1.1 What lessons can we learn from a vanished Viking society?
1.2 Environmental science is all encompassing.
1.3 The Greenland Vikings’ demise was caused by natural events and human choices.
1.4 Responding to environmental problems and working with neighbours help a society cope with changes.
1.5 Humans are an environmental force that impacts Earth’s ecosystems.
1.6 Human societies can become more sustainable.
1.7 Humanity faces some challenges in dealing with environmental issues.
1.8 Understanding The Issue
1.9 Analyzing The Science
1.10 Evaluating New Information
1.11 Making Connections
2.1 Solving the mystery of disappearing ozone
2.2 Science gives us tools to observe the natural world.
2.3 The scientific view of CFCs did not change overnight.
2.4 The scientific method systematically rules out explanations.
2.5 Different types of studies amass a body of evidence.
2.6 The international community got together to meet the problem head on.
2.7 Understanding The Issue
2.8 Analyzing The Science
2.9 Evaluating New Information
2.10 Making Connections
3.1 On the trail of chemicals in our everyday lives
3.2 We live in an environment full of toxic substances.
3.3 Regulation happens even in the face of change.
3.4 Information sources vary in quality and intent.
3.5 What are the dangers presented by toxic substances and how do we determine safe exposure levels?
3.6 Endocrine disruptors cause big problems at small doses.
3.7 Critical thinking skills give us the tools to uncover logical fallacies in arguments or claims.
3.8 Risk assessments help determine safe exposure levels.
3.9 Understanding The Issue
3.10 Analyzing The Science
3.11 Evaluating New Information
3.12 Making Connections
4.1 A country faces the outcomes of radical population control
4.2 Human populations grew slowly at first and then at a much faster rate in recent years.
4.3 Fertility rates are affected by a variety of factors.
4.4 Factors that decrease the death rate can also decrease overall population growth rates.
4.5 The age and gender composition of a population affects its potential for growth.
4.6 Carrying capacity: is zero population growth enough?
4.7 What awaits China’s generation of Little Emperors?
4.8 Understanding The Issue
4.9 Analyzing The Science
4.10 Evaluating New Information
4.11 Making Connections
5.1 Successful businesses take a chance on going green
5.2 Businesses and individuals impact the environment with their economic decisions.
5.3 Mainstream economics supports some actions that are not sustainable.
5.4 There are tactics for achieving sustainability.
5.5 Understanding The Issue
5.6 Analyzing The Science
5.7 Evaluating New Information
5.8 Making Connections
6.1 A desert experiment gone awry
6.2 Organisms and their habitats form complex systems.
6.3 Living things survive within a specific range of environmental conditions.
6.4 Nutrients such as carbon cycle through ecosystems.
6.5 Ecosystems are complicated, but learning how they function will help us restore degraded ones.
6.6 Understanding The Issue
6.7 Analyzing The Science
6.8 Evaluating New Information
6.9 Making Connections
7.1 Endangered grey wolves return to the American West
7.2 Populations fluctuate in size and have varied distributions.
7.3 Populations display various patterns of growth.
7.4 A variety of factors affect population growth.
7.5 The loss of the wolf emphasized the importance of an ecosystem’s top predator.
7.6 Understanding The Issue
7.7 Analyzing The Science
7.8 Evaluating New Information
7.9 Making Connections
8.1 A forest is more than just its trees
8.2 All the pieces of the ecological community puzzle are connected
8.3 Matter and energy move through a community via the food web
8.4 The Acadian forest is shaped by biotic and abiotic forces
8.5 Relationships are crucial in an ecological community
8.6 Restoration ecologists can help ecosystems recover
8.7 Community composition naturally changes over time
8.8 Understanding The Issue
8.9 Analyzing The Science
8.10 Evaluating New Information
8.11 Making Connections
9.1 Will the bark of an ordinary tree in Samoa become a cure for cancer?
9.2 Biodiversity benefits humans and other species.
9.3 Plants gain medicinal qualities as they adapt to other species.
9.4 There are many different ways to protect and enhance biodiversity.
9.5 Biodiversity is proving invaluable in the search for cures.
9.6 Understanding The Issue
9.7 Analyzing The Science
9.8 Evaluating New Information
9.9 Making Connections
10.1 Finding the missing birds of Guam
10.2 Natural selection is the main mechanism by which populations adapt and evolve.
10.3 Populations need genetic diversity to evolve.
10.4 Populations can diverge into subpopulations or new species.
