As I write this piece in early August, the joys of summer in the Pacific Northwest are all around. I sit with a flannel shirt and wonder if it will get into the 70s today, even though last week's newspapers rattled on about 100-degree weather and oppressive humidity for most Americans. Climate change and global warming seem very far away.

With the exception of France and Finland, most nations across North America and Europe rejected nuclear power following the nuclear accidents of the 1970s and 1980s. Public fears concerning disposal of radioactive waste only fueled the controversy. By 2000, not a single reactor was under construction or planned in North America or Western Europe. Surprisingly, the strongest advocates of nuclear power have been in Asia (Japan, Korea, and China), India, and Eastern Europe.

China is a heavily polluted country: one-third of its territory has been polluted by acid rain, two-fifths of the main water systems are of poor water quality, 290 major cities don't even reach the lower standards of air quality, and “cancer villages” and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) first occurred in China. The environmental crisis takes place just as China has developed its economy and increased its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Why, with greater finances and technical means, is the environment more effectively destroyed than effectively protected? The use of all material things is directed by men; the Chinese environmental crisis—like other environmental crises—is the result of human activities and practice. Notwithstanding the somewhat recently introduced Western ideology, the ideology orienting Chinese conduct is still, in large part, Confucianism and the folk culture of the peasants.

Are young professionals prepared to lead us in solving the environmental challenges of the twenty-first century, such as disaster recovery or global deforestation? Have they learned the basic skills it takes to communicate and work together with different people and cultures? Do they have the inner passion and mindset to be of service to the earth and their community rather than acting in self interest? The nation's universities have responded well in the last decade to become the young professional's preparatory launch pad for lifelong learning. Yet, after they leave school and enter the variety of environmental fields, are their jobs vital?

High resolution aerial photographs have important rangeland applications, such as monitoring vegetation change, developing grazing strategies, determining rangeland health, and assessing remediation treatment effectiveness. Acquisition of high resolution images by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has certain advantages over piloted aircraft missions, including lower cost, improved safety, flexibility in mission planning, and closer proximity to the target. Different levels of remote sensing data can be combined to provide more comprehensive information: 15–30 m resolution imaging from space-borne sensors for determining uniform landscape units; < 1 m satellite or aircraft data to assess the pattern of ecological states in an area of interest; 5 cm UAV images to measure gap and patch sizes as well as percent bare soil and vegetation ground cover; and < 1 cm ground-based boom photography for ground truth or reference data. Two parallel tracks of investigation are necessary: one that emphasizes the utilization of the most technically advanced sensors for research, and a second that emphasizes the minimization of costs and the maximization of simplicity for monitoring purposes. We envision that in the future, resource management agencies, rangeland consultants, and private land managers should be able to use small, lightweight UAVs to satisfy their needs for acquiring improved data at a reasonable cost, and for making appropriate management decisions.

As a planning concept, Smart Growth leads to a dead end. Planners and environmental professionals must help communities work toward a different planning theory predicated on the truth that, at some juncture, growth must stop. Impediments to achieving the necessary steady-state community are political, economic, legal, and ethical. Politically, most people do not want more growth, but growth happens because the pro-development community—buoyed by market forces—lobbies local government for pro-growth policies and because the pro-growth community often misrepresents the consequences of low or no growth. Economically, communities must move toward an economy of “relocalization” that promotes prosperity with growth. Legally, there are no insurmountable obstacles to the necessary (and inevitable) development of a steady-state economy that does not grow in quantity. Ethically, we must recognize that preserving a place from over-development is the right thing to do.

Chemical contaminants—such as explosives from unexploded ordnance and impact—found within cratered areas on military firing ranges are subject to environmental fate and transport processes. Depending on the solubility and charge of the pollutant, soils with higher fractions of organic carbon and/or higher cation exchange capacities may inhibit movement of contaminants and provide time for contaminant transformation and degradation to take place before resources such as groundwater are impacted. Cation exchange capacity should allow the use of the retardation factor approach in determining the relative risk for organic contaminant releases to soils. A soil property investigation, involving the collection of soil samples from an active impact area and subsequent mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of soil laboratory results, was used to determine the soil properties that best predict soil cation exchange capacity and describe crater disturbance, in terms of the resulting loss of organic matter. Organic matter content of the soil, in this study, proved to be a good predictor of cation exchange capacity and also a good descriptor of munitions disturbance. Because soil organic matter has an influence on contaminant fate and transport through the environment, and because its availability is affected by munitions disturbance, resource managers should be concerned with the effect of munitions use on soil organic matter dynamics.

