Paleoecological Research On Easter Island

Book Description :

Paleocological Research on Easter Island: Insights on Settlement, Climate Changes, Deforestation and Cultural Shifts examines the area’s climatic and ecological history, a topic not usually addressed in other literature. The book provides a thorough and synthetic account of all paleoecological works developed to date, including the latest discoveries. Finally, it attempts to match paleoecological evidence with the results of other disciplines creating a multidisciplinary framework. This approach to the field is ideal for researchers, university professors and graduate students in a varied range of disciplines and subdisciplines, including ecology, paleoecology, paleoclimatology, biogeography, sedimentology, and paleontology. Users will find synthesized information on Easter Island from the last millennia that will help pave the way towards an integrated interdisciplinary vision of the island’s environmental-ecological-cultural system as a complex functional unit. Human and environmental deterministic views are avoided and the Easter Island enigmas are analyzed under a holistic perspective of continuous feedbacks and synergies among the different components of the system. Provides the first synthesis of the available paleoecological knowledge on Easter Island Furnishes clues on how to integrate paleoecological information with evidence from other disciplines Addresses the complexity of the environmental-ecological-cultural system by analyzing the interactions (feedbacks and synergies) among its components

Book Description :

After more than three decades of paleoecological research, the potential role of climatic and anthropogenic drivers on Easter Island's ecological and cultural change is still under discussion. This eBook aims to provide a synthetic view of the topic using evidence from different research fields such as paleoecology, archaeology, history and molecular phylogenetics. A holistic approach is provided to combine the results of these research fields into a comprehensive framework able to account for most of the available multidisciplinary evidence. This eBook is dedicated to the memory of John R. Flenley, the pioneer of paleoecological study of Easter Island, who passed away on June 22, 2018.

Book Description :

This book addresses the main enigmas of Easter Island’s (Rapa Nui, in the Polynesian language) prehistory from the time of initial settlement to European contact with a multidisciplinary perspective. The main topics include: (i) the time of first settlement and the origin of the first settlers; (ii) the main features of prehistoric Rapanui culture and their changes; (iii) the deforestation of the island and its timing and causes; (iv) the extinction of the indigenous biota, (v) the occurrence of climatic shifts and their potential effects on socioecological trends; (vi) the evidence for a cultural and demographic collapse before European contact; and (vii) the influence of Europeans on prehistoric Rapanui society. The book is subdivided into thematic sections and each chapter is written by renowned specialists in disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, paleoecology, ethnography, linguistics, ethnobotany, phylogenetics/phylogeography and history. Contributors have been invited to provide an open and objective vision that includes as many views as possible on the topics considered. In this way, the readers may be able to compare different of points of view and make their own interpretations on each of the subjects considered. The book is intended for a wide audience including graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, university teachers and researchers interested in the subject. Given its multidisciplinary character and the topics included, the book is suitable for students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines and interests.

Book Description :

This book addresses the main enigmas of Easter Island’s (Rapa Nui, in the Polynesian language) prehistory from the time of initial settlement to European contact with a multidisciplinary perspective. The main topics include: (i) the time of first settlement and the origin of the first settlers; (ii) the main features of prehistoric Rapanui culture and their changes; (iii) the deforestation of the island and its timing and causes; (iv) the extinction of the indigenous biota, (v) the occurrence of climatic shifts and their potential effects on socioecological trends; (vi) the evidence for a cultural and demographic collapse before European contact; and (vii) the influence of Europeans on prehistoric Rapanui society. The book is subdivided into thematic sections and each chapter is written by renowned specialists in disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, paleoecology, ethnography, linguistics, ethnobotany, phylogenetics/phylogeography and history. Contributors have been invited to provide an open and objective vision that includes as many views as possible on the topics considered. In this way, the readers may be able to compare different of points of view and make their own interpretations on each of the subjects considered. The book is intended for a wide audience including graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, university teachers and researchers interested in the subject. Given its multidisciplinary character and the topics included, the book is suitable for students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines and interests.

