Includes index.

Preface for instructors -- Learning skills -- Humans and sustainability: an overview -- Science, ecological principles, and sustainability -- Sustaining biodiversity -- Sustaining natural resources -- Sustaining environmental quality -- Sustaining human societies -- Appendix -- Glossary -- Index.

This book is to help instructors achieve three important goals: first, to explain to their students the basics of earth science, including how life on the earth has survived for billions of years; second, to help students to use this scientific foundation in order to understand the multiple environmental problems that we face and to evaluate possible solutions to them; and third, to inspire their students to make a difference in how we treat the earth on which our lives and economies depend, and thus make a difference in how we treat ourselves and our descendants. Provides the basic scientific tools for understanding and thinking critically about the environmental problems we face. This book offers an integrated approach that emphasizes how environmental and resource problems and solutions are related.

College of Arts and Sciences