environmental conditions

"Examines how the polar bear's life cycle, body structure, and behaviors have adapted to its challenging environment and shrinking habitat. A final activity asks readers to use what they've learned to create an Arctic food web"--Provided by publisher.

"Explores how the leopard seal's life cycle, body structure, and behaviors have adapted to make it one of the most fearsome predators in one of the coldest places in the world. A . . . final activity encourages readers to use what they've learned to create an Antarctic food web"--Provided by publisher.

"Readers will examine how the emperor penguin's life cycle, body structure, and behaviors have adapted to its challenging environment. A . . . final activity encourages readers to use what they've learned to create an Antarctic food web. "--Provided by publisher.

Examines how the beluga whale's life cycle, body structure, and behaviors have adapted to its challenging environment. A final activity asks readers to use what they've learned to create an Arctic food web.

"A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town's economic, moral, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname 'Cancer Valley.' In Mill Town, Arsenault undertakes an excavation of a collective past, sifting through historical archives and scientific reports, talking to family and neighbors, and examining her own childhood to present a portrait of a community that illuminates not only the ruin of her hometown and the collapse of the working-class of America, but also the hazards of both living in and leaving home, and the silences we are all afraid to violate. In exquisite prose, Arsenault explores the corruption of bodies: the human body, bodies of water, and governmental bodies, and what it's like to come from a place you love but doesn't always love you back"--Provided by the publisher.

Follows scientists as they travel to the Inupiaq villages on the North Slope of Alaska to study the effects of global warming on the traditional whaling communities.

The Gal?pagos archipelago is often viewed as a last foothold of pristine nature. For sixty years, conservationists have worked to restore this evolutionary Eden after centuries of exploitation at the hands of pirates, whalers, and island settlers. This book tells the story of the islands' namesakes--the giant tortoises--as coveted food sources, objects of natural history, and famous icons of conservation and tourism. By doing so, it brings into stark relief the paradoxical, and impossible, goal of conserving species by trying to restore a past state of prehistoric evolution.

The author describes the science that has led to the conclusion that the Arctic is thawing due to climate change and that this transformation will have global consequences if we fail to address the challenge of a warming earth.

Mona Hanna-Attisha recounts the story about how she, and a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders in Flint, Michigan fought the government to expose the truth about lead contamination in the towns water supply.

"The Great Plains is a large and very important grassland ecosystem covering roughly one-fourth of the United States. Human activity has had an impact on this environment for thousands of years, especially since the 1800s, when hunters killed off almost all of the enormous herds of American bison that once roamed the area. Readers will learn how agricultural practices, global warming, hunting, and urban development have changed the area. They'll also learn about conservation efforts to both restore the Great Plains and prevent further damage. Informative fact boxes, sidebars, and full-color photographs provide extra in-depth information on the changing environment of the Great Plains"--Provided by the publisher.