Book Description :

The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works? No such astonishing numbers of massive statues are found anywhere else in the Pacific. How could the islanders possibly have moved so many multi-ton monoliths from the quarry inland, where they were carved, to their posts along the coastline? And most intriguing and vexing of all, if the island once boasted a culture developed and sophisticated enough to have produced such marvelous edifices, what happened to that culture? Why was the island the Europeans encountered a sparsely populated wasteland? The prevailing accounts of the island’s history tell a story of self-inflicted devastation: a glaring case of eco-suicide. The island was dominated by a powerful chiefdom that promulgated a cult of statue making, exercising a ruthless hold on the island’s people and rapaciously destroying the environment, cutting down a lush palm forest that once blanketed the island in order to construct contraptions for moving more and more statues, which grew larger and larger. As the population swelled in order to sustain the statue cult, growing well beyond the island’s agricultural capacity, a vicious cycle of warfare broke out between opposing groups, and the culture ultimately suffered a dramatic collapse. When Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began carrying out archaeological studies on the island in 2001, they fully expected to find evidence supporting these accounts. Instead, revelation after revelation uncovered a very different truth. In this lively and fascinating account of Hunt and Lipo’s definitive solution to the mystery of what really happened on the island, they introduce the striking series of archaeological discoveries they made, and the path-breaking findings of others, which led them to compelling new answers to the most perplexing questions about the history of the island. Far from irresponsible environmental destroyers, they show, the Easter Islanders were remarkably inventive environmental stewards, devising ingenious methods to enhance the island’s agricultural capacity. They did not devastate the palm forest, and the culture did not descend into brutal violence. Perhaps most surprising of all, the making and moving of their enormous statutes did not require a bloated population or tax their precious resources; their statue building was actually integral to their ability to achieve a delicate balance of sustainability. The Easter Islanders, it turns out, offer us an impressive record of masterful environmental management rich with lessons for confronting the daunting environmental challenges of our own time. Shattering the conventional wisdom, Hunt and Lipo’s ironclad case for a radically different understanding of the story of this most mysterious place is scientific discovery at its very best.

Book Description :

Biological invasion of native plant communities is a high-priority problem in the field of environmental management. Resource managers, biologists, and all those involved in plant communities must consider ecological interactions when assessing both the effects of plant invasion and the long-term effects of management. Sections of the book cover human perceptions of invading plants, assessment of ecological interactions, direct management, and regulation and advocacy. It also includes an appendix with descriptive data for many of the worst weeds.

Book Description :

Download Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology book written by Joel W. Iledgpeth and Harry S. Ladd, available in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle, or read full book online anywhere and anytime. Compatible with any devices.

Book Description :

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times

Book Description :

The first text in a series of single topic ecology books, Tropic Forests is an ideal text or supplement for introductory biology, ecology, and environmental science courses. It provides students with an accurate, easy to read, and easy to understand account of this important environmental topic that is often overlooked or glossed over in general texts. It's narrative style and clear illustrations and diagrams engage students, and paint a clear picture of the important concepts presented throughout the text.

Book Description :

Download Tropical Forests book written by , available in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle, or read full book online anywhere and anytime. Compatible with any devices.

Book Description :

Oceania was the last region on earth to be permanently inhabited, with the final settlers reaching Aotearoa/New Zealand approximately AD 1300. This is about the same time that related Polynesian populations began erecting Easter Island's gigantic statues, farming the valley slopes of Tahiti and similar islands, and moving finely made basalt tools over several thousand kilometers of open ocean between Hawai'i, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, and archipelagos in between. The remarkable prehistory of Polynesia is one chapter of Oceania's human story. Almost 50,000 years prior, people entered Oceania for the first time, arriving in New Guinea and its northern offshore islands shortly thereafter, a biogeographic region labelled Near Oceania and including parts of Melanesia. Near Oceania saw the independent development of agriculture and has a complex history resulting in the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. Beginning 1000 BC, after millennia of gradually accelerating cultural change in Near Oceania, some groups sailed east from this space of inter-visible islands and entered Remote Oceania, rapidly colonizing the widely separated separated archipelagos from Vanuatu to S?moa with purposeful, return voyages, and carrying an intricately decorated pottery called Lapita. From this common cultural foundation these populations developed separate, but occasionally connected, cultural traditions over the next 3000 years. Western Micronesia, the archipelagos of Palau, Guam and the Marianas, was also colonized around 1500 BC by canoes arriving from the west, beginning equally long sequences of increasingly complex social formations, exchange relationships and monumental constructions. All of these topics and others are presented in The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania written by Oceania's leading archaeologists and allied researchers. Chapters describe the cultural sequences of the region's major island groups, provide the most recent explanations for diversity and change in Oceanic prehistory, and lay the foundation for the next generation of research.

