The Natural History Of Puget Sound Country

Download or read book The Natural History of Puget Sound Country written by Arthur R. Kruckeberg and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award Bounded on the east by the crest of the Cascade Range and on the west by the lofty east flank of the Olympic Mountains, Puget Sound terrain includes every imaginable topograhic variety. This thoughtful and eloquent natural history of the Puget Sound region begins with a discussion of how the ice ages and vulcanism shaped the land and then examines the natural attributes of the region--flora and fauna, climate, special habitats, life histories of key organisms--as they pertain to the functioning ecosystem. Mankind's effects upon the natural environment are a pervasive theme of the book. Kruckeberg looks at both positive and negative aspects of human interaction with nature in the Puget basin. By probing the interconnectedness of all natural aspects of one region, Kruckeberg illustrates ecological principles at work and gives us a basis for wise decision-making. The Natural History of Puget Sound Country is a comprehensive reference, invaluable for all citizens of the Northwest, as well as for conservationists, biologists, foresters, fisheries and wildlife personnel, urban planners, and environmental consultants everywhere. Lavishly illustrated with over three hundred photographs and drawings, it is much more than a beautiful book. It is a guide to our future.

Download or read book Making and Unmaking of Puget Sound written by Gary C. Howard and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Puget Sound is a complex fjord-estuary system in Washington State that is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Juan de Fuca Strait and surrounded by several large population centers. The watershed is enormous, covering nearly 43,000 square kilometers with thousands of rivers and streams. Geological forces, volcanos, Ice Ages, and changes in sea levels make the Sound a biologically dynamic and fascinating environment, as well as a productive ecosystem. Human activity has also influenced the Sound. Humans built several major cities, such as Seattle and Tacoma, have dramatically affected the Puget Sound. This book describes the natural history and evolution of Puget Sound over the last 100 million years through the present and into the future. Key Features Summarizes a complex geological, geographical, and ecological history Reviews how the Puget Sound has changed and will likely change in the future Examines the different roles of various drivers of the Sound’s ecosystem function Includes the role of humans—both first people and modern populations. Explores Puget Sound as an example of general bay ecological and environmental issues

Download or read book Homewaters written by David B. Williams and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-04-24 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not far from Seattle skyscrapers live 150-year-old clams, more than 250 species of fish, and underwater kelp forests as complex as any terrestrial ecosystem. For millennia, vibrant Coast Salish communities have lived beside these waters dense with nutrient-rich foods, with cultures intertwined through exchanges across the waterways. Transformed by settlement and resource extraction, Puget Sound and its future health now depend on a better understanding of the region’s ecological complexities. Focusing on the area south of Port Townsend and between the Cascade and Olympic mountains, Williams uncovers human and natural histories in, on, and around the Sound. In conversations with archaeologists, biologists, and tribal authorities, Williams traces how generations of humans have interacted with such species as geoducks, salmon, orcas, rockfish, and herring. He sheds light on how warfare shaped development and how people have moved across this maritime highway, in canoes, the mosquito fleet, and today’s ferry system. The book also takes an unflinching look at how the Sound’s ecosystems have suffered from human behavior, including pollution, habitat destruction, and the effects of climate change. Witty, graceful, and deeply informed, Homewaters weaves history and science into a fascinating and hopeful narrative, one that will introduce newcomers to the astonishing life that inhabits the Sound and offers longtime residents new insight into and appreciation of the waters they call home. A Michael J. Repass Book

