World atlas of biodiversity : earth's living resources in the 21st century

This atlas addresses the remarkable growth in concern for living things and the environment, and the links between them. It provides a comprehensive and accessible view of the key global issues in biodiversity, and outlines some of the broad ecological relationships between humans and the rest of the material world. Opening with an outline of some fundamental aspects of material cycles and energy flow in the biosphere, the book goes on to discuss the expansion of this diversity through geological time and the pattern of its distribution over the surface of the Earth. Trends in the condition of the main ecosystem types and the species integral to them are also explored.