A vivid portrait of how Naval oversight shaped American oceanography, revealing what difference it makes who pays for science.

What difference does it make who pays for science?

Some might say none. If scientists seek to discover fundamental truths about the world, and they do so in an objective manner using well-established methods, then how could it matter who’s footing the bill? History, however, suggests otherwise. In science, as elsewhere, money is power. Tracing the recent history of oceanography, Naomi Oreskes discloses dramatic changes in American ocean science since the Cold War, uncovering how and why it changed. Much of it has to do with who pays.

After World War II, the US military turned to a new, uncharted theater of warfare: the deep sea. The earth sciences—particularly physical oceanography and marine geophysics—became essential to the US Navy, which poured unprecedented money and logistical support into their study. Science on a Mission brings to light how this influx of military funding was both enabling and constricting: it resulted in the creation of important domains of knowledge but also significant, lasting, and consequential domains of ignorance.

As Oreskes delves into the role of patronage in the history of science, what emerges is a vivid portrait of how naval oversight transformed what we know about the sea. It is a detailed, sweeping history that illuminates the ways funding shapes the subject, scope, and tenor of scientific work, and it raises profound questions about the purpose and character of American science. What difference does it make who pays? The short answer is: a lot.

Traces a commonplace average—sea level—from its origins in charting land to its emergence as a symbol of global warming.
 
News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and coastal communities. The baseline for these measurements—sea level—may seem unremarkable, a long-familiar zero point for altitude. But as Wilko Graf von Hardenberg reveals, the history of defining and measuring sea level is intertwined with national ambitions, commercial concerns, and shifting relationships between people and the ocean.
 
Sea Level provides a detailed and innovative account of how mean sea level was first defined, how it became the prime reference point for surveying and cartography, and how it emerged as a powerful mark of humanity’s impact on the earth. With Hardenberg as our guide, we traverse the muddy spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and the Himalayan foothills. Born out of Enlightenment studies of physics and quantification, sea level became key to state-sponsored public works, colonial expansion, Cold War development of satellite technologies, and recognizing the climate crisis. Mean sea level, Hardenberg reveals, is not a natural occurrence—it has always been contingent, the product of people, places, politics, and evolving technologies. As global warming transforms the globe, Hardenberg reminds us that a holistic understanding of the ocean and its changes requires a multiplicity of reference points.
 
A fascinating story that revises our assumptions about land and ocean alike, Sea Level calls for a more nuanced understanding of this baseline, one that allows for new methods and interpretations as we navigate an era of unstable seas.

Sailing across time and geography, the imaginary and the real, The Sea chronicles the many physical and cultural meanings of the watery abyss.
 
This book explores the sea and its meanings from ancient myths to contemporary geopolitics, from Atlantis to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. Richard Hamblyn traces a cultural and geographical journey from estuary to abyss, beginning with the topographies of the shoreline and ending with the likely futures of our maritime environments. Along the way he considers the sea as a site of work and endurance; of story and song; of language, leisure, and longing. By meditating on the sea as both a physical and a cultural presence, the book shines new light on the sea and its indelible place in the human imagination.

A continuing, comprehensive and timely survey of the state of knowledge of ocean science, this distinguished series provides an overview of research frontiers as ocean science progresses. Areas covered include physical, biological, and chemical oceanography, marine geology, and geophysics and the interactions of the oceans with the atmosphere, the solid earth, and ice. Because ocean science is evolving so rapidly, straining the boundaries of traditional sub-disciplines, interdisciplinary topics have a special place in this series--including those topics related to the application of ocean science, for example, to ocean technology, marine operations, and the resources of the sea. As a treatise on advances and new developments, each topical volume starts with fundamentals and covers recent progress, so as to provide a balanced account of how oceanography is evolving.

Previous volumes (1-12) in the series are now available from Harvard University Press.

In the manifold, multidisciplinary efforts of science to understand and manage our planet, contemporary ocean science plays an essential role. Volumes 13 and 14 of the series The Sea focus on two of the most important components in the interdisciplinary field of ocean science today--the coastal ocean and its interactions with the deep sea, and coupled physical-biogeochemical and ecosystem dynamics.

Comprehensive, definitive studies, these volumes chart the real progress being made by ocean scientists in achieving lasting scientific understanding; specifically, they address issues surrounding significant applications--for coastal regions and in general--such as: the development of monitoring and prediction systems; functionality and stability of ecosystems; eutrophication; harmful algae blooms; habitat modification; and regime shift.

