(Part 2) Best nature & ecology books according to redditors
We found 460 Reddit comments discussing the best nature & ecology books. We ranked the 253 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
32. EXPEDITION: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV
2 mentions
It's because humans don't follow the rules.
Every animal has a personal space bubble and they do "alarm" signs to show when another is getting in their bubble.
Example: A Robin is hunting worms. A deer is walking in the area. The Robin will stop feeding and look up at the deer. If the deer notices, it will shift course and go around the robin. If the deer doesn't notice and keeps heading towards the robin, the robin will stand up a little taller and maybe pump it's tail or fluff it's wings, using motion to show the deer, and any other animals, that he is not being respected. (Check out starting at 2:22) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8GBA7DmeM0&t=21s
If the deer keeps coming, the robin may jump a couple feet to the side or into a bush above the deer's head - a larger motion to show alarm. Other animals will notice this and look in that direction (the same behavior the robin first used to get the deer's attention.) If the deer would have started running at the robin, or jumped at it, the Robin would fly further up into the tree and given off a little "chirp!" alarm while pumping it's tail and maybe wiping it's beak on the branch, using movement and sound to show alarm. Making noise is dangerous for animals, so it's only done when absolutely necessary to alert all the other animals around it. (around 3:26 in the video, you can hear the robin chirp when it flies off)
Birds close to the robin will fly up and observe, and the birds a little further away will stand up and look. This creates pockets or bubbles of alarms around the landscape - the stronger the alarm, the bigger the bubble.
Humans now, we don't see the robin stand up and look at us. We don't see it stand taller, or take a few steps to the side. We don't see it fly up just above head level. When we notice a bird, we get an alarm because we startled it pretty bad, causing the bird to fly up and tell everyone about it by alarming. We don't follow the common courtesies of the natural world and so animals can't accurately predict our behaviors. This scares them, so the scream in panic.
If you slow down, walk slowly and quietly, and walk around the birds when they show the first stage of alarm - the standing up and looking - you can move through the landscape without setting off alarms.
If you want to learn more about this or have questions, let me know - I teach it occasionally, as well as other survival skills, and enjoy spreading it around.
Tl;dr: We are rude, don't follow the rules, and this scares animals.
EDIT: a good starter place for this type of awareness stuff: https://www.amazon.com/What-Robin-Knows-Secrets-Natural/dp/054400230X
and a shameless plug for https://wildernessawareness.org/
They're extremely different! For starters, a Red-tailed Hawk is a buteo. Big rounded head, broad shoulders, medium-length tail, thick legs and big feet. Merlins are falcons so they're long and slender with long tails, and thin but very long toes.
Additionally, the coloration on these two birds is totally different. Red-tailed Hawks are super variable, admittedly, but they never have this gray tone to the back - rather, various shades of brown and sometimes slightly gold, with white-mottled scapulars. Most Redtails will also have an apparent belly band pattern - clear whitish breast, dark feathers across the lower belly, and then whitish or very slightly streaked leg feathers.
I'd recommend familiarizing yourself first with the general shape differences between buteos, accipiters, and falcons, as well as a handful of oddities like harriers, kites, and osprey. Eagles are kind of their own set of weird things but if you can figure out the first three on sight then you can look closer when something doesn't fit one of those. And when it does, you can then narrow down into which buteo, accipiter, or falcon you have based on finer plumage and habitat details.
A really good book to check out, if you're interested in raptor ID, is Hawks in Flight. It's a perfect primer to figuring these guys out.
Keep filling your head with that information. Once you get a good grasp on foraging plants & fungi, you might be interested in picking up these books too:
What the Robin Knows
Reading Nature's Signs
How to Read Water
After you've gone through those, you go out into the woods.....
You know the scene in Superman, where he's a kid at school and locks himself in the closet because he's totally overwhelmed with sensory information? That's what going into the woods is like. Everywhere you look, more information coming in than you can possibly process.
Peter Singer is amazing. I remember having a 2-week breakdown and existential crisis when I read Animal Liberation. I just didn't know how to handle and accept the mind-blowingly immense suffering happening every second; I couldn't figure out how to go about my life with that fact existing. How could I simply turn my back on that fact, and not fight it every second? How could I possibly forget those animals and go about my life as if it weren't true?
