Our dying planet: An ecologist's view of the crisis we face

Our Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face

Volumn , Issue , 2011, Pages

  Sale, Peter F ^a  

^a United Nations University   (Canada)

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EID: 84865576895     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
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References (166)

1. The last to be published was P. F. Sale et al., "The Relation of Microhabitat to Variation in Recruitment of Young-of-Year Coral Reef Fishes," Bulletin of Marine Science 76 (2005): 123-142.
2. E. O. Wilson's autobiography, Naturalist (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994) is a delightful account by a leading environmental scientist.
3. A twenty-first-century view of ecology is presented in the better modern college texts on ecology, such as Charles J. Krebs, Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance, 6th ed. (San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings, 2008).
4. Michael Begon, Colin A. Townsend, and John L. Harper, Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems, 4th ed. (Oxford, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
5. Information on the size of the human population is readily available from the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm) or from the International Database maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/index.html).
6. A recent account of stromatolites' role in the creation of the oxygen atmosphere can be found in an article by A. Bekker et al., "Dating the Rise of Atmospheric Oxygen," Nature 427 (2004): 117-120.
7. L. W. Botsford et al., "The Management of Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems," Science 277 (1997): 509-515.
8. J. B. C. Jackson et al., "Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems," Science 293 (2001): 629-638.
9. R. A. Myers and B. Worm, "Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities," Nature 423 (2003): 280-283.
10. D. Pauly et al., "Fishing Down Marine Food Webs," Science 279 (1998): 860-863.
11. D. Pauly et al., "Toward Sustainability in World Fisheries," Nature 418 (2002): 689-695.
12. R. Watson and D. Pauly, "Systematic Distortion in World Fisheries Catch Trends," Nature 414 (2001): 534-536.
13. The decline and collapse of the Northwest Atlantic cod fishery is well documented. A delightful little book by Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), tells the story of our five-hundred-year association with this fish.
14. I also relied heavily on an article by W. H. Lear of Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, "History of Fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic: The 500-Year Perspective," Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fishery Science 23 (1993): 41-73.
15. In 1981 the marine ecologist R. E. Johannes published an account of a year he spent in Palau: Words of the Lagoon: Fishing and Marine Lore in the Palau District of Micronesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
16. In addition to the article by Watling and Norse that informed my discussion of trawling in the text (L. Watling and E. A. Norse, "Disturbance of the Seabed by Mobile Fishing Gear: A Comparison to Forest Clearcutting," Conservation Biology 12 [1998]: 1180-1197).
17. I recommend two articles documenting the seriousness of clear cutting through trawling, one by Rijnsdorp and colleagues (A. Rijnsdorp et al., "The Micro Distribution of Beam Trawl Effort in the Southern North Sea," committee meeting, International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, Copenhagen, 1991).
18. C. R. Pitcher and colleagues (C. R. Pitcher et al., "Implications of the Effects of Trawling on Sessile Megazoobenthos on a Tropical Shelf in Northeastern Australia," ICES Journal of Marine Science 57 [2000]: 1359-1368).
19. Garrett Hardin's 1968 article on the problems of open access, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162 (1968): 1243-1248, is more than forty years old but still relevant.
20. Key Findings: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 is also now online, providing some preliminary information from the report due out in late 2010. All are online at www.fao.org.
21. Margaret E. Lowman's website, www.canopymeg.com, provides an interesting portal to forest canopy research and much more.
22. Data on extraction of bushmeat from forested land came primarily from J. E. Fa et al., "Bushmeat Exploitation in Tropical Forests: An Intercontinental Comparison," Conservation Biology 16 (2002): 232-237.
23. The article by D. S. Wilkie and J. F. Carpenter, "Bushmeat Hunting in the Congo Basin: An Assessment of Impacts and Options for Mitigation," Biodiversity and Conservation 8 (1999): 927-955, was also helpful. This appears to be a serious problem in some tropical forests for which there are few data.
24. Valuation of ecosystems to include non-harvest services is an emerging activity. I used three articles that dealt with forest valuation approaches: A. Balmford et al., "Economic Reasons for Conserving Wild Nature," Science 297 (2002): 950-953.
