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Author: David R. Montgomery
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520933168
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Author: David R. Montgomery
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520933168
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Get Book
Book Description
Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Author: Kate Barger Showers
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821416138
Category : Soil conservation
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
Once the grain basket for South Africa, much of Lesotho has become a scarred and treeless wasteland. The nation's spectacular gullying has concerned environmentalists and conservationists for more than half a century, In Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho, Kate B. Showers documents the truth behind this devastation. Showers reconstructs the history of the landscape, beginning with a history of the soil. She concludes that Lesotho's distinctive erosion chasms, called dongas, often cited as an example of destructive land-use practices by African farmers, actually were caused by colonial and postcolonial practices. The residents of Lesotho emerge as victims of a failed technology. Their efforts to mitigate or resist implementation of destructive soil conservation engineering works were thwarted, and they were blamed for the consequences of policies promoted by international soil conservationists since the 1930s. Imperial Gullies calls for an observational, experimental and, most importantly, a fully consultative and participatory approach to address Lesotho's serious contemporary problems of soil erosion. The first book to bring to center stage the historical practice of colonial soil science and a cautionary tale of western science in unfamiliar terrain it will interest a broad, interdisciplinary audience in African and environmental studies, social sciences, and history. "Showers shows how local people understood that colonial contour conservation methods and road building actually stimulated gully erosion, something colonial scientists failed to realize. Overall it is undoubtedly one of the most important books written to date on any part of the environmental history of Africa. Moreover it stands out in the discipline of environmental history in general as an unusually sophisticated work of great insight and explanatory power."---Richard H. Grove, author of Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 Kate B. Showers is a visiting research fellow and senior research associate at the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, England. She has lived in rural Lesotho and has served as head of research, Institute of Southern African Studies, National University of Lesotho.
Author: Terry Tempest Williams
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374712298
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
Timely and unsettling essays from an important and beloved writer and conservationist In Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams's fierce, spirited, and magnificent essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of democracy. She asks: "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?" We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. Here, Williams bravely and brilliantly explores the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She examines the dire cultural and environmental implications of the gutting of Bear Ears National Monument—sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American Southwest; of the undermining of the Endangered Species Act; of the relentless press by the fossil fuel industry that has led to a panorama in which "oil rigs light up the horizon." And she testifies that the climate crisis is not an abstraction, offering as evidence the drought outside her door and, at times, within herself. These essays are Williams's call to action, blazing a way forward through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new territory—emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert lands exposes the truth of change. What has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming. Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of resistance, and that water can crack stone.
Author: David Montgomery
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786739932
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The salmon that symbolize the Pacific Northwest's natural splendor are now threatened with extinction across much of their ancestral range. In studying the natural and human forces that shape the rivers and mountains of that region, geologist David Montgomery has learned to see the evolution and near-extinction of the salmon as a story of changing landscapes. Montgomery shows how a succession of historical experiences -first in the United Kingdom, then in New England, and now in the Pacific Northwest -repeat a disheartening story in which overfishing and sweeping changes to rivers and seas render the world inhospitable to salmon. In King of Fish , Montgomery traces the human impacts on salmon over the last thousand years and examines the implications both for salmon recovery efforts and for the more general problem of human impacts on the natural world. What does it say for the long-term prospects of the world's many endangered species if one of the most prosperous regions of the richest country on earth cannot accommodate its icon species? All too aware of the possible bleak outcome for the salmon, King of Fish concludes with provocative recommendations for reinventing the ways in which we make environmental decisions about land, water, and fish.
Author: Darcy Pattison
Publisher: Mims House
ISBN: 1629441511
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33
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Book Description
A compelling, kid-friendly, and visually appealing erosion story. – Kirkus review 2021 Notable Social Studies Trade Book list When the dust storms of the 1930s threatened to destroy U.S. farming and agriculture, Hugh Bennett knew what to do. For decades, he had studied the soils in every state, creating maps showing soil composition nationwide. He knew what should be grown in each area, and how to manage the land to conserve the soil. He knew what to do for weathering and erosion. To do that, he needed the government’s help. But how do you convince politicians that the soil needs help? Hugh Bennett knew what to do. He waited for the wind. This is the exciting story of a soil scientist confronting politicians to encourage them to pass a law to protect the land, the soil. When the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing the Soil Conservation Service, it was the first government agency in the world dedicated to protecting the land, to protecting the Earth. Read this amazing story of an unchronicled early environmentalist, Hugh Bennett, the founder of the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service).
Author: Piers Blaikie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317268385
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
First published in 1985. This book examines wide variety of ways in which environmental deterioration, in particular soil erosion, can be viewed and the implicit political judgements that often inform them. Using the context of developing countries, where the effects tend to be more acute due to underdevelopment and climatic factors, this work aims to examine this source of uncertainty and make explicit the underlying assumptions in the debate about soil erosion. It also rejects the notion that soil erosion is a politically neutral issue and argues that conservation requires fundamental social change. This title will be of interest to students of environmental and developmental studies.
Author: Carolyn M. Heighway
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 126
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Book Description
Author: Robert Nisbet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351515462
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
The idea of progress from the Enlightenment to postmodernism is still very much with us. In intellectual discourse, journals, popular magazines, and radio and talk shows, the debate between those who are "progressivists" and those who are "declinists" is as spirited as it was in the late seventeenth century. In History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet traces the idea of progress from its origins in Greek, Roman, and medieval civilizations to modern times. It is a masterful frame of reference for understanding the present world. Nisbet asserts there are two fundamental building blocks necessary to Western doctrines of human advancement: the idea of growth, and the idea of necessity. He sees Christianity as a key element in both secular and spiritual evolution, for it conveys all the ingredients of the modern idea of progress: the advancement of the human race in time, a single time frame for all the peoples and epochs of the past and present, the conception of time as linear, and the envisagement of the future as having a Utopian end. In his new introduction, Nisbet shows why the idea of progress remains of critical importance to studies of social evolution and natural history. He provides a contemporary basis for many disciplines, including sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, politics, and science. History of the Idea of Progress continues to be a major resource for scholars in all these areas.
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416531785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
Author: Paul S. Sutter
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820348090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Providence Canyon State Park, also known as Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon,” preserves a network of massive erosion gullies allegedly caused by poor farming practices during the nineteenth century. It is a park that protects the scenic results of an environmental disaster. While little known today, Providence Canyon enjoyed a modicum of fame in the 1930s. During that decade, local boosters attempted to have Providence Canyon protected as a national park, insisting that it was natural. At the same time, national and international soil experts and other environmental reformers used Providence Canyon as the apotheosis of human, and particularly southern, land abuse. Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies uses the unlikely story of Providence Canyon—and the 1930s contest over its origins and meaning—to recount the larger history of dramatic human-induced soil erosion across the South and to highlight the role that the region and its erosive agricultural history played in the rise of soil science and soil conservation in America. More than that, though, the book is a meditation on the ways in which our persistent mental habit of separating nature from culture has stunted our ability to appreciate places like Providence Canyon and to understand the larger history of American conservation.
