University of California Press

Extensively illustrated with maps, color photographs, and graphics, this state-of-the-art reference offers a comprehensive and authoritative status report on the world's 100,000 parks, nature reserves, and other land and marine areas currently designated as protected areas. Now covering over 12 percent of the Earth's land surface, protected areas are the great strongholds of biodiversity and landscape conservation.

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.