Since humans first appeared on the earth, we've been cutting down trees for fuel and shelter. Indeed, the thinning, changing, and wholesale clearing of forests are among the most important ways humans have transformed the global environment. With the onset of industrialization and colonization the process has accelerated, as agriculture, metal smelting, trade, war, territorial expansion, and even cultural aversion to forests have all taken their toll. Michael Williams surveys ten thousand years of history to trace how, why, and when human-induced deforestation has shaped economies, societies, and landscapes around the world. Beginning with the return of the forests to Europe, North America, and the tropics after the Ice Ages, Williams traces the impact of human-set fires for gathering and hunting, land clearing for agriculture, and other activities from the Paleolithic through the classical world and the Middle Ages. He then continues the story from the 1500s to the early 1900s, focusing on forest clearing both within Europe and by European imperialists and industrialists abroad, in such places as the New World and India, China, Japan, and Latin America. Finally, he covers the present-day and alarming escalation of deforestation, with the ever-increasing human population placing a possibly unsupportable burden on the world's forests. Accessible and nonsensationalist, Deforesting the Earth provides the historical and geographical background we need for a deeper understanding of deforestation's tremendous impact on the environment and the people who inhabit it.
A moving tribute to the physical and spiritual properties of nature's richestelement by one of the world's leading soil conservationists.
Mills were built or relocated nearer to the stumpage and the railroad right - of - way and away from the old water - powered sites on the rivers like Saginaw , Muskegon , and Manistee ( Fig . 7.10C ) ...
Provides alternative solutions to such global problems as population control, emerging water shortages, eroding soil, and global warming.
Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skilfully distils in World on the Edge.
Written by world-leading thinkers on the front-lines of global change research and policy, this multi-disciplinary collection maintains a dual focus: some essays investigate specific facets of the physical Earth system, while others explore ...
I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet is my witness statement, and my vision for the future. It is the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake -- and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right.
By linking culture with nature, science with history, "Man and Nature" was the most influential text of its time next to Darwin's "On the Origin of Species."
One of Literary Hub’s August “Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books” | Geek Tyrant’s “The Most Highly Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of August 2021” | Gizmodo’s “49 New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Keep You Turning Pages in ...
Tracing our environmental impacts through time, scientists Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin reveal a new view of human history and a new outlook for the future of humanity in the unstable world we have created.
Journalist Zach St. George visits these trees in forests across continents, finding sequoias losing their needles in California, fossil records showing the paths of ancient forests in Alaska, domesticated pines in New Zealand, and tender ...