251 books match the query 'Environmental conditions' and 12 start with m

cover of Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ

Making Peace with Nature

Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ

Eleana J. Kim

Duke University Press, 2022

The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has been off-limits to human habitation for nearly seventy years, and in that time, biodiverse forms of life have flourished in and around the DMZ as beneficiaries of an unresolved war. In Making Peace with Nature Eleana J. Kim shows how a closer examination of the DMZ in South Korea reveals that the area’s biodiversity is inseparable from scientific practices and geopolitical, capitalist, and ecological dynamics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with ecologists, scientists, and local residents, Kim focuses on irrigation ponds, migratory bird flyways, and land mines in the South Korean DMZ area, demonstrating how human and nonhuman ecologies interact and transform in spaces defined by war and militarization. In so doing, Kim reframes peace away from a human-oriented political or economic peace and toward a more-than-human, biological peace. Such a peace recognizes the reality of war while pointing to potential forms of human and nonhuman relations.
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cover of Making of an Ecologist: My Career in Alaska Wildlife Management and Conservation

Making of an Ecologist

My Career in Alaska Wildlife Management and Conservation

David R. Klein

University of Alaska Press, 2019

This is an innovative and collaborative life history of one of Alaska’s pioneering wildlife biologists. David R. Klein has been a leader in promoting habitat studies across wildlife research in Alaska, and this is his first-hand account of how science and biological fieldwork has been carried out in Alaska in the last sixty years. This book tells the stories of how Klein did his science and the inspiration behind the research, while exposing the thinking that underlies particular scientific theories. In addition, this book shows the evolution of Alaska’s wildlife management regimes from territorial days to statehood to the era of big oil.

The first portion of the book is comprised of stories from Klein’s life collected during oral history interviews, while the latter section contains essays written by Klein about philosophical topics of importance to him, such as eco-philosophy, the definition of wilderness, and the morality of hunting.

Many of Klein’s graduate students have gone on to become successful wildlife managers themselves, in Alaska and around the globe. Through The Making of an Ecologist, Klein’s outlook, philosophy, and approach toward sustainability, wildlife management, and conservation can now inspire even more readers to ensure the survival of our fragile planet in an ever-changing global society.
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cover of Malibu Diary: Notes From An Urban Refugee

Malibu Diary

Notes From An Urban Refugee

Penelope O'Malley

University of Nevada Press, 2004

In 1986, Penelope O’Malley moved to Malibu, at that time a small community of oddballs and cantankerous isolationists, hoping to find peaceful exile from Los Angeles and a life that had become too frantic and confused. She knew little then of the landscape that she hoped would inspire her—who owned it, what manner of flora and fauna it might support—and she wasn’t much interested. Nor did she give much thought to the people who would become her neighbors. As it turned out, her life on this urban-wildland frontier was very different from what she had planned. Malibu Diary is O’Malley’s account of her years as a resident of this beautiful, beleaguered Southern California coastal community. Here, a landscape of rare beauty conceals geological and climatic treachery, and human presence endangers a rich but fragile ecosystem. Far from isolating herself from the ills of contemporary urban life, O’Malley found herself deeply engaged in a community where realtors lusted after the magnificent hills and beachfront, Native Americans fought to protect the artifacts of their ancestors, and locals, no matter how resistant to development, were forced to address such pressing urban issues as zoning and sewage treatment. Malibu’s decision to incorporate introduced politics into the quiet village while horrendous fires and floods destroyed property and the natural environment. Malibu Diary combines environmental history, personal memoir, and a meditation on the complicated relationships between humans and the landscapes they destroy. It is also the story of a colorful community, of how change has happened—and why—and what it has meant. And it is, ultimately, the story of many communities where people try to resist development, “assuming little responsibility to ameliorate the effects of our having settled here.” 
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cover of Meander Scars: Reflections on Healing the Willamette River

Meander Scars

Reflections on Healing the Willamette River

Abby Phillips Metzger

Oregon State University Press, 2013

Abby Phillips Metzger’s book of personal stories recounts a forgotten Oregon river, the Willamette, as it was before white settlement. Once a rich network of channels and sloughs, the Willamette today bears the scars of development and degradation.