Intended as companion volumes to Volumes 10 and 11 on physical coastal oceanography, these studies of the global coastal ocean continue the series' overall effort to encourage and facilitate coastal and shelf ocean sciences and technology on a global basis.

A continuing, comprehensive and timely survey of the state of knowledge of ocean science, this distinguished series provides an overview of research frontiers as ocean science progresses. Areas covered include physical, biological, and chemical oceanography, marine geology, and geophysics and the interactions of the oceans with the atmosphere, the solid earth, and ice. Because ocean science is evolving so rapidly, straining the boundaries of traditional sub-disciplines, interdisciplinary topics have a special place in this series--including those topics related to the application of ocean science, for example, to ocean technology, marine operations, and the resources of the sea. As a treatise on advances and new developments, each topical volume starts with fundamentals and covers recent progress, so as to provide a balanced account of how oceanography is evolving.

Previous volumes (1-13) in the series are now available from Harvard University Press.

In the manifold, multidisciplinary efforts of science to understand and manage our planet, contemporary ocean science plays an essential role. Volumes 13 and 14 of the series The Sea focus on two of the most important components in the interdisciplinary field of ocean science today--the coastal ocean and its interactions with the deep sea, and coupled physical-biogeochemical and ecosystem dynamics.

Comprehensive, definitive studies, these volumes chart the real progress being made by ocean scientists in achieving lasting scientific understanding; specifically, they address issues surrounding significant applications--for coastal regions and in general--such as: the development of monitoring and prediction systems; functionality and stability of ecosystems; eutrophication; harmful algae blooms; habitat modification; and regime shift.

Intended as companion volumes to Volumes 10 and 11 on physical coastal oceanography, these studies of the global coastal ocean continue the series' overall effort to encourage and facilitate coastal and shelf ocean sciences and technology on a global basis.

Download PDF of corrected version of Chapter 32

A continuing, comprehensive and timely survey of the state of knowledge of ocean science, this distinguished series provides an overview of research frontiers as ocean science progresses. Areas covered include physical, biological, and chemical oceanography, marine geology, and geophysics and the interactions of the oceans with the atmosphere, the solid earth, and ice. Because ocean science is evolving so rapidly, straining the boundaries of traditional sub-disciplines, interdisciplinary topics have a special place in this series--including those topics related to the application of ocean science, for example, to ocean technology, marine operations, and the resources of the sea. As a treatise on advances and new developments, each topical volume starts with fundamentals and covers recent progress, so as to provide a balanced account of how oceanography is evolving.

Previous volumes (1-13) in the series are now available from Harvard University Press.

In the manifold, multidisciplinary efforts of science to understand and manage our planet, contemporary ocean science plays an essential role. Volumes 13 and 14 of the series The Sea focus on two of the most important components in the interdisciplinary field of ocean science today--the coastal ocean and its interactions with the deep sea, and coupled physical-biogeochemical and ecosystem dynamics.

Comprehensive, definitive studies, these volumes chart the real progress being made by ocean scientists in achieving lasting scientific understanding; specifically, they address issues surrounding significant applications--for coastal regions and in general--such as: the development of monitoring and prediction systems; functionality and stability of ecosystems; eutrophication; harmful algae blooms; habitat modification; and regime shift.

Intended as companion volumes to Volumes 10 and 11 on physical coastal oceanography, these studies of the global coastal ocean continue the series' overall effort to encourage and facilitate coastal and shelf ocean sciences and technology on a global basis.

With the recent catastrophe in Indonesia, the topic of tsunamis could not be more timely. This book, volume fifteen in a distinguished series surveying the frontiers of ocean science and research, looks at every aspect of the current science of tsunamis. The world’s foremost experts write about the dynamics of geophysical processes involved in tsunami generation, propagation, and inundation, along with the statistical and geophysical properties of tsunami recurrence, and their application to tsunami forecasts and warnings. Together, their work constitutes the first comprehensive overview of a topic of paramount importance in ocean science today. Coinciding with the recent completion of the United States, enhanced tsunami warning program—which will provide an unprecedented volume of data on tsunamis in the deep ocean—this book will help crystallize a research agenda and foster the study of this critical issue in our understanding of the sea.

In the manifold, multidisciplinary efforts of science to understand and manage our planet, contemporary ocean science plays an essential role. This new volume in the series The Sea advances these efforts with a clear focus on one of the ocean’s more significant deadly phenomena.

