The Encyclopedia of American Environmental History is the first comprehensive reference to examine the issues, events, people, places, regions, activism, laws, and many other aspects of environmental history in the United States. From the Columbian Exchange in 1492, the development of slavery as a Southern institution, and the westward movement to the dust bowl, the Endangered Species Act, and the destruction caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, human interaction with the environment in America has been continuous, open-ended, and dynamic. How communities and individuals have used land, water, and natural resources has profoundly shaped U.S. history, influencing settlement patterns, social relations, cultural life, economic systems, wars, and political institutions. In the past generation, scholars have begun examining these human-environmental interactions in myriad ways, giving birth to the exciting new field of environmental history. By shedding light on new issues and recasting familiar views of major events in our nation's past, environmental historians have reinterpreted American history in a way that is gripping, immediate, and timely. The four-volume Encyclopedia of American Environmental History includes more than 750 articles covering every significant issue, event, law, and figure in U.S. environmental history. The encyclopedia begins with eight broad thematic essays, which both highlight the major topics in environmental history and serve as a learning center and entryway to the hundreds of more specific articles throughout the reference. The encyclopedia also includes more than 200 illustrations, 100 original documents, 80 maps, 20 charts, a master chronology, bibliography, and index. More than 350 leading environmental historians, scholars, and experts, many of them members of the American Society for Environmental History, have contributed signed articles to this authoritative reference. The Encyclopedia of American Environmental History will be the definitive work on this subject and set the standard for years to come. - Back cover.