Using the Malheur Basin in southeastern Oregon as a case study, this intriguing and nuanced book explores the ways people have envisioned boundaries between water and land, the ways they have altered these places, and the often unintended results.

Richards shows how humans—whether clearing forests or draining wetlands, transporting bacteria, insects, and livestock; hunting species to extinction, or reshaping landscapes—altered the material well-being of the natural world along with their own.

Presents state-of-the-art research on the impact of ongoing and anticipated economic policy and institutional reforms on agricultural development and sustainable rural resource in two East-Asian transition (and developing) economies—China and Vietnam.