Book Title: Natural Resources Sustainability: An introductory synthesis

Book Description

This text has evolved from 20 semesters teaching the undergraduate courses Geography, People, and the Environment and Environment and Society. It is designed for freshmen through junior-level courses at community, junior and four-year colleges and universities in the United States. Focused upon the dilemma of environmental sustainability, geography and the emergent field of ecological economics are emphasized in a trans-disciplinary framework. It provides—in a one semester or one quarter undergraduate course that requires no prerequisites—a fundamental background in the essentials students need to deal with natural resource and environmental issues as an informed citizen while building a foundation for further study..

Through use of conversational language and simple, clear visuals, and by relating technical terminology and units of measure to everyday experience, it overcomes the most common barriers students face in learning from textbooks. A dozen semesters of use, feedback and refinement have produced a text that the vast majority of students rate highly as a learning tool and even enjoy.

The text has five themes structured as a scaffolding. The first theme sets the stage as a drama between human development and a finite planet while environmental history teaching us that this drama has been with us for millennia. The second theme traces the processes through which the Earth generates natural resources, from soil to water to various forms of energy, and how these processes vary over historical time and geographical space. Beginning with population, the third theme explores different schools of political-economic thought—from neoclassical through ecological economics, to political-ecology—on how ‘the economy’ interfaces between nature and human wants and needs. The fourth theme applies the first three to contemporary sustainability problems in land, water, minerals and energy and the fifth theme applies these themes to U.S. environmental and natural resources policy.