Trees Are Shape Shifters: How Cultivation, Climate Change, and Disaster Create Landscapes

Description

In Italy and around the Mediterranean, almost every stone, every tree, and every hillside show traces of human activities. Situating climate change within the context of the Anthropocene, Andrew Mathews investigates how people in Lucca, Italy, make sense of social and environmental change by caring for the morphologies of trees and landscapes. He analyzes how people encounter climate change, not by thinking and talking about climate, but by caring for the environments around them. Maintaining landscape stability by caring for the forms of trees, rivers, and hillsides is a way that people link their experiences to the past and to larger scale political questions. The human-transformed landscapes of Italy are a harbinger of the experiences that all of us are likely to face, and addressing these disasters will call upon all of us to think about the human and natural histories of the landscapes we live in. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction ONE Sensing the Invisible: Plant Form and Landscape Transformation Interlude I. Plant Morphology Leads to Geomorphology TWO From Plant Morphologies to Landscape Structures THREE Fast and Slow Disasters: Plant Disease, Forest Fires, and Climate Change Interlude II. Pine Cultivation and Pine as an Agent of Landscape Transformation FOUR Plant Morphology, Geomorphology, and Weather FIVE Biogeomorphological Politics SIX From Landscape Histories to Climate Models SEVEN From Climate Change to Biomass Energy Interlude III. Airscapes EIGHT Landscapes and Energy Politics EPILOGUE Trees Are Shape Shifters Appendix 1. Ecology and Climate of the Monte Pisano Appendix 2. Equations as Stories Appendix 3. List of Organizations Glossary Notes References Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X