Book Review: The human impact reader: readings and case studies

The Human impact reader is a 39-article collage concerned with human impacts on the natural environment, with inferred recursive effects – that is, also how the environmental changes induced by human agents can affect human existence in various regions of the earth. There are five thematic areas presented in the following order: geomorphological and surface impacts, soil impacts, water impacts, climatic and atmospheric impacts and biological impacts, with a concluding ‘elegant overview’ essay (‘Has the human species been a suicidal success?’) by Sir Crispin Tickell, an environmental adviser to successive British prime ministers, a former President of the Royal Geographical Society, and Warden of Green College, Oxford. The editor deems the book worthy of university courses on environmental analysis and management, and the reader may also be used with Goudie’s previous book (4th edn, 1994) on The human impact on the natural environment – a thorough review of the subject. The articles in this 1997 reader were chosen because they were key references when they were published and do not stand today as necessarily the latest word on the subject, by the editor’s own admission. Over half of them were written prior to this decade. Instructors in courses who may use this reader can choose to update the arguments made in the articles presented (global warming updates in the IPCC volumes, counter debates on acid precipitation, the role of dams on the environment, updates on soil erosion equations, follow-ups on modern theories on urban climate, updates on the ozone hole debate, updates on air quality regulations and results by region and city, the emerging urban ecology themes, further theories on desertification, the endangered species acts, etc.). The individual case studies presented in Goudie’s reader span a wide range of topics within the five major themes; and, as would be the case in any selection of articles in a reader, present sometimes too narrow a view and what can seem to a student to be a set of disjointed concepts that beg a large amount of intervention by crafty discussion and editing. This is no criticism of this effort, because students will, indeed, learn well the essence of the environmental impacts mentioned in the reader, especially under instructor guidance and with the use of supplementary books and material such as Goudie’s own. Much has happened in the fields of environmental science and management since the writing of many of the articles that are used in this reader. For example, modern techniques of environmental analysis and management, especially using computer technology and satellite platforms (e.g. GIS and remote sensing), should be embraced by students entering this field. The market of the book, understandably a European one in large part, may suffer somewhat with lack of North American examples in some of the themes. However, a wise course adviser can cope with that deficiency if major concepts are presented and integrated in any course in which this reader may be used and analogues to other specific regions are made in an appropriate comparative fashion. In sum, the major premise of the reader is that the consequences of the Book reviews 243