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The California Field Atlas
''The California Field Atlas'' is a 2017 book written and illustrated by Obi Kaufmann. It was published by Heyday Books, a Berkeley-based nonprofit small press. Through passages of nature writing and hundreds of watercolor paintings, the book details California's ecology and geography. Kaufmann, an artist and outdoorsman, was born in California and currently resides in Oakland. He prepared the book over the course of a year, drawing from a lifetime of experience hiking thousands of miles of California wilderness. With the ''California Field Atlas'', he intended to foster geological literacy and conservation of the state's natural environment. The book contains ten chapters spanning more than 500 pages in total. The first eight chapters examine California's ecological system, the ninth chapter is an overview of nature throughout the state's 58 counties, and the final chapter covers the topic of rewilding. Rather than focusing on already-famous natural landmarks such as Yose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obi Kaufmann
Obi Kaufmann (born 1973) is an American naturalist, writer, and illustrator. He is the author of '' The California Field Atlas'', a guide to the state's ecology and geography. The book features hundreds of his watercolor paintings of maps, wildlife, and other aspects of nature. Early life and education Kaufmann was born in Hollywood, California in 1973. His father, William J. Kaufmann III, was an astrophysicist who served as director of the Griffith Observatory from 1970 to 1974, and also a writer of several books about physics. His mother is a clinical psychologist. In 1978, his family moved from Southern California to Danville, California, a town in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. While living there, Kaufmann spent an extensive amount of time exploring Mount Diablo State Park. Kaufmann studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He entered as a biology major but switched to visual arts after finding inspiration in wildlife paint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an area of and sits in four countiescentered in Tuolumne and Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono and south to Madera County. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity. Almost 95 percent of the park is designated wilderness. Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the Sierra Nevada, and the park supports a diversity of plants and animals. The geology of the Yosemite area is characterized by granite rocks and remnants of older rock. About 10 million years ago, the Sierra Nevada was uplifted and tilted to form its unique s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Governments to include the nine counties that border the aforementioned estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other definitions may be either smaller or larger, and may include neighboring counties that do not border the bay such as Santa Cruz and San Benito (more often included in the Central Coast regions); or San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus (more often included in the Central Valley). The core cities of the Bay Area are San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. Home to approximately 7.76 million people, Northern California's nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a complex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)
The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. With a population of roughly 2.5 million in 2010, it is the most populous subregion in the Bay Area. Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay and the third largest in the Bay Area. The city serves as a major transportation hub for the U.S. West Coast, and its port is the largest in Northern California. Increased population has led to the growth of large edge cities such as Alameda, Concord, Emeryville, Fremont, Livermore, Pleasanton, San Ramon and Walnut Creek. History and development Although initial development in the larger Bay Area focused on San Francisco, the coastal East Bay came to prominence in the middle of the nineteenth century as the part of the Bay Area most accessible by land from the east. The Transcontinental Rail ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Diablo
Mount Diablo is a mountain of the Diablo Range, in Contra Costa County of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. It is south of Clayton and northeast of Danville. It is an isolated upthrust peak of , visible from most of the San Francisco Bay Area. Mount Diablo appears from many angles to be a double pyramid and has many subsidiary peaks. The largest and closest is North Peak, the other half of the double pyramid, which is nearly as high in elevation at , and is about northeast of the main summit. The mountain is within the boundaries of Mount Diablo State Park, which is administered by California State Parks. Geography The summit is accessible by foot, bicycle, or motor vehicle. Road access is via North Gate Road or South Gate Road. Also you can hike in various places in Mount Diablo. Mount Diablo State Park The peak is in Mount Diablo State Park, a state park of about . The state park was the first public open space established on or near the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deserts Of California
The Deserts of California, collectively known as the California Deserts, are a region of California made up of distinct deserts that each have unique ecosystems and habitats. The region is home to a sociocultural and historical "Old West" collection of legends, districts, and communities, and they also form a popular tourism region of dramatic natural features and recreational development. Geography There are three main deserts in California: the Mojave Desert, the Colorado Desert, and the Great Basin Desert. The Mojave Desert is bounded by the Tehachapi Mountains on the northwest, the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains on the south, and extends eastward to California's borders with Arizona and Nevada; it also forms portions of northwest Arizona. The Colorado Desert lies in the southeastern corner of the state, between the Colorado River and the Transverse Ranges, and continues into Mexico and Arizona to the south and east, (as the named Sonoran Desert). The Great Basin des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coastal California
