Environmental Geography: Science, Land Use, and Earth Systems

By John Grossa, William M. Marsh, John Grossa

Book Overview

Revised

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471482803
• ISBN13: 9780471482802
• Release Date: August 1970
• Publisher: Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 2.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.7" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

uses global environmental problems to drive the narrative

Maybe it is fitting that the book starts off by confronting a possible global environmental crisis of the 21st century. The limits to growth of the human population are studied. This leads immediately to the idea of a maximum carrying capacity of the globe. The authors use this to segue into the rest of the book. Discussing in part the notion of sustainable land use, and by trying to properly account, in a bookkeeping sense, for the pollution costs of industry and of individual lifestyles. We see that more efficient use of raw materials is necessary, along with expanded recycling. Later on, the book goes into important topics like human population trends and temporal and spatial variations in how people are scattered throughout the world. Energy generation is another key idea. Fossil fuels are the most important, but alternatives like nuclear and solar are mooted. If you compare this text to others on geography written in the 90s, what you'll find is that there is now a sharper focus on global environmental problems. Traditional texts in geography tend to take a more didactic approach. The appeal of the new book is that it can better grab the student's attention by its relevance.