Teach students the importance of conserving Earth's natural resources. Students will learn about wind power, solar power, recycling, renewable and non-renewable resources, and more! Colorful images, supporting text, a glossary, table of contents, and index all work together to help readers better understand the content and be fully engaged from cover to cover. This informative, colorful book uses primary sources to captivate readers as they learn social studies topics.
Examines the nature, history, and management of natural resources ranging from soil and water to forests, wildlife, and marine resources. Includes suggested activities and discussion of occupations in the field.
Earth's Natural Resources provides a thorough overview of the subject and details how natural resources relate to individuals and our society. It discusses how the Earth's natural resources form and change over time, how they are extracted for human use, and how we can continue to sustainably use them with our ever-growing global population. The text begins with the basics of energy-giving resources such as oil, natural gas, and coal, as well as alternative energy sources and nuclear power. It goes on to cover the earth's abundant and scarce metals, followed by elements used in agriculture, water and its distribution, quality, and usage. The final section highlights soil composition, minerals, and degradation. In each section, the author discusses the science of the element under consideration, as well as any environmental and sustainability concerns that have arisen as humans have harvested the resources with increasing effectiveness. Key Features of Earth's Natural Resources: -Provides a thorough overview of our natural resources and how society affects these resources -Includes material on alternative energy sources -End-of-chapter material includes chapter summaries, key term listing, student problems, and reference for further reading -Instructor resources include: PowerPoint Image Bank, PowerPoint Lecture Slides, answers to end of chapter problems
The Government of Natural Resources explores scientific and technical activity in Quebec from Confederation until the eve of the Second World War. Scientific and technical personnel are an often quiet presence within the state, but they play an integral role. At the turn of the twentieth century, the provincial government created geology, forestry, fishery, and agronomy services. These new services drew from recently established university technical programs to amass a corps of skilled employees to support their mission: exploiting resources and occupying territory. Stéphane Castonguay traces the history of mining, logging, hunting, fishing, and agriculture in Quebec to reveal how territorial and environmental transformations thus became a tool of government. By helping to define and shape such interventions, scientific activity contributed to state formation and expanded administrative capacity. The lessons that this thoughtful reconceptualization of resource development offers reach well beyond provincial borders.
What are natural resources? And why is it important to prevent natural resources from being wasted? Explore Natural Resources! answers these questions. The 25 projects inspire young readers ages 6-9 to have fun while learning why natural resources are important to all living things and how every child can take care of the earth’s resources through reducing, reusing, and recycling. Kids will read about national parks and early environmentalists, Earth celebrations, and the science behind renewable and nonrenewable resources. With projects and experiments ranging from making a wind-powered car and creating a solar catcher to calculating their water footprint, children will discover that everything comes from the earth. Projects are easy-to-follow, require little adult supervision, and use commonly found household products, many from the recycling box. Through a mixture of fun facts, trivia, jokes, comics, and hands-on activities, kids will Explore Natural Resources! and gain an appreciation of earth’s resources, from its vast oceans to its open skies. Explore Natural Resources! meets common core state standards in language arts for reading informational text and literary nonfiction and is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. Guided Reading Levels and Lexile measurements indicate grade level and text complexity.
