Global Biodiversity: Earth's Living Resources in the 21st Century

The 1990s has seen a remarkable increase in appreciation of the links between the state of ecosystems and the state of humankind. This publication explores key global issues of biodiversity. It examines the relationships between humankind and biodiversity, covering salient features of human impacts on the environment from the earliest hominines onward, and the uses currently made of elements of biodiversity. Global Biodiversity also looks at the trends in condition of the main ecosystem types and the species integral to them. The book also outlines some fundamental aspects of material cycles and energy flow in the biosphere.