This fascinating introduction to environmental studies explores contemporary issues such as drought, flooding, loss of biodiversity, ecosystem toxicity, and crop failure, while also offering the tools to understand the impacts, alternatives, and possible solutions. This fully updated and revised edition reflects the most current data, profiles the most pressing environmental hotspots both at home and abroad, and emphasizes that being informed is the key to meeting environmental challenges and affecting positive change.
 
Review
"From a student's point of view, the graphics and full-colour images are excellent. Perhaps the best I have seen in an environmental text. The Internet website associated with the text is excellent." ―Darren Bardati, Bishop's University
"This text reflects the current state of environmental science very well. The material presented within the text is factually sound and...is well-supported by the most up-to-date research available." ―Bill Buhay, University of Winnipeg
"Rather than favouring biology/chemistry/physics as most texts do, or favour the social human geographies of environmental impacts, this text clearly focuses on action and understanding the emerging issues as a reflection of how we manage our impacts and environmental responses." ―Robert Stewart, Lakehead University
"The chapters are written clearly, with lots of ancillary information that can be made optional for professors, or drawn on if it fits their needs. This gives chapters a range of potential complexity and length for the customization to a range of audiences." ―Kate Sherren, Dalhousie University
About the Author
Philip Dearden is a prolific and well-known geographer who teaches in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. His research specialization is in conservation, in particular protected areas systems, and his work in this field has taken him around the world, though his focus has been on Canada and Southeast Asia. Currently Dearden's activity is centred on marine environments and he leads the Marine Protected Areas Research Group (MPARG) at the University of Victoria. In addition to co-authoring the first three editions of Environmental Change and Challenge, he has co-edited four editions of OUP's Parks and Protected Areas in Canada with Rick Rollins. Bruce Mitchell has been an OUP Canada author for over a decade, publishing five editions of Resource and Environmental Management in Canada as the volume's editor in addition to co-authoring the previous four editions of Environmental Change and Challenge. A professor of geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo, Mitchell has studied water management for over 46 years and in 2005 was named a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada and the International Water Resources Association. He received the Massey Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 2008.