The rich variety of life on Earth is a breathtaking culmination of natural evolution, with all natural ecosystems and cultivated lands teeming with biodiversity. This diverse array of flora and fauna is essential for a healthy, vibrant, and sustainable biosphere. The book "Biodiversity: Concepts, Crises and Conservation" is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to the subject, written by a renowned academician, expert, and celebrated author. It covers all aspects of biological diversity, from conception to recognition, discovery, and practical conservation for future generations. The book is structured to provide mental agility exercises for students across multiple disciplines, including life sciences, biological sciences, environmental sciences, agricultural sciences, geography, and natural resource management. It is also a useful resource for planners, policy-makers, environmental activists, government, and non-government organizations. The book delves into emerging concepts, ongoing crises, and potential conservation tactics of biodiversity, and it is composed in a textbook style that is both enriching and innovation-disrupting. It presents magnificent scenarios of agrobiodiversity, pedo-biodiversity, and biodiversity in chemosynthesis-based communities, as well as examining biodiversity-climate links and discussing the vital biodiversity-sustainability relationships. The book elucidates biodiversity-based sustainability principles and provides operationalization techniques. The book is an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand and conserve the rich diversity of life on Earth.
Prof. Vir Singh, Ph.D., is an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science at GB Pant University of
Agriculture & Technology, India. He has more than three decades experience in teaching, research, extension, project execution, and research supervision. He has also worked as Coordinator of Liberal Education, Director of Communication, Editor-in-Chief of two monthly magazines published by the university, and Nodal Officer of Disaster Management for the Uttarakhand Government, India. He has been educated and trained in many universities and institutes in India and has also worked with many reputed organizations outside India, including International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) based in Kathmandu, Nepal, Galilee International Management Institute (GIMI) in Israel, and Friedrich-Schiller University in Germany. He has a passion for environmental
science, ecology, agroecology, and eco-philosophy. He is fascinated by Nature’s biodiversity.
Prof. Vir Singh has published 54 books, many monographs, a lab manual, and more than 250 research papers, book chapters, and popular articles. In his book Fertilizing the Universe (Cambridge Scholars, 2019), he proposes a theory of astrobiological evolution. His textbook on Environmental Plant Physiology (Taylor and Francis, CRC Press, 2020) brings to the fore a botanical strategy for
a climate-smart planet. He is also a Climate Reality Leader committed to creating awareness about the ongoing climate change and its long-term implications of every walk of life. He is also actively engaged in environmental writing. His articles on vital contemporary issues are being widely published in English and Hindi dailies and e-magazines.
1. Biodiversity: Concepts and Values, 2. Agrobiodiversity: Biodiversity in Agriculture, 3. Biodiversity of the Pedosphere, 4. Biodiversity in the Chemosynthesis-Based Community, 5. Threats to Biodiversity, 6. Biodiversity Conservation, 7. Biodiversity and Sustainability