With marine ecosystems endangered by a warming climate and exploding human population growth, a critical transformation is taking place in the way the world's ocean resources are managed. Marine Ecosystem-Based Management presents a state-of-the-art synopsis of the conservation approaches that are currently being translated from theory to action on a global scale. With contributions from an international team of experts, this volume synthesizes the scientific literature of holistic practices in ecosystem-based management (EBM), focusing on protecting the marine ecologies that humans and countless other organisms vitally depend upon.

Human uses of ocean ecosystems have usually been divided into separate sectors--fisheries, transportation, tourism, and recreation, for example--and ecosystem boundaries defined as much by politics as geography. This approach is giving way to a broader strategy based on integrated management of human activities in scientifically identified regions of the marine environment. Spanning a range of issues from the tropics to the poles, the authors present analyses of open ocean systems and high-impact regions such as coastlines, coral reefs, and estuaries. Methods of modeling and evaluating marine EBM are explored, as well as the role of governmental and other regulatory frameworks in ocean management and the lessons to be learned from past ecological interventions.

It is now widely recognized that any viable strategy for sustaining the world's oceans must reflect the relationships among all ecosystem components, human and nonhuman species included. Marine Ecosystem-Based Management is an in-depth report of new advances in the rapidly evolving discipline of coupled Human-Ecological Systems.

Utah has long claimed to have the greatest snow on Earth—the state itself has even trademarked the phrase. In Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth, Jim Steenburgh investigates Wasatch weather, exposing the myths, explaining the reality, and revealing how and why Utah’s powder lives up to its reputation. Steenburgh also examines ski and snowboard regions beyond Utah, providing a meteorological guide to mountain weather and snow climates around the world.

Chapters explore mountain weather, avalanches and snow safety, historical accounts of weather events and snow conditions, and the basics of climate and weather forecasting. In this second edition, Steenburgh explains what creates the best snow for skiing and snowboarding using accurate and accessible language and 150 color photographs and illustrations, making Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth a helpful tool for planning vacations and staying safe during mountain adventures.

This edition is updated with two new chapters covering microclimates and climate change in greater depth. Steenburgh addresses the declining snowpack and the future of snow across the western United States, as well as the declining snow and ice in several regions of the world—the European Alps in particular. Snowriders, weather enthusiasts, meteorologists, students of snow science, and anyone who dreams of deep powder and bluebird skies will want to get their gloves on this new edition of Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth.

Praise for the first edition:
“Everything you always wanted to know about how snow forms and how to follow forecasts so you see
how much an”d where is in the book. It’s a must-have for any fan of snow, sure to get you excited about
winter, and give you a bevy of conversation topics for the chairlift ride.”
—Utah Adventure Journal

“For backcountry enthusiasts that find themselves infatuated with weather patterns, snow-water
equivalents, microclimates, and Utah, this book is a dream come true.”
—The Backcountry Skiing Blog

“Steenburgh shares a career’s worth of knowledge in this book. His love of both snow science and skiing
is obvious, and he adds humor and personality to the scientific discussion.”
—First Tracks!! Online Skiing Magazine

“When it comes to snow, the details—both small- and large-scale—do matter. If we all observed our
surroundings with as much curiosity and enthusiasm as Steenburgh, the world could be a much better-
tended place.”
—American Scientist

When viewed from a quiet beach, the ocean, with its rolling waves and vast expanse, can seem calm, even serene. But hidden beneath the sea’s waves are a staggering abundance and variety of active creatures, engaged in the never-ending struggles of life—to reproduce, to eat, and to avoid being eaten.

With Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime, marine scientist Ellen Prager takes us deep into the sea to introduce an astonishing cast of fascinating and bizarre creatures that make the salty depths their home. From the tiny but voracious arrow worms whose rapacious ways may lead to death by overeating, to the lobsters that battle rivals or seduce mates with their urine, to the sea’s masters of disguise, the octopuses, Prager not only brings to life the ocean’s strange creatures, but also reveals the ways they interact as predators, prey, or potential mates. And while these animals make for some jaw-dropping stories—witness the sea cucumber, which ejects its own intestines to confuse predators, or the hagfish that ties itself into a knot to keep from suffocating in its own slime—there’s far more to Prager’s account than her ever-entertaining anecdotes: again and again, she illustrates the crucial connections between life in the ocean and humankind, in everything from our food supply to our economy, and in drug discovery, biomedical research, and popular culture.

Written with a diver’s love of the ocean, a novelist’s skill at storytelling, and a scientist’s deep knowledge, Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime enchants as it educates, enthralling us with the wealth of life in the sea—and reminding us of the need to protect it.

