Another excellent wake-up call about the need to prevent the destruction of our natural environment.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution environmental writer Seabrook (Cumberland Island: Strong Women, Wild Horses, 2002, etc.) opens the door to the world that lies between the land and the ocean, the tidal salt marsh.
Told through the life experiences of his friends and colleagues—fishermen, crabbers, oystermen and others—the author's story frequently returns to his main theme: the destruction of this important environmental resource. He quotes Georgia political analyst Bill Shipp: “Everywhere you look, developers are rolling out plans for gigantic subdivisions and shopping centers. Many of these new gold-seekers view the marshlands as Georgia's last frontier—a wild and watery space to be filled, developed and overpopulated.” From the upper reaches of the Altamaha, the river that supplies Atlanta, to the Savannah shipping canal, the flow of fresh water to the coastal plain has been impeded and reduced by hard topping. Coastal towns such as Bluffton, S.C., are being swamped by sprawling development, and changes to the ecology are undermining the marshland nurseries essential to the survival of crustaceans and fish. Seabrook reviews scientific studies showing that “more people—and the secondary development that followed—[has] meant more pollution, which meant more shellfish beds off-limits to harvesting.” He also assesses restoration and mitigation programs designed to determine whether it is possible to recover such habitats once they have been lost. Ultimately, though, it is a social problem, and conflicting needs—e.g., the need for more housing versus the destruction of our maritime environment—will need to be resolved politically. Seabrook includes history, a summary of contemporary scientific research and current legislative initiatives, and he also writes poignantly of his birthplace, John's Island, S.C.
Another excellent wake-up call about the need to prevent the destruction of our natural environment.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8203-2706-8
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
An earnest, sometimes overwrought, and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to link the famed Lewis and Clark expedition to modern environmentalist thought. Botkin (Discordant Harmonies, 1990, etc.), a proponent of the data-heavy New Ecology, sets out to cover the same ground Meriwether Lewis and William Clark did in their 18041806 survey of the Missouri River, maintaining that their careful observations on the native species, landscapes, and human residents of that great stretch of country should serve as models for avoiding ``a glamorized utopian vision of nature.'' He covers the ground in a fashion, all right, but the framing device is contrived. Botkin writes with none of the luminousness of Lewis's journals (``Ocian in View!''), none of the sense of wonder at the vast new country the expedition saw. Instead, he offers sometimes sterile, sometimes contorted observations such as: ``Lewis and Clark, like modern rivermen, were confronted hour by hour, day by day, with the reality of a changing, unpredictable, and harsh nature. It is these rates of change and kinds of changes that must be our guide to finding solutions to environmental problems.'' Botkin's decision to cut his text into subheaded, scatterburst, short discussions yields an argument that flows as choppily as the lower Missouri. In that brisk seen-this-done-that approach, simple fact too often stands in the place of reasoned observation, and statements of the obvious are offered as profundities. Botkin does hit, now and again, on meaty matters, as when he observes that even as our cartographic techniques have grown ever more sophisticated, it is harder and harder to buy a US Geological Survey topographic map, and his longish discussion of salmon ecology is worthy of a book in itself. Botkin's forays, too, into the mismanagement of our national resources are well taken. But in the end there are too many asides here, and too little matter. (maps, not seen) (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Pub Date: May 3, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14048-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this sturdy if at times tortured field report cum memoir of a geochemical visit to a series of ice-covered lakes in Antarctica, Green takes measure not just of calcium, phosphate, and magnesium, but of his life and the mystery of nature as well. The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica host a string of lakes with which Green (Chemistry/Miami Univ., Ohio) has become mesmerized. What are their origins, what do they have to say about the nature of weathering and mineral transport, and what about those strange temperature inversions? Chemistry is Green's passion, and it is not only the chemistry of the lake and laboratory that we get in spades, but a pleasurable poke through the history of the science as well: Dalton and Rutherford, Einstein and Bohr, and dozens more. These asides nicely clarify his arcane fieldwork. Shedding further light are finely honed flashes of pure science writing—his discourse on the physical behavior of water is handled with impressive dexterity, as are the explanations of conductivity units and Klemmerer readings (both important aspects of his lake studies). While it may be forgiven that such a sere, remote landscape conjures repeat visits to Green's family history, it is when Green gets mystical that he crashes through the thin ice of natura poetica. Readers are informed that ``the maple seed glides like a wooded blade in whispers from the parent tree,'' and that water ``punctuates waking and dream with longing.'' Say what? Such stuff is a squandering of Green's obvious narrative talents—his depiction of life at base camp is so grungily immediate, you can almost smell the body odor—and diminishes much of the pleasure this book otherwise has to offer. The clear south polar light, working its magic on Green's science writing, should have revealed to him that it was not his destiny to be bard of the crystal desert.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-58759-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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