25. B. Kaiser and J. Roumasset, "Valuing Indirect Ecosystem Services: The Case of Tropical Watersheds," Environment and Development Economics 7 (2002): 701-714.
26. T. H. Ricketts et al., "Economic Value of Tropical Forests to Coffee Production," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 101 (2004): 12579-12582.
27. My source for the information on the collapse of the Easter Island civilization and the more general idea that societies tend to overuse their resources and then collapse came from Jared M. Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking Press, 2005).
28. Information on desertification came chiefly from the FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 and from a report from United Nations University: Z. Adeel et al., Overcoming One of the Greatest Environmental Challenges of Our Times: Re-thinking Policies to Cope with Desertification (Tokyo: United Nations University, 2007), available at www.inweh.unu.edu.
29. The claim that dust from Africa has brought novel pathogens to Caribbean coral reefs is covered well in a 2003 article by V. H. Garrison et al., "African and Asian Dust: From Desert Soils to Coral Reefs," Bioscience 53:469-479.
30. Charles C. Mann's book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (New York: Knopf, 2005) introduced me to pre-Columbian agriculture in the Amazon Basin.
31. In reading further, I waded into the anthropological literature and ultimately drew information from two articles dealing with terra preta: N. J. H. Smith, "Anthrosols and Human Carrying Capacity in Amazonia," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70 (1980): 553-566.
32. W. M. Denevan, "A Bluff Model of Riverine Settlement in Prehistoric Amazonia," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86 (1996): 654-681.
33. A paper presented by Ken Wilkening at the 48th annual convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, 28 February-3 March 2007, and titled "The Discovery and Scientific and Political Recognition of International Environmental Problems: Case Studies of Arctic Haze, Acid Deposition and Persistent Organic Pollutants" provided a good history of the scientific understanding of acid rain. It is online at www.allacademic.com/meta/p181116_index.html.
34. The acid rain story, particularly as it related to the Sudbury smelters and the Aurora trout, was fleshed out using several websites and three articles: R. J. Beamish and H. H. Harvey, "Acidification of La Cloche Mountain Lakes, Ontario, and Resulting Fish Mortalities," Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada 29 (1972): 1131-1143.
35. Aurora Trout Recovery Team, Recovery Strategy for the Aurora Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis timagamiensis) in Canada, Species at Risk Act Recovery Strategy Series (Ottawa: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 2006), also available at the Canadian Species at Risk site, www.sararegistry.gc.ca/species/speciesDetails_e.cfm?sid=65.
36. Pollution Probe, Sulfur Dioxide and Toxic Metal Pollution from Smelters in Ontario (Pollution Probe, 2003), available at www.pollutionprobe.org/Publications/SmelterReport.pdf.
37. I used two documents from the U.S. Department of Energy for data on current and predicted patterns of energy use. These are International Energy Outlook 2008, report DOE/EIA 0484(2008) (Washington, D.C.: Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy), available at www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo.
38. Annual Energy Outlook 2008, with Projections to 2030, report DOE/EIA 0383(2008) (Washington, D.C.: Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy), available at www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo.
39. My information on the efficiency of photosynthesis came from FAO's agricultural services bulletin number 128 by Kazuhisa Miyamoto, published in 1997 and available at www.fao.org/docrep/w7241e/w7241e00.HTM.
40. Information concerning the Norse expansion to North America came from several websites, including that for the L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows/index.aspx.
41. The description of the Bolca fossil site came from D. R. Bellwood, "The Eocene Fishes of Monte Bolca: The Earliest Coral Reef Fish Assemblage," Coral Reefs 15 (1996): 11-19.
42. J. E. N. Veron, Corals of Australia and the Indo-Pacific (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1986).
43. My primary source for information on the science of climate change was the various reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, available from its website at www.ipcc.ch.
44. I also used two more recent updates on the science and the trends in climate: Catherine P. McMullen and Jason Jabbour, Climate Change Science Compendium (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme, 2009), available online at www.unep.org/compendium2009/.
45. N. L. Allison et al., The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science (Sydney: University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre, 2009), available online at www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/.
46. Other references used in this chapter included Wallace S. Broecker, "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" Science 189 (1975): 460-463.
