National parks are different from other federal lands in the United States. Beginning in 1872 with the establishment of Yellowstone, they were largely set aside to preserve for future generations the most spectacular and inspirational features of the country, seeking the best representative examples of major ecosystems such as Yosemite, geologic forms such as the Grand Canyon, archaeological sites such as Mesa Verde, and scenes of human events such as Gettysburg. But one type of habitat--the desert--fell short of that goal in American eyes until travel writers and the Automobile Age began to change that perception. As the Park Service began to explore the better-known Mojave and Colorado deserts of southern California during the 1920s for a possible desert park, many agency leaders still carried the same negative image of arid lands shared by many Americans--that they are hostile and largely useless. But one wealthy woman--Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, from Pasadena--came forward, believing in the value of the desert, and convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish a national monument that would protect the unique and iconic Joshua trees and other desert flora and fauna. Thus was Joshua Tree National Monument officially established in 1936, with the area later expanded in 1994 when it became Joshua Tree National Park. Since 1936, the National Park Service and a growing cadre of environmentalists and recreationalists have fought to block ongoing proposals from miners, ranchers, private landowners, and real estate developers who historically have refused to accept the idea that any desert is suitable for anything other than their consumptive activities. To their dismay, Joshua Tree National Park, even with its often-conflicting land uses, is more popular today than ever, serving more than one million visitors per year who find the desert to be a place worthy of respect and preservation. Distributed for George Thompson Publishing

The Clean Water Act (CWA) requires that wetlands be protected from degradation because of their important ecological functions including maintenance of high water quality and provision of fish and wildlife habitat. However, this protection generally does not encompass riparian areasâ€"the lands bordering rivers and lakesâ€"even though they often provide the same functions as wetlands. Growing recognition of the similarities in wetland and riparian area functioning and the differences in their legal protection led the NRC in 1999 to undertake a study of riparian areas, which has culminated in Riparian Areas: Functioning and Strategies for Management. The report is intended to heighten awareness of riparian areas commensurate with their ecological and societal values. The primary conclusion is that, because riparian areas perform a disproportionate number of biological and physical functions on a unit area basis, restoration of riparian functions along America's waterbodies should be a national goal.

The publication was prepared based on information provided by 86 countries, outcomes from regional and subregional consultations and commissioned thematic studies. It includes: •an overview of definitions and concepts related to Forest Genetic Resources (FGR) and a review of their value; •a description of the main drivers of changes; •the presentation of key emerging technologies; •an analysis of the current status of FGR conservation, use and related developments; •recommendations addressing the challenges and needs. By the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Wild Animals of North America" (Intimate Studies of Big and Little Creatures of the Mammal Kingdom) by Edward William Nelson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Over the past thirty years, late Quaternary environments in the arid interior of western North America have been revealed by a unique source of fossils: well-preserved fragments of plants and animals accumulated locally by packrats and quite often encased, amberlike, in large masses of crystallized urine. These packrat middens are ubiquitous in caves and rock crevices throughout the arid West, where they can lie preserved for tens of thousands of years. More than a thousand of these deposits have been dated and analyzed, and middens have supplanted pollen records as a touchstone for studying vegetation dynamics and climatic change in radiocarbon time (the last 40,000 years). Now, similar deposits made by other mammals like hyraxes are being reported from other parts of the world. This book brings together the findings and views of many of the researchers investigating fossil middens in the United States, Mexico, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. The contributions serve to open a forum for methodological concerns, update the fossil record of various geographic regions, introduce new applications, and display the vast potential for fossil midden analysis in arid regions worldwide. The findings presented here will serve to foster regional research and to promote general studies devoted to global climate change. Included in the text are more than two hundred charts, photographs, and maps.