Willens Alan (1 results)

Quarto, blue leatherette (hardcover), gilt letters, vii, 152 pp. Good+, with soiling to page edges, neat former-owner stamps, former-owners published review pasted to rear endpaper, in a Near-Fine dust jacket. From jacket: Over a quarter of the world's surface is arid or semi-arid, and there are fears that this total may increase sharply as the result of climatic change and growing pressures from an expanding and hungry world population. Urgent needs have led man himself to contribute alarmingly to the continuous depletion of the stock of usable lands through unconsidered exploitation: fertile areas are degrading rapidly and marginal ones are turning into deserts. This timely book shows how the threats to such fragile territories can be arrested, controlled and reversed through the careful management of dry-land ecosystems. It examines the characteristics of arid and semi-arid environments throughout the world and describes the kinds of vegetation they are able to support. Drawing thier lessons from nature, the authors show how indiginous vegetation can be used to create developments which are self-sustaining in the long run, based on an apporach that works with nature rather than against it. They set out in great detail the techniques that are involved, from the preliminary survey of climate, topography, soils and water through the analysis of the existing ecosystem, to the planning of developments with plants and regimes of irrigation, plant propagation and management of soil, water, vegeation, and human settlements. Agriculture, Conservation, Xeroscape, Ecosystem, Natural History.