​World Atlas of Biodiversity addresses the remarkable growth in concern at all levels for living things and the environment and the increased appreciated of the links between the state of ecosystems and the stat of humankind. Building on a wealth of research and analysis by the conservation community worldwide. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible view of key global issues in biodiversity. It outlines some of the broad ecological relationships between humans and the rest of the material world and summarizes information of the health of the planet. Opening with an outline of some fundamental aspects of material cycles and energy flow in the biosphere, the book goes on to discuss the expansion of the diversity through geological time and the pattern of its distribution over the surface of the Earth, and analyzes trends in the condition of the main ecosystem types and the species integral to them.