Download or read book Water in a Dry Land written by Margaret Somerville and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water in a Dry Land is a story of research about water as a source of personal and cultural meaning. The site of this exploration is the iconic river system which forms the networks of natural and human landscapes of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. In the current geological era of human induced climate change, the desperate plight of the system of waterways has become an international phenomenon, a symbol of the unsustainable ways we relate to water globally. The Murray-Darling Basin extends west of the Great Dividing Range that separates the densely populated east coast of Australia from the sparsely populated inland. Aboriginal peoples continue to inhabit the waterways of the great artesian basin and pass on their cultural stories and practices of water, albeit in changing forms. A key question informing the book is: What can we learn about water from the oldest continuing culture inhabiting the world’s driest continent? In the process of responding to this question a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers formed to work together in a contact zone of cultural difference within an emergent arts-based ethnography. Photo essays of the artworks and their landscapes offer a visual accompaniment to the text on the Routledge Innovative Ethnography Series website, http://www.innovativeethnographies.net/. This book is perfect for courses in environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, and qualitative methods.
Download or read book Ogallala written by John Opie and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-08 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ogallala aquifer, a vast underground water reserve extending from South Dakota through Texas, is the product of eons of accumulated glacial melts, ancient Rocky Mountain snowmelts, and rainfall, all percolating slowly through gravel beds hundreds of feet thick. Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land is an environmental history and historical geography that tells the story of human defiance and human commitment within the Ogallala region. It describes the Great Plains' natural resources, the history of settlement and dryland farming, and the remarkable irrigation technologies that have industrialized farming in the region. This newly updated third edition discusses three main issues: long-term drought and its implications, the efforts of several key groundwater management districts to regulate the aquifer, and T. Boone Pickens's failed effort to capture water from the aquifer to supply major Texas urban areas. This edition also describes the fierce independence of Texas ranchers and farmers who reject any governmental or bureaucratic intervention in their use of water, and it updates information about the impact of climate change on the aquifer and agriculture. Read Char Miller's article on theconversation.com to learn more about the Ogallala Aquifer.
Download or read book Wetlands in a Dry Land written by Senior Lecturer Emily O'Gorman and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world's wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and only in the past few decades have wetlands been widely recognized as worth preserving. Emily O'Gorman asks, What has counted as a wetland, for whom, and with what consequences? Using the Murray-Darling Basin--a massive river system in eastern Australia that includes over 30,000 wetland areas--as a case study and drawing on archival research and original interviews, O'Gorman examines how people and animals have shaped wetlands from the late nineteenth century to today. She illuminates deeper dynamics by relating how Aboriginal peoples acted then and now as custodians of the landscape, despite the policies of the Australian government; how the movements of water birds affected farmers; and how mosquitoes have defied efforts to fully understand, let alone control, them. Situating the region's history within global environmental humanities conversations, O'Gorman argues that we need to understand wetlands as socioecological landscapes in order to create new kinds of relationships with and futures for these places.
Download or read book Looking After Our Land written by Will Critchley and published by Oxfam. This book was released on 1991 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the main lessons to be learnt from new approaches to soil and water conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. It presents six case studies, two each from Burkina Faso, Kenya and Mali, where soil and water conservation, based on the participation of the local people, has resulted in some success.
Download or read book Water in a Dry Land written by Margaret Somerville and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water in a Dry Land is a story of research about water as a source of personal and cultural meaning. The site of this exploration is the iconic river system which forms the networks of natural and human landscapes of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. In the current geological era of human induced climate change, the desperate plight of the system of waterways has become an international phenomenon, a symbol of the unsustainable ways we relate to water globally. The Murray-Darling Basin extends west of the Great Dividing Range that separates the densely populated east coast of Australia from the sparsely populated inland. Aboriginal peoples continue to inhabit the waterways of the great artesian basin and pass on their cultural stories and practices of water, albeit in changing forms. A key question informing the book is: What can we learn about water from the oldest continuing culture inhabiting the world's driest continent? In the process of responding to this question a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers formed to work together in a contact zone of cultural difference within an emergent arts-based ethnography. Photo essays of the artworks and their landscapes offer a visual accompaniment to the text on the Routledge Innovative Ethnography Series website, http://www.innovativeethnographies.net/. This book is perfect for courses in environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, and qualitative methods.
