Island Press

Making healthy places; designing and building for health, well-being, and sustainability.

Dannenberg (environmental and occupational health sciences and urban design and planning, U. of Washington, Seattle) et al. assemble specialists in a variety of fields including health and urban planning, in the US, Australia, and Taiwan who identify action steps for improving human and environmental health by changing the way communities are planned and designed. They outline the major health issues that relate to the built environment, including physical activity, food, air and water quality, injury, mental health, and social bonds, and specific transportation and land use aspects. They also address how to create change, the future training of professionals, research, and urban health in low and middle-income countries. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Shifting baselines; the past and the future of ocean fisheries.

Twenty-six international scientists and historians contribute 11 chapters exploring the "shifting baselines" paradigm — how each generation regards a progressively poorer natural world as normal — as it applies to current perceptions of the world's oceans and the future of ocean fisheries. The text evolved from a 2003 conference on marine biodiversity held at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and subsequent debates on the issues. Coverage includes various perspectives on the problem of shifting baselines; two sets of case studies, examining the anchovy-sardine puzzle in the Pacific Ocean and factors in the demise of northwest Atlantic cod; the myriad kinds of data and methodologies that have been used to reconstruct the ocean's ecological history; the role of historical perspective in governance; and practical lessons learned from historical marine ecology. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)