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Numbers From Nature

To Create A Green Plaque Scheme Around The World

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Numbers From Nature

Numbers From Nature

Numbers From Nature

Numbers From Nature

Numbers From Nature

To Create A Green Plaque Scheme Around The World

To Create A Green Plaque Scheme Around The World

To Create A Green Plaque Scheme Around The World

To Create A Green Plaque Scheme Around The World

Gary Skinner
Gary Skinner
Gary Skinner
Gary Skinner
1 Campaign |
Halifax, United Kingdom
$140 USD 5 backers
2% of $5,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
I need some money to fund the rest of the travel, which will be one more trip to the states after the one in the summer of 2012.    
 
In the next 3 years the two oldest ecological societies in the world will be 100, British in 2013 and the American in 2015.  The 20th Century was the first century of ecology, and the pace is hotting up in the 21st.  I want to honour the men and women who made our understanding possible, the ecologists and especially the field ecologists.
 
I have been working for some time now on a book to be called Numbers from Nature.  The basic idea is to tell the story of some of the key pieces of ecological fieldwork, and of the people that did them, from Aristotle to Edward Wilson, looking at Darwin, Gilbert White and others on the way.  It is also about place.  That is, the places in which these pieces of work were done.  I have been travelling to visit the sites I want to write about and have another trip planned this summer to visit some more.   All the sites (bar one in Australia!) are shown in the image at the top of the page. So, each chapter will be about a scientist (or, in one or two cases, two such) and where they did the work, the latter informed by their own writing but also by my own visits.  I will have images (and movies) of each site, and some of the former would, I hope, grace the book.  But I also have the notion of linking it all to an image rich website and Google Earth, to set up there a kind of green plaque scheme to mirror the blue plaques we have around the world to commemorate where various famous people lived.  There will be virtual green plaques on Google Earth to show where ecologists did the seminal work.   These will be linked to webpages for each ecologist.
 
        
 
What I wrote for myself in the front of my notebook is:
 
This book is not (primarily) about what was discovered but how it was discovered.  About the determination, courage, patience, inventiveness, opportunism and love of nature shown by the men and women involved.
 
I have in mind an introductory chapter which will address the numbers side of things, amongst others.  Looking, in  a very user friendly way I hope (I am NOT a mathematician or statistician!) at the necessity for measuring things to get numbers and then do some statistics, growing out of the wonderful earlier traditions of careful observation.
I will then move on to the scientists and the work I have chosen.  These range from Aristotle and Theophrastus (Joint "Fathers of Ecology") working on Lesvos in the Aegean, to Edward Wilson working with Dan Simberloff in The Florida Keys, taking in Gilbert White, Charles Darwin and many others on the way.
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Choose your Perk

The Book

$10 USD
A copy of the book once published, signed by the author.
4 claimed

Books, Photos, Lecture

$100 USD
TWO signed copies of the book, together with DVDs with all the photographs taken for the project, from around the world. I will also come and give a lecture on the trips to any group you desire if you pay my travel!
1 claimed

books, photos, films, lecture

$200 USD
TWO signed copies of the book, together with DVDs with all the photographs taken for the project, from around the world and all the films. I will also come and give a lecture on the trips to any group you desire if you pay my travel!
0 claimed
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