Download or read book Dryland written by Sara Jaffe and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sara Jaffe's engrossing debut novel, Dryland, is a smart coming-of-age novel that charts the murky waters of adolescence. Anything can happen when Julie hits the water. It’s 1992, and the world is caught up in the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the Balkan Wars, but for Julie Winter, 15, the news is noise. In Portland, Oregon, Julie moves through her days in a series of negatives: the skaters she doesn’t think are cute, the Guatemalan backpack she doesn’t buy at the craft fair, the umbrella she refuses to carry despite the incessant rain. Her family life is routine and restrained, and no one talks about Julie’s older brother, a one-time Olympic hopeful swimmer who now lives in self-imposed exile in Berlin. Julie has never considered swimming herself, until Alexis, the swim team captain, tries to recruit her. It's a dare, and a flirtation—and a chance for Julie to find her brother, or to finally let him go.
Download or read book When the World Runs Dry written by Nancy F. Castaldo and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning science writer Nancy F. Castaldo gives a riveting narrative nonfiction account of the worldwide water crisis, explaining what’s happening to the world’s water supply, from industrial pollution to harmful algal blooms, and what kids can do about it.
Download or read book Dry written by Ehsan Masood and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water is in the air we breathe and beneath the ground we walk on. The very substance of life, it makes up as much as 60 percent of the human body. And yet, for one billion people there is such a thing as life without water. These are the people we meet in Dry--those who live in the dry lands of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas, eking out an existence at once remarkable and mundane between craggy mountains, near oases, or close to well-springs surrounded by cracked earth or shifting sands. From the ingenuity of the highland people of Chile's Atacama desert who use giant nets to capture water from clouds of fog, to the ancient wisdom that protects the grazing lands of Kenya's Masai, this beautifully illustrated book tells the diverse stories about people in very hot, very cold, or very high places, who spend their lives collecting, chasing, piping, and trapping the water that life requires--all the while taking great care that no form of life, plant or animal, benefits at the expense of another. In a world of finite resources, where the struggle for shrinking sources of water intensifies daily, these stories--collected over three years by photographers, writers, and scientists from four continents--are a source of hope and wonder. This book contains a wealth of information and images designed to further awareness of the vast array of life that is carried on precariously yet proudly on the earth's dryest lands.
Download or read book A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration written by David A. Bainbridge and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dryland degradation and desertification now affect almost a billion people around the world. Tragically, the biological resources and productivity of millions of acres of land are lost to desertification each year because people remain unaware of strategies and techniques that could improve yields, reduce risk, and begin healing the world's deserts. A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration is the first book to offer practical, field-tested solutions to this critical problem. Author David Bainbridge has spent more than 25 years actively involved in restoring lands across the American Southwest. A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration presents the results of his years of fieldwork, as well as research and experience from scientists and practitioners around the globe. The book discusses the ecology of desert plants, explores the causes of desertification and land abuse, and outlines the processes and procedures needed to evaluate, plan, implement, and monitor desert restoration projects. It sets forth economical and practical field-tested solutions for understanding site characteristics, selecting and growing plants, and ensuring that they survive with a minimal amount of water and care. Each chapter represents a guide to a critical topic for environmental restoration; extensive photographs, diagrams and drawings give detailed information for immediate application, and additional resources are included in appendixes. A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration is the first comprehensive book focused on restoring arid regions, and clearly demonstrates that arid lands can be successfully rehabilitated. In addition to restorationists, the book will be an invaluable resource for anyone working in arid lands, including farmers, ranchers, gardeners, landscapers, outdoor recreation professionals, and activists.
Download or read book River in a Dry Land written by Trevor Herriot and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-03-18 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trevor Herriot’s memoir and history of the Qu’Appelle River Valley has won the CBA Libris Award for First-Time Author, the Writers’ Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award, and the Regina Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction.
