Showing titles in Earth Sciences

Tim Coulson – Professor of Zoology at Oxford – takes us back to the beginning of everything: the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. From there, he leads us step by step along the path to the most astonishing thing we have yet encountered – the staggering complexity of the modern human mind. Covering physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, the emergence of life, evolution, consciousness and the rise of humankind, yet written to be understood by anyone with a child’s curiosity, this book takes the biggest story of all and tells it simply, grippingly and, above all, entertainingly.

It is hard to imagine that the busy townscape of South London was once a great wood, stretching almost seven miles from Croydon to Deptford or that, scattered through the suburbs, from Dulwich to Norwood, a number of oak woodlands have survived since before the Norman Conquest. These woods were intensively managed for a thousand years, providing timber for construction, furniture and shipbuilding, and charcoal for London's blacksmiths, kilns and bakeries. Now they afford important green space, a vital habitat for small mammals, birds and insects.

This audiobook explores how the discoveries within the Solar System and of exoplanets far beyond it come together to help us understand the habitability of Earth, and how these findings guide the search for exoplanets that could support life. The author highlights how, within two decades of the discovery of the first planets outside the Solar System in the 1990s, scientists concluded that planets are so common that most stars are orbited by them. The lives of exoplanets and their stars are inextricably interwoven.

Get Gardening's podcast for plant lovers is jam-packed with choice plants. Hosts Thordis and Alan Gray (of East Ruston Old Vicarage gardens) catch up with their horticultural (or should that be naughty-cultural!) friends to talk about their favourite plants of the moment. It's a bit like a stroll around a fantastic nursery or inspiring garden, but with someone telling you what all the plants are! There are lots of growing and propagation tips included, and everyone shares their latest FLOMO (FLoral/plant-based fOMO). Check out the show notes or our website (getgardeningnow.co.uk) for a full ...

More than a hundred salt lakes dot Earth's surface, most of them hidden away in remote desert valleys. But today nearly all of them are at risk of drying up. Their death is a harbinger of rising sea levels, life-threatening dust storms, and environmental collapse. Writer and geographer Caroline Tracey didn't know this when she began crossing paths with salt lakes during her early twenties. From the Great Salt Lake to the Aral Sea, across the American West and around the world, the unusual beauty of these shimmering, uncanny bodies of water captured her imagination.

Revised, updated, and expanded with the latest interpretations and fossil discoveries, the second edition of Oceans of Kansas adds new twists to the fascinating story of the vast inland sea that engulfed central North America during the Age of Dinosaurs. Giant sharks, marine reptiles called mosasaurs, pteranodons, and birds with teeth all flourished in and around these shallow waters. Their abundant and well-preserved remains were sources of great excitement in the scientific community when first discovered in the 1860s and continue to yield exciting discoveries 150 years later.

Africa has long been considered the cradle of life - where life and humans evolved - but somewhere west of Munich, Germany, paleoclimatologist and paleontologist Madelaine Böhme and her team make a discovery that is beyond anything they ever imagined: the 12-million-year-old bones of an ancient ape - Danuvius guggenmos - which makes headlines around the world and defies prevailing theories of human history and where human life began.

In this masterful account in the spirit of Bill Bryson and Ian Frazier, a longtime deep-sea diver masterfully weaves together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea. In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and...

This Very Short Introduction audiobook celebrates the centrality of ecology in our lives. Jaboury Ghazoul explores how ecology has evolved rapidly from natural history to become a predictive science that explains how the natural world works and which guides environmental policy and management decisions. 

With the new edition of Unsettled, Steven Koonin draws on decades of experience—including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration—to clear away the fog and explain what science really says (and doesn’t say). With a new introduction, this edition now features reflections on an additional three years of eye-opening data, alternatives to unrealistic “net zero” solutions, global energy inequalities, and the energy crisis arising from the war in Ukraine.

Actor and environmental campaigner Cate Blanchett and clean technology expert Danny Kennedy explore eco-anxiety, optimism and hope in the face of climate change. The two long-term friends take listeners around the world to hear from the most exciting green energy initiatives addressing the climate crisis. From a Navajo solar farm in the Arizona desert, to renewable technology in Indonesian fishing, and ideas that could transform the global fashion industry; Cate and Danny offer uplifting stories of ingenuity and resilience.

Welcome to Antarctica. What's it like living and working in one of the most extreme environments in the world? From polar scientists to plumbers, ICEWORLD is a series of interviews with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary jobs in Antarctica. The team talk climate science, extreme living, expeditions and becoming a community. A podcast from British Antarctic Survey, hosted and recorded by marine biologist Nadia Frontier. Produced in partnership with Boffin Media.

What's in a cloud? What separates a tropical storm from a winter blizzard? And what exactly is El Niño? Elliot Rappaport, a professional captain of traditional sailing ships, has spent three decades at sea, where understanding weather could be the difference between life and death. In Reading the Glass, he offers a sailor's-eye view of the moving parts of our atmosphere and unveils the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams, and the longer arc of our climate.

Mary Anning was only 12 years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton - of an ichthyosaur - while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct.  

As soon as man discovered writing, he began engaging in historiography (historical writing and philosophy), but paleoanthropology only really began in the late 1800s. As archaeologists began finding bones in European caves of a human race that was very different than any race in the modern world, the study of paleoanthropology was born. The race of those early humans who were found in the European caves were later termed Neanderthals, and for quite some time, they were believed to have been the race from which many modern humans were directly descended.

Immerse yourself in the sounds of the riverbank, crashing tides, wild marshes filled with birds and the underwater sounds of the humble pond as we bring to life our incredible wetlands - and reveal their power to shape our future for the better. Join zoologist and wildlife presenter Megan McCubbin as she explores the wonders of our watery worlds and how wetlands have fed, inspired and transported us from countryside to city, source to sea. Our wetlands bring us together across species and continents. They’re the source of life as we know it. Yet wetlands only cover about 6% of our planet, ...

Look up! When you look to the sky, do you wonder why the sun is so bright or why the clouds are white or why the sky is blue? Then Weather for Dummies is your resource to fuel your curiosity about the weather. It takes you on an exciting journey through the Earth's atmosphere and the ways it behaves. You'll get an overview of rain, sun, clouds, storms, and other phenomena.  

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING. 'Captivating' - New Scientist 'A wondrous work of walking, seeing and thinking' - Robert Macfarlane 'A startlingly brilliant and moving debut' - William Dalrymple A deep observation of coast and wetland, climate and self, by a leading...

Here is the extraordinary story of the unfolding of life on Earth, told by Michael J. Benton, a world-renowned authority on biodiversity. Ranging over four billion years, Benton weaves together the latest findings on fossils, earth history, evolutionary biology, and many other fields to highlight the great leaps that enabled life to evolve from microbe to human - big breakthroughs that made whole new ways of life possible - including cell division and multicellularity, hard skeletons, the move to land, the origin of forests, the move to the air. 

From the national bestselling author of The Food Explorer, a fascinating and rollicking plunge into the story of the world’s most famous shipwreck, the RMS Titanic On a frigid April night in 1912, the world’s largest—and soon most famous—ocean liner struck an iceberg and slipped beneath...