Desert Channels is a book that combines art, science and history to explore the ‘impulse to conserve’ in the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland. The region is the source of Australia’s major inland-flowing desert rivers. Some of Australia’s most interesting new conservation initiatives are in this region, including partnerships between private landholders, non-government conservation organisations that buy and manage land (including Bush Heritage Australia and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy) and community-based natural resource management groups such as Desert Channels Queensland. Conservation biology in this place has a distinguished scientific history, and includes two decades of ecological work by scientific editor Chris Dickman. Chris is one of Australia’s leading terrestrial ecologists and mammalogists. He is an outstanding writer and is passionate about communicating the scientific basis for concern about biodiversity in this region to the broadest possible audience. Libby Robin, historian and award-winning writer, has co-ordinated the writings of the 46 contributors whose voices collectively portray the Desert Channels in all its facets. The emphasis of the book is on partnerships that conserve landscapes and communities together. Short textboxes add local and technical commentary where relevant. Art and science combine with history and local knowledge to richly inform the writing and visual understanding of the country. Conservation here is portrayed in four dimensions: place, landscape, biodiversity and livelihood. These four parts each carry four chapters. The ‘4x4’ structure was conceived by acclaimed artist, Mandy Martin, who has produced suites of artworks over three seasons in this format with commentaries, which make the interludes between parts. Martin’s work offers an aesthetic framework of place, which shapes how we see the region. Desert Channels explores the impulse to protect the varied biodiversity of the region, and its Aboriginal, pastoral and prehistoric heritage, including some of Australia’s most important dinosaur sites. The work of Alice Duncan-Kemp, the region’s most significant literary figure, is highlighted. Even the sounds of the landscape are not forgotten: the book's webpage has an audio interview by Alaskan radio journalist Richard Nelson talking to ecologist Steve Morton at Ocean Bore in the Simpson Desert country. The twitter of zebra finches accompanies the interview. Conservation can be accomplished in various ways and Desert Channels combines many distinguished voices. The impulse to conserve is shared by local landholders, conservation enthusiasts (from the community and from national and international organisations), Indigenous owners, professional biologists, artists and historians.

Publisher's description. Combines art, science and history to explore the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland.

Prepared following the 2007 GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, these 15 guides illustrate the latest geological and archeological thinking on a variety of current research themes.

Water is scarce in the Lake Eyre Basin in the heart of Australia. The region goes through natural cycles of boom and bust, and the flooding of the basin rivers is accompanied by spectacular responses from wildlife and vegetation. However, the Lake Eyre Basin faces the threat of diversion of water from rivers and wetlands and development of floodplains for irrigation and mining. Around the world, such water resource developments have caused widespread degradation of rivers and loss of habitats. Lake Eyre Basin Rivers outlines the environmental, social and economic values of the rivers from a diverse range of perspectives, including science, tourism, economy, engineering, policy, Traditional Owners and pastoralists. It describes the current state of the environment and the past and ongoing threats to the river systems, drawing on stories from the Murray-Darling Basin. It also provides direction for ensuring that the rivers remain free-flowing to service the environment and future generations. This book is a valuable reference for environment and government agencies, industries and policy-makers concerned with the region and will be of interest to the communities of the Lake Eyre Basin.

This book is the product of the 2nd World Conference on Environmental History, held in Guimarães, Portugal, in 2014. It gathers works by authors from the five continents, addressing concerns raised by past events so as to provide information to help manage the present and the future. It reveals how our cultural background and examples of past territorial intervention can help to combat political and cultural limitations through the common language of environmental benefits without disguising harmful past human interventions. Considering that political ideologies such as socialism and capitalism, as well as religion, fail to offer global paradigms for common ground, an environmentally positive discourse instead of an ecological determinism might serve as an umbrella common language to overcome blocking factors, real or invented, and avoid repeating ecological loss. Therefore, agency, environmental speech and historical research are urgently needed in order to sustain environmental paradigms and overcome political, cultural an economic interests in the public arena. This book intertwines reflections on our bonds with landscapes, processes of natural and scientific transfer across the globe, the changing of ecosystems, the way in which scientific knowledge has historically both accelerated destruction and allowed a better distribution of vital resources or as it, in today’s world, can offer alternatives that avoid harming those same vital natural resources: water, soil and air. In addition, it shows the relevance of cultural factors both in the taming of nature in favor of human comfort and in the role of the environment matters in the forging of cultural identities, which cannot be detached from technical intervention in the world. In short, the book firstly studies the past, approaching it as a data set of how the environment has shaped culture, secondly seeks to understand the present, and thirdly assesses future perspectives: what to keep, what to change, and what to dream anew, considering that conventional solutions have not sufficed to protect life on our planet.