Ultimately I had to make the conscious choice to forget. I could only do what I could do - become vegan, evangelize, be an advocate, protest, boycott, take part in everyday activism. But beyond that, what can I do for the billions of animals suffering unimaginable horrors every second?
There are facts and images seared into my brain that I cannot and never will forget - pigs snouts being sliced off and salt rubbed in the wound, cats being boiled alive in cages, raccoon dogs skinned alive and thrown in a pile of agony, animals caught in unbearable suffering in steel traps, others anally/vaginally/orally electrocuted to death for their furs, pigs boiled alive, chickens trampled and pecked to death in too-small to move cages, cows beaten and prodded to walk on broken legs, the heartbroken wail of a pig or cow whose baby is stolen away, male chicks ground up alive... I have SEEN these things. And it is unbearable.
I think these things should be shown to everybody. How anybody could bite into the flesh of a chicken after that is beyond me.
Edit: for those who may be interested in learning more:
I can't remember the other videos I've watched, and frankly, I can't deal with finding them right now. But they're on Youtube, or at least they were a few years ago.
It can and has gone both ways. We need public support, but change can also occur through legislation, and often public support will follow once legislation has been passed. Tobias Leenaert writes in How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach:
>When a democratic government implements a new law, it's usually the case that enough public support exists for it to pass. However, there will always be people (sometimes a large number of them) who don't support the law. Yet, by definition, if the law applies to them, they have to obey it or risk being penalized. This forced behavioral change, however, may be followed by a change in attitude later, so that people who were initially opposed to the law eventually come to accept it.
>A classic example is the law on buckling your seat belt. Polls show that many of those who initially opposed wearing seat belts later supported mandatory use (Fhaner and Hane). I can imagine the same switch with the prohibition of smoking in public places. Initially, the ban caused opposition and outrage in many countries. Today, many people can hardly believe or even remember that smoking used to be acceptable in universities or hospitals, or that teachers could smoke at school. Many of those same resisters find it obvious and good that the law was changed.
If you've never gone to Lake Louise and the Valley of the Ten peaks, I'd definitely head there first. Moraine lake as well, it's always busy out there but it's so beautiful, it's definitely worth it. If you haven't ever seriously been hiking, I'd start out with some of the more popular trails. This book is worth the investment for sure, especially if you want less well-known hikes. I've been hiking my whole life, if you have any questions feel free to ask me or PM me. :) enjoy yourself.
I've never been hunting up in the Boulder area, but the whole state of Colorado is very heavily mineralized (at least compared to the stuff available in the South!).
Here is GatorGirl's list of museums and places of interest.
Here is Boulder County's Mindat page, and the somewhat less comprehensive Peak to Peak page.
Unfortunately I don't have access to any of my books right now, but Voynick's Colorado Rockhounding, Kapelle's Rockhounding Colorado, and especially Mitchell's Gem Trails of Colorado all have much more detailed site reports. You might see if a local library has any or all of those to help you plan a trip.
Of course, if you're willing to drive a couple hours, a lot of other counties have plenty to offer as well!
Welcome! The answer is yes, there is a dictionary and some equipment, but it's not as much as you might think. A book and even a basic pair of binoculars will take you most of the way. Bird feeders are optional: some people do feeders as their entire effort, other people don't do feeders at all. It's up to you.
While you can go out with just your eyes and/or ears, most people prefer to take binoculars, a camera, or a spotting scope [miniature telescope]. Most people also either take some sort of ID aid.
A low-end but usable pair of binoculars will run $25-100 depending on the size, most "decent" to "good" binoculars will run $100+, with really high-end pairs up to $2500; it just depends on how much you're willing to spend.
With binoculars there are a couple things to look for:
Bird ID.
You can use a book, an app, or both. Any bookstore or bird-feeder store should have bird id books, usually called "field guides". They include pictures of the birds and short descriptions, along with a map showing areas of the country where they are usually found. You can also download a variety of apps that will do this. They organize birds by type, so all the ducks are together, all the sparrows are together, all the herons are together, all the hawks are together, etc. Some use photos, some use drawing or painting. Some are big, some are small. Some are national, some are local. The most recognized names to look for are:
If you prefer birds to be listed by color you need to look for the series by Stan Tekiela. The link is for his Colorado book, which is where I live, but he has books for every state.
