“As you read these pages you will understand why I so admire [Peter Wohlleben] and am so in love with his work.”—JANE GOODALL Nature is full of surprises: deciduous trees affect the rotation of the Earth, cranes sabotage the production of Iberian ham, and coniferous forests can make it rain. But what are the processes that drive these incredible phenomena? And why do they matter? In The Secret Wisdom of Nature, master storyteller and international sensation Peter Wohlleben takes readers on a thought-provoking exploration of the vast natural systems that make life on Earth possible. In this tour of an almost unfathomable world, Wohlleben describes the fascinating interplay between animals and plants and answers such questions as: How do they influence each other? Do lifeforms communicate across species boundaries? And what happens when this finely tuned system gets out of sync? By introducing us to the latest scientific discoveries and recounting his own insights from decades of observing nature, one of the world’s most famous foresters shows us how to recapture our sense of awe so we can see the world around us with completely new eyes. Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.

How do people avoid the stresses of the digital age? Urban dwellers must now turn to nature to recover, restore and rebalance after the stresses brought on by relentless digital connectivity. It is easy to task nature as the cure, with technology as the ailment. In Network Nature, Richard Coyne challenges the definitions of both the natural and the artificial that support this time-worn narrative of nature's benefits. In the process, he attacks the counter-claim that nature must succumb to the sovereignty of digital data. Covering a spectrum of issues and concepts, from big data and biohacking to animality, numinous spaces and the post-digital, he draws on the rich field of semiotics as applied to natural systems and human communication, to enhance our understanding of place, landscape and architecture in a digital world.

The Book That Launched an International Movement Fans of The Anxious Generation will adore Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's groundbreaking New York Times bestseller. “An absolute must-read for parents.” —The Boston Globe “It rivals Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.” —The Cincinnati Enquirer “I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are,” reports a fourth grader. But it’s not only computers, television, and video games that are keeping kids inside. It’s also their parents’ fears of traffic, strangers, Lyme disease, and West Nile virus; their schools’ emphasis on more and more homework; their structured schedules; and their lack of access to natural areas. Local governments, neighborhood associations, and even organizations devoted to the outdoors are placing legal and regulatory constraints on many wild spaces, sometimes making natural play a crime. As children’s connections to nature diminish and the social, psychological, and spiritual implications become apparent, new research shows that nature can offer powerful therapy for such maladies as depression, obesity, and attention deficit disorder. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that childhood experiences in nature stimulate creativity. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv talks with parents, children, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, child-development researchers, and environmentalists who recognize the threat and offer solutions. Louv shows us an alternative future, one in which parents help their kids experience the natural world more deeply—and find the joy of family connectedness in the process. Included in this edition: A Field Guide with 100 Practical Actions We Can Take Discussion Points for Book Groups, Classrooms, and Communities Additional Notes by the Author New and Updated Research from the U.S. and Abroad

Network Science is the emerging field concerned with the study of large, realistic networks. This interdisciplinary endeavor, focusing on the patterns of interactions that arise between individual components of natural and engineered systems, has been applied to data sets from activities as diverse as high-throughput biological experiments, online trading information, smart-meter utility supplies, and pervasive telecommunications and surveillance technologies. This unique text/reference provides a fascinating insight into the state of the art in network science, highlighting the commonality across very different areas of application and the ways in which each area can be advanced by injecting ideas and techniques from another. The book includes contributions from an international selection of experts, providing viewpoints from a broad range of disciplines. It emphasizes networks that arise in nature—such as food webs, protein interactions, gene expression, and neural connections—and in technology—such as finance, airline transport, urban development and global trade. Topics and Features: begins with a clear overview chapter to introduce this interdisciplinary field; discusses the classic network science of fixed connectivity structures, including empirical studies, mathematical models and computational algorithms; examines time-dependent processes that take place over networks, covering topics such as synchronisation, and message passing algorithms; investigates time-evolving networks, such as the World Wide Web and shifts in topological properties (connectivity, spectrum, percolation); explores applications of complex networks in the physical and engineering sciences, looking ahead to new developments in the field. Researchers and professionals from disciplines as varied as computer science, mathematics, engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, neuroscience, epidemiology, and the social sciences will all benefit from this topical and broad overview of current activities and grand challenges in the unfolding field of network science.

When a group of liberal arts students embark on a university assignment about the natural environment, no one could have quite prepared them for the bewildering array of questions and provocations to confront them in their task. What starts out as an earnest attempt to understand nature in the modern world, turns into a philosophical and practical tangle that only a good transdisciplinary education can provide. Can anyone save the day and actually start to value ‘nature’? And if they can’t, then what’s stopping them? The idea of ‘valuing nature’ harmonises diverse areas of natural resource management and is an important dimension of scientific and practical work concerned with managing ecosystems and habitats for sustainability. This graphic book takes the reader on an exploration of the issues that arise from this growing interest and concern in the valuation of nature. Set around the premise of a ‘motley’ group of undergraduates endeavouring to complete a university assignment on ‘nature in the modern world’, the book explores: the many and diverse meanings people assign to nature the different ways the relationship between people and nature might be characterised the many values systems people hold for the natural world the options and approaches society can deploy to manage it the extent to which we need entirely new economic systems to protect and sustain nature. This highly interdisciplinary book invites consideration of a range of philosophical and applied debates and questions. Written in an accessible style, it is an ideal undergraduate text in the fields of ecology, human and physical geography, conservation science, environment, social science and spatial planning, as well as a general primer for graduate natural and social scientists embarking on interdisciplinary research in the natural resource management arena.