
Our Environment: A Canadian Perspective, 5th Edition
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This fully revised and updated fifth edition of Our Environment engages students and encourages them to critically evaluate potential solutions to environmental problems we now face. The authors outline specific environmental issues and provide the scientific underpinning required to enable students to understand the complexities at the root of these issues. The authors provide many examples of policy success to help students see that environmental concerns are not insurmountable, and that a sustainable future is something that can be attained. Sometimes issues are resolved relatively quickly – removal of phosphorus from various detergents or replacements for chlorofluorocarbons for example. Other issues such as acid rain can take a decade or more to address. Highly complex issues – loss of global biodiversity or global environmental change – remain unresolved. The text acknowledges that important in moving these issues forward has and will continue to be both environmental professionals and a critically informed public. Team up with Draper and Zimmerman’s fifth edition of Our Environment and inspire your students to create a successful future for our environment.
Features
- *NEW* Why it Matters feature raises important questions about chapter topics and provides students with a critical understanding of why they are important.
- *NEW* Offsets appear throughout the chapters providing additional explanations or quotations that are relevant to the material.
- *NEW* Chapter Debates ask students to think critically about issues related to the chapter topics.
- *NEW* The fifth edition of Our Environment contains significant changes and updates throughout. This edition contains enhanced coverage of the science that underpins many environmental issues. The text now has 18 shorter chapters, grouped into four parts, including four new chapters on Canada (Chapter 5), Managing Ecological Resources (Chapter 6), Waste (Chapter 15), and Environmental Hazards and Human Health (Chapter 16).
- EnviroFocus boxes identify a range of personal interest/impact issues ranging from a list of Canada's special places to proposals to re-wild North American ecosystems, to the challenges in managing the discharge of municipal sewage to our ocean environment and the competition between wild species and humans for habitat that affects grizzly bears in Banff National Park.
- Each chapter ends with a Making a Difference case study that provides not only real illustrations of environmental problems but also demonstrates how people have applied the principles and concepts discussed in the text to the resolution of environmental issues at various geographical scales.
- Chapter Questions at the end of each chapter will engage students in development of observational and critical thinking skills.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Part One: Our Environment
- Chapter 1: Environmental Change
- Chapter 2: Human Relationships with Nature
- Chapter 3: Science and Environment
- Chapter 4: Our Planet
- Chapter 5: Canada
- Part Two: Ecological Resources
- Chapter 6: Managing Ecological Resources
- Chapter 7: Biodiversity
- Chapter 8: Agroecosystems
- Chapter 9: Fresh Water
- Chapter 10: Oceans and Fisheries
- Chapter 11: Forests and Forestry
- Part Three: Commonly Held and Legacy Resources
- Chapter 12: Atmosphere and Climate
- Chapter 13: Energy
- Chapter 14: Mining
- Part Four: Getting to Tomorrow
- Chapter 15: Waste
- Chapter 16: Environmental Hazards and Human Health
- Chapter 17: Cities
- Chapter 18: The Way Forward
- Glossary
- Index