I would also recommend setting up an account at ebird, you can keep a checklist there along with all kinds of pictures, maps, and other useful stuff. The same people who run ebird also run All About Birds, and produce an app called Merlin. Merlin is free, and might be a good app to start with even if you eventually add others later.
You might also google "birding + [home area]" as there are facebook groups in most areas, and there are often area specific websites. Here in Colorado, for example, we have both Colorado County Birding and the Colorado Birding Trail along with a variety of facebook groups, a google group, and a listserv. Your state/region likely has similar.
I would also look up the Audubon chapter in your area. Some are more active than others; it is worth looking up your local unit to see if they are active in doing trips. Some areas may even have multiple active chapters.
There may also be a bird or nature specific store in your area that does trips or other events. There are also a lot of birding festivals/events around the country at various times; many birders travel to them, but it is also ok to wait for one near you.
I feel a bit like a broken record, but Isaac Asimov's Beginnings was my "a ha" moment. Specifically a few paragraphs where he discusses the biblical flood, but I think the whole book laid the groundwork for that information to really cut through the JW programming and lead to a moment of clarity.
I'd read plenty of science popularizations before that, and read many after. It was that one that cracked the actual beliefs though.
The author of the blog entry has gotten some publishing exposure (introduction) here, here, and (maybe) here. Also, underground metal music reviewer: http://www.examiner.com/metal-music-in-houston/brett-stevens
Anyway, here is my slightly modified take on the death of republic as influenced by Carl Schmitt et. al.
I believe what America is showing and what ancient Greece experienced, as Plato indicates, is the liberalizing of a democracy leads us around to the next segment in the cycle. Liberalizing a democracy opens up the political process to people who are too corruptible or inherently incompetent to effectively participate without discord taking hold.
A healthy republic must:
Finished up 5 non-fiction books this week!
The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens
by Samuel Bowles. 3/5 stars.
The Psychology of Pro-Environmental Communication: Beyond Standard Information Strategies
by Christian Klöckner. 3/5 stars.
How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach by Tobias Leenaert. 5/5 stars.
Motivational Methods for Vegan Advocacy: A Clinical Psychology Perspective
by Casey T. Taft. 4/5 stars.
The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It
by Vanda Felbab Brown. 3/5 stars.
Still reading/started:
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
So you live in Cali, eh? I worked south of V-town for a while and took a few trips through Napa. Nice area. Lots of grapes and expensive cars and shit. Take a trip over to the Petrified Forest and see if you can talk to the shop owners, I bet they'd know where you can go locally.
There's lots of stuff in Cali to find. You might have to take a few long drives for the good stuff, though. Get you a copy of the book "Gem Trails of California" and read up.
Apparently they revised Mitchell's original 1992 California Gem Trails book and split it into Northern Cali and Southern Cali.
I'd explore a few book stores to see if they have a copy of either, that way you can flip through the book to make sure you get the right one for your area.
How about gem and mineral specimens?
one more
Point 1 would have us consider that Clausewitz was wrong all along.
Point 2 would suggest that we've been locked in an imperial war since 1991.
Point 3 would suggest that we will be at war for the indefinite future.
Here is a nice website if you're looking for anything in particular or just want to know more in your area. I'm from the east side of OR so I'm a bit jelly you're on the coast, agates are my favorite to collect. One book I highly recommend is this. If you're like me and have no idea where to go it's a great guide. I am also new to the rock collecting scene and have started tumbling too, it's great fun and I hope you keep finding awesome stuff!
For me, Sibley's is a must-have, but it's very detailed and can be intimidating for new birders. While I do recommend it, you might consider something smaller, easier to use, and more Oregon-specific like this, for example.
> I had a friend get busted and had to go to court for this.
Your friend could have been claim jumping. Many mineral locals have claims on them, and they can be transient in nature. So even though it seems that it is on public lands, and is ok, someone could have come along and filed a claim over that particular area.
In defense of the claim holder, it takes a lot of expense, time, and energy to dig a hole in the ground. And the claim holder needs to see a return on that money. In defense of the collector, some claim holders should not be filing claims on things that they should not, such as designated public collecting areas. There is one such jerk in my area that may want to haul my butt into court, which at that time we could discuss the validity of his claims in the first place.
