About the Text

Help students focus on important concepts and develop science skills.

Concept Check Questions follow each major topic discussion within each chapter and provide students with opportunities to check their understanding as they read and review. These questions are aligned with the Learning Objectives that are listed at the beginning of each chapter and students can quickly check their understanding by consulting the answer key at the back of the text.
Understanding the Data questions have been added to selected graphs, maps, and tables to give students practice in interpreting data and to focus their attention on important points that are presented in such figures.

Stay up-to-date with recent scientific and policy developments in environmental science.

Current and contemporary Environmental Science issues are updated throughout the text as well as data related to the UN Millennium Development Goals. Examples include the drought in the Western United States, the impact of an aging population in Japan, and the Keystone pipeline proposal.
UPDATED! Engaging stories open each chapter and draw students into reading the chapter topic at hand. New to the Thirteenth Edition are chapter-opening stories on the threatened habitat of emperor penguins in the Antarctic (Chapter 3), the declining population of African savanna elephants (Chapter 4), drought in the American Southwest (Chapter 10), and the recent Ebola outbreak (Chapter 17).

Also available with MasteringEnvironmentalScience™

MasteringEnvironmentalScience is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment system designed to improve results by helping students quickly master concepts. Students benefit from self-paced tutorials that feature personalized wrong-answer feedback and hints that emulate the office-hour experience and help keep students on track. With a wide range of interactive, engaging, and assignable activities, students are encouraged to actively learn and retain tough course concepts.

Everyday Environmental Science video activities connect environmental science course topics with current stories in the news. Produced by the BBC, these high-quality videos can be assigned for pre- and post-lecture homework, or can be shown in class to engage students in the topic at hand.
NEW and EXPANDED! Interpreting Graphs and Data activities and Process of Science activities help students practice quantitative literacy and scientific reasoning skills. Students learn to analyze data, develop a hypothesis or make a prediction. Each activity includes personalized feedback for wrong answers.
EXPANDED! Video Field Trip activities give students fascinating behind-the-scenes tours of real environmental concerns and the strategies and solutions employed to address them. These popular, short videos engage students as they explore a coal-fired power plant, a wastewater treatment facility, a wind farm, and more. New video field trip activities discuss bee colony collapse and take students on a tour of a water desalination plant.
UPDATED! Current Events Articles from the New York Times are assignable and updated twice a year with new articles that help instructors integrate current environmental topics into their course.

Also new to MasteringEnvironmentalScience:

Dynamic Study Modules (DSMs) help students study effectively on their own by continuously assessing their activity and performance in real time. Here's how it works: students complete a set of questions with a unique answer format that also asks them to indicate their confidence level. Questions repeat until the student can answer them all correctly and confidently. Once completed, Dynamic Study Modules explain the concept using materials from the text. These are available as graded assignments prior to class, and accessible on smartphones, tablets, and computers.
Learning Catalytics^™ helps you generate class discussion, guide your lecture, and promote peer-to-peer learning with real-time analytics. Mastering with eText now provides Learning Catalytics–an interactive student response tool that uses students’ smartphones, tablets, or laptops to engage them in more sophisticated tasks and thinking. Instructors, you can:

Pose a variety of open-ended questions that help your students develop critical thinking skills
Monitor responses to find out where students are struggling
Use real-time data to adjust your instructional strategy and try other ways of engaging your students during class
Manage student interactions by automatically grouping students for discussion, teamwork, and peer-to-peer learning

Pearson eText 2.0 features include:

Now available on smartphones and tablets.
Seamlessly integrated videos and other rich media.
Accessible (screen-reader ready).
Configurable reading settings, including resizable type and night reading mode.
Instructor and student note taking, highlighting, bookmarking, and search.

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Environmental Science: Toward A Sustainable Future, 13th edition

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