Yet, through canoe trips and intimate explorations of the river, Metzger discovers glints of resiliency: a beaver trolling through a slough, native fish in quiet backwaters, and strong currents that carry undertones of the wild Willamette. Together with tales from farmers and scientists alike, these experiences lead Metzger to ask whether something scarred can fully heal, and whether a disjointed river can be whole again.

A story of re-discovery as told by a learner, Meander Scars will appeal to readers of literary nonfiction, river advocates, naturalists, and outdoor enthusiasts interested in sustaining healthy river systems for themselves, their children, and beyond.
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cover of Milwaukee: A City Built on Water

Milwaukee

A City Built on Water

John Gurda

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2026

Paddle through the watery history of the Midwest’s Cream City. 

The success and survival of Milwaukee lies in the rivers that meander through its streets and the great lake at its eastern boundary. The Indigenous peoples of the region recognized the value of an abundant, clean water supply for food and transportation. Generations of immigrants, entrepreneurs, innovators, and recreationists used the same waters to travel greater distances, power million-dollar industries, and even have a bit of fun. 

In Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, celebrated historian John Gurda relates the history of the waters that gave Milwaukee life—and occasionally threatened the city through erosion, invasive species, and water-borne diseases. Telling tales of brewers, brickmakers, ecologists, and engineers, Gurda explores the city’s complicated connections with its most precious resource and greatest challenge. You’ll meet the generations of people, from a Potawatomi chief to fur traders and fishermen, who settled on the small spit of land known as Jones Island; learn how Milwaukee’s unique water composition creates its distinct cream-colored bricks; visit Wisconsin’s first waterparks; and see how city leaders transformed the Milwaukee River—once described as a “vast sewer” with an “odorous tide”—into today’s lively and lovely Riverwalk. 

Now available in paperback, Milwaukee: A City Built on Water is the sweeping chronicle of a critical natural resource that has weathered heavy use and flagrant abuse to emerge as a focal point of both celebration and concern in the twenty-first century.
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cover of Mining, the Environment, and Indigenous Development Conflicts

Mining, the Environment, and Indigenous Development Conflicts

Saleem H. Ali

University of Arizona Press, 2003

From sun-baked Black Mesa to the icy coast of Labrador, native lands for decades have endured mining ventures that have only lately been subject to environmental laws and a recognition of treaty rights. Yet conflicts surrounding mining development and indigenous peoples continue to challenge policy-makers.

This book gets to the heart of resource conflicts and environmental impact assessment by asking why indigenous communities support environmental causes in some cases of mining development but not in others. Saleem Ali examines environmental conflicts between mining companies and indigenous communities and with rare objectivity offers a comparative study of the factors leading to those conflicts.

Mining, the Environment, and Indigenous Development Conflicts presents four cases from the United States and Canada: the Navajos and Hopis with Peabody Coal in Arizona; the Chippewas with the Crandon Mine proposal in Wisconsin; the Chipewyan Inuits, Déné and Cree with Cameco in Saskatchewan; and the Innu and Inuits with Inco in Labrador. These cases exemplify different historical relationships with government and industry and provide an instance of high and low levels of Native resistance in each country. Through these cases, Ali analyzes why and under what circumstances tribes agree to negotiated mining agreements on their lands, and why some negotiations are successful and others not.

Ali challenges conventional theories of conflict based on economic or environmental cost-benefit analysis, which do not fully capture the dynamics of resistance. He proposes that the underlying issue has less to do with environmental concerns than with sovereignty, which often complicates relationships between tribes and environmental organizations. Activist groups, he observes, fail to understand such tribal concerns and often have problems working with tribes on issues where they may presume a common environmental interest.

