What Shapes The Land

Amazing photographs give young readers a fun-filled look at what makes Earth so beautiful. Topics include what are landforms, how different landforms are created, a look at land-shapers--wind, water, fire, and ice, different kinds of erosion, how erosion shapes the land, and how some animals form islands.

Learn all about landforms, or different shapes of land on the Earth.

Explains how contours of the land are sculptured by violent phenomena such as landslides, as well as gradually eroded by chemical and mechanical weathering.

"This books introduces young readers to how water changes the Earth's surface"--

Not far from Seattle skyscrapers live 150-year-old clams, more than 250 species of fish, and underwater kelp forests as complex as any terrestrial ecosystem. For millennia, vibrant Coast Salish communities have lived beside these waters dense with nutrient-rich foods, with cultures intertwined through exchanges across the waterways. Transformed by settlement and resource extraction, Puget Sound and its future health now depend on a better understanding of the region’s ecological complexities. Focusing on the area south of Port Townsend and between the Cascade and Olympic mountains, Williams uncovers human and natural histories in, on, and around the Sound. In conversations with archaeologists, biologists, and tribal authorities, Williams traces how generations of humans have interacted with such species as geoducks, salmon, orcas, rockfish, and herring. He sheds light on how warfare shaped development and how people have moved across this maritime highway, in canoes, the mosquito fleet, and today’s ferry system. The book also takes an unflinching look at how the Sound’s ecosystems have suffered from human behavior, including pollution, habitat destruction, and the effects of climate change. Witty, graceful, and deeply informed, Homewaters weaves history and science into a fascinating and hopeful narrative, one that will introduce newcomers to the astonishing life that inhabits the Sound and offers longtime residents new insight into and appreciation of the waters they call home. A Michael J. Repass Book

On Earth, nothing is still. Mountains rise and fall. Tides ebb and flow. Even the continents themselves are on the move. Beneath the surface, a nuclear engine powers earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the shifting of continents. Above ground, the sun causes the wind to howl, rain to pour, rivers to churn, and oceans to swell with waves. Processes That Shape the Earth surveys these forces and the ways they sculpt the planet. The modern theory of plate tectonics is introduced, along with other pertinent topics in physical geology. Several chapters add relevant historical context, presenting readers with fascinating discussions of Earth's origin, its history over billions of years, and the recent changes that have resulted from human activity.

Rural communities depend on the health of the agrarian cultures that compose them. These cultures grow out of the symbiotic relationship between a particular landscape and the human community that lives on and uses the land. Agrarian cultures had their origin in the development of agriculture and gave birth to the civilizations and empires of history. Based on the exercise of hierarchical power characteristic of their nature, empires and civilizations are always a threat to the welfare of their agrarian cultures, that by nature tend to be local, relational, reciprocal, and ecological. This is the story of the three Anabaptist agrarian cultures--Swiss German, Low German, and Hutterian--of the Freeman, South Dakota, rural community, and their sojourn within the empires of civilization through the centuries. More specifically, this is the story of their birth, growth, maturation, and death (or rebirth?) in the particular landscape of the Great Plains to which they came from Russia in the 1870s. Here we see the agrarian cultures' struggle to adapt to the new environment of the Great Plains and to maintain their unique identity while living within American society. This is the drama of a rural community's life cycle!

Each book in this exciting series introduces a particular landform on Earth or a force that affects the planet. Simple text describes what it is, how it is formed, and what effects it might have on the earth. Children will be drawn to the spectacular photos which help reinforce the informative text.