America's ocean and coastal regionsâ€"which provide wildlife habitat, commercial fish stocks, mineral reserves, travelways, recreation, and moreâ€"are under increasing pressure as more and more people exploit marine resources, leaving environmental damage in their wake. Striking a Balance responds to the urgency for sound decision-making in the management of marine resources. An expert committee proposes principles, goals, and a framework for marine area governance, including new governance structures at the federal and regional levels and improvements for existing governing and regulatory systems. Recommendations include using toolsâ€"such as zoning and liabilityâ€"for resolving conflicts between users, controlling access to marine resources, and enforcing regulations. The book describes the wide-ranging nature and value of marine resources, evaluates their current management, and explores three in-depth case studies. It also touches on the implications of newer, more flexible, less hierarchical approaches to organizational behavior. Striking a Balance will be of interest to everyone concerned about marine resource management, especially federal and state marine managers and regulators, marine scientists and policy analysts, companies and organizations with interests in marine and coastal resources, and advocacy groups.

Case Studies from North America, Scandinavia, Japan, and Great Britain demonstrate natural outdoor teaching environment that support hand-on learning in science, math, language, and art in ways that nurture healthy imagination and socialization Asphalt to Ecosystems is a compelling color guidebook for designing and building natural schoolyard environments that enhance childhood learning and play experiences while providing connection with the natural world. With this book, Danks broadens our notion of what a well-designed schoolyard should be, taking readers on a journey from traditional, ordinary grassy fields and asphalt, to explore the vibrant and growing movement to "green" school grounds in the United States and around the world. This book documents exciting green schoolyard examples from almost 150 schools in 11 countries, illustrating that a great many things are possible on school grounds when they are envisioned as outdoor classrooms for hands-on learning and play. The book's 500 vivid, color photographs showcase some of the world's most innovative green schoolyards including: edible gardens with fruit trees, vegetables, chickens, honey bees, and outdoor cooking facilities; wildlife habitats with prairie grasses and ponds, or forest and desert ecosystems; schoolyard watershed models, rainwater catchment systems and waste-water treatment wetlands; renewable energy systems that power landscape features, or the whole school; waste-as-a-resource projects that give new life to old materials in beautiful ways; K-12 curriculum connections for a wide range of disciplines from science and math to art and social studies; creative play opportunities that diversify school ground recreational options and encourage children to run, hop, skip, jump, balance, slide, and twirl, as well as explore the natural world first hand. The book grounds these examples in a practical framework that illustrates simple landscape design choices that all schools can use to make their schoolyards more comfortable, enjoyable and beautiful, and describes a participatory design process that schools can use to engage their school communities in transforming their own asphalt into ecosystems.