Book Description :

This Research Topic commemorates the centenary of the first quantitative pollen diagram by Lennart von Post, the founder of paleoecological palynology. The main aim is to provide a thorough view of the use of palynology in aspects such as the reconstruction of Quaternary vegetation and environmental changes, the role of natural and anthropogenic drivers in the development of the Quaternary vegetation, the shaping of present-day ecological and biogeographical patterns, the potential application of this knowledge in biodiversity conservation and landscape restoration and the development of new methods of pollen analysis and data management. The Research Topic is subdivided into four main conceptual parts, namely (1) modern analog studies; (2) land cover estimates from pollen data; (3) vegetation dynamics reconstructions from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Oceania; and (4) large-scale reviews and meta-analyses. Hopefully, this Research Topic will serve to appraise the state of the art of modern palynology and highlight the usefulness of this discipline in long-term ecological research.

Book Description :

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the patterns of biodiversity in various neotropical ecosystems, as well as a discussion on their historical biogeographies and underlying diversification processes. All chapters were written by prominent researchers in the fields of tropical biology, molecular ecology, climatology, paleoecology, and geography, producing an outstanding collection of essays, synthetic analyses, and novel investigations that describe and improve our understanding of the biodiversity of this unique region. With chapters on the Amazon and Caribbean forests, the Atlantic rainforests, the Andes, the Cerrado savannahs, the Caatinga drylands, the Chaco, and Mesoamerica – along with broad taxonomic coverage – this book summarizes a wide range of hypotheses, views, and methods concerning the processes and mechanisms of neotropical diversification. The range of perspectives presented makes the book a truly comprehensive, state-of-the-art publication on the topic, which will fascinate both scientists and general readers alike.

Book Description :

"The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania presents the archaeology, linguistics, environment and human biology of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. First colonized 50,000 years ago, Oceania witnessed the independent invention of agriculture, the construction of Easter Island's statues, and the development of the word's last archaic states."--Provided by publisher.

Book Description :

The Pacific Ocean covers one-third of the earth's surface and encompasses many thousands of islands, the home to numerous human societies and cultures. Among these indigenous Oceanic cultures are the intrepid Polynesian double-hulled canoe navigators, the atoll dwellers of Micronesia, the statue carvers of remote Easter Island, and the famed traders of Melanesia. Recent archaeological excavations, combined with allied research in historical linguistics, biological anthropology, and comparative ethnography, have begun to reveal much new information about the long-term history of these Pacific Island societies and cultures. On the Road of the Winds synthesizes the grand sweep of human history in the Pacific Islands, beginning with the movement of early people out from Asia more than 40,000 years ago, and tracing the development of myriad indigenous cultures up to the time of European contact in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Questions that scholars have posed and puzzled over for two centuries or more are illuminated here: Where did the Pacific Islanders come from? How did they discover and settle the thousands of islands? Why did they build great monuments like Nan Madol on Pohnpei Island in Micronesia or the famous Easter Island statues? This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of archaeological and historical anthropological knowledge of these fascinating indigenous cultures. In particular, Kirch focuses on human ecology and island adaptations, the complexities of island trading and exchange systems, voyaging technology and skills, and the development of intensive economic systems linked to the growth of large populations. He also draws on his own original field research conducted on many islands, ranging from the Solomons to Hawai'i, as he takes us on an intellectual voyage into the Oceanic past.

Book Description :

Now in its second edition, Pollution of Lakes and Rivers provides essential insights into present-day water quality problems from an international perspective. Explains simply and effectively how lake sediments can be used to reconstruct pollution history Includes over 200 additional references and a new chapter on recent climatic change and its effects on water quality and quantity Tackles present-day water quality problems from an international perspective Previously published by Hodder Arnold PowerPoint slides of the artwork from the book are available from: http://post.queensu.ca/~pearl/textbook.htm Reviews: "This is a very well-written and wide-ranging volume that is both instructive and topical. It is likely to prove useful as an introduction to the general area, a reference source and for teaching purposes." (The Holocene, November 2008) "If you thought that paleolimnology was just mud, pollen, and diatoms then you will likely be both struck by the complexity of this field of research and grateful that John Smol, FRSC, has described it so clearly and broadly. Simply put, the second edition is an excellent book." ( Journal of Phycology, 2008) “This is a useful text. It provides a good level of detail so that the beginner in this area can appreciate what palaeolimnology can (and cannot) achieve. It goes beyond the simple introduction to provide a detailed understanding of how techniques can be applied ... This is a different take on the usual pollution text and would be of great use to those wishing to understand more from sedimentary records.” Taken from the British Ecological Society’s Teaching Ecology website "John Smol has extensive experience in this field of paleoenvironmental research which he combines well with his excellent written communication skills to produce a text that is easy to read but also thought provoking." (Quaternary Science Reviews, 2009) “The breadth of coverage in this text is impressive.” (Lake and Reservoir Management, 2009) “If I could speak with fluidity and clarity in my lectures as consistently as John Smol writes my students would be very grateful.” (Journal of Paleolimnology, 2009)

