Wild North Carolina: Discovering the Wonders of Our State's Natural Communities

Wild North Carolina: Discovering the Wonders of Our State's Natural Communities Review

Celebrating the beauty, diversity, and significance of the state's natural landscapes, Wild North Carolina provides an engaging, beautifully illustrated introduction to North Carolina's interconnected webs of plant and animal life. From dunes and marshes to high mountain crags, through forests, swamps, savannas, ponds, pocosins, and flatrocks, David Blevins and Michael Schafale reveal in words and photographs natural patterns of the landscape that will help readers see familiar places in a new way and new places with a sense of familiarity.
Wild North Carolina introduces the full range of the state's diverse natural communities, each brought to life with compelling accounts of their significance and meaning, arresting photographs featuring broad vistas and close-ups, and details on where to go to experience them first hand. Blevins and Schafale provide nature enthusiasts of all levels with the insights they need to value the state's natural diversity, highlighting the reasons plants and animals are found where they are, as well as the challenges of conserving these special places.

Mountain Nature: A Seasonal Natural History of the Southern Appalachians

Mountain Nature: A Seasonal Natural History of the Southern Appalachians Review

The Southern Appalachians are home to a breathtakingly diverse array of living things--from delicate orchids to carnivorous pitcher plants, from migrating butterflies to flying squirrels, and from brawny black bears to more species of salamander than anywhere else in the world. Mountain Nature is a lively and engaging account of the ecology of this remarkable region. It explores the animals and plants of the Southern Appalachians and the webs of interdependence that connect them.

Within the region's roughly 35 million acres, extending from north Georgia through the Carolinas to northern Virginia, exists a mosaic of habitats, each fostering its own unique natural community. Stories of the animals and plants of the Southern Appalachians are intertwined with descriptions of the seasons, giving readers a glimpse into the interlinked rhythms of nature, from daily and yearly cycles to long-term geological changes. Residents and visitors to Great Smoky Mountains or Shenandoah National Parks, the Blue Ridge Parkway, or any of the national forests or other natural attractions within the region will welcome this appealing introduction to its ecological wonders.

A Long Look at Nature: The North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences

A Long Look at Nature: The North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences Review

A Long Look at Nature: The North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences Feature

• ISBN13: 9780807849859
• Condition: New
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What does a jar of preserved leopard frogs or the articulated skeleton of a beached sperm whale say about the way we understand nature in North Carolina? Margaret Martin explores this question in the story of the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, founded over 120 years ago to serve as a keeper of natural history collections, a vital resource for the scientific community, and a public interpreter of our natural world.

The book is organized around the museum's collections: Rocks and Minerals, Fossils, Invertebrates, Fishes, Reptiles and Amphibians, Birds, and Mammals. Martin looks at how these collections have been interpreted over time, tracing the shift away from a nineteenth-century presentation of nature as something ripe for exploitation to a more contemporary view of natural communities as complex, interconnected, and deserving of conservation.

With 175 color and black-and-white photographs, A Long Look at Nature is both an engaging introduction to the museum and a striking visual tribute to its collections. The book celebrates North Carolina nature in all its diversity and highlights the museum's crucial role in interpreting North Carolina's natural heritage.