Geotechnologies and the Environment: Environmental Applications and
Mana- ment presents an engaging and diverse array of physically-oriented
GIScience applications that have been organized using four broad themes.
While the book's themes are by no means mutually exclusive,
Hoalst-Pullen and Patterson provide an elegant overview of the eld that
frames the collection's subsequent thematic str- ture - Wilderness and
Wildlife Response; Glaciers; Wetlands and Watersheds; and Human Health
and the Environment. Over the course of the volume, the contrib- ing
authors move beyond basic (and in some respects clichéd) landscape
ecology of land use change to explore human-environment dynamics
heretofore not emp- sized in the applied literature. In doing so, the
collection presents a compelling case for the importance of developing
new physically-oriented GIScience applications that reside at the nexus
of social and natural systems with the explicit intent of informing
public policy and/or the decision making practices of resource managers.
Individually, the chapters themselves are intentionally diverse. The
diversity of the approaches, their spatial context, and emphases on
management applications demonstrate the many ways in which
geotechnologies can be used to address small and big problems in both
developed and developing regions. The collection's int- nal coherence is
derived - like the book series - from its explicit appeal to a wide
variety of human-environment interactions with potential policy
linkages.
