The Rocky Mountains are one of the Earth's most spectacular geological features, containing vast stretches that remain wild and untamed. Hikers on mountain trails often see the wilderness just as Lewis and Clark saw it almost 200 years ago. The diversity of life found along the Rockies' 2,000-mile range is so varied that the mountains are divided into three regions: the Northern, Central, and Southern Rocky Mountains. Scott A. Elias discusses the unique features of each region in his comprehensive natural history of "the backbone of the continent." Elias examines the physical environment of each of the three regions, looking at geology, important land forms, climatology, soils, water resources, and paleontology. Equally detailed chapters examine botany, invertebrate zoology, native fishes of the plains and mountains, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. Elias also includes a history of the native peoples and a synthesis of activities since the Spanish colonial period in the Southern Rockies. Conservation topics are woven throughout the book and the final pages examine the problems of overuse and overcrowding in national and state parks. Elias offers recommendations to alleviate these problems and stresses that the Rockies are a national treasure and should be treated as such.

The quaternary sciences constitute a dynamic, multidisciplinary field of research that has been growing in scientific and societal importance in recent years. This branch of the Earth sciences links ancient prehistory to modern environments. Quaternary terrestrial sediments contain the fossil remains of existing species of flora and fauna, and their immediate predecessors. Quaternary science plays an integral part in such important issues for modern society as groundwater resources and contamination, sea level change, geologic hazards (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis), and soil erosion. With over 360 articles and 2,600 pages, many in full-color, the Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science provides broad ranging, up-to-date articles on all of the major topics in the field. Written by a team of leading experts and under the guidance of an international editorial board, the articles are at a level that allows undergraduate students to understand the material, while providing active researchers with the latest information in the field. Also available online via ScienceDirect (2006) - featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com.360 individual articles written by prominent international authorities, encompassing all important aspects of quaternary scienceEach entry provides comprehensive, in-depth treatment of an overview topic and presented in a functional, clear and uniform layoutReference section provides guidence for further research on the topicArticle text supported by full-color photos, drawings, tables, and other visual materialWriting level is suited to both the expert and non-expert

Product Description: With its warm, dry climate and abundance of caves and rockshelters, the Southwest is a repository of fossils that provide unparalleled opportunities to study the ancient past. During the last ice age - more than 10,000 years ago - the desert regions of the American Southwest flourished, with conifer woodlands blanketing a landscape where camels, mammoths, dire wolves, short-faced bears, and ground sloths thrived...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Book by Scott A. Elias

Product Description: The importance of fossil insects and their relevance to the paleoenvironmental record.