Download or read book Dreaming of Dry Land written by Vera S. Candiani and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-04 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not long after the conquest, the City of Mexico's rise to become the crown jewel in the Spanish empire was compromised by the lakes that surrounded it. Their increasing propensity to overflow destroyed wealth and alarmed urban elites, who responded with what would become the most transformative and protracted drainage project in the early modern America—the Desagüe de Huehuetoca. Hundreds of technicians, thousands of indigenous workers, and millions of pesos were marshaled to realize a complex system of canals, tunnels, dams, floodgates, and reservoirs. Vera S. Candiani's Dreaming of Dry Land weaves a narrative that describes what colonization was and looked like on the ground, and how it affected land, water, biota, humans, and the relationship among them, to explain the origins of our built and unbuilt landscapes. Connecting multiple historiographical traditions—history of science and technology, environmental history, social history, and Atlantic history—Candiani proposes that colonization was a class, not an ethnic or nation-based phenomenon, occurring simultaneously on both sides of an Atlantic, where state-building and empire-building were intertwined.
Download or read book At the Scent of Water written by J. Gerald Janzen and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On the basis of a study of "east wind" in the Bible -- "whirlwind" in Job -- Janzen proposes that the prominence God gives to rain in Job 38, with its renewal of the parched earth and the ensuing vigor of all forms of life, signals God's response to Job's thirst, heals Job's bitterness, and restores him to a life at the end of which he dies contented. Janzen demonstrates how life-crippling bitterness is transcended and hope in life's worthwhileness is restored in the face of grievous evil. The resolution of the Joban question lies not in a vindication of divine justice but, rather, in God's renewal of Job's appetite for life. Janzen underscores this interpretation with a candid epilogue on his own struggle with aggressive prostate cancer, which enabled him to connect personally with Job's story and to find a fresh and illuminating grace."--From publisher description.
Download or read book Streams in the Desert written by and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Innovations in Dryland Agriculture written by Muhammad Farooq and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a ready reference on recent innovations in dryland agriculture and reinforces the understanding for its utilization to develop environmentally sustainable and profitable food production systems. It covers the basic concepts and history, components and elements, breeding and modelling efforts, and potential benefits, experiences, challenges and innovations relevant to agriculture in dryland areas around world.
Download or read book Ogallala written by John Opie and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-08 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ogallala aquifer, a vast underground water reserve extending from South Dakota through Texas, is the product of eons of accumulated glacial melts, ancient Rocky Mountain snowmelts, and rainfall, all percolating slowly through gravel beds hundreds of feet thick. Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land is an environmental history and historical geography that tells the story of human defiance and human commitment within the Ogallala region. It describes the Great Plains’ natural resources, the history of settlement and dryland farming, and the remarkable irrigation technologies that have industrialized farming in the region. This newly updated third edition discusses three main issues: long-term drought and its implications, the efforts of several key groundwater management districts to regulate the aquifer, and T. Boone Pickens’s failed effort to capture water from the aquifer to supply major Texas urban areas. This edition also describes the fierce independence of Texas ranchers and farmers who reject any governmental or bureaucratic intervention in their use of water, and it updates information about the impact of climate change on the aquifer and agriculture. Read Char Miller's article on theconversation.com to learn more about the Ogallala Aquifer.
Download or read book The Water Is Wide written by Pat Conroy and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2002-03-26 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “miraculous” (Newsweek) human drama, based on a true story, from the renowned author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini The island is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw Island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. Waste from industry threatens their very existence unless, somehow, they can learn a new way. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them, and their school has no teacher—until one man gives a year of his life to the island and its people. Praise for The Water Is Wide “Miraculous . . . an experience of joy.”—Newsweek “A powerfully moving book . . . You will laugh, you will weep, you will be proud and you will rail . . . and you will learn to love the man.”—Charleston News and Courier “A hell of a good story.”—The New York Times “Few novelists write as well, and none as beautifully.”—Lexington Herald-Leader “[Pat] Conroy cuts through his experiences with a sharp edge of irony. . . . He brings emotion, writing talent and anger to his story.”—Baltimore Sun
Download or read book How Vertebrates Left the Water written by Michel Laurin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than three hundred million years ago—a relatively recent date in the two billion years since life first appeared—vertebrate animals first ventured onto land. This usefully illustrated book describes how some finned vertebrates acquired limbs, giving rise to more than 25,000 extant tetrapod species. Michel Laurin uses paleontological, geological, physiological, and comparative anatomical data to describe this monumental event. He summarizes key concepts of modern paleontological research, including biological nomenclature, paleontological and molecular dating, and the methods used to infer phylogeny and character evolution. Along with a discussion of the evolutionary pressures that may have led vertebrates onto dry land, the book also shows how extant vertebrates yield clues about the conquest of land and how scientists uncover evolutionary history.