Signs orient, inform, persuade, and regulate. They help give meaning to our natural and human-built environment, to landscape and place. In Signs in America’s Auto Age, cultural geographer John Jakle and historian Keith Sculle explore the ways in which we take meaning from outdoor signs and assign meaning to our surroundings—the ways we “read” landscape. With an emphasis on how the use of signs changed as the nation’s geography reorganized around the coming of the automobile, Jakle and Sculle consider the vast array of signs that have evolved since the beginning of the twentieth century.

One of the world's oldest crossroads, the Sinai joins the great continental land masses of Africa and Eurasia. Its physical geography of rugged mountain peaks, desert plains, and sea coasts was formed by the collision of the two continental plates, while the human tides that have swept across the region over millennia have left an intricate web of cultures and ethnicities.

In this book, Ned Greenwood offers a complete, up-to-date physical geography of Sinai. After an introductory chapter that situates Sinai within world history and geography, he focuses in detail on the following areas: plate tectonics and geology, geomorphology and drainage, weather and climate, soils, and biogeography.

In the concluding chapter, Greenwood considers the human geography of Sinai, including the pressures currently posed by population growth, political extremism, and environmental constrictions on development. He offers a fully rounded picture of the physical environment of Sinai that will be vital reading for everyone concerned about the future of this strategic yet fragile land.

We all see the largest features of mountain ecosystems—the impressively rugged peaks, the clear blue lakes, and the extensive forests—but each of these readily visible features depends on largely invisible creatures and flows of material and energy. Something Hidden in the Ranges draws on a wide array of scientific research to reveal the complex ecology of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and, by extension, of mountain ecosystems generally.

Geologist Ellen Wohl has spent three decades investigating the streams and forests near her home in Colorado. In writing that is free from jargon and easy to understand, she tells the intricate story of how streams provide energy to adjacent forests, how lake sediments record the history of wind-blown pollutants, and how hidden networks of fungi keeps forests healthy. She guides readers through forests at both lower and higher elevations, revealing how trees rely on microbes in the soil, in the forest canopy, and even within individual pine needles to obtain the food they need. Other chapters focus on subalpine lakes, mountain streams, beaver meadows, and alpine tundra.

While scientists, students, and scholars will benefit from Wohl’s intimate knowledge of mountain ecosystems, Something Hidden in the Ranges is written for anyone interested in natural or environmental history. It will change the way readers perceive and think about natural landscapes.

 

A land where some streams ran with gold. A landscape nearly empty of inhabitants in the wake of Apache raids from the north. And a former desert transformed by irrigation into vast fields of wheat and cotton. This was and is the state of Sonora in northwest Mexico.

In this cultural historical geography, Robert C. West explores the dual geographic "personality" of this part of Mexico's northern frontier. Utilizing the idea of "old" and "new" landscapes, he describes two Sonoras—to the east, a semiarid to subhumid mountainous region that reached its peak of development in the colonial era and still lives largely in its colonial past; and, to the west, a desert region that in the twentieth century has become a major agricultural producer and the modern center of economic and cultural activity.

After a description of the physical and biotic aspects of Sonora, West describes the aboriginal farming cultures that inhabited eastern Sonora before the Spanish conquest. Following the conquest, he traces the spread of Jesuit missions and Spanish mining and ranching communities into this land where gold, silver, and copper ores were easily extracted by surface mining. He charts the decline of eastern Sonora with the coming of Apache and Seri raids during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And he shows how western Sonora has become one of Mexico's most powerful political and economic entities in the twentieth century.

For geographers, historians, anthropologists, and economists, as well as travelers to Sonora and its coastal resorts, this lively and interesting book will be important reading.

This remarkable volume presents a panorama of geographical writings from Hesiod to Humboldt, from the beginnings of geographical thought in the Western world to the emergence of topical specialization. It includes a wealth of material from non-Western sources, particularly Moslem and Chinese, that has not been collected before.

The selections are arranged chronologically, and contain geographical theory, descriptions of terrestrial phenomena by early observers, and excerpts from major voyages of discovery. Some are obvious classics: Socrates on the nature of the Earth, Ezekiel’s description of the commerce of Tyre, Columbus’s first glimpse of the West Indies, Buffon on the history of the Earth, and Kant’s geographical lectures. Yet more commonly, George Kish provides a sense of the discovery with such finds as the ambassador’s report to the Caliph of Baghdad on the lands and customs of the Norsemen, the study of the Tartar Empire by John of Monte Corvino, Archbishop of Peking, and Jefferson’s private memo to Alexander von Humboldt seeking information on the American West.

