Chapter 2 Environmental History

Highest rate at which a potentially renewable resource can be used without reducing its available supply throughout the world or in a particular area.

• sustainable yield

• maximum yield

• replenishing surplus

View of the earth as a spaceship: a machine we can understand, control, and change at will by using advanced technology.

• geocentric view

• holistic view

• spaceship-earth worldview

Cutting down trees and other vegetation in a patch of forest, leaving the cut vegetation on the ground to dry, and then burning it. The ashes that are left add nutrients to the nutrient-poor soils found in most tropical forest areas. Crops are planted between tree stumps. Plots must be abandoned after a few years (typically 2-5 years) because of loss of soil fertility or invasion of vegetation from the surrounding forest.

• erosion farming

• slash-and-burn cultivation

• open farming

• organic farming

Clearing a plot of ground in a forest, especially in tropical areas, and planting on it for a few years (typically 2-5 years) until the soil is depleted of nutrients or the plot has been invaded by a dense growth of vegetation from the surrounding forest. Then a new plot is cleared and the process is repeated. The abandoned plot cannot successfully grow crops for 10-30 years.

• slash and burn cultivation

• shifting cultivation

• sustainable farming

• open farming

Person concerned primarily with setting aside or protecting undisturbed natural areas from harmful human activities.

• survivalist

• eco-warrior

• sociologist

• preservationist

Use of an ecosystem such as a forest for a variety of purposes such as timber harvesting, wildlife habitat, watershed protection, and recreation.

• limited use

• multiple use

• service use

Use of new technologies such as the telephone, radio, television, computers, the Internet, automated databases, and remote sensing satellites to enable people to have increasingly rapid access to much more information on a global scale.

• reformation and established revolution

• information and globalization revolution

Use of new sources of energy from fossil fuels and later from nuclear fuels, and use of new technologies, to grow food and manufacture products.

• technological revolution

• social revolution

• Industrial revolution

• ecological revolution

People who get their food by gathering edible wild plants and other materials and by hunting wild animals and fish.

• farmers

• hunter gatherers

• socialist

• ecologist

Viewing undeveloped land as a hostile wilderness to be conquered (cleared, planted) and exploited for its resources as quickly as possible.

• spaceship-earth worldview

• Frontier environmental worldview

• Industrial revolution