10.5 The pace of evolution is generally slow but is responsive to selective pressures.
10.6 Extinction is normal, but the rate at which it is currently occurring appears to be increasing.
10.7 Biodiversity is threatened worldwide.
10.8 Humans affect evolution in a number of ways.
10.9 Understanding The Issue
10.10 Analyzing The Science
10.11 Evaluating New Information
10.12 Making Connections
11.1 Repairing a forest ecosystem one tree at a time
11.2 The location and characteristics of forest biomes are influenced by temperature and precipitation.
11.3 Forests provide a range of goods and services and face a number of threats.
11.4 Forests can be managed to protect or enhance their ecological and economic productivity.
11.5 There are several ways to protect forests, but each comes with trade-offs.
11.6 Understanding The Issue
11.7 Analyzing The Science
11.8 Evaluating New Information
11.9 Making Connections
12.1 The key to recovering the world’s grasslands may be a surprising one
12.2 Grasslands provide a wide range of important goods and services.
12.3 Grasslands face a variety of human and natural threats.
12.4 Taking our cues from nature, we can learn to use rangelands sustainably.
12.5 Counteracting overgrazing requires careful planning.
12.6 Planned grazing is tricky work.
12.7 Understanding The Issue
12.8 Analyzing The Science
12.9 Evaluating New Information
12.10 Making Connections
13.1 Aquanauts explore an ecosystem on the brink
13.2 Acidification threatens life in the world’s oceans.
13.3 Marine ecosystems are diverse.
13.4 Can some organisms adapt to ocean acidification?
13.5 Coral reefs are complex communities with lots of interspecific interactions.
13.6 The world’s oceans face many other threats.
13.7 Understanding The Issue
13.8 Analyzing The Science
13.9 Evaluating New Information
13.10 Making Connections
14.1 How one fish scientist could change the way we eat
14.2 Humans rely on protein from fish.
14.3 Laws exist to protect and manage fisheries.
14.4 Scientists study the possibility of growing marine fish indoors.
14.5 Aquaculture presents environmental challenges.
14.6 Indoor fish farming may provide a solution.
14.7 Understanding The Issue
14.8 Analyzing The Science
14.9 Evaluating New Information
14.10 Making Connections
15.1 A California county is tapping controversial sources for drinking water
15.2 Water is one of the most ubiquitous, yet scarce, resources on Earth.
15.3 Like communities around the world, California depends on many sources of water.
15.4 There are a variety of approaches to water purification.
15.5 Solving water shortages is not easy.
15.6 Conservation is an important “source” of water.
15.7 Understanding The Issue
15.8 Analyzing The Science
15.9 Evaluating New Information
15.10 Making Connections
16.1 Brought back from the brink in the 1970s, pollution threatens Lake Erie once again
16.2 When pollutants infiltrate water bodies, things go awry.
16.3 Nutrient enrichment can lead to oxygen depletion.
16.4 The source of pollution can be hard to pinpoint.
16.5 Identifying the types and sources of the pollution is the first step to cleaning up our water.
16.6 You can’t prevent it if you can’t see it coming.
16.7 Reducing pollution means reducing it at the source and preventing it from reaching the water.
16.8 Understanding The Issue
16.9 Analyzing The Science
16.10 Evaluating New Information
16.11 Making Connections
17.1 Are the oceans teeming with trash?
17.2 Waste is a uniquely human invention, generated by uniquely human activities.
17.3 How big is the Atlantic Garbage Patch and is it growing?
17.4 How we handle waste determines where it ends up.
17.5 Improperly handled waste threatens all living things.
17.6 When it comes to managing waste, the best solutions mimic nature.
17.7 Life-cycle analysis and better design can help reduce waste.
17.8 Consumers have a role to play, too.
17.9 Understanding The Issue
17.10 Analyzing The Science
17.11 Evaluating New Information
17.12 Making Connections
18.1 Creative solutions to feeding the world
18.2 The natural world holds answers to some environmental problems.
18.3 Some industrial agricultural practices have significant drawbacks.
18.4 Sustainable agriculture techniques can keep farm productivity high.
18.5 Genetically modified crops may help feed the world.
18.6 Understanding The Issue
18.7 Analyzing The Science
18.8 Evaluating New Information
18.9 Making Connections
19.1 In the rubble, the true costs of coal
19.2 The world depends on coal for most of its electricity production.
19.3 Coal forms over millions of years.
19.4 Mining comes with a set of serious trade-offs.
19.5 Surface mining brings severe environmental impacts.
19.6 Can coal’s emissions be cleaned up?