Each section is highlighted by a brief but engagingly written introduction by the editor. Throughout, the unique cultural and professional perspective of Kish is very much in evidence.

Since 1900, the science of geology has grown in a spectacular fashion. Not only have field studies been undertaken throughout vast areas of the earth’s surface previously unexplored or only superficially surveyed, but recent discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology have provided geologists with new techniques of observation and experimentation, and radically new concepts and theories have been developed. This book presents source literature for the most important contributions to this remarkable expansion of geological knowledge. One of the world’s most distinguished geologists provides excerpts from sixty-five articles by sixty-three authors, selected with the advice of more than a score of leading scientists from all parts of the globe. Among the subjects discussed in this comprehensive volume are the constitution of the earth’s interior, the causes of earthquakes, radioactive timekeepers, the interpretation of submarine features and deep-sea cores, the origin and entrapment of petroleum, and crystal structure. Included are articles which led directly to the development of theories of paleomagnetism, metamorphism, cryopedology, and isostasy.

Source Book in Geology, 1900–1950 makes available several papers previously to be found in the libraries of only a few universities, and eight articles translated into English for the first time, of which four are by leading Soviet geologists.

Throughout the four hundred thousand years that humanity has been collecting fossils, sea urchin fossils, or echinoids, have continually been among the most prized, from the Paleolithic era, when they decorated flint axes, to today, when paleobiologists study them for clues to the earth’s history. 

In The Star-Crossed Stone, Kenneth J. McNamara, an expert on fossil echinoids, takes readers on an incredible fossil hunt, with stops in history, paleontology, folklore, mythology, art, religion, and much more. Beginning with prehistoric times, when urchin fossils were used as jewelry, McNamara reveals how the fossil crept into the religious and cultural lives of societies around the world—the roots of the familiar five-pointed star, for example, can be traced to the pattern found on urchins. But McNamara’s vision is even broader than that: using our knowledge of early habits of fossil collecting, he explores the evolution of the human mind itself, drawing striking conclusions about humanity’s earliest appreciation of beauty and the first stirrings of artistic expression. Along the way, the fossil becomes a nexus through which we meet brilliant eccentrics and visionary archaeologists and develop new insights into topics as seemingly disparate as hieroglyphics, Beowulf, and even church organs.

An idiosyncratic celebration of science, nature, and human ingenuity, The Star-Crossed Stone is as charming and unforgettable as the fossil at its heart.

The story of our deep and multifaceted connections to geological matter—the very bedrock of our lives.
 
From small beach pebbles to huge megaliths, stones have been revered, collected, enhanced, sculpted, or engraved for practical and artistic purposes throughout the ages. They have been used to delineate boundaries and to build homes and shelters and utilized for cooking, games, and competitions. This surprising and fascinating compendium of stone facts, myths, and stories reveals the impact and importance of stones in our history and culture. Cally Oldershaw introduces the science in an accessible way and covers the aesthetic appeal of stones, their practical uses, and metaphysical properties. With an eclectic mix of examples from the Stone Age to the present, Stones engagingly excavates the story of this essential matter.

Lavishly illustrated with full-color geological maps, tables of strata, geological cross-sections, photographs, and fossil illustrations from the archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Geological Society, the London Natural History Museum, and others, Strata provides the first complete presentation of the revolutionary work of nineteenth-century geologist William Smith, the so-called father of English geology. It illustrates the story of his career, from apprentice to surveyor for hire and fossil collector, from his 1799 geological map of Bath and table of strata to his groundbreaking 1815 geological strata map, and from his imprisonment for debt to his detailed stratigraphical county maps.
 
This sumptuous volume begins with an introduction by Douglas Palmer that places Smith’s work in the context of earlier, concurrent, and subsequent ideas regarding the structure and natural processes of the earth, geographical mapping, and biostratigraphical theories. The book is then organized into four parts, each beginning with four sheets from Smith’s hand-colored, 1815 strata map, accompanied by related geological cross-sections and county maps, and followed by fossil illustrations by Smith contemporary James Sowerby, all organized by strata. Essays between each section explore the aims of Smith’s work and its application in the fields of mining, agriculture, cartography and hydrology. Strata concludes with reflections on Smith’s later years as an itinerant geologist and surveyor, plagiarism by a rival, receipt of the first Wollaston Medal in recognition of his achievements, and the influence of his geological mapping and biostratigraphical theories on the sciences—all of which culminated in the establishment of the modern geological timescale.
 
