A critical and interdisciplinary exploration of our world's continuously urbanizing and expanding coastline. For centuries, cities have grown and expanded onto previously saturated grounds; "reclaiming" land from estuaries, marshes, mangroves, and seabeds. While these artificial coastlines are sites of tremendous real estate, civic, and infrastructural investments, they are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Terra-Sorta-Firma documents the global extent of reclaimed coastal lands, and provides a framework for comparison across varying geographies, cultures, and histories. It renders visible the ubiquity and precarity of urban coastal reclamation in an age of increased environmental and economic indeterminacy. It challenges designers, developers, policymakers, engineers, and urbanists to reconsider the design and construction of land itself, and to re-imagine this most fundamental of all infrastructures along a gradient of inundation.

Land Reclamation and Restoration Strategies for Sustainable Development: Geospatial Technology Based Approach, Volume Ten covers spatial mapping, modeling and risk assessment in land hazards issues and sustainable management. Each section in the book explores state-of-art techniques using commercial, open source and statistical software for mapping and modeling, along with case studies that illustrate modern image processing techniques and computational algorithms. A special focus is given on recent trends in data mining techniques. This book will be of particular interest to students, researchers and professionals in the fields of earth science, applied geography, and those in the environmental sciences. - Demonstrates a geoinformatics approach to data mining techniques, data analysis, modeling, risk assessment, visualization, and management strategies in different aspects of land use, hazards and reclamation - Covers land contamination problems, including effects on agriculture, forestry, and coastal and wetland areas - Suggests specific techniques of remediation - Explores state-of-art techniques based on commercial, open source, and statistical software for mapping and modeling using modern image processing techniques and computational algorithm

Land Restoration: Reclaiming Landscapes for a Sustainable Future provides a holistic overview of land degradation and restoration in that it addresses the issue of land restoration from the scientific and practical development points of view. Furthermore, the breadth of chapter topics and contributors cover the topic and a wealth of connected issues, such as security, development, and environmental issues. The use of graphics and extensive references to case studies also make the work accessible and encourage it to be used for reference, but also in active field-work planning. Land Restoration: Reclaiming Landscapes for a Sustainable Future brings together practitioners from NGOs, academia, governments, and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to exchange lessons to enrich the academic understanding of these issues and the solution sets available. Provides accessible information about the science behind land degradation and restoration for those who do not directly engage with the science allowing full access to the issue at hand. Includes practical on-the-ground examples garnered from diverse areas, such as the Sahel, Southeast Asia, and the U.S.A. Provides practical tools for designing and implementing restoration/re-greening processes.

Land contamination is of global concern with many of the world’s industries potentially harming the environment and human health. Along with rapidly changing policy and technological developments, this is an interdisciplinary area in which successful contaminated land management depends on the expertise of and interaction between a number of scientific and engineering disciplines. Reclamation of Contaminated Land takes into account the different groups involved in contaminated land management and offers a flexible learning approach based on practical experience and research. It presents an overview of the general skills and knowledge required, encompassing both general management and regulatory practice and specific land contamination issues. Divided into two parts, Part I discusses site characterisation and the design of site investigations, and the central role of conceptual models and risk assessment in decision making. Part II discusses how risks from contaminated land are managed and the role of different remediation approaches to achieving this. This book is of great value for 2nd/3rd/4th year undergraduates and MSc students in Environmental Science, Environmental Technology, Environmental Management, Geography, Geology, Estate and Land Management. It is also key reading for undergraduates and MSc students in Chemical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering and Environmental Chemistry, as well as professional planners and developers, and local authorities.

“The Earth says, God has placed me here. The Earth says that God tells me to take care of the Indians on this earth; the Earth says to the Indians that stop on the Earth, feed them right. . . . God says feed the Indians upon the earth.” —Cayuse Chief Young Chief, Walla Walla Council of 1855 America has always been Indian land. Historically and culturally, Native Americans have had a strong appreciation for the land and what it offers. After continually struggling to hold on to their land and losing millions of acres, Native Americans still have a strong and ongoing relationship to their homelands. The land holds spiritual value and offers a way of life through fishing, farming, and hunting. It remains essential—not only for subsistence but also for cultural continuity—that Native Americans regain rights to land they were promised. Beth Rose Middleton examines new and innovative ideas concerning Native land conservancies, providing advice on land trusts, collaborations, and conservation groups. Increasingly, tribes are working to protect their access to culturally important lands by collaborating with Native and non- Native conservation movements. By using private conservation partnerships to reacquire lost land, tribes can ensure the health and sustainability of vital natural resources. In particular, tribal governments are using conservation easements and land trusts to reclaim rights to lost acreage. Through the use of these and other private conservation tools, tribes are able to protect or in some cases buy back the land that was never sold but rather was taken from them. Trust in the Land sets into motion a new wave of ideas concerning land conservation. This informative book will appeal to Native and non-Native individuals and organizations interested in protecting the land as well as environmentalists and government agencies.

“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White’s California Exposures.”—Kirkus Reviews Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous. Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.

A lively account of a community working to combat suburban sprawl, and how it discovers how to live responsibly on the land.