検索キーワード： 生態系・生息地

Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves, and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden—towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest, and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction; by the 1950s, squirrels were one of the few wild mammals an easterner was likely to encounter.

A feedback loop occurs when the outcome of a process restarts that process, creating a cyclical chain of cause and effect. Feedback loops can either maintain the status quo (a negative feedback loop), or they can create a “snowball effect” (a positive feedback loop) where more begets more. These feedback loops have been with us since the beginning of time, and they are implicit in the formation of everything that exists in the universe.

Antarctica is a land of extremes. It is the coldest, windiest and most inaccessible part of our planet—and now one of the places most affected by climate change. In this moving and personal narrative, conservation biologist Louise K. Blight recounts her summer studying Adélie penguins with one of the world’s great Antarctic scientists.

Marine microbiologist and deep sea explorer Jeff Marlow offers a new perspective on the power and beauty of the deep sea. Beginning with the nineteenth century “discovery” that the deep sea was, in fact, teeming with life, to more recent investigations into the microbiology of cold seeps and deep sea vents. Throughout, Marlow explores the ocean’s scientific marvels: theories about how life began underwater and how it may hold the key to discovering new life to entire ecosystems that formed around sunk whale carcasses.

With her bestselling book Finding the Mother Tree, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard advanced a revelatory new paradigm for the profound intelligence and interconnectedness of trees. Now, with When the Forest Breathes, she uncovers the ways that nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal can ensure the longevity of threatened ecosystems.

National Geographic writer Neil Shea begins his journey with the wolves of Canada’s Ellesmere Island, and travels among the Indigenous Netsilingmiut and Tlicho peoples of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. In the Barren Lands, perched on an esker, he watches bears, or Big Men. In Alaska he tracks the patterns of caribou, now shifting after thousands of years of predictability, and in the European Arctic he explores the new Cold War that is rising between Russia, China, Europe, and the United States over who controls the pole, and who will reap its riches as the ice melts.

In the aftermath of loss, a mother and her young son cross the ocean to a remote strip of land on the North Atlantic. Through art, philosophy, poetry, geology and Minecraft, Coutts starts to imagine new ways of being and a new existence for her small family. With the precision and clarity of the camera, Coutts combines the real with the fictional, interweaving folk song, maps and island lore to present a devastating and fierce reflection on intimacy and separation, parenthood, photography and the fragility and strangeness of our environment.

Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth—where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas—the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world’s military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region.

Fifty Percent of Mountaineering Is Uphill is the enthralling true story of Jasper's Willi Pfisterer, a legend in the field of mountaineering and safety in the Rocky Mountains. For more than thirty years, Willi was an integral part of Jasper's alpine landscape, guiding climbers up to the highest peaks, and rescuing them from perilous situations.

As warming reshapes our planet, the Arctic—a region that once seemed unchangeable, beyond the reach of modern problems—is quickly coming undone. While the old cold world can still be glimpsed in the movements of caribou, the hidden lives of wolves, or the hunting skill of an Inupiat elder, look closer and you’ll find a new Arctic emerging in its place. In Frostlines, Neil Shea blends natural history, anthropology, and travel writing to explore how the beauty, chaos, and power of change in the far north are reflected in the lives of people and animals.

In Why Whales Sing, bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges decades of established science.

Journeying across the continents, writer Matt Collins and photographer Roo Lewis tie together both the historical context and modern-day applications of some of the world's most fascinating and iconic trees. The book is divided into 10 main chapters, each of which explores a tree from a particular genus – Pine, Juniper, Oak, Hornbeam, Cherry, Beech, Birch, Chestnut, Douglas-fir, and Poplar.

What if saving our home planet starts with giving other species space to roam? How can we re-shape our human-built landscapes to serve both people and wildlife? These are the questions that Hillary Rosner attempts to answer in Roam, an urgent quest to figure out how to stitch our fragmented planet back together. It’s about the people trying to reconstruct landscapes where animals can once again move freely, as they did for millennia.

Did you know that a whale shark’s spots are as unique as a fingerprint? Or that sharks can go into a trance when flipped upside down? Or that the Megallodon’s mouth was 6 feet across? With The Shark Handbook, jump into brand new facts about these fierce sea creatures! Learn about over 400 profiles of every shark in existence, from the first sharks living about 445 million years ago to the ones lurking in the ocean deep today.

The Wild East explores the social, political, and environmental changes in the Great Smoky Mountains during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although this national park is most often portrayed as a triumph of wilderness preservation, Margaret Lynn Brown concludes that the largest forested region in the eastern United States is actually a recreated wilderness—a product of restoration and even manipulation of the land.

With humor and easy-to-understand language, marine scientist Ellen Prager and meteorologist Dave Jones use frequently asked and zany questions about the ocean and atmosphere to combat misinformation and make science engaging and understandable for all. From dangerous marine life, coral reefs, and the deep sea to lightning, hurricanes, weather forecasting, the Sun, and climate change, they reveal what's fact, what's fiction, and how to find science-based answers.

In The Penguin Book of Penguins, leading British Antarctic scientist Peter Fretwell introduces us to eighteen charismatic species of penguin and the fascinating lives they lead: their evolution, behaviours and habitats, and their history with humans. From the fact that emperor penguins dive twice as deep as any other bird, to the story of a king penguin called Sir Nils Olav III who was made a Major General by the Norwegian Army, we discover through fascinating first-hand encounters why penguins matter so greatly to all of us.

Since its first BBC broadcast in 1925, the Shipping Forecast has captured the nation's heart. Its practical use as a precise reading of the marine weather around the British Isles has been largely forgotten by its recreational listeners, who instead value its gentle rhythm and curious wording as a comfort, a charm, or fail-safe formula for inducing sleep.

In this panoramic account, Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. Moving through the ages, Arielli reveals the religious, economic, military, and scientific importance of the lake, which has been both a source of great wealth and a site of war. The Dead Sea weaves together a tapestry of the lake's human stories—and amidst environmental degradation and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved.

Rivers are the great natural arteries that run through our lives. We have navigated them, dammed them and worshipped at them. From the ancient ecosystems of Egypt to the sinking cities of Shanghai and London, what we do with our rivers tells us about who has power and what we value. Now, when a passion for wild swimming is flourishing but the Amazon is on fire and some of our major river systems are dying, it has never been clearer that rivers are intertwined with humanity at our best and our worst.