Invasive Species in Forests and Rangelands of the United States

Invasive Species in Forests and Rangelands of the United States
Author: Therese M. Poland
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2021-02-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030453677

This open access book describes the serious threat of invasive species to native ecosystems. Invasive species have caused and will continue to cause enormous ecological and economic damage with ever increasing world trade. This multi-disciplinary book, written by over 100 national experts, presents the latest research on a wide range of natural science and social science fields that explore the ecology, impacts, and practical tools for management of invasive species. It covers species of all taxonomic groups from insects and pathogens, to plants, vertebrates, and aquatic organisms that impact a diversity of habitats in forests, rangelands and grasslands of the United States. It is well-illustrated, provides summaries of the most important invasive species and issues impacting all regions of the country, and includes a comprehensive primary reference list for each topic. This scientific synthesis provides the cultural, economic, scientific and social context for addressing environmental challenges posed by invasive species and will be a valuable resource for scholars, policy makers, natural resource managers and practitioners.

Remaking Area Studies

Remaking Area Studies
Author: Terence Wesley-Smith
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 082483321X

This collection identifies the challenges facing area studies as an organized intellectual project in this era of globalization, focusing in particular on conceptual issues and implications for pedagogical practice in Asia and the Pacific. The crisis in area studies is widely acknowledged; various prescriptions for solutions have been forthcoming, but few have also pursued practical applications of critical ideas for both teachers and students. Remaking Area Studies not only makes the case for more culturally sensitive and empowering forms of area studies, but indicates how these ideas can be translated into effective student-centered learning practices through the establishment of interactive regional learning communities. This pathbreaking work features original contributions from leading theorists of globalization and critics of area studies as practiced in the U.S. Essays in the first part of the book problematize the accepted categories of traditional area-making practices. Taken together, they provide an alternative conceptual framework for area studies that informs the subsequent contributions on pedagogical practices. To incorporate critical perspectives from the "areas studied," chapters examine the development of area studies programs in Japan and the Pacific Islands. Not surprisingly, given the lessons learned from critical examinations of area studies in the U.S., there are competing, state, institutional, and intellectual perspectives involved in each of these contexts that need to be taken into account before embarking on an interactive and collaborative area studies across Pacific Asia. Finally, area studies practitioners reflect on their experiences developing and teaching interactive, web-based courses linking classrooms in six universities located in Hawai‘i, Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, New Zealand, and Fiji. These collaborative on-line teaching and learning initiatives were designed specifically to address some of the conceptual and theoretical concerns associated with the production and dissemination of contemporary area studies knowledge. Multiauthored chapters draw useful lessons for international collaborative learning in an era of globalization, both in terms of their successes and occasional failures. Uniquely combining theoretical, institutional, and practical perspectives across the Asia Pacific region, Remaking Area Studies contributes to a rethinking and reinvigorating of regional approaches to knowledge formation in higher education. Contributors: Conrado Balabat, Lonny Carlile, T. C. Chang, Hezekiah A. Concepcion, Arif Dirlik, Jeremy Eades, Gerard Finin, Jon Goss, Peter Hempenstall, Lily Kong, Lisa Law, Martin W. Lewis, Robert Nicole, Neil Smith, Teresia Teaiwa, Ricardo Trimillos, Christine Yano, Terence Wesley-Smith.

By More Than Providence

By More Than Providence
Author: Michael J. Green
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 760
Release: 2017-03-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231542720

Soon after the American Revolution, ?certain of the founders began to recognize the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the center of the continent, or Japan, looking toward the Pacific. Where should the United States draw its defensive line, and how should it export democratic principles? In a history that spans the eighteenth century to the present, Michael J. Green follows the development of U.S. strategic thinking toward East Asia, identifying recurring themes in American statecraft that reflect the nation's political philosophy and material realities. Drawing on archives, interviews, and his own experience in the Pentagon and White House, Green finds one overarching concern driving U.S. policy toward East Asia: a fear that a rival power might use the Pacific to isolate and threaten the United States and prevent the ocean from becoming a conduit for the westward free flow of trade, values, and forward defense. By More Than Providence works through these problems from the perspective of history's major strategists and statesmen, from Thomas Jefferson to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Kissinger. It records the fate of their ideas as they collided with the realities of the Far East and adds clarity to America's stakes in the region, especially when compared with those of Europe and the Middle East.

