Biodiversity - An Introduction

Second edition of this concise introductory text on biodiversity. Although it is designed as an undergraduate text, the book can be profitably read by the general reader and contains a wealth of charts and tables. The book defines the field, giving a historical overview before going into mapping, the importance of biodiversity, human impacts on the environment and ways in which biodiversity can be maintained. The authors comment that, since the appearance of the first edition in 1998, 'there has been little, if any, reduction in the degree of threat faced by the variety of life on earth' and they add that 'if anything, there is now a sharpened awareness of how acute the threat is and how pervasive are its implications.'