Southern Waters: The Limits to Abundance by Craig E. Colten PDF

Water has ruled photographs of the South all through historical past, from Hernando de Soto's 1541 crossing of the Mississippi to tragic scenes of flooding during the Gulf South after typhoon Katrina. yet those photographs inform basically part the tale: as city, business, and inhabitants development create remarkable calls for on water within the South, the issues of pollutants and water shortages develop ever extra pressing. In Southern Waters: the bounds to Abundance, Craig E. Colten addresses how the South -- in an atmosphere fraught with uncertainty -- can navigate the dual dangers of an excessive amount of water and never enough.

From the coming of the 1st ecu settlers, the South's population have pursued a process greatest exploitation and keep an eye on of the area's considerable waters, making an investment commonly in wetland drainage and big flood-control initiatives. Disputes over southern waterways return approximately as a ways: obstruction of fish migration by way of mill dams caused new rules to guard aquatic existence as early because the colonial period. Colten argues that such conflicts, that have heightened dramatically because the explosive urbanization of the mid-twentieth century, will purely turn into extra widespread and extreme, making the shift towards sustainable use a countrywide imperative.

In tracing the evolving makes use of and abuses of southern waters, Colten deals the most important insights into the complicated ancient geography of water during the zone. A masterful research of the ways that earlier generations harnessed and ate up water, Southern Waters additionally stands as a consultant to adapting our water utilization to deal with the looming scarcity of this once-abundant resource.