Baja California is one of the Earth’s last great wilderness areas that is easily accessible to travelers. Whether you enter from the United States to the north or from Cabo San Lucas to the south, it doesn’t take long to find yourself passing through a unique desert ecosystem of islands and land bound by the Pacific Ocean on the west and the Gulf of California on the east. But where, you might ask, can you go to best experience the physical majesty of Baja California? This book holds the answer. Off-Trail Adventures in Baja California describes—and maps and illustrates—nine hikes along outcrops on islands and peninsular shores where geography, geology, and ecology meet in singular ways. Each spot tells a story about the nature of the place—the cumulative effects of millions of years of natural forces at work. During the course of his long teaching career, Markes E. Johnson has hiked much of Baja California, often with students in tow. He brings a lifetime of study to his simple descriptions of the stories that are revealed by looking closely at natural phenomena framed by rocks and fossils. This hiking guide offers a wealth of stories that seem to encompass everything, and can clearly communicate Johnson’s deep understanding of how our planet’s ecosystems function. Whether you like to hike with your boots on or from the comfort of your favorite chair, this book is a must-have for anyone who has visited or hopes to visit Baja California’s Gulf Coast.

This single volume reference resource offers students, scholars, and general readers alike an in-depth background on Mexico, from the complexity of its pre-Columbian civilizations to its social and political development in the context of Western civilization. How did modern Mexico become a nation of multicultural diversity and rich indigenous traditions? What key roles do Mexico's non-Western, pre-Columbian indigenous heritage and subsequent development as a major center in the Spanish colonial empire play the country's identity today? How is Mexico today both Western and non-Western, part Native American and part European, simultaneously traditional and modern? Modern Mexico is a thematic encyclopedia that broadly covers the nation's history, both ancient and modern; its government, politics, and economics; as well as its culture, religion traditions, philosophy, arts, and social structures. Additional topics include industry, labor, social classes and ethnicity, women, education, language, food, leisure and sport, and popular culture. Sidebars, images, and a Day in the Life feature round out the coverage in this accessible, engaging volume. Readers will come to understand how Mexico and the Mexican people today are the result of the processes of transculturation, globalization, and civilizational contact.

Hilltops surrounded by farmland in southern Wisconsin turn out to be the eroded remnants of an ancient archipelago. An island in the Yellow Sea where Korean tourists flock is the peak of a flooded mountain rising from a drowned continental shelf. From a mountaintop shrine to Genghis Khan in Inner Mongolia, the silhouette of a Silurian seascape can be spotted. On the shores of Hudson Bay, where polar bears patrol the Arctic tundra, a close look unveils what was a tropical coastline encrusted with corals nearly 450 million years ago. The geologist Markes E. Johnson invites readers on a journey through deep time to find the traces of ancient islands. He visits a dozen sites around the globe, looking above and below today’s waterlines to uncover how landscapes of the past are preserved in the present. Going back 500 million years to the Cambrian through the Pleistocene 125,000 years ago, this book reconstructs how “paleoislands” appeared under different climatic conditions and environmental constraints. Finding vestiges of prehistoric ecologies, Johnson emphasizes the complexity of island ecosystems and the importance of preserving these significant sites. Inviting and accessible, this book is a travelogue that takes readers through time as well as space. Islands in Deep Time shares the adventure of exploring striking locations across geologic eras and issues a passionate call for their conservation.

This book provides an overview of major changes in mainland China since the start of the modern era in 1900, as leaders grappled with how to harness natural resources requiring equal development in the pure and applied sciences based on fundamentals in geology. On one hand, China was put on the global stage with discovery of Peking Man fossils in the 1920s but has continued to win global acclaim for more recent discoveries of feathered dinosaurs and the earliest examples of metazoan life. At the same time, China struggled against outside exploitation to take full control of its own mineral and oil reserves -which today are increasingly imported from abroad to maintain oil and steel production through the Belt and Road initiative. The book concludes with a a discussion of what the ‘Chinese Dream’ may mean in comparison to what many in the United States consider as a birthright with the ‘American Dream’.

