The most comprehensive book ever written on leatherback sea turtles. Weighing as much as 2,000 pounds and reaching lengths of over seven feet, leatherback turtles are the world’s largest reptile. These unusual sea turtles have a thick, pliable shell that helps them to withstand great depths—they can swim more than one thousand meters below the surface in search of food. And what food source sustains these goliaths? Their diet consists almost exclusively of jellyfish, a meal they crisscross the oceans to find. Leatherbacks have been declining in recent decades, and some predict they will be gone by the end of this century. Why? Because of two primary factors: human redevelopment of nesting beaches and commercial fishing. There are only twenty-nine index beaches in the world where these turtles nest, and there is immense pressure to develop most of them into homes or resorts. At the same time, longline and gill net fisheries continue to overwhelm waters frequented by leatherbacks. In The Leatherback Turtle, James R. Spotila and Pilar Santidrián Tomillo bring together the world’s leading experts to produce a volume that reveals the biology of the leatherback while putting a spotlight on the conservation problems and solutions related to the species. The book leaves us with options: embark on the conservation strategy laid out within its pages and save one of nature’s most splendid creations, or watch yet another magnificent species disappear.

In 2007, the United Nations adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, a landmark political recognition of indigenous rights. A decade later, this book looks at the status of those rights internationally. Written jointly by indigenous and non-indigenous scholars, the chapters feature case studies from four continents that explore the issues faced by Indigenous Peoples through three themes: land, spirituality, and self-determination.

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Water Science and Application Series, Volume 9. Groundwater recharge, the flux of water across the water table, is arguably the most difficult component of the hydrologic cycle to measure. In arid and semiarid regions the problem is exacerbated by extremely small recharge fluxes that are highly variable in space and time. --from the Preface Groundwater Recharge in a Desert Environment: The Southwestern United States speaks to these issues by presenting new interpretations and research after more than two decades of discipline-wide study. Discussions ondeveloping environmental tracers to fingerprint sources and amounts of groundwater at the basin scalethe critical role of vegetation in hydroecological processesnew geophysical methods in quantifying channel rechargeapplying Geographical Information System (GIS) models to land surface processescoupling process-based vadose zone to groundwater modeling, and more make this book a significant resource for hydmlogists, biogeoscientists, and geochemists concerned with water and water-related issues in arid and semiarid regions.

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service manage about 628 million acres of public land, mostly in the 11 western states and Alaska. Under the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA), revenue raised from selling BLM lands is available to the agencies, primarily to acquire non-federal land within the boundaries of land they already own -- known as in-holdings, which can create significant land management problems. To acquire land, the agencies can nominate parcels under state-level interagency agreements or the Secretaries can use their discretion to initiate acquisitions. FLTFA expires in 2010. The author was asked to determine (1)FLTFA revenue generated, (2)challenges to future sales, (3)FLTFA expenditures, and (4)challenges to future acquisitions. This is an edited and indexed edition.