Featuring a foreword by Robert Macfarlane, Strata is a glorious testament to the lasting geological and illustrative genius of William Smith, a collection as colossal and awe-inspiring as the layers of the Earth themselves.

This report is the last of a six-volume series in which RAND explores the elements of a national strategy for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. It analyzes U.S. strengths and weaknesses, and suggests adaptations for this new era of turbulence and uncertainty. The report offers three alternative strategic concepts and evaluates their underlying assumptions, costs, risks, and constraints.

In Subterranean Matters, Andrea Marston examines the ongoing history of Bolivian mining cooperatives, an economic formation that has been central to Bolivian politics and to the country’s economy. Marston outlines how mining cooperatives occupy a contradictory place in Bolivian politics. They were major backers of left-wing president Evo Morales in 2006 and participated significantly in the crafting of the constitution that would declare Bolivia a plurinational state. At the same time, many Bolivians regard mining cooperatives as thieves because they derive personal profits from the subterranean mineral resources that are the legal inheritance of all Bolivians. Through extensive fieldwork underground in Bolivian cooperative mines, Marston explores how these miners—and the subterranean spaces they occupy—embody the tensions at the heart of Bolivia’s plurinational project. Marston shows how persistent commitment to nation and nationalism is a shared feature of left-wing and right-wing politics in Bolivia, illustrating how bodies, identities, and resources fit into this complex political matrix.

To understand continental drift and plate tectonics, the shifting and collisions that make and unmake continents, requires a long view. The Earth, after all, is 4.6 billion years old. This book extends our vision to take in the greatest geological cycle of all—one so vast that our species will probably be extinct long before the current one ends in about 250 million years. And yet this cycle, the grandest pattern in Nature, may well be the fundamental reason our species—or any complex life at all—exists.

This book explores the Supercontinent Cycle from scientists' earliest inkling of the phenomenon to the geological discoveries of today—and from the most recent fusing of all of Earth's landmasses, Pangaea, on which dinosaurs evolved, to the next. Chronicling a 500-million-year cycle, Ted Nield introduces readers to some of the most exciting science of our time. He describes how, long before plate tectonics were understood, geologists first guessed at these vanishing landmasses and came to appreciate the significance of the fusing and fragmenting of supercontinents.

He also uses the story of the supercontinents to consider how scientific ideas develop, and how they sometimes escape the confines of science. Nield takes the example of the recent Indian Ocean tsunami to explain how the whole endeavor of science is itself a supercontinent, whose usefulness in saving human lives, and life on Earth, depends crucially on a freedom to explore the unknown.

Given the ubiquity of environmental rhetoric in the modern world, it’s easy to think that the meaning of the terms environment and environmentalism are and always have been self-evident. But in Surroundings, we learn that the environmental past is much more complex than it seems at first glance. In this wide-ranging history of the concept, Etienne S. Benson uncovers the diversity of forms that environmentalism has taken over the last two centuries and opens our eyes to the promising new varieties of environmentalism that are emerging today.
 
Through a series of richly contextualized case studies, Benson shows us how and why particular groups of people—from naturalists in Napoleonic France in the 1790s to global climate change activists today—adopted the concept of environment and adapted it to their specific needs and challenges. Bold and deeply researched, Surroundings challenges much of what we think we know about what an environment is, why we should care about it, and how we can protect it.

One of the greatest challenges facing atmospheric science instructors is helping students link theoretical and mathematical concepts to the real atmosphere. The past decade has been characterized by remarkable advances in meteorological observation, computing techniques, and data-visualization technology. However, the benefit of these advances can only be fully realized with the introduction of a systematic, applied approach to meteorological education that allows well-established theoretical concepts to be used with modernized observational and numerical datasets.

This lab manual is a tool designed just for this purpose; it links theoretical concepts with groundbreaking visualization to elucidate concepts taught in the companion textbook by Gary Lackmann, Midlatitude Synoptic Meteorology, the most current text available on modern weather forecasting techniques. When used in concert with Lackmann’s book and its companion CD of lecture slides, this lab manual will guide students in using contemporary observational and visualization techniques to provide in-depth understanding of fundamental concepts and serve as a catalyst for student-led innovation and application. With topics considered in an order that reinforces and builds upon new knowledge in meteorological observation and analysis, these materials will help students to deepen their understanding of synoptic-dynamic meteorology, synoptically-driven mesoscale phenomena, numerical weather prediction, ensemble prediction, and more, and put this understanding into practice.