Conventional narratives describe the United States as a continental country bordered by Canada and Mexico. Yet, since the late twentieth century the United States has claimed more water space than land space, and more water space than perhaps any other country in the world. This watery version of the United States borders some twenty-one countries, particularly in the archipelagoes of the Pacific and the Caribbean. In Borderwaters Brian Russell Roberts dispels continental national mythologies to advance an alternative image of the United States as an archipelagic nation. Drawing on literature, visual art, and other expressive forms that range from novels by Mark Twain and Zora Neale Hurston to Indigenous testimonies against nuclear testing and Miguel Covarrubias's visual representations of Indonesia and the Caribbean, Roberts remaps both the fundamentals of US geography and the foundations of how we discuss US culture.

From the boundary surveys of the 1850s to the ever-expanding fences and highway networks of the twenty-first century, Border Land, Border Water examines the history of the construction projects that have shaped the region where the United States and Mexico meet. Tracing the accretion of ports of entry, boundary markers, transportation networks, fences and barriers, surveillance infrastructure, and dams and other river engineering projects, C. J. Alvarez advances a broad chronological narrative that captures the full life cycle of border building. He explains how initial groundbreaking in the nineteenth century transitioned to unbridled faith in the capacity to control the movement of people, goods, and water through the use of physical structures. By the 1960s, however, the built environment of the border began to display increasingly obvious systemic flaws. More often than not, Alvarez shows, federal agencies in both countries responded with more construction—“compensatory building” designed to mitigate unsustainable policies relating to immigration, black markets, and the natural world. Border Land, Border Water reframes our understanding of how the border has come to look and function as it does and is essential to current debates about the future of the US-Mexico divide.

In December 2002, a group of specialists on water resources from the United States and Iran met in Tunis, Tunisia, for an interacademy workshop on water resources management, conservation, and recycling. This was the fourth interacademy workshop on a variety of topics held in 2002, the first year of such workshops. Tunis was selected as the location for the workshop because the Tunisian experience in addressing water conservation issues was of interest to the participants from both the United States and Iran. This report includes the agenda for the workshop, all of the papers that were presented, and the list of site visits.

Brought together scientists & resource managers from government, universities, & private organizations in the U.S. & Mexico. Participants exchanged information on existing or potential cooperative projects, agency functions & programs, & issues concerning natural & cultural resource management in the border states. Sessions: ecotourism, recreation & partnership, wildlife biology & management, wetlands & watersheds, flora & vegetation, environmental education, cultural resources; water resources, fisheries, & protection & conservation. Contains 126 papers & abstracts, usually in English & Spanish.

The premise of this book is that careful reconsideration of strategies to achieve water management ambitions, together with more in-depth knowledge on the theories and practices of boundary spanning, could bring solutions for contemporary water problems within reach. The book integrates boundary work approaches, new forms of governance and water resource management to explore frameworks for spanning sector, scale and time boundaries. Structured case studies reflect the experiences and lessons of cooperation and exchange with professional water managers and their projects. Recommendations for boundary spanning in practice are presented, and important contemporary water management themes including flooding and flood policy, water depletion and water restoration are discussed in depth. Incorporating conceptual, theoretical and practical foci to address complexity and conflict in adaptive water management, this book will strongly appeal to academics, researchers and practitioners in the areas of water management, planning and sustainability.