That's the short version. What you need to do is buy a recent collecting guide such as this, that will get you started. Then, after that if you have a concern, you go to your local BLM office and ask for information about what claims have been filed in the area you plan on collecting in.
Edit: Also, I should mention that collecting is illegal in National Parks, and also on private property. But I have a hard time thinking that someone would get more than just a trespass citation aka misdemeanor and not hauled into court. Though digging on private property might be considered vandalism. You can ask your friend which of these it was. I don't try to collect in these areas, so maybe someone can chime in on this.
Edit2: If you destroy property in State Parks, then this also might happen.
So this is the general idea.
Go on some group walks (http://www.nvabc.org/trips.htm http://www.loudounwildlife.org/Programs_and_Field_Trips.htm) and meet some other birders - they'll have some thoughts on places to visit and can tell you about other local resources.
Woodend has some great classes for example.
Ditto what LigoRider says - As for guides to birds, having a good field guide is key (iBird pro is good for an app, but book can be handy too). Sibley is the generally recommended book.
For learning, I think specific guides can be helpful. For example:
May I suggest Wayne Barlowe's Expedition.
I'm saddened they don't have a print version anymore.
http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-Introduction/dp/0805055762
Agreed. There is a great spot for some geodes less than an hour away. If anyone wants more information on rockhounding in CO, the book "Rockhounding Colorado" is a great source of information..
Definitely. Sorry, this will be a bit long, but read through.
I think the first thing, is just getting out a little bit more often, of course, there's a sort of qualitative change that happens in you when you get out in nature.
But then there are nature observation skills you can develop. And this really can change the game a bit, and make it much more engaging to get out when you do.
The first thing I would suggest, and this you can do from your backyard, is learning to observe birds. The societies of the birds are omnipresent, more complex than you might think, and quite interesting and engaging once you break into the ability to watch them. It's best if you have something you can zoom in on them with. A pair of binoculars. I use a cheap camera that has a superzoom (Panasonic fz70). Of course, you don't need anything extra to observe the nature around you, that's just a suggestion.
There are different skills to develop here. One is learning to tune in with your audiovisual system. What I've been taught to do is to get very still, widen your vision, tune in with your ears, and soon you will detect a flicker here, a sound there, and the birds which you normally would have trouble finding can't help but reveal themselves to you.
If your location is anything like mine, there are some interesting things about the birds in your average backyard. First there are the ways they interact with eachother. What I've found most interesting though is that maybe 3 or 4 times each day, a Hawk will swoop through and try to catch one. Birds exist in cooperative multispecies complexes, and they all help eachother against these threats. You will be sitting there, and then suddenly, every bird will dart off into a hiding place, and then maybe 1 second later, a Hawk will come soaring through. Sometimes the Hawk will succeed. Just the other day I went outside to find a Hawk on a branch with one of the sparrows from my yard in its claw.
Another thing about birds is their language. If you observe for just like 2 or 3 months, by that time you will soon be able to distinguish each common species by the noises they make. And then you can go deeper and begin to understand what calls are just baseline behavior singing (most prevalent in the morning and afternoon choruses), what noises are made when two birds are fighting, what noises signify the aporoach of an aerial predator, what noises signify the approach of a ground predator, etc.
This isn't all about birds, but you'll notice as you explore more that birds are the most omnipresent type of animals in the wild. In the same way that they cooperate as a multispecies complex that warns eachother of a predators approach, if you enter a wooded area, the birds will begin making alarm noises to each other, sometimes even behaving as if they are "yelling at you". Not only do all the birds in an environment get alerted by this, so too do the mammals sense the change in baseline behavior and begin to hide.
When most people explore nature, they tramp through noisily, alerting every animal in there, and thus do not find much. They behave out of place, disrupt the baseline of an environment. Furthermore, their audiovisual systems are not attuned, not used to picking out where an animal might be, they may not even notice a huge raptor in the tree nearby, or the raccoon or fox as he slinks out of sight at the approaching commotion.