47. J. Hansen et al., "Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide," Science 213 (1981): 957-966.
48. James E. Hansen, "A Slippery Slope: How Much Global Warming Constitutes 'Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference'?" Climate Change 68 (2005): 269-279.
49. Katja M. Meyer and Lee R. Kump, "Oceanic Euxinia in Earth History: Causes and Consequences," Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 36 (2008): 251-288.
50. 2 World,'" Science 322 (2008): 1466b.
51. Glenn De'ath et al., "Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef," Science 323 (2009): 116-119.
52. A more technical treatment of my studies of real estate transactions among damselfishes is in P. F. Sale, "Coexistence of Coral Reef Fishes-A Lottery for Living Space," Environmental Biology of Fishes 3 (1978): 85-102.
53. Charles Darwin's comment on coral reefs came from his book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs. Being the First Part of the Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle, under the Command of Capt. Fitzroy, R.N., during the Years 1832 to 1836 (London: Smith Elder and Co., 1842).
54. There are numerous books about coral reef biology and some excellent websites. I have primarily used the technical literature, but NOAA 's Coral Health and Monitoring Program website at www.coral.noaa.gov is an excellent gateway to much of the science.
55. Two other excellent sites are the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority site at www.gbrmpa.gov.au and the AR C Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at www.coralcoe.org.au.
56. The research studies I specifically highlighted are documented in P. L. Harrison et al., "Mass Spawning in Tropical Reef Corals," Science 223 (1984): 1186-1189.
57. C. L. Hunter and C. W. Evans, "Coral Reefs in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii: Two Centuries of Western Influence and Two Decades of Data," Bulletin of Marine Science 57 (1995): 501-515.
58. D. R. Robertson, "Fish Feces as Fish Food on a Pacific Coral Reef," Marine Ecology Progress Series 7 (1982): 253-265.
59. J. Stimson and E. Conklin, "Potential Reversal of a Phase Shift: The Rapid Decrease in the Cover of the Invasive Green Macroalga Dictyosphaeria cavernosa Forsskål on Coral Reefs in Kane'ohe Bay, Oahu, Hawai'i," Coral Reefs 27 (2008): 717-726.
60. R. R. Warner, "Traditionality of Mating-Site Preferences in a Coral Reef Fish," Nature 335 (1988): 719-721.
61. Many of the articles referenced in chapter 1 were used in dealing with overfishing of reefs, but the chapter by Yvonne Sadovy and Amanda Vincent was a valuable treatise on the live reef fish restaurant trade: "Ecological Issues and the Trades in Live Reef Fishes," chapter 18 of Coral Reef Fishes: Dynamics and Diversity in a Complex Ecosystem, ed. P. F. Sale (San Diego: Academic Press, 2002), 391-420.
62. A recent document from United Nations University provides a broad range of information on coastal mismanagement, much of it directly relevant to reef management: P. F. Sale et al., Stemming Decline of the Coastal Ocean: Rethinking Environmental Management (Hamilton, Canada: UNU-IN WEH, 2008), available online at www.inweh.unu.edu/publications.htm.
63. Information on coastal pollution and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was obtained from D. Haynes, ed., Great Barrier Reef Water Quality: Current Issues (Townsville, Australia: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, 2001), available online at www.gbrmpa.gov.au/corp_site/info_services/publications#Water_Quality.
64. Information on geological history of coral reefs came from P. Copper, "Ancient Reef Ecosystem Expansion and Collapse," Coral Reefs 13 (1994): 3-11.
65. D. M. Raup and J. J. Sepkoski, "Periodic Extinction of Families and Genera," Science 231 (1986): 833-836.
66. J. E. N. Veron, Corals of Australia and the Indo-Pacific (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1986).
67. J. E. N. Veron, "Mass Extinctions and Ocean Acidification: Biological Constraints on Geological Dilemmas," Coral Reefs 27 (2008): 459-472.
68. For information on the economic value of reefs and aspects of reef management, I used a 2008 report from Access Economics: Economic Contribution of the GBRMP, 2006-07, which was prepared for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, available online at www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/29272/AE_GBRMP_19MAR08.pdf.