The Gateway to the Pacific

The Gateway to the Pacific
Author: Meredith Oda
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2019-01-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 022659274X

In the decades following World War II, municipal leaders and ordinary citizens embraced San Francisco’s identity as the “Gateway to the Pacific,” using it to reimagine and rebuild the city. The city became a cosmopolitan center on account of its newfound celebration of its Japanese and other Asian American residents, its economy linked with Asia, and its favorable location for transpacific partnerships. The most conspicuous testament to San Francisco’s postwar transpacific connections is the Japanese Cultural and Trade Center in the city’s redeveloped Japanese-American enclave. Focusing on the development of the Center, Meredith Oda shows how this multilayered story was embedded within a larger story of the changing institutions and ideas that were shaping the city. During these formative decades, Oda argues, San Francisco’s relations with and ideas about Japan were being forged within the intimate, local sites of civic and community life. This shift took many forms, including changes in city leadership, new municipal institutions, and especially transformations in the built environment. Newly friendly relations between Japan and the United States also meant that Japanese Americans found fresh, if highly constrained, job and community prospects just as the city’s African Americans struggled against rising barriers. San Francisco’s story is an inherently local one, but it also a broader story of a city collectively, if not cooperatively, reimagining its place in a global economy.

The United States and the Pacific

The United States and the Pacific
Author: Jean Heffer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This work offers a history of the Pacific as a frontier of the United States using economics, politics, and culture as its central areas of consideration. While many studies have analyzed specific regions within the Pacific, this work considers the whole of this vast ocean and its coasts as a single unit of study. In broadening the scope of analysis, one of the author's primary aims is to expand American understanding of the term frontier to include the Pacific and its nations. It covers periods stretching from 1784, the year the first ship flying the American flag reached China, to 1867, the eve of the Civil War. During this period, America's presence was expanding throughout the entire ocean. It also covers the period from 1868 to Pearl Harbour in 1941, witnessing a simultaneous contraction of the area within which various American interests were active, and a gradual integration of the frontier region. Finally, World War II marks the beginning of the period which concludes in 1994, during which, Heffer argues, the entire Pacific becomes an American lake and the former frontier begins to disappear.

Managing Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific Region

Managing Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific Region
Author: Walter Leal Filho
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030405524

This book presents papers written by scholars, practitioners, and members of social movements and government agencies pursuing research and/or climate change projects in the Pacific region. Climate change is impacting the Pacific in various ways, including numerous negative effects on the natural environment and biodiversity. As such, a better understanding of how climate change affects Pacific communities is required, in order to identify processes, methods, and tools that can help countries and the communities in the region to adapt and become more resilient. Further, the book showcases successful examples of how to cope with the social, economic, and political problems posed by climate change in the region.

African Americans and the Pacific War, 1941–1945

African Americans and the Pacific War, 1941–1945
Author: Chris Dixon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2018-09-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107112699

Dixon provides the first comprehensive study of African American military and social experiences during the Pacific War.

The Pacific Region

The Pacific Region
Author: Jan Goggans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2004-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0313085056

Robert Penn Warren once wrote West is where we all plan to go some day, and indeed, images of the westernmost United States provide a mythic horizon to American cultural landscape. While the five states (California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawai'i) which touch Pacific waters do share commonalities within the history of westward expansion, the peoples who settled the region—and the indigenous peoples they encountered—have created spheres of culture that defy simple categorization. This wide-ranging reference volume explores the marvelously eclectic cultures that define the Pacific region. From the music and fashion of the Pacific northwest to the film industry and surfing subcultures of southern California, from the vast expanses of the Alaskan wilderness to the schisms between native and tourist culture in Hawa'ii, this unprecedented reference provides a detailed and fascinating look at American regionalism along the Pacific Rim. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures is the first rigorous reference collection on the many ways in which American identity has been defined by its regions and its people. Each of its eight regional volumes presents thoroughly researched narrative chapters on Architecture; Art; Ecology & Environment; Ethnicity; Fashion; Film & Theater; Folklore; Food; Language; Literature; Music; Religion; and Sports & Recreation. Each book also includes a volume-specific introduction, as well as a series foreword by noted regional scholar and former National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman William Ferris, who served as consulting editor for this encyclopedia.

Reimagining the American Pacific

Reimagining the American Pacific
Author: Rob Wilson
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822325239

Discusses the makings of the "American Pacific" locality/location/identity as space and ground of cultural production, and the way this region can be linked to "Asia" and "Pacific" as well as to "American mainland"