Four centuries of colonial extraction lead to severe ecological degradation of the forests and soils of the Atlantic region of Brazil. This article discusses the management of soil fertility and the relationship between agricultural practices and forest stands based on agricultural manuals published in Brazil over a period of more than two centuries.
Times Beach, a former summer resort town for citizens of St. Louis, Missouri, was evacuated due to the EPA’s discovery of large amounts of toxic dioxin in the soil.
The Centralia mine fire in Centralia, Pennsylvania is a massive underground fire that has been burning for more than 50 years. Beginning in 1962, it has since driven away all but ten (as of 2012) residents.
In 2010 a sinkhole in Guatemala City collapsed due to negligent sewer pipe regulations, claiming the lives of 15 people and swallowed a small factory.
The ancient Native American city of Cahokia supported an estimated 20,000 residents at its height and featured scores of earthen mounds. However, by 1400 it was abandoned.
Dirt! The Movie takes a humorous and substantial look into the history and current state of the living organic matter that we come from and will later return to.
Brian Donahue offers an innovative, accessible, and authoritative history of the early farming practices of Concord, Massachusetts.
Most contributors to Agrarmodernisierung und Ökologische Folgen deal with the ecological consequences of farming and agriculture in twentieth-century Germany.
Stoll traces the origins of nineteenth-century conservation, which grew out of a rich and heated discussion, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, about soil fertility, plant nutrition, and livestock management. More fundamental than any other resource, soil “became the focal point for a conception of nature as strictly limited.” The problem gave rise to a major disagreement about the wisdom of territorial expansion.