19.7 Reclaiming closed mining sites helps repair the area but can never recreate the original ecosystem.
19.8 Understanding The Issue
19.9 Analyzing The Science
19.10 Evaluating New Information
19.11 Making Connections
20.1 A massive oil reserve in Alberta raises concerns over the cost of our dependence on fossil fuels
20.2 Oil is a valuable resource but it has many drawbacks.
20.3 Conventional oil reserves are tapped by drilling wells.
20.4 We are increasingly relying on unconventional sources of oil.
20.5 Oil use comes at a great cost.
20.6 Natural gas is another conventional energy resource.
20.7 Oil consumption drives extraction.
20.8 The future of oil sands mining remains unclear.
20.9 Understanding The Issue
20.10 Analyzing The Science
20.11 Evaluating New Information
20.12 Making Connections
21.1 Kids on the frontlines of asthma research
21.2 Outdoor air pollution has been under examination for many years.
21.3 Outdoor air pollution has many sources.
21.4 The air we breathe affects our lungs, especially those of children.
21.5 Travelling pollution has far-reaching impacts.
21.6 Indoor air pollution may pose a bigger health threat than outdoor air pollution.
21.7 Air pollution is responsible for myriad health and environmental problems.
21.8 We have several options for addressing air pollution.
21.9 Understanding The Issue
21.10 Analyzing The Science
21.11 Evaluating New Information
21.12 Making Connections
22.1 Scientists grapple with a shifting climate
22.2 Climate is not the same thing as weather.
22.3 Evidence of global climate change abounds.
22.4 A variety of factors affect climate.
22.5 Current climate change has both human and natural causes.
22.6 Some tree species are already migrating north; that doesn’t mean they will survive.
22.7 Climate change has environmental, health, and economic consequences.
22.8 Confronting climate change is challenging.
22.9 Mitigation might not be enough.
22.10 Understanding The Issue
22.11 Analyzing The Science
22.12 Evaluating New Information
22.13 Making Connections
23.1 Can nuclear energy overcome its bad rep?
23.2 Nuclear power harnesses the heat released in nuclear reactions to produce electricity.
23.3 Nuclear energy has a troubled history.
23.4 Nuclear accidents can be devastating.
23.5 The generation of nuclear waste is a particularly difficult problem to address.
23.6 Responding to a nuclear accident is difficult and dangerous work.
23.7 The impacts of nuclear accidents can be far reaching.
23.8 Will nuclear power play a role in future energy?
23.9 The future of nuclear energy is uncertain.
23.10 Understanding The Issue
23.11 Analyzing The Science
23.12 Evaluating New Information
23.13 Making Connections
24.1 A tiny island makes big strides with renewable energy
24.2 Reliance on renewable energy is a characteristic of a sustainable ecosystem and society.
24.3 To become sustainable, Samsø would harness the power of one of its most plentiful natural resources.
24.4 The most abundant source of sustainable energy is the one that powers the entire planet—the Sun.
24.5 Energy that causes volcanoes to erupt and warms hot springs can also heat our homes.
24.6 Power can be generated from moving water—but at potentially significant environmental and social costs.
24.7 The true cost of various energy technologies can be difficult to estimate.
24.8 Meeting our energy needs with renewable sources becomes more likely when we pair them with energy conservation measures.
24.9 Understanding The Issue
24.10 Analyzing The Science
24.11 Evaluating New Information
24.12 Making Connections
25.1 Will an ordinary prairie grass become the next biofuel?
25.2 Biofuels are a potentially important alternative to fossil fuels.
25.3 Biofuels can come from unexpected sources.
25.4 Turning grass into gas is less environmentally friendly than it sounds.
25.5 Tilman’s experiments showed the importance of biodiversity.
25.6 There is another rising biofuel star: algae.
25.7 There are many reasons why biofuels have not solved our dependence on fossil fuels.
25.8 Multiple solutions will be needed to help replace fossil fuels.
25.9 Despite ongoing controversies and setbacks, the future of biofuels looks bright.
25.10 Understanding The Issue
25.11 Analyzing The Science
25.12 Evaluating New Information
25.13 Making Connections
26.1 In the Bronx, building a better backyard
26.2 More people live in cities than ever before.
26.3 Suburban sprawl consumes open space and wastes resources.
26.4 Environmental justice requires engaged citizens.
26.5 The future depends on making large cities sustainable.
26.6 Understanding The Issue
26.7 Analyzing The Science
26.8 Evaluating New Information
26.9 Making Connections