Environmental Science For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11

This Land Belongs to You and Me: Land as a Resource

IN THIS CHAPTER

Sorting out types of shared land

Managing timber and grasslands and dealing with fire management

Recognizing urban sprawl and smart growth

Many of the resources you depend on, including raw materials, food, and fuel resources, come from the land. But the land itself is also a resource — for the raw materials it provides, the ecosystems it supports, and the space it offers human societies to expand their roads, towns, and cities.

In this chapter, I describe how people deal with shared land (that is, land that doesn’t belong to any one person), including how they use it for recreation and resource harvesting. I also explain how increasing urban and suburban development endangers this limited resource and describe methods of smart growth that seek to conserve land resources.

Sharing Land

You may own the land on which your house is built, but most of the land space you inhabit is shared land — land that many different people have a right to access. Environmental scientists have recognized that if no one owns the land, then no one takes on the responsibility of caring for and managing its resources. As ...