Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land
By Steven I. Apfelbaum and Alan Haney
In the Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land series, authors Steven I. Apfelbaum and Dr. Alan Haney educate readers on the considerable benefits of land restoration and show them how to restore an ecosystem to its natural state.
The first book, Restoring Ecological Health to your Land, introduces the process and importance of ecological restoration using specific examples from the authors’ experience. The first several chapters offer ten steps to improving land health for any property. The final chapters apply the process to restoration projects of specific ecosystems, including grasslands, forests, wetlands, streams, and deserts.
The Restoring Ecological Health to your Land Workbook expands on the first book, with a chapter dedicated to each of the ten restoration steps. It picks up where the first left off, focusing on what can be done and how to do it. Readers are shown how to examine the natural features of a property, develop restoration plans, estimate project costs, determine necessary equipment, and more.
Both books are appropriate for people from all walks of life and all levels of experience—from landowners to patio gardeners to land trust property stewards and agency personnel responsible for restoring lands in their care. The authors avoid jargon and break down each concept for readers with minimal ecological training, while at the same time offering suggestions that even those with considerable experience will value.
An informative and easy read, the Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land series shows readers how to:
· Appreciate and improve the value of a property’s ecological health
· Recognize natural processes and ecological trends occurring on the land
· Work with – rather than in opposition to – nature
· Perform simple tests to solve a property’s ecological problems
· Encourage key stakeholders and family members to take part in land restoration
“Restoration is a necessity, not a luxury, if we want to have a supply of food and clean drinking water and an earth rich with biodiversity,” says Apfelbaum. “Nature needs our help. The Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land series provides a clear, step-by-step process to develop and implement effective restoration plans for a project of any scale.”
Steven I. Apfelbaum, M.S., is among the world’s most well known leaders in the fields of ecosystem restoration and conservation development. He founded Applied Ecological Services (AES), one of the largest ecological restoration companies in the world, with ten offices in the United States and two branches abroad. He is also the author of Nature’s Second Chance, a thirty-year, personal account of the restoration of his family’s Wisconsin dairy farm. Apfelbaum received the Aldo Leopold Foundations’ John T. Curtis Award for Career Excellence in Ecological Restoration in 2010.
Dr. Alan Haney holds a Master's Degree from the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a Ph.D. in forest ecology from the State University of New York at Syracuse. A leading ecologist, he has taught – and inspired – thousands of students at three different universities and worked with ecosystem restoration in theory as well as practice for more than 30 years.
Website: http://www.appliedeco.com/
Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land and The Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land Workbook are available at www.barneandnoble.com and www.amazon.com.
