The lavish array of organisms known as "biodiversity" is an intricately linked web that makes the earth a uniquely habitable planet. Yet pressures from human activities are destroying biodiversity at an unprecedented rate. How many species can be lost before the ecological systems that nurture life begin to break down?
In The Work of Nature, noted science writer Yvonne Baskin examines the threats posed to humans by the loss of biodiversity. She summarizes and explains key findings from the ecological sciences, highlighting examples from around the world where shifts in species have affected the provision of clean air, pure water, fertile soils, lush landscapes, and stable natural communities.
As Baskin makes clear, biodiversity is much more than number of species -- it includes the complexity, richness, and abundance of nature at all levels, from the genes carried by local populations to the layout of communities and ecosystems across the landscape. Ecologists are increasingly aware that mankind's wanton destruction of living organisms -- the planet's work force -- threatens to erode our basic life support services. With uncommon grace and eloquence, Baskin demonstrates how and why that is so.
Distilling and bringing to life the work of the world's leading ecologists, The Work of Nature is the first book of its kind to clearly explain the practical consequences of declining biodiversity on ecosystem health and function.
Yvonne Baskin is author of
The Work of Nature (Island Press, 1997) and
A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines: The Growing Threat of Species Invasions (Island Press, 2002). Her articles have appeared in
Science,
Natural History,
Discover, and numerous other publications.
Paul R. Ehrlich is a co-founder with Peter H. Raven of the field of co-evolution, and has pursued long-term studies of the structure, dynamics, and genetics of natural butterfly populations. He has also been a pioneer in alerting the public to the problems of overpopulation, and in raising issues of population, resources, and the environment as matters of public policy. Ehrlich is the author of
The Population Bomb, and many other books, as well as hundreds of papers.
Ehrlich is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Ehrlich has received several honorary degrees, the John Muir Award of the Sierra Club, the Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International, a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (given in lieu of a Nobel Prize in areas where the Nobel is not given), in 1993 the Volvo Environmental Prize, in 1994 the United Nations' Sasakawa Environment Prize, in 1995 the Heinz Award for the Environment, in 1998 the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, in 1999 the Blue Planet Prize, in 2001 the Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.In addition to
The Population Bomb, Ehrlich is the author of
Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect (Island Press, 2000) and co-author of
The Work of Nature: How The Diversity Of Life Sustains Us (Island Press, 1998).With his wife Anne, he is the author of
Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future (Island Press, 1996) and
One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future (Island Press, 2004). His latest book with Anne is
The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (Island Press, 2008).Paul R. Ehrlich received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas.