This book goes beyond popular perceptions of environmentalism to provide a detailed picture of how and when the concerns of industry, society, and tribal governments may converge and when they conflict. As demands for domestic energy exploration increase, it offers clear guidance for such endeavors when native lands are involved.
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cover of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.

Mirage

Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.

Cynthia Barnett

University of Michigan Press, 2007

“Never before has the case been more compellingly made that America’s dependence on a free and abundant water supply has become an illusion. Cynthia Barnett does it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida’s best journalists and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the state.”

—Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald

“Mirage is the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida. Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett’s story, but so too do heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris Carr. The author’s research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking water is the new oil. Get used to it.”

—Michael Gannon, Distinguished Professor of history, University of Florida, and author of Florida: A Short History

“With lively prose and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida—one of our wettest states—and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate as it informs.”

—Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters

Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nation—historically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigation—has squandered so much of its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West.

Florida’s parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of freshwater in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard.

Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes.

From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.

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cover of Modern Oceans, Ancient Sites: Archaeology and Marine Conservation on San Miguel Island, California

Modern Oceans, Ancient Sites

Archaeology and Marine Conservation on San Miguel Island, California

Todd J Braje

University of Utah Press, 2010

There is a growing consensus in the scientific realm that the world’s oceans are reaching a state of crisis as commercial fisheries are more widely overexploited and many coastal ecosystems are approaching collapse. A number of scientists and resource managers have argued that a successful understanding of the current crisis can be found through the development of a deeper historical perspective of the ecology of coastal ecosystems and the impacts that humans have had on them. In Modern Oceans, Ancient Sites: Archaeology and Marine Conservation on San Miguel Island, California, Todd Braje works to provide just such an understanding, bridging the divide between the archaeological record and the modern crisis.
 
Using archaeological, paleoecological, and historical datasets from California’s Channel Islands and the larger Santa Barbara Channel region, Braje explores the evolving relationship between humans and fragile island ecosystems. San Miguel Island, westernmost of the Northern Channel Islands, holds archaeological records spanning 10,000 years, providing a backdrop for the examination of changes in human demography, subsistence, and technology over time. Braje’s systematic excavations of five well-preserved sitesranging from a 9500-year-old shell midden to a 150-year-old abalone fishing camptranslate into a long-term case study that enables a unique assessment of the human impacts on marine ecosystems.
 
Modern Oceans, Ancient Sites: Archaeology and Marine Conservation on San Miguel Island, California helps to provide a more complete picture of human sea and land use through time, offering vital information for understanding, interpreting, and managing the past, present, and future of both the Channel Islands and global marine ecosystems. Braje demonstrates the relevance of archaeological, historical, and paleoecological data to extant environmental problems and concludes with tangible and practical recommendations for managing modern marine ecosystems and fisheries.
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cover of Montana Ghost Dance: Essays on Land and Life

Montana Ghost Dance

Essays on Land and Life

By John B. Wright

University of Texas Press, 1998

Montana has been the "last best place" for so many people. A century ago, Native Americans gathered here to perform the Ghost Dance—a last, doomed attempt to make white settlers vanish and bring back the old ways of life. Today, people are still pouring into Montana, looking for the pristine wilderness they saw in A River Runs through It.

The reality of Montana—indeed, of all the West—has never matched the myths, but this book eloquently explores how the search for a perfect place is driving growth, development, and resource exploitation in Big Sky country. In ten personal essays, John Wright looks at such things as Montana myths; old-timers; immigrants; elk; ways of seeing the landscape; land conservation and land trusts; the fate of the Blackfoot, Bitterroot, and Paradise valleys; and some means of preserving the last, best places.

These reflections offer a way of understanding Montana that goes far beyond the headlines about militia groups and celebrities' ranches. Montana never was or will be a pristine wilderness, but Wright believes that much can be saved if natives and newcomers alike see what stands to be lost. His book is a wake-up call, not a ghost dance.

