Environmental Pollution And Human Habitation

The Environment of Human Settlements: Human Well-Being in Cities, Volume 1 contains the proceedings of the Conference on the Environment of Human Settlements: Human Well-Being in Cities, held in Brussels, Belgium, in April 1976. The papers focus on the environmental implications of human settlements, with emphasis on the well-being of people living in cities. This volume is comprised of 31 chapters organized around four themes: modern technology for cities of today; decision-making for human well-being in cities (including political, legal and economic considerations); urban and land-use planning; and design as a component in urban policy. Ontario's resource recovery program is described, and interstate highway interchange communities as sites of future settlements are considered. The effects of highway noise in residential communities are also discussed, along with the role of remote sensing in habitat; financial and technical management for human settlements; human settlements as sociotechnical-economic processes; how to optimize urban density; and quantitative landscape evaluation for open space planning. This book will be of interest to engineers, scientists, and decision-makers concerned with local, national, regional, and global environmental problems related to human settlements.

Thoroughly revised and significantly expanded, the Second Edition of Environmental Ecology provides new case studies and in-depth treatment of the effects of pollution and other disturbances on our oceans, lakes, forests, and air. New chapters on biological resources and ecological applications have been added, including material on environmental economics, import assessments, ecological monitoring, and environmental ethics. Extensive indexes, a glossary, and a bibliography are included.

Today environmental problems of unprecedented magnitude confront planet earth. The sobering fact is that a whole range of human activities is affecting our global environment as profoundly as the billions of years of evolution that preceded our tenure on Earth. The pressure on vital natural resources in the developing world and elsewhere is intense, and the destruction of tropical forests, wildlife habitat, and other irreplaceable resources, is alarming. Climate change, ozone depletion, loss of genetic diversity, and marine pollution are critical global environmental concerns. Their cumulative impact threatens to destroy the planet's natural resources. The need to address this situation is urgent. More than at any previous moment in history, nature and ecological systems are in human hands, dependent on human efforts. The earth is an interconnected and interdependent global ecosystem, and change in one part of the system often causes unexpected change in other parts. Atmospheric, oceanic, wetland, terrestrial and other ecological systems have a finite capacity to absorb the environmental degradation caused by human behavior. The need for an environmentally sound, sustainable economy to ease this degradation is evident and urgent. Policies designed to stimulate economic development by foregoing pollution controls both destroy the long-term economy and ravage the environment. Over the years, we have sometimes drawn artificial distinctions between the health of individuals and the health of ecosystems. But in the real world, those distinctions do not exist.