San Antonio College Library

"Exposes the vulnerability of this stark land that spreads along the Gulf Coast, as it literally vanishes."--Cover.

"Louisiana's Chenier Plain is a 2,200-square-mile region of marshes and oak-covered ridges (cheniers) that stretches along the Gulf of Mexico from Sabine Lake to Vermilion Bay. Its inhabitants, some 6,000 people of Cajun and other ancestries, retain strong economic and cultural ties to the land and its teeming wildlife. Gomez explores the interaction of the land, people, and wildlife of the Chenier Plain, revealing both the uniqueness of the region...

The High Plains is classified as a semiarid region meaning water is scarce. But in a "good" year as you fly over the region and look down on the flat land passing beneath - something catches your eye - scattered across the land are glimmering jewels that are created by the sun's rays bouncing off water. These are playa lakes. Although most are ephemeral, these shallow rain-fed catchments are extremely important to the existence of life on the High...

"Manno traces the history of nutria from their natural range in South America to their status as an invasive species known for destroying the environmentally and economically important wetlands along the Gulf Coast. In this ... book on 'swamp rats, ' [he] recounts western expansion and the explosion of the American fur industry. Then he details an apocalyptic turn--to replace an overhunted beaver population in North America, humans introduced nutria"--Dust...

Along the shores of Lake Ontario, over 90 percent of wetlands in the area have been sacrificed to other land use needs. In the lower Mississippi valley, the floodplain forested wetlands, which once covered 39,000 square miles, now cover only 7,000 (the rest of the area was cleared to provide land for agriculture). For centuries, these marshes, floodplains, lagoons, deltas, and other wetland systems of the world have been perceived as wasteland, obstacles...