Читать книгу Geography For Dummies - Jerry T. Mitchell - Страница 29

Do you remember a farm or piece of countryside that is now a shopping center or a housing development? Have you ever experienced air pollution or water pollution? Have you ever had to cope with a severe storm, flood, or earthquake? If so, then you are already familiar with environment and society.

Human beings and the natural environment interact in many ways. For example, people play a very important role in shaping and modifying the natural world. Some results of this interaction may be visually pleasing, such as the skyline of Paris, or the terraced rice paddies of Southeast Asia, or the English countryside. But other results may be troubling, such as pollution and global deforestation, or the landscape devastation and human health problems stemming from Chinese uranium mining in Africa. References to human impact on the environment will appear in several chapters, particularly the ones dealing with water (see Chapter 8), natural resources (see Chapter 16), and urbanization (see Chapter 17). Most importantly, an entire chapter will be devoted to matters of environmental quality (see Chapter 18).

And while people impact the environment, environmental phenomena impact people. Climate affects agriculture and other human activity (see Chapters 9 and 10). Landforms and related processes and hazards affect life and property — think how Hurricane Katrina in 2005 upended the entire Mississippi coastline (see Chapters 6 and 7). The geography of water impacts settlement and commerce (see Chapter 8). In a nutshell, relationships between environment and society are pervasive, profound, and often political — and for those reasons will manifest themselves in several chapters.