And finally, people do not understand how to observe animal track and sign. Everything that passes through an ecosystem will make marks upon it. We can begin by observing the overt signs. Everywhere the coyote goes, he leaves big canid footprints. As does the fox. Skunk and raccoon tracks are easily distinguiahable. Feline tracks may be a bobcat, maybe even a mountain lion, although they tend to be more light footed. And they all make different looking scat along the way. If there are beavers, you will see their signs everywhere. They gnaw at the bottom of trees, first removing the bark, then chewing into the tree, finally toppling them. As well as making dams and scent mounds, and big dens out of sticks. All the lumber beavers chew down has a particular pointed tip on it, and once you know it you see their sign everywhere.
If you learn how to follow the tracks of an animal, you enter into a perceptual relationship with it. It can bring you through an ecosystem in a way you would never have done, show you a bit of the ways the locals do things, bring you into new interesting areas, as well as give a glimpse into the mind and habits of that particular animal. But also, even if you just know the very basics of which tracks belong to which animal, you can come across a watering hole where the banks stay wet and muddy, and instantly know every animal which has visited the place.
Of course, you have to know how to move through an ecosystem so as to not disturb everything in it. The best way is to move quietly as possible, move strategically, and otherwise, move and behave as if you belong there. You should learn the Fox Walk, which you can read about in the Tom Brown book I'll link at the end. It takes a bit to practice, but once you get used to it you begin to naturally use it everytime you move in nature.
A general rule of thumb is this: in every little bit of nature there are many more animals than you know about, and they only come out when things are quiet and they feel like no one is around. It is very difficult to see even large animals in a thicket, and you have no idea how many countless smaller ones are wandering around in there. Every book I've ever read on the subject has recommended trying out the technique of finding a sit spot and hanging out there for awhile. It shows you nature in a way that is not possible when you are continually moving, it allows the possibility for things to resume normal behavior and pop out for you to see.
Another thing too is to observe little microcosms. Get your face really really close to a little patch of ground. You'll be astounded to realize that it is its whole own complex little world with all sorts of crazy fauna that you would never have seen otherwise. Then when you pull out, you'll be shocked to look around and realize just how vast everything really is, from that perspective. Oh how much we pass right over with each step!
I'm saving this right here because I am going to link some books and I have to see which ones to link, so if your reading this part give me one moment...
Some reccommended reading:
Tom Brown's Nature Observation Field Guide. This book is kind of hyped up and exaggerated, with a lot of native american lore, but what he teaches you is legitimate. The way to walk in nature, the way to look and listen, a lot of what I've told you comes from Tom Brown, and the more you read people from this genre, you'll see his ideas again and again. But if you where to only get one book on this subject I'd recommend this one. Despite me calling it hyped up, this book can really change your life if you practice what he says. (Although there are much better books on tracking itself though, look for actual guidebooks to learn more about that, but this book gives a good intro).
Art of Bird Finding. This one is about the perceptual skills needed to pick out birds. I found it very helpful.
What the Robin Knows. How I told you you can begin to analyze bird language and know what sounds mean what, and how their communications alert things in an ecosystem to disturbances in the baseline... This book is about that and how to learn to decode their language.
The Healing Art of Tracking. This book isn't that great, but it gave me some really useful concepts, such as the idea that you create concentric rings of disturbances around yourself as you move in an environment, and to always check the "dead zones" or hiding places in the brush around you as you move.
The forest unseen. This is a pretty entertaining and educational book by a biologist who goes back to one sit spot again and again over a year and describes what he observes there. Shows how much you can find if you look.
final word: sorry man, I have overloaded you with info here. No need to over think things. Ultimately, if you just begin to move through nature more slowly, carefully, and observantly, you will find so much. Don't try too hard, and most importantly have fun with it. Nature is great and we are a part of it too, we just have to learn how to inhabit it best. I hope you find a renewed connection with it, and have many great times. If you ever have anything you want to ask about it or what I've told you here, feel free to ask me!
http://www.amazon.com/Beginnings-Story-Origins-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0425115860
Beginnings: The Story of Origins by Isaac Asimov is a good one that will blow their mind. It will introduce him to a lot of naturalist concepts and make him think very critically about the universe.
...and it's only a penny on Amazon.com : http://www.amazon.com/Beginnings-Story-Origins-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0425115860
I live in Birmingham and hunt all over the state. I hunt turkeys almost everyday of the season. It is literally my most favorite thing in this world to do.
Start by reading this. It's the bible of turkey hunting.
