Water by Alice Outwater

Water by Alice Outwater

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Summary

This history shows how human-engineered dams, canals and farms in the US replaced nature's beaver dams, prairie dog tunnels, and buffalo wallows. The author argues that while engineering can depollute water, only ecologically interacting systems can create healthy waterways.

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Water by Alice Outwater

An environmental engineer turned ecology writer relates the history of our waterways and her own growing understanding of why our waterways continue to be polluted,and what needs to be done to save this essential natural resourse. Water: A Natural History takes us back to the diaries of the first Western explorers it moves from the reservoir to the modern toliet, from the grasslands of the Midwest to the Everglades of Florida, throught the guts of a wastewater treatment plant and out to the waterways again. It shows how human-engineered dams, canals and farms replaces nature's beaver dams, prairie dog tunnels, and buffalo wallows. Step by step, Outwater makes clear what should have always been obvious: while engineering can depollute water, only ecologically interacting systems can create healthy waterways.Important reading for students of environmental studies, the heart of this history is a vision of our land and waterways as they once were, and a plan that can restore them to their former glory: a land of living streams, public lands with hundreds of millions of beaver-built wetlands, prairie dog towns that increase the amount of rainfall that percolates to the groundwater, and forests that feed their fallen trees to the sea.
Alice Outwater is an environmental engineer, a consultant in sludge management, and the coauthor, with Larry Gonick, of The Cartoon Guide to Environmental Science.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780465037803
ISBN 10 0465037801
Title Water
Author Alice Outwater
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Basic Books
Year published 1997-09-27
Number of pages 224
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.