Global biodiversity

This book opens with an outline of some fundamental aspects of material cycles and energy flows within the biosphere. This is followed by discussion of the components of biological diversity, and an account of its expansion through geological time as well as the pattern of its distribution over the surface of the Earth. The second part is concerned with material relationships between humans and biodiversity, covering the salient features of our impacts on the environment from the earliest hominids onwards, and the uses currently made of elements of biodiversity.