This book provides a first synthetic view of an emerging area of ecology and biogeography, linking individual- and population-level processes to... geographic distributions and biodiversity patterns. Problems in evolutionary ecology, macroecology, and biogeography are illuminated by this integrative view. The book focuses on correlative approaches known as ecological niche modeling, species distribution modeling, or habitat suitability modeling, which use associations between known occurrences of species and environmental variables to identify environmental conditions under which populations can be maintained. The spatial distribution of environments suitable for the species can then be estimated: a potential distribution for the species. This approach has broad applicability to ecology, evolution, biogeography, and conservation biology, as well as to understanding the geographic potential of invasive species and infectious diseases, and the biological implications of climate change. The authors lay out conceptual foundations and general principles for understanding and interpreting species distributions with respect to geography and environment. Focus is on development of niche models. While serving as a guide for students and researchers, the book also provides a theoretical framework to support future progress in the field.

Integrating a discussion of the application of quantitative methods with practical examples, this book explains the philosophy of the new quantitative... methodologies and contrasts them with the methods associated with geography's `Quantitative Revolution' of the 1960s. Key issues discussed include: the nature of modern quantitative geography; spatial data; geographical information systems; visualization; local analysis; point pattern analysis; spatial regression; and statistical inference. Concluding with a review of models used in spatial theory, the authors discuss the current challenges to spatial data analysis. Written to be accessible, to communicate the diversity and excitement of recent thinking, Quantitative Geog

The Dutch Revolt has long been hailed as the triumph of political freedom over monarchical tyranny. In 1781, John Adams observed that the American... Revolution was its "transcript." Known for its many protagonists-King Philip II, the Duke of Alba, the counts of Egmont and Hornes, radical Calvinists, obstreperous townspeople, and William of Orange-the Dutch Revolt brought into relief conflicts among civic freedoms, religious dissent, representative institutions, and royal authority.Drawing on a vast array of sources-including archival documents, political and religious pamphlets, ballads, chronicles and letters, and a rich store of popular prints-Peter Arnade gives us a new history of the core years of the revolt between 1566 and 1585, showing how the act of rebellion forged a political identity through ritual, symbol, and public action. In Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots, Arnade focuses on the political culture that took shape during the Revolt, a culture that itself fueled decades of turmoil. He sees the pulse of the Revolt in its public dramatization-the acts, words, and cultural representations that were its "daily bread and popular voice."The violent wave of radical iconoclasm that swept the southern Netherlands in 1566 is the book's pivot, setting the stage for the Duke of Alba's brutal effort to restore the authority of the Spanish crown. Arnade details the sieges and violent sacks of Dutch cities by the Army of Flanders, and the response of Dutch rebels, who touted defiant cities as the seats and guarantors of unassailable rights and freedoms. This civic patriotism hailed William of Orange as father of the fatherland, his apotheosis hearkening back to late medieval princely ritual even as it invoked new republican imagery.

In 1992, Calhuasí, an isolated Andean town, got its first road. Newly connected to Ecuador’s large cities, Calhuasí experienced rapid social-spatial... change, which Kate Swanson richly describes in Begging as a Path to Progress. Based on nineteen months of fieldwork, Swanson’s study pays particular attention to the ideas and practices surrounding youth. While begging seems to be inconsistent with—or even an affront to—ideas about childhood in the developed world, Swanson demonstrates that the majority of income earned from begging goes toward funding Ecuadorian children’s educations in hopes of securing more prosperous futures. Examining beggars’ organized migration networks, as well as the degree to which children can express agency and fulfill personal ambitions through begging, Swanson argues that Calhuasí’s beggars are capable of canny engagement with the forces of change. She also shows how frequent movement between rural and urban Ecuador has altered both, masculinizing the countryside and complicating the Ecuadorian conflation of whiteness and cities. Finally, her study unpacks ongoing conflicts over programs to “clean up” Quito and other major cities, noting that revanchist efforts have had multiple effects—spurring more dangerous transnational migration, for example, while also providing some women and children with tourist-friendly local spaces in which to sell a notion of Andean authenticity.

You are a good person. You are one of the 84 million Americans who volunteer with a charity. You are part of a national donor pool that contributes... nearly $200 billion to good causes every year. But you wonder: Why don't your efforts seem to make a difference? Fifteen years ago, Robert Egger asked himself this same question as he reluctantly climbed aboard a food service truck for a night of volunteering to help serve meals to the homeless. He wondered why there were still people waiting in line for soup in this day and age. Where were the drug counselors, the job trainers, and the support team to help these men and women get off the streets? Why were volunteers buying supplies from grocery stores when restaurants were throwing away unused fresh food every night? Why had politicians, citizens, and local businesses allowed charity to become an end in itself? Why wasn't there an efficient way to solve the problem? Robert knew there had to be a better way. In 1989, he started the D.C. Central Kitchen by collecting unused food from local restaurants, caterers, and hotels and bringing it back to a central location where hot, nutritious meals were prepared and distributed to agencies around the city. Since then, the D.C. Central Kitchen has been named one of President Bush Sr.'s Thousand Points of Light and has become one of the most respected and emulated nonprofit agencies in the world, producing and distributing more than 4,000 meals a day. Its highly successful 12-week job-training program equips former homeless transients and drug addicts with culinary and life skills to gain employment in the restaurant business. In Begging for Change, Robert Egger looks back on his experience and exposes the startling lack of logic, waste, and ineffectiveness he has encountered during his years in the nonprofit sector, and calls for reform of this $800 billion industry from the inside out. In his entertaining and inimitable way, he weaves stories from his days in music, when he encountered legends such as Sarah Vaughan, Mel Torme, and Iggy Pop, together with stories from his experiences in the hunger movement -- and recently as volunteer interim director to help clean up the beleaguered United Way National Capital Area. He asks for nonprofits to be more innovative and results-driven, for corporate and nonprofit leaders to be more focused and responsible, and for citizens who contribute their time and money to be smarter and more demanding of nonprofits and what they provide in return. Robert's appeal to common sense will resonate with readers who are tired of hearing the same nonprofit fund-raising appeals and pity-based messages. Instead of asking the "who" and "what" of giving, he leads the way in asking the "how" and "why" in order to move beyond our 19th-century concept of charity, and usher in a 21st-century model of change and reform for nonprofits. Enlightening and provocative, engaging and moving, this book is essential reading for nonprofit managers, corporate leaders, and, most of all, any citizen who has ever cared enough to give of themselves to a worthy cause.

In reconstructing and interpreting rituals of supplication, Geoffrey Koziol here uncovers the dense meanings of these most commonplace of all early... medieval rituals. The author casts a wide net, comparing these rituals in several regions of northern and western France to illuminate the complex changes in social relations and political power in the tenth and eleventh centuries.In medieval cultures, "supplication" was simply the act of prayer, an act that required a distinctive language of entreaty accompanied gestures of humility, such as kneeling and prostration. Koziol shows that in tenth- and eleventh-century France, prayer was an act of political honor as well as religious devotion, since the language and gestures of prayer were used to address not only God but also earthly lords who claimed to rule "by the grace of God."Making subtle use of ethnological studies and using a remarkable range of sources, Koziol demonstrates that supplication accurately reflected the complexities and paradoxes in contemporary attitudes toward friendship, enmity, and political authority. And in documenting their regional variations, he shows that the rituals of supplication, far from being routinized gestures insensitive to context, remained culturally meaningful by adapting to the realities of different political and social communities. Original and richly interdisciplinary, Begging Pardon and Favor is a major contribution to our understanding of medieval political and religious culture.