The stories featured in Baja California Adventures take place during a span of almost sixty years of travel in the rugged, parched yet hauntingly attractive peninsula. The author kept detailed notes on most of his trips, then fleshed out this skeleton in a narrative which places the reader in the role of participant in the adventure. Thus one feels the bite of the 4WD tires into the desert sand, newly hard-packed by the moisture of a quick-moving thunderstorm. The author describes the excitement of finding Indian petroglyphs, arrowheads or clay ollas in remote canyons. Because Mr. Tiscareo is also a pilot, many of the trips included here involve mention of the special immigration rules for private fly-in tourists. Finally, there are Baja Adventures in the pine-clad granite fortress that is the Sierra de San Pedro Mrtir in the northern part of the peninsula. Here, the author joined other veteran Bajeos in hoof-and-boot or horse-assisted explorations. In short, this book should be inspiration to those readers who want to visit Baja California, particularly the less tourist-trod destinations. Arm-chair travelers will derive vicarious pleasure without the effort of going there themselves.

Few places in the world can claim such a diversity of species as the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), with its 6,000 recorded animal species estimated to be half the number actually living in its waters. So rich are the Gulf's water that over a half-million tons of seafood are taken from them annuallyÑand this figure does not count the wasted by-catch, which would triple or quadruple that tonnage. This timely book provides a benchmark for understanding the Gulf's extraordinary diversity, how it is threatened, and in what ways it isÑor should beÑprotected. In spite of its dazzling richness, most of the Gulf's coastline now harbors but a pale shadow of the diversity that existed just a half-century ago. Recommendations based on sound, careful science must guide Mexico in moving forward to protect the Gulf of California. This edited volume contains contributions by twenty-four Gulf of California experts, from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. From the origins of the Gulf to its physical and chemical characteristics, from urgently needed conservation alternatives for fisheries and the entire Gulf ecosystem to information about its invertebrates, fishes, cetaceans, and sea turtles, this thought-provoking book provides new insights and clear paths to achieve sustainable use solidly based on robust science. The interdisciplinary, international cooperation involved in creating this much-needed collection provides a model for achieving success in answering critically important questions about a precious but rapidly disappearing ecological treasure.

Discover 101 places, monuments, beaches, food, and experiences in Baja California. Tijuana, Mexicali, Ensenada, San Quintin, Guerrero Negro, Laguna de San Ignacio, Loreto, La Paz, Todos Santos, Cabo San Lucas: this land is a veritable gold mine of revelations.Alongside the most beautiful, postcard-like images of the art and natural wonders, you will find the folklore and the handicrafts, the culinary delicacies and the cocktails--the small unknown jewels which enrich the area's panorama made of people and stories, rocks and sea, mythology and tradition.Baja California is uncompromising. It is a 1,220-kilometers-long peninsula of desert and cactus, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Sea of Cortez on the other, beaten by strong winds, eroded by gigantic waves, and made incandescent by hot summers.

Entertaining account of the author's experiences walking with a burro 1,000 miles from the U.S. border to Loreto, Baja California. Mackintosh and his burro traversed scorching desert and frigid pine-covered mountains to visit mission sites along the way.

Offering invaluable sightseeing tips, advice on fun activities, and detailed descriptions of campgrounds, this grand tour of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula provides both RV and tent campers with the best resources for planning a vacation chock-full of beaches, backroads, golf, fishing, and water sports. The tour centers around one of the most interesting highways in the world, a two-lane ribbon of asphalt winding southward to Cabo San Lucas, from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Cortez and back again, including such details as border crossings, document requirements, vehicle preparation, and road conditions. In addition to describing the formal campgrounds of Baja, featuring location maps, recreational opportunities, lists of facilities, and driving instructions from nearby towns and routes, this guide also provides telephone numbers, websites, e-mail addresses, GPS coordinates, and picture icons that offer a convenient, quick review of each campground.

The author recounts his experiences walking around the Baja California coast, describes the region's desert wildlife, and shares his impressions of the people and landscapes