Book Description :

This volume focuses on the reconstruction of past ecosystems and provides a comprehensive review of current techniques and their application in exemplar studies. The 18 chapters address a wide variety of topics that span vertebrate paleobiology and paleoecology (body mass, postcranial functional morphology, evolutionary dental morphology, microwear and mesowear, ecomorphology, mammal community structure analysis), contextual paleoenvironmental studies (paleosols and sedimentology, ichnofossils, pollen, phytoliths, plant macrofossils), and special techniques (bone microstructure, biomineral isotopes, inorganic isotopes, 3-D morphometrics, and ecometric modeling). A final chapter discusses how to integrate results of these studies with taphonomic data in order to more accurately characterize an ancient ecosystem. Current investigators, advanced undergraduates, and graduate students interested in the field of paleoecology will find this book immensely useful. The length and structure of the volume also makes it suitable for teaching a college-level course on reconstructing Cenozoic ecosystems.

Book Description :

The aim of this edited volume is to introduce the scientific community to paleoenvironmental studies of estuaries, to highlight the types of information that can be obtained from such studies, and to promote the use of paleoenvironmental studies in estuarine management. Readers will learn about the the application of different paleoecological approaches used in estuaries that develop our understanding of their response to natural and human influences. Particular attention is given to the essential steps required for undertaking a paleoecological study, in particular with regard to site selection, core extraction and chronological techniques, followed by the range of indicators that can be used. A series of case studies are discussed in the book to demonstrate how paleoecological studies can be used to address key questions, and to sustainably manage these important coastal environments in the future. This book will appeal to professional scientists interested in estuarine studies and/or paleoenvironmental research, as well as estuarine managers who are interested in the incorporation of paleoenvironmental research into their management programs.

Book Description :

"Islands have captured the imagination of scientists and the public for centuries - unique and rare environments, their isolation makes them natural laboratories for ecology and evolution. This authoritative, alphabetically arranged reference, featuring more than 200 succinct articles by leading scientists from around the world, provides broad coverage of all the island sciences. But what exactly is an island? The volume editors define it here as any discrete habitat isolated from other habitats by inhospitable surroundings. The Encyclopedia of Islands examines many such insular settings - oceanic and continental islands as well as places such as caves, mountaintops, and whale falls at the bottom of the ocean. This essential, one-stop resource, extensively illustrated with color photographs, clear maps, and graphics will introduce island science to a wide audience and spur further research on some of the planet's most fascinating habitats." --Book Jacket.

Book Description :

The history and science of a cluster of dinosaurs found in the Hungarian region and the story of the aristocrat who discovered them. At the end of the time of the dinosaurs, Transylvania was an island in what was to become southeastern Europe. The island’s limited resources affected the size and life histories of its animals, resulting in a local dwarfism. For example, sauropods found on the island measured only six meters long, while their cousins elsewhere grew up to five times larger. Here, David B. Weishampel and Coralia-Maria Jianu present unique evolutionary interpretations of this phenomenon. The authors bring together the latest information on the fauna, flora, geology, and paleogeography of the region, casting these ancient reptiles in their phylogenetic, paleoecological, and evolutionary contexts. What the authors find is that Transylvanian dinosaurs experienced a range of unpredictable successes as they evolved. Woven throughout the detailed history and science of these diminutive dinosaurs is the fascinating story of the man who first discovered them, the mysterious twentieth-century paleontologist Franz Baron Nopcsa, whose name is synonymous with Transylvanian dinosaurs. Hailed by some as the father of paleobiology, it was Nopcsa alone who understood the importance of the dinosaur discoveries in Transylvania; their story cannot be told without recounting his. Transylvanian Dinosaurs strikes an engaging balance between biography and scientific treatise and is sure to capture the imagination of professional paleontologists and amateur dinophiles alike. “It is rare to find a book on dinosaurs so literate, well-written, and full of insight and synthesis—particularly when the dinosaurs are so unusual. The authors lay them out for us, situate them beautifully in time, space, and cultural history, and then reassemble them and their world using all the tools of modern science. The result is a tour de force.” —Kevin Padian, University of California Museum of Paleontology “A fine example of something I always try, but rarely succeed, to articulate to colleagues in paleontology, evolutionary biology, and geology who don’t work on dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, within the context of their ecosystems and paleogeography, can tell us many neat things about how evolution works over long time scales.” —Stephen Brusatte, Priscum