Human impact on natural landscapes through urbanization and agricultural expansion are becoming more and more dramatic and are the cause of serious environmental problems. This volume examines the effect of landscape disturbance on plant and animal diversity in the five mediterranean-climate regions of the world. It begins with three introductory chapters broadly reviewing the issues of landscape degradation. Further contributions describe regional land use conflicts in each of the five regions. Landscape disturbance and plant diversity, and landscape disturbance and animal diversity are treated in separate chapters. Four contributions deal with demography and ecophysiology in vegetation succession following disturbance. The volume closes with a consideration of the future addressing aspects of environmental politics.

Human impact on natural landscapes through urbanization and agricultural expansion are becoming more and more dramatic and are the cause of serious environmental problems. This volume examines the effect of landscape disturbance on plant and animal diversity in the five mediterranean-climate regions of the world. It begins with three introductory chapters broadly reviewing the issues of landscape degradation. Further contributions describe regional land use conflicts in each of the five regions. Landscape disturbance and plant diversity, and landscape disturbance and animal diversity are treated in separate chapters. Four contributions deal with demography and ecophysiology in vegetation succession following disturbance. The volume closes with a consideration of the future addressing aspects of environmental politics.

Human activities are causing species extinctions at a rate and magnitude rivaling those of past geologic extinction events. Exploring mediterranean-type ecosystems - the Mediterranean Basin, California, Chile, Australia, and South Africa - this volume addresses the question whether biological diversity plays a significant role in the functioning of natural ecosystems, and to what extent that diversity can be reduced without causing system malfunction. Comparative studies in ecosystems that are similar in certain respects, but differ in others, offer considerable scope for gaining new insights into the links between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

The world's mediterranean-type climate regions (including areas within the Mediterranean, South Africa, Australia, California, and Chile) have long been of interest to biologists by virtue of their extraordinary biodiversity and the appearance of evolutionary convergence between these disparate regions. These regions contain many rare and endemic species. Their mild climate makes them appealing places to live and visit and this has resulted in numerous threats to the species and communities that occupy them. Threats include a wide range of factors such as habitat loss due to development and agriculture, disturbance, invasive species, and climate change. As a result, they continue to attract far more attention than their limited geographic area might suggest. This book provides a concise but comprehensive introduction to mediterranean-type ecosystems. It is an accessible text which provides an authoritative overview of the topic. As with other books in the Biology of Habitats Series, the emphasis in this book is on the organisms that dominate these regions although their management, conservation, and restoration are also considered.

It is becoming clear that the Mediterranean region is one of the "hottest" of the biodiversity hotspots on the planet. There is also an increasing concern for the conservation, adaptive management, and restoration of the unique natural ecosystems and cultural landscapes that characterize this area. The region's biological and cultural heritage as well as its huge wealth of biodiversity is now at real risk. This brings a further urgency to the task of communicating detailed but readily accessible information on the Mediterranean biota, and an ecological, historical and evolutionary perspective to the changing contexts in which the region's flora and fauna continue to evolve. There is no other recent textbook devoted solely to Mediterranean evolutionary ecology, and a synthesis of the many recent advances is now overdue. This new work builds on the success and reputation of the first edition, although the text has been updated and expanded to document recent changes to biodiversity, new ecological and evolutionary insights, and the challenges for the future. These changes include the addition of two new chapters devoted to the Mediterranean Sea itself, and especially the coastal areas. Throughout the book, the pressing issues of global change (especially climate warming) are addressed, in conjunction with changing land use, and in terms of their potential impact on biota, communities, ecosystems, and landscapes.

This volume contains the texts of invited papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Mediterranean Ecosystems (MEDECOS) held in Perth, Western Australia during August 1984. It thus follows three previous meetings, Chile (1971), California (1977) and South Africa (1980). There has been no formal international body to organize these meetings, merely a continuity of purpose provided by the common interests of the scientists concerned in the English-speaking world. Following previous themes on structure, fire and role of nutrients in mediterranean ecosystems, MEDECOS was structured around the theme 'Resilience in Mediterranean Ecosystems'. The invited speakers were requested to deal with particu lar aspects of this subject, and offered papers were encouraged to do so as well. This provided a broad framework for discussions which at the same time highlighted many of the major conservation issues arising from extreme natural events and human-induced disturbances in the mediterranean regions. The proceed ings were issued on the last day of the conference and provided two-page accounts of each of the contributed papers and posters (Dell, B. (ed. ) 1984 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Mediterranean Ecosystems. Botany Dept. , University of Western Australia). This volume was reserved for the review papers whose aim was to explore general principles and unifying concepts at all levels in the study of resilience. Perth, December 1985. VII List of contributors B. Dell 1. E.