Knowing Global Environments

Knowing Global Environments PDF

Author: Jeremy Vetter

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0813548756

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Knowing Global Environments brings together nine leading scholars whose work spans a variety of environmental and field sciences, including archaeology, agriculture, botany, climatology, ecology, evolutionary biology, oceanography, ornithology, and tidology. Collectively their essays explore the history of the field sciences, through the lens of place, practice, and the production of scientific knowledge, with a wide-ranging perspective extending outwards from the local to regional, national, imperial, and global scales. The book also shows what the history of the field sciences can contribute to environmental history-especially how knowledge in the field sciences has intersected with changing environments-and addresses key present-day problems related to sustainability, such as global climate, biodiversity, oceans, and more. Contributors to Knowing Global Environments reveal how the field sciences have interacted with practical economic activities, such as forestry, agriculture, and tourism, as well as how the public has been involved in the field sciences, as field assistants, students, and local collaborators.

To Know the World

To Know the World PDF

Author: Mitchell Thomashow

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0262539829

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Why environmental learning is crucial for understanding the connected challenges of climate justice, tribalism, inequity, democracy, and human flourishing. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time—migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy—connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that. Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene's rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; why we should understand migration both ecologically and culturally; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as educational explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.

Global Environmental Change

Global Environmental Change PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1991-02-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0309044944

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Global environmental change often seems to be the most carefully examined issue of our time. Yet understanding the human sideâ€"human causes of and responses to environmental changeâ€"has not yet received sustained attention. Global Environmental Change offers a strategy for combining the efforts of natural and social scientists to better understand how our actions influence global change and how global change influences us. The volume is accessible to the nonscientist and provides a wide range of examples and case studies. It explores how the attitudes and actions of individuals, governments, and organizations intertwine to leave their mark on the health of the planet. The book focuses on establishing a framework for this new field of study, identifying problems that must be overcome if we are to deepen our understanding of the human dimensions of global change, presenting conclusions and recommendations.

To Know the World

To Know the World PDF

Author: Mitchell Thomashow

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0262361051

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Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy--connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.

Confronting Environments

Confronting Environments PDF

Author: James G. Carrier

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2004-10-17

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0759115265

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Carrier and his group of international researchers tackle the complex factors affecting people's understandings of their environment-not just the natural environment, but landscapes shaped by humans, and their social contexts. The authors consider the impact of local events, such as tourism or environmental protection regimes, with detailed analyses of local cases. They also evaluate the large-scale political-economic forces that operate at regional and global levels, such as policies and bureaucratic requirements of international agencies and a country's position in global commodity markets. Their approach encourages policy makers and researchers to think about their natural and non-natural environment in novel ways. This book will be an excellent resource for all concerned with social, cultural and political-economic aspects of environmental use and conservation, and researchers in anthropology, geography, and political ecology.

Solid-Earth Sciences and Society

Solid-Earth Sciences and Society PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1993-02-01

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0309047390

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As environmental problems move upward on the public agenda, our knowledge of the earth's systems and how to sustain the habitability of our world becomes more critical. This volume reports on the state of earth science and outlines a research agenda, with priorities keyed to the real-world challenges facing human society. The product of four years of development with input from more than 200 earth-science specialists, the volume offers a wealth of historical background and current information on: Plate tectonics, volcanism, and other heat-generated earth processes. Evolution of our global environment and of life itself, as revealed in the fossil record. Human exploitation of water, fossil fuels, and minerals. Interaction between human populations and the earth's surface, discussing the role we play in earth's systems and the dangers we face from natural hazards such as earthquakes and landslides. This volume offers a comprehensive look at how earth science is currently practiced and what should be done to train professionals and adequately equip them to find the answers necessary to manage more effectively the earth's systems. This well-organized and practical book will be of immediate interest to solid-earth scientists, researchers, and college and high school faculty, as well as policymakers in the environmental arena.

Bringing the Biosphere Home

Bringing the Biosphere Home PDF

Author: Mitchell Thomashow

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2001-10-26

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780262264921

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A guide for understanding the ecological and existential aspects of global environmental change. This book shows how to make global environmental problems more tangible, so that they become an integral part of everyday awareness. At its core is a simple assumption: that the best way to learn to perceive the biosphere is to pay close attention to our immediate surroundings. Through local natural history observations, imagination and memory, and spiritual contemplation, we develop a place-based environmental view that can be expanded to encompass the biosphere. Interweaving global change science, personal narrative, and commentary on a wide range of scientific and literary works, the book explores both the ecological and existential aspects of urgent issues such as the loss of biodiversity and global climate change. Written in a warm, engaging style, Bringing the Biosphere Home considers the perceptual connections between the local and global, how the ecological news of the community is of interest to the world, and how the global movement of people, species, and weather systems affects the local community. It shows how global environmental change can become the province of numerous educational initiatives—from the classroom to the Internet, from community forums to international conferences, from the backyard to the biosphere. It explains important scientific concepts in clear, nontechnical language and provides dozens of ideas for learning how to practice biospheric perception.

Global Environmental Change

Global Environmental Change PDF

Author: Robert W. Corell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1991-03-26

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9783540531289

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Understanding global environmental change and predicting the consequences of global environmental variability are becoming increasingly important to the nations of the world. Global change is now on the agenda of world leaders, a substantial number of whom are deeply concerned with the potential economic, social and political consequences of human-induced variabilities in the climate system and other aspects of global environmental change. Uncertainty of scientific knowledge of global and regional processes and the limited ability of science to predict the behavior of the Earth system are of major concern. These realities place upon the international scientific community a responsibili ty to expand scientific knowledge and predictive capabilities about the fundamental processes that control the Earth system. The response of the scientific community has been phenomenal. National and international planning and coordination mechanisms have been established to address the fundamental scientific questions of global environmental change, e.g., the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, the World Climate Research Programme, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program and other such national programs. This NATO Workshop, entitled ''The Science of Global Environmental Change," focused on the state of knowledge in global change science and on assisting the Scientific Affairs Division of NATO in designing a 5-year program of Advanced Research Workshops (ARWs) and Advanced Study Institutes (ASIs) in the area of global change that would make a meaningful contribution to the international activities already underway.

Physical Geography

Physical Geography PDF

Author: William M. Marsh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 721

ISBN-13: 0521764289

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A systems-based approach to physical geography written in an easy-to-understand narrative style that is closely integrated with clear, single-concept illustrations.