Introduction to Forestry and Natural Resources, Second Edition, presents a broad, completely updated overview of the profession of forestry. The book details several key fields within forestry, including forest management, economics, policy, utilization and forestry careers. Chapters deal specifically with forest regions of the world, landowners, forest products, wildlife habitats, tree anatomy and physiology, and forest disturbances and health. These topics are ideal for undergraduate introductory courses and include numerous examples and questions for students to ponder. There is also a section dedicated to forestry careers. Unlike other introductory forestry texts, which focus largely on forest ecology rather than practical forestry concepts, this book encompasses the economic, ecological and social aspects, thus providing a uniquely balanced text. The wide range of experience of the contributing authors equips them especially well to identify missing content from other texts in the area and address topics currently covered in corresponding college courses. - Covers the application of forestry and natural resources around the world with a focus on practical applications and graphical examples - Describes basic techniques for measuring and evaluating forest resources and natural resources, including fundamental terminology and concepts - Includes management policies and their influence at the local, national and international levels
The complex and dynamic interlinks between natural resource management (NRM) and development have long been recognized by national and international research and development organizations and have generated voluminous literature. However, much of what is available in the form of university course books, practical learning manuals and reference materials in NRM is based on experiences from outside Africa. Managing Natural Resources for Development in Africa: A Resource Book provides an understanding of the various levels at which NRM issues occur and are being addressed scientifically, economically, socially and politically. The book's nine chapters present state-of-the-art perspectives within a holistic African context. The book systematically navigates the tricky landscape of integrated NRM, with special reference to Eastern and Southern Africa, against the backdrop of prevailing local, national, regional and global social, economic and environmental challenges. The authors' wide experience, the rich references made to emerging challenges and opportunities, and the presentation of different tools, principles, approaches, case studies and processes make the book a rich and valuable one-stop resource for postgraduate students, researchers, policymakers and NRM practitioners. The book is designed to help the reader grasp in-depth NRM perspectives and presents innovative guidance for research design and problem solving, including review questions, learning activities and recommended further reading. The book was developed through a writeshop process by a multi-disciplinary team of lecturers from the University of Nairobi, Egerton University, Kenyatta University, the University of Zimbabwe, the University of Malawi, Makerere University and the University of Dar es Salam. In addition, selected NRM experts from regional and international research organizations including the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), the Africa Forest Forum, RUFORUM, IIRR and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) participated in the writeshop and contributed material to the book.
The natural resources of the earth – from oil and water to minerals and land – are crucial to our basic economic and social existence. But who is entitled to control, use and benefit from them? Should anyone ‘own’ the natural bounty of our planet? In this book, distinguished political theorist Margaret Moore tackles these questions and examines the different positions in the debate. States claim the right to control the natural resources within their territory. Liberals argue for a system of private ownership rights, including over natural resources, while egalitarians dispute such claims and argue for equal rights to natural resources. Moore shows why these standard approaches to resource justice are wanting, and offers an original approach that examines the different ways in which people interact with resources in order to determine what good is at stake in any particular case. In the context of serious environmental crisis and looming resource conflicts, this innovative and timely book will be essential reading for all students and scholars interested in the environment, property, distributive justice, and future generations.
In this edited open access book leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds wrestle with social science integration opportunities and challenges. This book explores the growing concern of how best to achieve effective integration of the social science disciplines as a means for furthering natural resource social science and environmental problem solving. The chapters provide an overview of the history, vision, advances, examples and methods that could lead to integration. The quest for integration among the social sciences is not new. Some argue that the social sciences have lagged in their advancements and contributions to society due to their inability to address integration related issues. Integration merits debate for a number of reasons. First, natural resource issues are complex and are affected by multiple proximate driving social factors. Single disciplinary studies focused at one level are unlikely to provide explanations that represent this complexity and are limited in their ability to inform policy recommendations. Complex problems are best explored across disciplines that examine social-ecological phenomenon from different scales. Second, multi-disciplinary initiatives such as those with physical and biological scientists are necessary to understand the scope of the social sciences. Too frequently there is a belief that one social scientist on a multi-disciplinary team provides adequate social science representation. Third, more complete models of human behavior will be achieved through a synthesis of diverse social science perspectives.
An introduction to the concepts and tools of natural resource economics, including dynamic models, market failures, and institutional remedies. This introduction to natural resource economics treats resources as a type of capital; their management is an investment problem requiring forward-looking behavior within a dynamic setting. Market failures are widespread, often associated with incomplete or nonexistent property rights, complicated by policy failures. The book covers standard resource economics topics, including both the Hotelling model for nonrenewable resources and models for renewable resources. The book also includes some topics in environmental economics that overlap with natural resource economics, including climate change. The text emphasizes skills and intuition needed to think about dynamic models and institutional remedies in the presence of both market and policy failures. It presents the nuts and bolts of resource economics as applied to nonrenewable resources, including the two-period model, stock-dependent costs, and resource scarcity. The chapters on renewable resources cover such topics as property rights as an alternative to regulation, the growth function, steady states, and maximum sustainable yield, using fisheries as a concrete setting. Other, less standard, topics covered include microeconomic issues such as arbitrage and the use of discounting; policy problems including the “Green Paradox”; foundations for policy analysis when market failures are important; and taxation. Appendixes offer reviews of the relevant mathematics. The book is suitable for use by upper-level undergraduates or, with the appendixes, masters-level courses.