Author: Steve Morton Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING ISBN: 1486306012 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 543
Book Description
Australian Deserts: Ecology and Landscapes is about the vast sweep of the Outback, a land of expanses making up three-quarters of the continent – the heart of Australia. Steve Morton brings his extensive first-hand knowledge and experience of arid Australia to this book, explaining how Australian deserts work ecologically. This book outlines why unpredictable rainfall and paucity of soil nutrients underpin the nature of desert ecosystems, while also describing how plants and animals came to be desert dwellers through evolutionary time. It shows how plants use uncertain rainfall to provide for persistence of their populations, alongside outlines of the dominant animals of the deserts and explanations of the features that help them succeed in the face of aridity and uncertainty. Richly illustrated with the photographs of Mike Gillam, this fascinating and accessible book will enhance your understanding of the nature of arid Australia.
Author: Simon Holdaway Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING ISBN: 0643108963 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
This book provides readers with a unique understanding of the ways in which Aboriginal people interacted with their environment in the past at one particular location in western New South Wales. It also provides a statement showing how geoarchaeology should be conducted in a wide range of locations throughout Australia. One of the key difficulties faced by all those interested in the interaction between humans and their environment in the past is the complex array of processes acting over different spatial and temporal scales. The authors take account of this complexity by integrating three key areas of study – geomorphology, geochronology and archaeology – applied at a landscape scale, with the intention of understanding the record of how Australian Aboriginal people interacted with the environment through time and across space. This analysis is based on the results of archaeological research conducted at the University of New South Wales Fowlers Gap Arid Zone Research Station between 1999 and 2002 as part of the Western New South Wales Archaeology Program. The interdisciplinary geoarchaeological program was targeted at expanding the potential offered by archaeological deposits in western New South Wales, Australia. The book contains six chapters: the first two introduce the study area, then three data analysis chapters deal in turn with the geomorphology, geochronology and archaeology of Fowlers Gap Station. A final chapter considers the results in relation to the history of Aboriginal occupation of Fowlers Gap Station, as well as the insights they provide into Aboriginal ways of life more generally. Analyses are well illustrated through the tabulation of results and the use of figures created through Geographic Information System software.
Author: Andrew A. Mitchell Publisher: ISBS ISBN: 9781875560226 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 490
Book Description
An attractive and accessible guide to identification and appreciation of the native flora of the arid region of Western Australia, this revised edition of Arid Shrubland Plants of Western Australia now describes over 200 herbs, grasses, shrubs and trees. Each species is illustrated in colour, and the non-technical text gives vegetative and floral characteristics, habitat, forage value, the response to grazing and, where appropriate, the value of plants for degraded land and mine site rehabilitation. The only book of its kind, Arid Shrubland Plants of Western Australia is an important resource for pastoralists, mining companies, geologists, shire councils and native tree growers, and will also appeal to travellers and lovers of the Australian bush.
Author: Mike Smith Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521407451 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 433
Book Description
This is the first book-length study of the archaeology of Australia's deserts, exploring the cultural and environmental history of these drylands.
Author: Peter Marius Veth Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 160
Book Description
Subtitled `The dynamics of prehistoric adaptations within the arid zone of Australia' this book reports on the author's research within the semitropical desertlands at the interphase of the Little and Great Sandy Deserts of north-western Australia.
Author: Emily O'Gorman Publisher: University of Washington Press ISBN: 0295749040 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world’s wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and only in the past few decades have wetlands been widely recognized as worth preserving. Emily O’Gorman asks, What has counted as a wetland, for whom, and with what consequences? Using the Murray-Darling Basin—a massive river system in eastern Australia that includes over 30,000 wetland areas—as a case study and drawing on archival research and original interviews, O’Gorman examines how people and animals have shaped wetlands from the late nineteenth century to today. She illuminates deeper dynamics by relating how Aboriginal peoples acted then and now as custodians of the landscape, despite the policies of the Australian government; how the movements of water birds affected farmers; and how mosquitoes have defied efforts to fully understand, let alone control, them. Situating the region’s history within global environmental humanities conversations, O’Gorman argues that we need to understand wetlands as socioecological landscapes in order to create new kinds of relationships with and futures for these places.
Author: Peter Veth Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1405137533 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Desert Peoples: Archaeological Perspectives provides an issues-oriented overview of hunter-gatherer societies in desert landscapes that combines archaeological and anthropological perspectives and includes a wide range of regional and thematic case studies. Brings together, for the first time, studies from deserts as diverse as the sand dunes of Australia, the U.S. Great Basin, the coastal and high altitude deserts of South America, and the core deserts of Africa Examines the key concepts vital to understanding human adaptation to marginal landscapes and the behavioral and belief systems that underpin them Explores the relationship among desert hunter-gatherers, herders, and pastoralists
Author: Hans Lambers Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319939432 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
This book will appeal to an international audience as well as be irresistible to local readers. Anyone working or with an interest in Australia’s arid zone should need ready access to this book. There is no equivalent publication out there at the moment, and this book has many authoritative chapters, richly illustrated with colourful material. The challenge of this book was to assemble current knowledge on particular topics and concepts, and principles relating to them. It is also forward-looking by identifying where there are gaps or inadequacies in knowledge, and where future research needs to be directed. Lead authors were encouraged to take such an approach; they had the opportunity to involve any author they considered appropriate. The final product shouldbe a fabulous resource, also for university courses, especially at MSc level.
Author: Steve Morton
Author: Simon Holdaway
Author: Andrew A. Mitchell
Author: Mike Smith
Author: Martin Williams
Author: Peter Marius Veth
Author: Alan Pennock Newton House
Author: Emily O'Gorman
Author: Peter Veth
Author: Hans Lambers