PM me if you would be interested in being shown the ropes around central Alabama. I love teaching folks how to turkey hunt.
I haven't read it yet, but here at work we recently bought Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, which talks about exactly that.
A conservative/reactionary reading list:
Jean Bodin - Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576)
Robert Filmer - Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings (1680)
Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Joseph de Maistre - Considerations on France (1797) and Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions (1809)
Thomas Carlyle - The French Revolution: A History (1837) and On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History (1841)
Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Genealogy of Morals (1887)
Oswald Spengler - Decline of the West (1918)
Ernst Jünger - Storm of Steel (1920)
Jose Ortega y Gassett - Revolt of the Masses (1929)
Julius Evola - Revolt Against the Modern World (1934) and Men Among the Ruins (1953)
Bertrand de Jouvenal - On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (1949)
Leo Strauss - Natural Right and History (1953)
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - The Menace of the Herd (1943) and Liberty or Equality (1952)
On this particular topic, here are some books that I have read (sorry, mere comments from them will not do them justice):
All of these authors have legitimate scientific credentials. With a little searching there is a lot more to be found. You might also check out www.climate.gov.
Good luck.
Check out Rockhounding Oregon: A Guide to the State's Best Rockhounding Sites. It’s a great resource for agate hotspots on the coast.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer might interest you. Almost seven years old now, but still interesting.
Maybe you would like something written by the animal rights philosopher Tom Regan. His Empty Cages are a great read, and he has written a very readable introduction to moral philosophy on ~150 pages: Animal Rights, Human Wrongs
Shorter encapsulations of his work in animal ethics.
"The Animal Rights Debate
Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights" serves as a pretty good intro to him and animal ethics in general:
The Case for Animal Rights. Most important work. Written in 1983; I think it's still the most rigorous argument in animal ethics.
And The Moral Rights of Animals. From the description: "The attitudes of philosophers on our obligations to other animals and the view that other animals possess certain moral rights have shifted considerably in the last 40 years and a great deal of credit for this shift is owed to Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights and subsequent work. This excellent anthology grew out of a 2011 workshop held in Regan's honor and is dedicated to him. It features fourteen essays all of which intersect with Regan's views in some way."
Haha, awesome. I'd buy that guide.
You could try this or this. They are probably ok. But regional guides are never going to be as useful as a good standard field guide. I recommend getting a western bird guides (I like Sibley) if you don't already have one and use one of the specific Oregon guides as a complement.
The yellow book. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0971264627
Excellent reference for aqauculture, and includes a specific chapter on aquaponics written by Rakocy.
Rakocy and Lennard were supposed to have come out with a book on aquaponics in 2013, so were Timmons and Ebeling. Not a clue on when or if we will ever be seeing those texts. Seems like a lot of public research has stalled regarding aquaponics.
I attended a lecture on the rise of fundamentalism about six years ago, but I don't have any references to hand I'm afraid.
If these topics are of interest to anyone, I'd recommend reading Straw Dogs, by John Gray. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1862075964/202-4818677-1343821?v=glance&n=266239
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals blew my mind when I was 15, although it seems to have very mixed reviews.
And if you want to balance out your view you should also consider both sides
http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/0521173159
http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Change-Observed-impacts-Planet/dp/044453301X/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10300308-living-in-denial
http://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Global-Warming-Histories-Technology/dp/067403189X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888732&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Uncertainty-William-Stewart/dp/0976729164/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3
http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/1597265675
http://www.amazon.com/The-Weather-Makers-Changing-Climate/dp/B001PO66MG/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
http://knopfdoubleday.com/2012/06/25/global-weirdness-by-climate-central/
http://mark-bowen.com/book_cs.html
http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Flat-Crowded-2-0-Revolution/dp/0312428928/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888779&sr=1-1
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/six-degrees-mark-lynas/1100833125
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15856813-overheated
http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/1608193942
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Contact-Sport-Inside-Climate/dp/1426205406/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888885&sr=1-1
http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/0822351099
http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Capitalism-Creating-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0316353000/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888939&sr=1-1
Some of my favorites that's relevant to this subreddit:
Check them out:)
Leo Strauss: Natural Right and History
My wife is a definite non-hiker, and so I searched the book Where Locals Hike in the Canadian Rockies and looked for hikes that are classified as "easy", are around 4 hours or less, and have an elevation gain of less than 500 m. I also preferred hikes that weren't in like Lake Louise, because we don't always want to spend 2-1/2 hours in the car each way and/or $20 for a park pass.