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cover of Mountains of Injustice: Social and Environmental Justice in Appalachia

Mountains of Injustice

Social and Environmental Justice in Appalachia

Michele Morrone

Ohio University Press, 2011

Research in environmental justice reveals that low-income and minority neighborhoods in our nation’s cities are often the preferred sites for landfills, power plants, and polluting factories. Those who live in these sacrifice zones are forced to shoulder the burden of harmful environmental effects so that others can prosper. Mountains of Injustice broadens the discussion from the city to the country by focusing on the legacy of disproportionate environmental health impacts on communities in the Appalachian region, where the costs of cheap energy and cheap goods are actually quite high.

Through compelling stories and interviews with people who are fighting for environmental justice, Mountains of Injustice contributes to the ongoing debate over how to equitably distribute the long-term environmental costs and consequences of economic development.

Contributors:
Laura Allen, Brian Black, Geoffrey L. Buckley, Donald Edward Davis, Wren Kruse, Nancy Irwin Maxwell, Chad Montrie, Michele Morrone, Kathryn Newfont, John Nolt, Jedediah S. Purdy, and Stephen J. Scanlan.

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cover of Mountaintop Mining in Appalachia: Understanding Stakeholders and Change in Environmental Conflict

Mountaintop Mining in Appalachia

Understanding Stakeholders and Change in Environmental Conflict

Susan F. Hirsch

Ohio University Press, 2014

Residents of the Appalachian coalfields share a history and heritage, deep connections to the land, and pride in their own resilience. These same residents are also profoundly divided over the practice of mountaintop mining—that is, the removal and disposal in nearby valleys of soil and rock in order to reach underlying coal seams. Companies and some miners claim that the practice has reduced energy prices, earned income for shareholders, and provided needed jobs. Opponents of mountaintop mining argue that it poisons Appalachia’s waters and devastates entire communities for the sake of short-term gains. 


This conflict is emblematic of many other environmental disputes in the United States and around the world, disputes whose intensity derives not only from economic and environmental stakes but also from competing claims to individual and community identity. Looking beyond the slogans and seemingly irreconcilable differences, however, can reveal deeper causes of conflict, such as flawed institutions, politics, and inequality or the strongly held values of parties for whom compromise is difficult to achieve.



Mountaintop Mining in Appalachia focuses on the people of the region, the people who have the most at stake and have been the most active in trying to shift views and practices. By examining the experiences of these stakeholders and their efforts to effect change, Susan F. Hirsch and E. Franklin Dukes introduce key concepts and theories from the field of conflict analysis and resolution. They provide a compelling case study of how stakeholders challenge governance-as-usual, while offering insight into the causes of conflict over other environmental issues.

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cover of Mythical River: Chasing the Mirage of New Water in the American Southwest

Mythical River

Chasing the Mirage of New Water in the American Southwest

Melissa L. Sevigny

University of Iowa Press, 2016

In a lyrical mix of natural science, history, and memoir, Melissa L. Sevigny ponders what it means to make a home in the American Southwest at a time when its most essential resource, water, is overexploited and undervalued. Mythical River takes the reader on a historical sojourn into the story of the Buenaventura, an imaginary river that led eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers, fur trappers, and emigrants astray for seventy-five years. This mythical river becomes a metaphor for our modern-day attempts to supply water to a growing population in the Colorado River Basin. Readers encounter a landscape literally remapped by the search for “new” water, where rivers flow uphill, dams and deep wells reshape geography, trees become intolerable competitors for water, and new technologies tap into clouds and oceans.

In contrast to this fantasy of abundance, Sevigny explores acts of restoration. From a dismantled dam in Arizona to an accidental wetland in Mexico, she examines how ecologists, engineers, politicians, and citizens have attempted to secure water for desert ecosystems. In a place scarred by conflict, she shows how recognizing the rights of rivers is a path toward water security. Ultimately, Sevigny writes a new map for the future of the American Southwest, a vision of a society that accepts the desert’s limits in exchange for an intimate relationship with the natural world. 
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