Transporting listeners into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe - from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai'ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, Wild Souls will change the way we think about nature-and our place within it. 

Explore Earth's hidden ecosystems and bizarre animal survival tactics in this awe-inspiring dive into nature science. Perfect for an educational daily commute or unwinding before sleep, these vivid stories transform complex biology into gripping, curiosity-sparking tales. Prepare to encounter...

Following the Irish coast in a clockwise direction, acclaimed ecologist Richard Nairn travels by boat, on foot and sometimes by air to visit the best remaining wild places, including islands, cliffs, beaches and dunes. The result is a unique mix of nature, history, science and a reflection on the author’s personal experiences of exploring Ireland’s coast. By viewing the Irish coastline from the sea, Richard gains a unique perspective on the island. And along the way, he recalls a lifetime spent studying nature.

The dramatic and action-packed story of the last mysterious place on earth—the world’s seafloor—and the deep-sea divers, ocean mappers, marine biologists, entrepreneurs, and adventurers involved in the historic push to chart it, as well as the opportunities, challenges, and perils this...

Dr Sean Wensley is an award-winning vet and lifelong naturalist, advocating animal wellbeing around the world. Fusing keen scientific insight with tender meditations on the natural world, Through a Vet's Eyes reveals the injustices which animals experience every day and raises an important question: how can we choose a better life for animals?

Bees are small, yet their impact on the world is enormous. They may weigh less than a paperclip and live only a matter of weeks, but they hold the power to shape ecosystems, economies, and even the food on our plates. Without them, fields would fall silent, harvests would collapse, and the dazzling diversity of life we so often take for granted would fade into memory. This book is a journey into the remarkable world of bees, exploring their hidden importance and why our future is so closely tied to theirs.

Paddling a canoe into the sunrise. Watching a child take her first kayak ride with her father. Dodging campfire smoke while burning marshmallows and telling scary stories to wide-eyed kids. These are some of the moments and memories depicted in Summers at the Lake. The essays—often humorous, sometimes tinged with a sweet melancholy—celebrate the people and events marking the progress of the seasons, from the budding of the first leaves of May to their falling, gold and scarlet, in September. These prose poems capture the joy of simple, lakeside living and quiet reflection.

Bloomsbury presents Wanderland written and read by Jini Reddy. SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR UK NATURE WRITING Alone on a remote mountaintop one dark night, a woman hears a mysterious voice. Propelled by the...

A quixotic journey through London's past, Mudlark plumbs the banks of the Thames to reveal the stories hidden behind the archaeological remnants of an ancient city. Long heralded as a city treasure herself, expert "mudlarker" Lara Maiklem is uniquely trained in the art of seeking. Tirelessly trekking across miles of the Thames' muddy shores, where others only see the detritus of city life, Maiklem unearths evidence of England's captivating, if sometimes murky, history - with some objects dating back to 43 AD, when London was but an outpost of the Roman Empire.

FINALIST FOR THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND BOOKLIST The story of the urgent fight to save coral reefs, and why it matters to us all Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When...

Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself.

Is it too late to regenerate the earth? Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our Australian landscape and our planet. This ground-breaking book will change the way we think of, farm and grow food. Author and radical farmer Charles Massy explores...