69. R. W. Buddemeier et al., Coral Reefs and Global Climate Change: Potential Contributions of Climate Change to Stresses on Coral Reefs (Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2004), available online at www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-indepth/all_reports/coral_reefs.
70. The topic of climate change impacts on coral reefs is developing rapidly, and I used a number of recent technical articles. The major ones are listed here. The Coral Reef Watch website was also a useful source of current information: http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/current/products_ssta.html.
71. A. C. Baker, P. W. Glynn, and B. Riegl, "Climate Change and Coral Reef Bleaching: An Ecological Assessment of Long-T erm Impacts, Recovery Trends and Future Outlook," Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 80 (2008): 435-471.
72. G. De'ath et al., "Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef," Science 323 (2009): 116-119.
73. S. D. Donner et al., "Global Assessment of Coral Bleaching and Required Rates of Adaptation under Climate Change," Global Change Biology 11 (2005): 2251-2265.
74. V. H. Garrison et al., "African and Asian Dust: From Desert Soils to Coral Reefs," Bioscience 53 (2003): 469-480.
75. D. M. Geiser et al., "Causes of Sea Fan Death in the West Indies," Nature 394 (1998): 137-138.
76. P. W. Glynn, "Extensive 'Bleaching' and Death of Reef Corals on the Pacific Coast of Panamá," Environmental Conservation 10 (1983): 149-154.
77. P. W. Glynn, "Widespread Coral Mortality and the 1982/83 el Niño Warming Event," Environmental Conservation 11 (1984): 133-146.
78. P. W. Glynn, "Coral Reef Bleaching: Facts, Hypotheses and Implications," Global Change Biology 2 (1996): 495-509.
79. J. M. Guinotte and V. J. Fabry, "Ocean Acidification and Its Potential Effects on Marine Ecosystems," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1134 (2008): 320-342.
80. O. Hoegh-Guldberg, "Coral Bleaching, Climate Change and the Future of the World's Coral Reefs," Marine and Freshwater Research 50 (1999): 839-866.
81. O. Hoegh-Guldberg et al., "Coral Reefs under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification," Science 318 (2007): 1737-1742.
82. J. A. Kleypas et al., "Environmental Limits to Coral Reef Development: Where Do We Draw the Line?" American Zoologist 39 (1999): 146-159.
83. J. A. Kleypas et al., "Geochemical Consequences of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Coral Reefs," Science 284 (1999): 118-120.
84. J. T. I. Tanzil et al., "Decline in Skeletal Growth of the Coral Porites lutea from the Andaman Sea, South Thailand, between 1984 and 2005," Coral Reefs 28 (2009): 519-528.
85. The shifting baseline concept was introduced by Daniel Pauly and developed further by Jeremy Jackson. My discussion was based on D. Pauly, "Anecdotes and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of Fisheries," Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10 (1995): 430.
86. J. B. C. Jackson, "Reefs since Columbus," Coral Reefs 16 (1997): S23-S32.
87. J. B. C. Jackson et al., "Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems," Science 293 (2001): 629-638.
88. J. B. C. Jackson, "What Was Natural in the Coastal Oceans?" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 98 (2001): 5411-5418. The concept now possesses its own website, www.shiftingbaselines.org, which is full of wacky stuff, some only marginally related to the concept.
89. J. H. Connell and W. P. Sousa, "On the Evidence Needed to Judge Ecological Stability or Persistence," American Naturalist 121 (1983): 789-824.
90. This chapter is a crash course on modern ecology. The ideas discussed are all covered in the better modern college texts on ecology, such as Ecology: The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance, 6th ed., by Charles J. Krebs (San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings, 2008).
91. Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems, 4th ed., by Michael Begon, Colin A. Townsend, and John L. Harper (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
92. Foundations of Ecology: Classic Papers with Commentaries, ed. Leslie A. Real and James H. Brown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), reproduces many of the critical older papers that I refer to. Here are the key references for those who want to delve more deeply.
93. E. O. Wilson's autobiography, Naturalist (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994), is a delightful account by a leading environmental scientist.
