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Discovering the Chesapeake: The History of an Ecosystem

Amazon.com Price:  $32.95 (as of 02/05/2019 13:50 PST- Details)

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Description

With its rich evolutionary record of natural systems and long history of human activity, the Chesapeake Bay provides a very good example of how a great estuary has responded to the powerful forces of human settlement and environmental change. Discovering the Chesapeake explores the entire long-term changes the Chesapeake has undergone and uncovers the inextricable connections among land, water, and humans in this unusually delicate ecosystem.

Edited by a historian, a paleobiologist, and a geologist at the Johns Hopkins University and written for general readers, the book brings together experts in quite a lot of disciplines to imagine the in point of fact complex and interesting environmental history of the Chesapeake and its watershed. Chapters explore quite a few topics, including the natural systems of the watershed and their origins; the effects of human interventions ranging from Indian slash-and-burn practices to changing farming techniques; the introduction of pathogens, both human and botanical; the consequences of the oyster’s depletion; the response of bird and animal life to environmental factors introduced by humans; and the influence of the land and water on the people who settled along the Bay.

Discovering the Chesapeake, originating in two conferences sponsored by the National Science Foundation, achieves a broad historical and scientific appreciation of the quite a lot of processes that shaped the Chesapeake region.

“Today’s Chesapeake Bay is just a few ten thousand years old. What a different world it was once… when the region was once the home of the ground sloth, giant beaver, dire wolf, mastodon, and other megafauna. In the following couple of thousand years, the ice may form again and the Bay will over again be the valley of the Susquehanna, unless, of course, human-induced changes in climate create some other currently unpredictable condition.”―from the Introduction


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