Description

About the Book Environmental Studies teaches us about our environment, which denotes everything that surrounds us. The environment, infact, includes all the living biological life (biotic world) as well as the non-living things like air, water and land (abiotic world). In order to preserve life on ‘Earth’ we have to preserve and protect its environment. The excessive growth of human population, increasing from about 1.6 billion in the year 1900 to about 7.7 billion by July 2019, has resulted in enormous urbanisation and expansion of agricultural, industrial, residential and commercial activities on our fragile planet ‘Earth’. Besides, the large scale use of fossil fuels in industries as well as in automobiles have accelerated and resulted in wide spread pollution of our environment at local, regional as well as global levels. Not only our physical environment has been polluted but even the biological bodies such as plants and animals, providing food to humans, have been contaminated. The worst effect of air pollution is, infact, resulting in global warming, which is causing climate changes and extreme hydrological events with increase in frequency of floods, cyclones, heat waves, droughts, melting of glaciers, rise of sea levels, etc. such effects may lead to spread of diseases, shrinkage of food, water, and large scale migration of people, thereby disturbing peace and harmony between nations. There also exists a dire need to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources like metals, minerals, fossil fuels, etc. to ensure their continued availability to our future generations. In addition to mineral resources and air pollution, water and land pollution have been well explained in this book, besides covering other topics like Ecosystems, Biodiversity, Disaster Management, etc. The book thus, covers the entire U.G.C./A.I. C. T.E. syllabuses of the subject, with several case studies and objective questions. About the Author The Author, Santosh Kumar Garg, obtained his degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Delhi in 1969, securing First Rank at the university with Record breaking percentage of marks, getting certificates of merit for securing maximum marks in seven subjects. He has also authored eight widely acclaimed books. His books on Water Resources Engineering (Vol. I & II), and Environmental Engineering (Vol. I & lI), are infact, being followed in almost every engineering college in India, including the prestigious lITs and NITs, and also in certain Asian and African countries.