94. C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859).
95. F. E. Clements, Research Methods in Ecology (Lincoln, NE: University Publishing House, 1905).
96. F. E. Clements, "Nature and Structure of the Climax," Journal of Ecology 24 (1936): 252-284.
97. J. Grinnell, "The Niche-R elationships of the California Thrasher," Auk 34 (1917): 427-433.
98. C. S. Elton, Animal Ecology (New York: MacMillan, 1927).
99. C. S. Elton, Animal Ecology and Evolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930; the quote is from p. 17).
100. C. S. Elton, "Competition and the Structure of Ecological Communities," Journal of Animal Ecology 15 (1946): 54-68.
101. A. J. Nicholson, "The Balance of Animal Populations," Journal of Animal Ecology 2 (1933): 132-178.
102. D. Lack, The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1954).
103. H. G. Andrewartha and L. C. Birch, The Distribution and Abundance of Animals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
104. G. E. Hutchinson, An Introduction to Population Ecology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).
105. Again, I list the main references in the order of their appearance: A. S. Watt, "Pattern and Process in the Plant Community," Journal of Ecology 35 (1947): 1-22.
106. C. B. Huffaker, "Experimental Studies on Predation: Dispersion Factors and Predator-Prey Oscillations," Hilgardia 27 (1958): 343-383.
107. S. P. Hubbell and R. B. Foster, "Biology, Chance, and History and the Structure of Tropical Rain Forest Tree Communities," in Community Ecology, ed. J. Diamond and T. J. Case (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 314-329.
108. J. F. Grassle, "Variety in Coral Reef Communities," in Biology and Geology of Coral Reefs, vol. 2, Biology 1, ed. O. A. Jones and R. Endean (New York: Academic Press, 1973), 247-270.
109. Paul K. Dayton, "Competition, Disturbance and Community Organization: The Provision and Subsequent Utilization of Space in a Rocky Intertidal Environment," Ecological Monographs 41 (1971): 351-389.
110. J. H. Connell, "Diversity in Tropical Rain Forests and Coral Reefs," Science 199 (1978): 1302-1310.
111. R. T. Paine and S. A. Levin, "Intertidal Landscapes: Disturbance and the Dynamics of Pattern," Ecological Monographs 51 (1981): 145-178.
112. S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics (Orlando: Academic Press, 1985).
113. R. Levins, "Some Demographic and Genetic Consequences of Environmental Heterogeneity for Biological Control," Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America 15 (1969): 237-240.
114. R. Levins, "Extinction," in Some Mathematical Problems in Biology, ed. M. Desternhaber (Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1970), 77-107.
115. A good entry to metapopulation biology is the small text by Ilkka Hanski, Metapopulation Ecology (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1999).
116. metapopulation ecology of marine systems is covered in Marine Metapopulations, ed. J. P. Kritzer and P. F. Sale (San Diego: Academic Press, 2006).
117. In 1976 the late Robert H. Peters clearly pointed out the lack of testability inherent in the concept of the homeostatic community as developed during the mid-twentieth century in his article "Tautology in Evolution and Ecology," American Naturalist 110:1-12.
118. subsequently in more detail in a very useful book, A Critique for Ecology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
119. An entry to this literature is in W. A. Kurz et al., "Mountain Pine Beetle and Forest Carbon Feedback to Climate Change," Nature 452 (2008): 987-990.
120. I drew on John F. Kennedy's commencement address to Yale University, 11 June 1962, for his comments on lies and myths.
121. Information on the current plight of polar bears is available from a number of sources. I used the World Wide Fund publication that first drew public attention to this problem in 2002: S. Norris et al., Polar Bears at Risk (Gland, Switzerland: World Wide Fund for Nature), available for download at www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/europe/what_we_do/arctic/polar_bear/publications/index.cfm.
122. Study of the richness of the earth's biodiversity and the rates of extinction now and in the past has been active since at least the mid-1990s, when Stuart Pimm and others produced their seminal article on the topic: S. L. Pimm et al., "The Future of Biodiversity," Science 269 (1995): 347-350.
123. I also drew from several other articles: N. Myers et al., "Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Priorities," Nature 403 (2000): 853-858.
