Series Preface
This series is concerned with humanity's stewardship of the environment, our use of natural resources, and the ways in which we can
mitigate environmental hazards and reduce risks. Thus it is concerned
with applied ecology in the widest sense of the term, in theory and in
practice, and above all in the marriage of sound principles with pragmatic innovation. It focuses on the definition and monitoring of environmental problems and the search for solutions to them at scales that
vary from the global to the local according to the scope of analysis. No
particular academic discipline dominates the series, for environmental
problems are interdisciplinary almost by definition. Hence a wide variety of specialties are represented, from oceanography to economics,
sociology to silviculture, toxicology to policy studies.
In the modern world, increasing rates of resource use, population
growth, and armed conflict have tended to magnify and complicate
environmental problems that were already difficult to solve a century
ago. Moreover, attempts to modify nature for the benefit of humankind have often had unintended consequences, especially in the disruption of natural equilibria. Yet, at the same time, human ingenuity
has been brought to bear in developing a new range of sophisticated
and powerful techniques for solving environmental problems, for example, pollution monitoring, restoration ecology, landscape planning,
risk managment, and impact assessment. Books in this series will shed
light on the problems of the modern environment and contribute to
the further development of the solutions. They will contribute to the
immense effort by ecologists of all persuasions to nurture an environment that is both stable and productive.
David E. Alexander
Amherst, Massachusetts
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