Download or read book Native Seattle written by Coll Thrush and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2008 Washington State Book Award for History/Biography In traditional scholarship, Native Americans have been conspicuously absent from urban history. Indians appear at the time of contact, are involved in fighting or treaties, and then seem to vanish, usually onto reservations. In Native Seattle, Coll Thrush explodes the commonly accepted notion that Indians and cities-and thus Indian and urban histories-are mutually exclusive, that Indians and cities cannot coexist, and that one must necessarily be eclipsed by the other. Native people and places played a vital part in the founding of Seattle and in what the city is today, just as urban changes transformed what it meant to be Native. On the urban indigenous frontier of the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, Indians were central to town life. Native Americans literally made Seattle possible through their labor and their participation, even as they were made scapegoats for urban disorder. As late as 1880, Seattle was still very much a Native place. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, however, Seattle's urban and Indian histories were transformed as the town turned into a metropolis. Massive changes in the urban environment dramatically affected indigenous people's abilities to survive in traditional places. The movement of Native people and their material culture to Seattle from all across the region inspired new identities both for the migrants and for the city itself. As boosters, historians, and pioneers tried to explain Seattle's historical trajectory, they told stories about Indians: as hostile enemies, as exotic Others, and as noble symbols of a vanished wilderness. But by the beginning of World War II, a new multitribal urban Native community had begun to take shape in Seattle, even as it was overshadowed by the city's appropriation of Indian images to understand and sell itself. After World War II, more changes in the city, combined with the agency of Native people, led to a new visibility and authority for Indians in Seattle. The descendants of Seattle's indigenous peoples capitalized on broader historical revisionism to claim new authority over urban places and narratives. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Native people have returned to the center of civic life, not as contrived symbols of a whitewashed past but on their own terms. In Seattle, the strands of urban and Indian history have always been intertwined. Including an atlas of indigenous Seattle created with linguist Nile Thompson, Native Seattle is a new kind of urban Indian history, a book with implications that reach far beyond the region. Replaced by ISBN 9780295741345

Download or read book We are Puget Sound written by David L. Workman and published by Braided River. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Puget Sound is a magnificent and intricate estuary, the very core of life in Western Washington. Yet it's also a place of broader significance: rivers rush from the Cascade and Olympic mountains and Canada's coastal ranges through varied watersheds to feed the Sound, which forms the southern portion of a complex, international ecosystem known as the Salish Sea. A rich, life-sustaining home shared by two countries, as well as 50-plus Native American Tribes and First Nations, the Salish Sea is also a huge economic engine, with outdoor recreation and commercial shellfish harvesting alone worth $10.2 billion. But this spectacular inland sea is suffering. Pollution and habitat loss, human population growth, ocean acidification, climate change, and toxins from wastewater and storm runoff present formidable challenges. We Are Puget Sound amplifies the voices and ideas behind saving Puget Sound, and it will help engage and inspire citizens around the region to join together to preserve its ecosystem and the livelihoods that depend on it.

Download or read book Saving Puget Sound written by John Lombard and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Lombard was named Conservationist of the Year by Northwest Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration. The North Pacific International Chapter of the American Fisheries Society awarded Lombard the Haig-Brown Award for environmental writing. No other developed area in the world matches the Puget Sound region's combination of beauty, wealth, natural resiliency, and history of environmental concern. Saving Puget Sound develops a practical proposal to conserve the Puget Sound region's most important ecosystems in the face of long-term population growth, drawing lessons that are relevant across the Northwest and in other parts of the country. It provides both a vision for conservation and a detailed review of the political and legal issues that must be at the core of any practical strategy to achieve it.

Download or read book Geology and Plant Life written by Arthur R. Kruckeberg and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before any other influences began to fashion life and its lavish diversity, geological events created the initial environments--both physical and chemical--for the evolutionary drama that followed. Drawing on case histories from around the world, Arthur Kruckeberg demonstrates the role of landforms and rock types in producing the unique geographical distributions of plants and in stimulating evolutionary diversification. His examples range throughout the rich and heterogeneous tapestry of the earth's surface: the dramatic variations of mountainous topography, the undulating ground and crevices of level limestone karst, and the subtle realm of sand dunes. He describes the ongoing evolutionary consequences of the geology-plant interface and the often underestimated role of geology in shaping climate. Kruckeberg explores the fundamental connection between plants and geology, including the historical roots of geobotany, the reciprocal relations between geology and other environmental influences, geomorphology and its connection with plant life, lithology as a potent selective agent for plants, and the physical and biological influences of soils. Special emphasis is given to the responses of plants to exceptional rock types and their soils--serpentines, limestones, and other azonal (exceptional) substrates. Edaphic ecology, especially of serpentines, has been his specialty for years. Kruckeberg's research fills a significant gap in the field of environmental science by connecting the conventionally separated disciplines of the physical and biological sciences. Geology and Plant Life is the result of more than forty years of research into the question of why certain plants grow on certain soils and certain terrain structures, and what happens when this relationship is disrupted by human agents. It will be useful to a wide spectrum of professionals in the natural sciences: plant ecologists, paleobiologists, climatologists, soil scientists, geologists, geographers, and conservation scientists, as well as serious amateurs in natural history.