Here are some good ones:
Johnston Canyon, as others have mentioned above, is a classic too. It doesn't have the high mountain views, but the canyon itself is neat, and I like the 1950s metal walkways. 215 m elev and 4 hours to the ink pots (small mineral pools). Note that you have to buy a park pass for this one.
http://www.amazon.com/Tenth-Legion-White-Tom-Kelly-ebook/dp/B0081UFP6A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453946863&sr=8-1&keywords=the+tenth+legion
edit: Oh wait. You mean you don't do Kindle books. Yeah, I don't know then. I'm all digital on books these days.
Hawks in Flight by David Sibley. It's not a bird identification guide, but it's fantastic at teaching you about how to identify hawks (without pictures!).
https://www.amazon.com/Hawks-Flight-Second-David-Sibley/dp/0395709598
Little known? Are you quite sure?
Hit up MEC, get a guide book.
In my experience, Kananaskis was an easy area to start hiking in; lots of good hikes of varying difficulty, and almost all of them are accessible from one of two highways.
We've used this book over the years as a guide: http://www.amazon.ca/Where-Locals-Hike-Canadian-Rockies/dp/0973509945
Do invest in a set of topographical maps for the area you want to start hiking in though, along with a compass/GPS. It's well worth the investment when you take a wrong turn at the shady trail marker.
With zero aquaculture knowledge, I'd start studying some texts to give yourself an edge over other potential employees, there is a lot going on a farm, far more than what most people would anticipate.
For Aquaculture Technologies, research: [AKVA] (http://www.akvagroup.com/home) These guys seem to be the leading suppliers of technologies all over the world.
For an Introduction to recirculating aquaculture, research: Timmons' Book This book is basically the aquaculture bible.
It's not very difficult to learn the basic types of filters and systems, just spend a little time reading.
I know I have mentioned it before, but has anyone else here read Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV? The author isn't a scientist, but evolution plays a big role in the book, particularly body plans, the constraints past history put on evolution, and the impact of the environment. I think he does a pretty good job with it, even if some of the outcomes are questionable. It was also made into a Discovery Channel Documentary back before they mostly abandoned science.
The author is the same guy who did the creature design for Avatar. Although the organisms in Avatar look and act completely different to those in Expedition, the role of body plans and environmental influences is the same, just starting from different base. In fact I was able to immediately identify him as the creature designer for the movie, and I have no doubt he got the role due to his work in Expedition (in fact he got the role around the same time the Discovery Channel movie of Expedition came out). He also did the creature design for a bunch of other movies such as the Hellboy movies, Pacific Rim, Titan A.E., several Harry Potter movies, The Hobbit, Galaxy Quest, etc.
Stan Tekiela is an incredible write of bird books. I have the vermont one and it is the best, here is the Colorado Bird field guide he wrote, I imagine it’s pretty good. Good luck!
I can't emphasize enough on getting decent safety glasses (even if you already wear glasses). I use my Estwing (a 13 lb-er I think) for geode cracking and the shards did like to aim for your eyes.
To OP; I would hit up any recent rock hounding books on your area on amazon. I have both [Gem Trails] (http://www.amazon.com/Trails-Northern-California-James-Mitchell/dp/1889786284/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372461605&sr=8-1&keywords=gem+trails+of+northern+california) and [Rock Hounding in California] (http://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-California-2nd-Guide-States/dp/0762771410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372461690&sr=1-1&keywords=rock+hounding+california) in my collection for when I visit eventually.
Yes, fish can develop issues if they are constantly swimming in one circular direction. You may be able to avoid this with a large enough tank, but most tanks aren't that large. This paper expresses a few issues with round tanks and I have personally witnessed scoliosis caused by swimming long term, in the same direction, in circular tanks.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270422/
You should check out mixed cell raceways. Also, read Recirculating Aquaculture by M.B. Timmons and J.M. Ebeling. I took a short course from them, in Maine. I aslo have a MS in aquculture/aquatic science. Hope this helps.
https://www.amazon.com/Recirculating-Aquaculture-M-B-Timmons-Ebeling/dp/0971264627