Some 40 percent of North Americans live in homes built prior to 1940, and when it comes time to remodel or restore our older homes, homeowners and contractors can find themselves lost in a morass of wildly divergent information and opinion. With Green Restorations , author Aaron Lubeck brings his expertise as a restoration contractor and preservation consultant to this first-of-its-kind guide, leading the reader through the steps for restoring historic building using sustainable practices and green building techniques. In a readily accessible room-by-room and system-by-system format, Green Restorations covers rehabilitation and remodelling questions applicable to old homes, focusing on the core techniques and debates often seen in practice. Here you'll find the answers to restoration questions, such as: Is sealing my old crawl space a good idea? Should I replace or rehabilitate my windows? Are there historic aspects of my home I need to preserve and what can I change? What are the cultural, environmental and financial implications of my proposed changes? Do residential historic tax credits apply to my home and how can I access them? Written in such a way as to be accessible for homeowners but technical enough for contractors, this book will appeal to anyone trying to green an older home while preserving its historic and cultural significance.

This book explores the leadership of state and federal environmental agencies and local environmental groups in restoring the degraded rivers that flow into North America’s Great Lakes and other sites in the northeastern industrial corridor of the US. Robinson examines twenty of the forty-eight sites included in the Areas of Concern Program of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the US. These twenty include heavily urbanized locales such as those along the River Rouge and Detroit River, but also more pristine locales such as the St. Louis River that flows through Duluth. Additionally, Robinson examines challenging river restorations within the northeastern industrial corridor which are led by effective local environmental advocacy organizations: the Penobscot Nation of Indigenous People, the Mystic River Watershed Association, and the Housatonic River Valley Association. All of these river restorations are led and managed by the environmental experts of (i) state and federal agencies, (ii) academia, and (iii) environmental NGOs. Local restorations of industrially degraded water bodies now compose a significant segment of the environmental movement and, ultimately, Robinson demonstrates that local environmental advocacy organizations can help marshal state and local funding for those efforts.

Aesthetic dentistry has become increasingly important to dentists and their patients. This book is designed as a springboard to assist clinicians in developing the aesthetic potential of restorative procedures. The book marries evidence-based principles with handy hints and tips the author has distilled from years of clinical experience. This combination of scientific principles with ‘real world’ practice will boost the confidence of budding aesthetic practitioners and clinical dental students. The book focuses on the principles of aesthetic work across the dentist's repertoire, rather than concentrating on one particular technique. For this reason, it will add value to the range of daily restorative work in the dental surgery.

What is a natural habitat? Who can define what is natural when species and ecosystems constantly change over time, with or without human intervention? When a polluted river or degraded landscape is restored from its damaged state, what is the appropriate outcome? With climate change now threatening greater disruption to the stability of ecosystems, how should restoration ecologists respond? Ecological Restoration and Environmental Change addresses and challenges some of these issues which question the core values of the science and practice of restoration ecology. It analyzes the paradox arising from the desire to produce ecological restorations that fit within an historical ecological context, produce positive environmental benefits and also result in landscapes with social meaning. Traditionally restorationists often felt that by producing restorations that matched historic ecosystems they were following nature's plans and human agency played only a small part in restoration. But the author shows that in reality the process of restoration has always been defined by human choices. He examines the development of restoration practice, especially in North America, Europe and Australia, in order to describe different models of restoration with respect to balancing ecological benefit and cultural value. He develops ways to balance more actively these differing areas of concern while planning restorations. The book debates in detail how coming global climate change and the development of novel ecosystems will force us to ask new questions about what we mean by good ecological restoration. When the environment is constantly shifting, restoration to maintain biodiversity, local species, and ecosystem functions becomes even more challenging. It is likely that in the future ecological restoration will become a never-ending, continuously evolving process.

With greater public awareness of the need for energy independence, the issue of how we can make our existing homes more resource efficient is becoming ever more critical. Residential buildings make up a large fraction of our energy needs, largely due to heating and air-conditioning. So it's no longer enough to simply do the small stuff, like switching to compact fluorescent bulbs, or turning down the thermostat at night. In The Greened-House Effect, author Jeff Wilson brings his twenty-five years of construction experience and knowledge of home building to bear on making our current houses cleaner, greener, and healthier. Think of a deep-energy retrofit (DER) as a "home makeover" - one that represents a significant investment, but that saves money from the get-go by capturing the energy you "drop on the ground" every month, every year, through inefficiency, poor design, or simply living in a typical older home. Using his own family's DER of their 1942 home as a prime example, Wilson weaves a readable narrative at a practical, hammer-and-nail level. He presents the solutions to our building and energy problems, making them seem possible for average homeowners and small contractors by offering the right set of information, skills, and materials. More technical information is presented in sidebars and graphs, and numerous color photos illustrate the process, including: Testing the energy efficiency of your home and learning where improvements need to be made Issues of local building codes and regulations Financing and paying for a DER Major components of the DER, such as roofs, exterior walls, basements, and home systems Wilson's building experience, along with his lifelong passion for energy issues, all come together to form an inspirational, can-do approach to making our neighborhood, our community, our nation, and our world a better place - one home at a time.