Island Press Field Notes

A growing energy footprint requires careful thought about our world’s energy mix, but even a renewable energy future is not necessarily a green one. Many renewable energy sources have a large footprint which can threaten biodiversity and conservation. With rising energy demands around the world expected to convert one-fifth of remaining natural lands, is it possible to balance energy development with biodiversity protection?  

Bugs and germs are big problems—and they’re evolving. Each year, 2,300 people in the U.S. die from drug-resistant bacterial infections and farmers lose billions of dollars of crops to insects that evade pesticides. But there is reason for hope. In the fight to protect our food and health, bugs and germs may also be part of the solution. Natural Defense by veteran science writer Emily Monosson is the first book to bring readers into this exciting new world.

Today’s students will face the unprecedented challenges of a rapidly warming world, including emerging diseases, food shortages, drought, and waterlogged cities. How do we prepare 9.5 billion people for life in the Anthropocene, to thrive in this uncharted and more chaotic future? Answers are being developed in universities, preschools, professional schools, and even prisons around the world.

"Biting the snorkel mouthpiece, I submerged my head through a layer of crisp-edged leaves and into another world.” So begins Abbie Gascho Landis’ discovery of an Alabama creek—and the freshwater mussels who call it home. Ranging in size from thumbnail to dinner plate, freshwater mussels have been filtering our rivers, streams, and creek beds for millions of years, and, as Landis learns, have much to teach us about ecology, freshwater systems, and our relationship to the natural world.