Coastal California, also known as the California Coastline and the Golden Coast, refers to the coastal regions of the U.S. state of California. The term is not primarily geographical as it also describes an area distinguished by cultural, economic and political attributes. Geography The area includes the North Coast, San Francisco Bay Area, Central Coast, and South Coast. The coastline is slowly eroding due to natural processes and potentially accelerated by climate change, though much more slowly in other places in the United States. In the last 100 years, the water line has risen less than along the coast of California. In the next 100 years, the water is expected to surge as much as , bringing into question the fate of the many million dollar homes settled right on the edge of the sea. Climate Coastal California is heavily influenced by east–west distances to the cold California Current (dominated by it) and microclimates due to hills and coast ranges, having strong ec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water In California
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...'s interconnected water system serves over 30 million people and irrigates over of farmland. As the world's largest, most productive, and potentially most controversial water system, it manages over of water per year. Water and water rights are among the state's divisive political issues. Due to the lack of reliable dry season rainfall, water is limited in the most populous U.S. state. An ongoing debate is whether the state should increase the redistribution of water to its Agriculture in California, large agricultural and urban sectors, or increase conservation and preserve the natural ecosystems of the water sources. Sources of water California's limited water supply comes from two main sources: surface water, or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Award
A literary award or literary prize is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author. Organizations Most literary awards come with a corresponding award ceremony. Many awards are structured with one organization (usually a non-profit organization) as the presenter and public face of the award, and another organization as the financial sponsor or backer, who pays the prize remuneration and the cost of the ceremony and public relations, typically a corporate sponsor who may sometimes attach their name to the award (such as the Orange Prize). Types of awards There are awards for various writing formats including poetry and novels. Many awards are also dedicated to a certain genre of fiction or non-fiction writing (such as science fiction or politics). There are also awards dedicated to works in individual languages, such as the Miguel de Cervantes Prize ( Spanish), the Camões Prize ( Portuguese) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-order
A pre-order is an order placed for an item that has not yet been released. The idea for pre-orders came because people found it hard to get popular items in stores because of their popularity. Companies then had the idea to allow customers to reserve their own personal copy before its release, which has been a huge success. Pre-orders allow consumers to guarantee immediate shipment on release, manufacturers can gauge how much demand there will be and thus the size of initial production runs, and sellers can be assured of minimum sales. Additionally, high pre-order rates can be used to increase sales further. Order incentive Order incentive, also known as Order bonus, is a marketing tactic in which a retailer or manufacturer/publisher of a product (usually a book or video game) encourages buyers to reserve a copy of the product at the store prior to its release. Reasons vary, but typically, publishers wish to ensure strong initial sales for a product, and the offered incentiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holism
Holism () is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical, biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. The term "holism" was coined by Jan Smuts in his 1926 book '' Holism and Evolution''."holism, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2019, www.oed.com/view/Entry/87726. Accessed 23 October 2019. While his ideas had racist connotations, the modern use of the word generally refers to treating a person as an integrated whole, rather than as a collection of separate systems. For example, well-being may be regarded as not merely physical health, but also psychological and spiritual well-being. Meaning The exact meaning of "holism" depends on context. Jan Smuts originally used "holism" to refer to the tendency in nature to produce wholes from the ordered grouping of unit structures. However, in common usage, "holism" usually refers to the idea that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.J. C. Poynton (1987) SMUTS'S HOLISM AND E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Systems Thinking
Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts, enablinsystems change Systems thinking draws on and contributes to systems theory and the system sciences. History Frameworks and methodologies Frameworks and methodologies for systems thinking include: * Critical systems thinking * Soft systems methodology * Systemic design * System dynamics System dynamics (SD) is an approach to understanding the nonlinear behaviour of complex systems over time using stocks, flows, internal feedback loops, table functions and time delays. Overview System dynamics is a methodology and mathematic ... * Viable system model Multi-method approach See also * Management cybernetics * Operational research References Systems science Cybernetics Systems theory Syst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