Sustainable Leadership. Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink. 2006. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. 352 pp. $25.00 paperback.

Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. David W. Orr. 2004. Island Press, Washington, DC. 224 pp. $19.95 paperback.

Recently, David Orr's young classic, Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect, celebrated its lasting place in education and sustainability literature with a tenth-year anniversary re-release edition. This year, noted educational leadership authors Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink have collaborated to produce Sustainable Leadership. Although both books purport to address ideas of sustainability in education, their approaches could not be more dramatically, diametrically different.

Agroforestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Landscapes. Götz Schroth, Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca, Celia A. Harvey, Claude Gascon, Heraldo L. Vasconcelos, and Anne-Marie N. Izac, eds. 2004. Island Press, Washington, DC. 523 pp. $90 cloth, $45 paperback.

It is common knowledge that coral reefs and tropical rain forests hold the greatest amount of biodiversity; yet, both have suffered grievous damage in modern times. Agroforestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Landscapes brings together the works of hundreds of scientists, dedicated environmentalists, conservationists, social activists, and economists, in a series of articles arguing the merits of agroforestry strategy and its attempts to mitigate the damage to tropical forests and conserve their biodiversity.

Basic Concepts of Environmental Chemistry, 2nd Edition. Des W. Connell. 2005. Taylor and Francis/CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 462 pp. $79.95 cloth.

Over the years, there have been many excellent environmental chemistry texts written; however, due to the dynamic nature of this field, the entrance of a more current and timely text is always welcomed. There are essentially two types of scientific texts. The first type is an objective assessment of the scientific field that focuses on the essential information and concepts needed to rigorously assess a situation. The second type presents a slightly biased perspective, which perhaps could lead the reader to preclude an assessment away from the full spectrum of possible conclusions; it is important that authors be ever vigilant of the latter. For example, science has determined that the major reasons for pollution and environmental impairment are due both to Mother Nature (volcanic action, hurricanes, floods, forest fires, etc.) and societal needs (such as transportation related emissions, air conditioning power demands, higher lifestyle requirements, etc.). Industry is not the culprit it once was, and what impairment it creates is now attributed to increased societal demands. The initial impression I received from this text, however, is that industry is more of a major culprit than a segment of the whole problem.

Military Geographies. R. Woodward. 2004. Blackwell Publishing, Williston, VT. 196 pp. $39.95 paperback.

Military impacts tend to summon images associated with the ravages of conflict: landscapes worn by battle, ruined buildings turned into rubble, and the horrifying magnitude of people killed. Preparation for armed conflict, however, is an endless operation that takes place on different fields. In Military Geographies, Rachel Woodward explores the imprint of military preparedness on the economic, social, and political life, with the hope of improving the study of non-conflict military geography in research and teaching. The themes covered in the book include (1) geographies of control over space, (2) military economic geographies, (3) militarized environments, (4) military landscapes, and (5) challenges to military geographies. These themes focus predominantly on the United Kingdom's military, with few examples from the United States and other countries with advanced capitalist economies.

Environmental Protection and the Social Responsibility of Firms: Perspectives for Law, Economics, and Business. B. L. Hay, R. N. Stavins, and R. H. K. Vietor, eds. 2005. RFF Press, Washington, DC. 240 pp. $80 cloth, $39.95 paperback.

In the 2005 text, Environmental Protection and the Social Responsibility of Firms, editors Bruce Hay, Robert Stavins, and Richard Vietor examine an issue that has existed for some time in its various iterations but only recently has gained renewed exposure under the buzzword “Corporate Social Responsibility,” or CSR. The editors employ a variety of authorities in various CSR-related areas to examine the three central questions of the work. First, do firms have a moral or social responsibility to commit resources to voluntary environmental protection, even if these voluntary efforts might reduce the company's overall earnings or profitability? Second, can such firms commit these voluntary resources on an ongoing, sustainable basis, or will market forces render such efforts implausible? Finally, do firms in general tend to engage in CSR-related activities and, if so, at what “cost”?

Contributors.