124. S. L. Pimm et al., "Can We Defy Nature's End?" Science 293 (2002): 2207-2208.
125. D. M. Raup and J. J. Sepkowski, "Periodic Extinctions of Families and Genera," Science 231 (1986): 833-836.
126. Peter H. Raven put this subject into context as part of the human dilemma in his presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002: "Science, Sustainability and the Human Prospect," Science 297:954-958.
127. The Amazonian forest fragment project has been going since 1979 and is still yielding new findings. One recent article I made use of is W. F. Laurance et al., "Rain Forest Fragmentation and the Dynamics of Amazonian Tree Communities," Ecology 79 (1998): 2032-2040. The project has its own webpage: www.stri.org/english/research/programs/ecology/index.php.
128. A good introduction to the current state of pollution of aquatic environments is in the United Nations Environmental Programme's The State of the Marine Environment: Trends and Processes (The Hague: UNE P GPA Coordination Office, 2006), available at www.gpa.unep.org/documents/soe_-_trends_and_english.pdf.
129. I referred to one classic study on effects of estrogen disruptors in aquatic systems: K. A. Kidd et al., "Collapse of a Fish Population after Exposure to a Synthetic Estrogen," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 104 (2007): 8897-8901.
130. Honeybee loss and its consequences are abundantly reported on the web, with plenty of misinformation. One recent reliable article is C. A. Mullin et al., "High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health," PLoS ONE 5, no. 3 (2010): e9754, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009754.
131. My account of the lionfish invasion drew on two primary articles: P. E. Whitfield et al., "Abundance Estimates of the Indo-Pacific Lionfish Pterois volitans/miles Complex in the Western North Atlantic," Biological Invasions 9 (2007): 53-64.
132. J. A. Morris Jr. and J. L. Akins, "Feeding Ecology of Invasive Lionfish (Pterois volitans) in the Bahamian Archipelago," Environmental Biology of Fishes 86 (2009): 389-398.
133. In addition to several articles cited in chapter 2, I used the classic article by Costanza and colleagues on valuation of ecosystem services: R. Costanza et al., "The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital," Nature 387 (1997): 253-260.
134. Klaus Rohde, whose expertise lies in the ecology of parasites, particularly those that occupy the exterior and interior surfaces of fishes, has provided an unusual perspective on parasite-host systems within a refreshing view of community ecology in his 2006 book Nonequilibrium Ecology (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press).
135. Chapter 2 of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Our Human Planet. Summary for Decision-Makers, from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005), 15-39, provides a detailed review of the issue and the arguments for mitigating species loss.
136. In addition, the NOAA sites available at its National Ocean Service Office of Response and Restoration, http://response.restoration.noaa.gov, and the site set up by the Joint Information Center for the response to this disaster, www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931/, were quite informative.
137. Information on environmental issues with oil and gas extraction came primarily from the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences' report on oil and gas extraction, available at http://ecm.ncms.org/ERI/new/IRRoilgas.htm.
138. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Sector Notebook Project: Profile of the Oil and Gas Extraction Industry (EPA/310-R-99-006), published in 2000 and online at www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/assistance/sectors/notebooks/oil.html.
139. The Athabasca tar sands story was told using several sources, particularly C. Hatch and M. Price, Canada's Toxic Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth (Toronto: Environmental Defense, 2008).
140. D. Thompson, Facts on Oil Sands and the Environment (Fort McMurray, Canada: Oil Sands Developers Group, 2008).
141. J. Grant et al., Fact or Fiction: Oil Sands Reclamation (Drayton Valley, Canada: Pembina Institute, 2008).
142. Data on world coal reserves came from the World Energy Council's Survey of Energy Resources 2007, as reported in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008, online at www.bp.com.
143. General information on the coal industry was gained primarily from World Coal Institute, The Coal Resource: A Comprehensive Overview of Coal (London: World Coal Institute, 2005).
144. Information on the Chinese coal sector came primarily from an article by P. Fairley in the January 2007 edition of Technology Review, "China's Coal Future," online at www.technologyreview.com/energy/17963/page1.
145. Christina S. Ho and Lawrence O. Gostin, "The Social Face of Economic Growth: China's Health System in Transition," JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 301 (2009): 1809-1810.
