A Guide to Understanding Fundamental Principles of Environmental Management
It Ain't Magic: Everything Goes Somewhere
Andrew Manale
Skip Hyberg
9781789060980
220 pages
IWA Publishing
Overview
In this human-dominated “Anthropocene Epoch,” how does one protect and manage scarce environmental resources?
This book uses plain language to introduce the non-expert to the fundamentals of environmental
management, without requiring them to have a solid grounding in the basic sciences. The authors
build upon the reader’s natural understanding of scientific principles to learn how to follow
the consequences of change through natural systems and to ask better questions about one’s
environment. Case studies are provided, drawn from temperate ecosystems and human-altered
landscapes. Two sets of stories are crafted to explain scientific concepts and introduce analytical
approaches, identifying where and how to obtain relevant information. The first covers water
and where it goes and what factors affect its fate, and the second how key building blocks of life
(carbon and the nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus) change chemical forms and cycles through the
environment. The role of soils in the nexus of environmental media is explained. Finally, the authors
describe, and also lead the reader to identify, how humans have altered core processes and to
judge the significance of these changes. The reader will learn how to fix environmental dysfunction
in both private and public lives.