The Earth in Transition

• Preface; Acknowledgements; List of contributors; Part I. Global Change and the Patterns of Impoverishment: 1. The earth under stress: a transition to climatic instability raises questions about patterns of impoverishment George M. Woodwell; 2. The experimental impoverishment of natural communities: effects of ionizing radiation on plant communities, 1961–1976 George M. Woodwell and Richard A. Houghton; 3. Air pollution and temperate forests: creeping degradation F. Herbert Bormann; 4. The long-term effects of air pollutants on lichen communities in Europe and North America D. L. Hawksworth; 5. Biotic impoverishment in Northern Peatlands Eville Gorham; 6. Climatic change and the survival of forest species Margaret Bryan Davis; 7. The atmosphere and the future of the biosphere: points of interactive disturbance Michael Oppenheimer; Part II. Chronic Disturbance and Natural Ecosystems: Forests: 8. The restoration of Nonsuch Island as a living museum of Bermuda's precolonial terrestrial biome David B. Wingate; 9. Patterns of impoverishment in natural communities: case history studies in forest ecosystems - New Zealand A. F. Mark and G. D. McSweeney; 10. Changes in the eucalypt forests of Australia as a result of human disturbance R. L. Specht; 11. Impoverishment in Pacific Island forests Dieter Mueller-Dombois; 12. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia Philip M. Fearnside; 13. Incentives for sustainable forest management Robert Repetto; Part III. Chronic Disturbance and Natural Ecosystems: Woodlands, Grasslands and Tundra: 14. Changes in the Mediterranean vegetation of Israel in response to human habitation and land use Zev Naveh and Pua Kutiel; 15. Bromus tectorum, a biotic cause of ecosystem impoverishment in the Great Basin W. D. Billings; 16. Detecting early signs of regional air-pollution injury to coastal sage scrub Walter E. Westman; 17. Arctic ecosystems: patterns of change in response to disturbance L. C. Bliss; Part IV. Chronic Disturbance and Natural Ecosystems: Aquatic and Emergent Ecosystems; Section A. Marine Systems: 18. Changes in a Red Sea coral community structure: a long-term case history study Y. Loya; 19. Are deep-sea communities resilient? J. Frederick Grassle, Nancy J. Maciolek and James A. Blake; 20. Species dominance-diversity patterns in Oceanic communities John A. McGowan; Section B. Freshwater Systems: 21. Natural and anthropogenically imposed limitations to biotic richness in fresh waters David W. Schindler; 22. Human impacts on the South Florida Wetlands: the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp William A. Niering; 23. The impoverishment of aquatic communities by Smelter activities near Sudbury, Canada N. D. Yan and P. M. Welbourn; 24. Biotic impoverishment: effects of anthropogenic stress John Cairns Jr and James R. Pratt; Part V. Conclusion: Steps Toward a World that Runs Itself: 25. Steps toward sustainability J. Gustave Speth; 26. A reaction from a multitude Donella H. Meadows; Name index; Subject index.

Review of the hardback: '…this is an exceptionally competent book, the only one of its sort to achieve a systematized, also systemic, insight into the question of how far and how fast we are reducing the biotic diversity of the Earth.' Nature