146. For information on methane emissions from mines, I used D. A. Kirchgessner et al., "An Improved Inventory of Methane Emissions from Coal Mining in the United States," Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association 50 (2000): 1904-1919.
147. I also used an International Security Advisory Board report prepared in 2008 for the U.S. Department of State: Proliferation Implications of the Global Expansion of Civil Nuclear Power, available at www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/rpt_ISAB_GlobalExpansionofCivilNuclearPower_Apr2008.pdf.
148. Finally, a congressional research service report updated in 2008 for the U.S. Congress, Managing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Policy Implications of Expanding Global Access to Nuclear Power, was also helpful.
149. A report from the Chernobyl Forum, Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine (Vienna: IAEA Division of Public Information, 2006), provided balanced information on the accident.
150. Information on alternative energy sources and on energy efficiency came from a number of sources, particularly the following articles: D. Arent et al., Energy Sector Market Analysis, technical report NREL/TP-620-40541 (Golden, CO: U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2006), available from www.osti.gov/bridge.
151. International Energy Agency, Worldwide Trends in Energy Use and Efficiency: Key Insights from IEA Indicator Analysis (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2008), available from www.iea.org/books.
152. Office of Energy Efficiency, Improving Energy Performance in Canada, report to parliament under the Energy Efficiency Act for the fiscal year 2005-2006, M141-10/2006E-PDF (Ottawa: Office of Energy Efficiency, Natural Resources Canada, 2006). Their website is oee.nrcan.gc.ca.
153. Information on the size, age structure, and rate of growth of the human population is readily available from the Population Division within the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm, or from the International Database maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/index.html.
154. My comments on fisheries yield came from the FAO's The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2008 (referenced also for chapter 1).
155. I also used D. Zeller and D. Pauly, "Good News, Bad News: Global Fisheries Discards Are Declining, but so Are Total Catches," Fish and Fisheries 6 (2005): 156-159.
156. The history of the establishment of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and a great deal more is detailed in The Great Barrier Reef: History, Science, Heritage, by James Bowen and Margarita Bowen (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
157. The Queensland Littoral Society has changed its name to the Australian Marine Conservation Society but is alive and well at www.amcs.org.au.
158. I have previously discussed our environmental dilemma with specific reference to coral reefs in the 2008 essay "Management of Coral Reefs: Where Have We Gone Wrong and What Can We Do about It?" Marine Pollution Bulletin 56:805-809. Information on our ecological footprint is available at www.footprintnetwork.org.
159. I used the 2009 Ecological Footprint Atlas, downloadable from there, and the Living Planet Report (Gland, Switzerland: World Wide Fund for Nature, 2008), available at www.panda.org.
160. Information concerning sustainable fisheries was primarily taken from a "newsfocus" editorial in Science, a document from the Marine Stewardship Council, and two technical publications: V. Morell, "Can Science Keep Alaska's Bering Sea Pollock Fishery Healthy?" Science 326 (2009): 1340-1341.
161. Marine Stewardship Council, Net Benefits: The First Ten Years of MSC Certified Sustainable Fisheries (published in 2009 and available at www.msc.org/healthy-oceans/our-solution/net-benefits).
162. J. C. Castilla et al., "Successes, Lessons, and Projections from Experience in Marine Benthic Invertebrate Artisanal Fisheries in Chile," in Fisheries Management: Progress toward Sustainability, ed. T. McClanahan and J. C. Castilla (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 25-39.
163. S. F. Walmsley and A. T. White, "Influence of Social, Management and Enforcement Factors on the Long-Term Ecological Effects of Marine Sanctuaries," Environmental Conservation 30 (2003): 388-407.
164. The story of the greening of Greensburg, Kansas, came from an article by F. Heeren, "Rebuilding Greensburg Green," in the Smithsonian magazine, posted online on 27 February 2009 at www.smithsonianmag.com.
165. S. A. Sandin et al., "Baselines and Degradation of Coral Reefs in the Northern Line Islands," PLoS ONE 3 (2008): e1548.
166. Its story is told in a 1981 book by island ecologist Harold Heatwole: A Coral Island: The Story of One Tree Island and Its Reef (Sydney: Collins).