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Sustainable development is a process to improve the quality of life of people, while maintaining the ability of social–ecological systems to continue to provide valuable ecological services that social systems require. In the Galapagos Islands, the maintenance of amenity resources to support tourism and the quality of life of residents is explicitly linked to ecosystem goods and services, particularly, the accessibility to high-quality natural environments and the terrestrial and marine visitation sites that showcase iconic species.On June 26-30, 2022, the Galapagos Science Center celebrated its 10-Year Anniversary. As the crowning event of the anniversary celebration, the World Summit on Island Sustainability was held on San Cristobal Island, Galapagos Archipelago of Ecuador. The intent of the World Summit was to bring together leading experts on island ecosystems and, particularly, on island sustainability from across the globe to represent a diversity of perspectives, approaches, and stakeholder groups. The World Summit was an exclusive event that featured an “expert convening” of scholars and practitioners to address the social, terrestrial, and marine sub-systems of the Galapagos Islands and other similarly challenged island ecosystems from around the globe. The World Summit attracted 150 scientists to the Galapagos Islands to discuss projects conducted, for instance, in the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, Guam, French Polynesia, Chile, Australia, and the Caribbean Islands. Island vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability were examined by scholars, for instance, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Catholic University of Chile, University of Guam, James Cook University, University of the Sunshine Coast, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, California Academy of Sciences, University of San Francisco, and the University of South Alabama aswell as affiliated scientists from Exeter University, University of Edinburgh, University of Southampton, and the Galapagos National Park. The World Summit also included scholars from Re:wild, World Wildlife Fund, EarthEcho, and the East-West Center, Hawaii.

This book presents chapters, written by leading coastal scientists, which collectively depict the current understanding of the processes that shape barrier islands and barrier spits, with an emphasis on the response of these landforms to changing conditions. A majority of the world's population lives along the coast at the dynamic intersection between terrestrial and marine ecosystems and landscapes. As narrow, low-lying landforms, barriers are especially vulnerable to changes in sea level, storminess, the geographic distribution of grass species, and the rate of sand supply—some barriers will undergo rapid changes in state (e.g., from landward migrating to disintegrating), on human time scales. Attempts by humans to prevent change can hasten the loss of these landforms, threatening their continued existence as well as the recreational, financial and ecosystem service benefits they provide. Understanding the processes and interactions that drive landscape response to climate change andhuman actions is essential to adaptation. As managers and governments struggle to plan for the future along low-lying coasts worldwide, and scientists conduct research that provides useful guidance, this volume offers a much-needed compilation for these groups, as well as a window into the science of barrier dynamics for anyone who is generally interested in the impacts of a changing world on coastal environments.

Alfred Russel Wallace is best known as the codiscoverer, with Charles Darwin, of natural selection, but he was also history's foremost tropical naturalist and the father of biogeography, the modern study of the geographical basis of biological diversity. Island Life has long been considered one of his most important works. In it he extends studies on the influence of the glacial epochs on organismal distribution patterns and the characteristics of island biogeography, a topic as vibrant and actively studied today as it was in 1880. The book includes history's first theory of continental glaciation based on a combination of geographical and astronomical causes, a discussion of island classification, and a survey of worldwide island faunas and floras. The year 2013 will mark the centennial of Wallace's death and will see a host of symposia and reflections on Wallace's contributions to evolution and natural history. This reissue of the first edition of Island Life, with a foreword by David Quammen and an extensive commentary by Lawrence R. Heaney, who has spent over three decades studying island biogeography in Southeast Asia, makes this essential and foundational reference available and accessible once again.

Biogeography considers the distribution of biological units over a wide range of scales. The units range from genotypes, populations and species to families and higher taxa. Processes can be local, such as the isolation on islands due to sea-level fluctuations, or large-scale tectonic processes that separates continents and creates oceans. In all processes time is an important factor and by combining data on recent patterns with paleontological data the understanding of the distribution of extant taxa can be improved. This volume focuses on speciation due to isolation in island-like settings, and the evolution of large-scale diversity as the result of origination, maintenance and extinction.