Geography

But what exactly is an island? The editors define it here as any discrete habitat isolated from other habitats by inhospitable surroundings. The Encyclopedia of Islands examines many such insular settings--oceanic and continental islands as well as places such as caves, mountaintops, and whale falls at the bottom of the ocean.

From tourist paradises to immigrant detention camps, from offshore finance centres to strategic military bases, islands offer distinct identities and spaces in an increasingly homogenous and placeless world. The study of islands is important, for its own sake and on its own terms. But so is the notion that the island is a laboratory, a place for developing and testing ideas, and from which lessons can be learned and applied elsewhere. The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies is a global, research-based and pluri-disciplinary overview of the study of islands. Its chapters deal with the contribution of islands to literature, social science and natural science, as well as other applied areas of inquiry. ...

Islands and their environs, aerial, terrestrial, aquatic, may be understood as intensifiers, their particular and distinctive geographies enabling concentrated study of many kinds of challenges and opportunities. This edited collection brings together several emerging and established academics with expertise in island studies, as well as interest in geopolitics, governance, adaptive capacity, justice, equity, self-determination, environmental care and protection, and land management. Individually and together, their perspectives provide theoretically useful, empirically grounded evidence of the contributions human geographers can make to knowledge and understanding of island places and the place of islands. ...

Islandology is a fast-paced, fact-filled comparative essay in critical topography and cultural geography that cuts across different cultures and argues for a world of islands. The book explores the logical consequences of geographic place for the development of philosophy and the study of limits (Greece) and for the establishment of North Sea democracy (England and Iceland), explains the location of military hot-spots and great cities (Hormuz and Manhattan), and sheds new light on dozens of world-historical productions whose motivating islandic aspect has not heretofore been recognized (Shakespeare's Hamlet and Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung). ...

From Charles Darwin's enlightening voyage to the Galapagos Islands to moat-encased prisons incarcerating the world's deadliest prisoners, islands have been sites of immense scientific, political, and creative importance. An inspiration for artists and writers, they can be lively centers of holiday revelry or remote, mysterious spots; places of escape or of exile and imprisonment. In this cultural and scientific history of these alluring, isolated territories, the author describes the great variety of islands, their economies, and the animals, plants, and people who thrive on them.

A rare and beautifully illustrated journey to fifty faraway worlds. There are still places on earth that are unknown. Visually stunning and uniquely designed, this wondrous book captures fifty islands that are far away in every sense-from the mainland, from people, from airports, and from holiday brochures. The author used historic events and scientific reports as a springboard for each island, providing information on its distance from the mainland, whether its inhabited, its features, and the stories that have shaped its lore. ...

Official estimates put the future scale of human displacement as a result of climate change at anywhere from 150 million to one billion people. Despite this crisis in the making, few countries or international institutions are adequately prepared to address and resolve this emerging human rights crisis. This compilation brings together 51 of the leading texts on climate change and displacement. It provides a consolidated source and substantive overview of the key issues relating to climate change and displacement, including: the reality of climate displacement; the shape of current and proposed international law on this matter; the institutional and governance framework that will address and respond to this crisis; and an analysis of what a cross-section of governments and civil society organizations are already doing to prepare for and act against climate displacement.

Small Island Developing States are often depicted as being among the most vulnerable of all places to the effects of climate change, and they are a cause celebre of many involved in climate science, politics and the media. Yet while small island developing states are much talked about, the production of both scientific knowledge and policies to protect the rights of these nations and their people has been remarkably slow. This book is the first to apply a critical approach to climate change science and policy processes in the South Pacific region. It shows how groups within politically and scientifically powerful countries appropriate the issue of island vulnerability in ways that do not do justice to the lives of island people. ...

Islands have been at the heart of our desires, and our fears, forever. Island tells the groundbreaking story of humans and islands, and islands and nature, from the beginning of time to the present. Drawing on history, literature, art, anthropology, biology, and earth science, Island explores the human settlement of islands--including the seafaring skills required to cross the seas--and describes in vivid detail the spectacular flora and fauna of islands as well as their earth-shattering geology. ...

Islands represent unique opportunities to examine human interaction with the natural environment. They capture the human imagination as remote, vulnerable and exotic, yet there is comparatively little understanding of their basic geology, geography, or the impact of island colonization by plants, animals and humans. This detailed study of island environments focuses on nine island groups, including Hawaii, New Zealand and the British Isles, exploring their differing geology, geography, climate and soils, as well as the varying effects of human actions. It illustrates the natural and anthropogenic disturbances common to island groups, all of which face an uncertain future clouded by extinctions of endemic flora and fauna, growing populations of invasive species, and burgeoning resident and tourist populations. ...

From Charles Darwin's enlightening voyage to the Galapagos Islands to moat-encased prisons incarcerating the world&'s deadliest prisoners, islands have been sites of immense scientific, political, and creative importance. An inspiration for artists and writers, they can be lively centers of holiday revelry or remote, mysterious spots; places of escape or of exile and imprisonment. In this cultural and scientific history of these alluring, isolated territories, Stephen A. Royle describes the great variety of islands, their economies, and the animals, plants, and people who thrive on them. ...

Hawaiʻi is a rare and special place, in which beauty and isolation combine to form a vision of paradise. That isolation, though, comes at a price: resources in modern-day Hawaiʻi are strained and expensive, and current economic models dictate that the Hawaiʻian Islands are reliant upon imported food, fuels, and other materials. Yet the islands supported a historic Hawaiʻian population of a million people or more. This was possible because Hawaiʻians, prior to European contact, had learned the ecological limits of their islands and how to live sustainably within them. Today, Hawaiʻi is experiencing a surge of new strategies that make living in the islands more ecologically, economically, and socially resilient. ...

When it was first formulated in the 1960s, The theory of island biogeography offered a bold and ingenious explanation for patterns in the distribution and abundance of species on islands. The boldness derived, in large part, from the conscious effort to depart from historical explanations and offer simple equilibrium solutions to predict the diversity and evolution of island species. The ingenuity was evident in the simplicity and elegance of explanations in the theory’s two most resilient ideas: the equilibrium model of island biogeography, and the taxon cycle of insular evolution. ...

This article focuses on the ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation of biotas on islands surrounded by ocean. These include oceanic islands in a strict sense (i.e., volcanic islands), atolls, islands on a continental shelf, and continental fragments (i.e., islands that originated from a continental plate but are now isolated in the ocean). This article treats only the terrestrial ecology of islands, and it does not cover islands in freshwater bodies, or islandlike isolated habitats on land such as mountaintops or landscape fragments. ...

Islands provide unique environments isolated from the major land masses. The animals and people that live on islands are faced with different problems of survival, in which the ocean, with it’s vast array of potential food, plays an important part. ...