Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Alternative natural materials are natural materials like rock or adobe that are not as commonly used as materials such as wood or iron. Alternative natural materials have many practical uses in areas such as sustainable architecture and engineering. The main purpose of using such materials is to minimize the negative effects that built ...
Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of soil or soil type; i.e., a soil containing more than 85 percent sand-sized particles by mass. [2]
A small cob building with a living roof Porch of a modern timber framed home. Natural building or ecological building is a discipline within the more comprehensive scope of green building, sustainable architecture as well as sustainable and ecological design that promotes the construction of buildings using sustainable processes and locally available natural materials.
Sand mining and gravel mining creates large pits and fissures in the earth's surface. At times, mining can extend so deeply that it affects ground water, springs, underground wells, and the water table. [107] The major threats of sand mining activities include channel bed degradation, river formation and erosion. [108]
Environmental resource management is an issue of increasing concern, as reflected in its prevalence in several texts influencing global sociopolitical frameworks such as the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future, [3] which highlighted the integrated nature of the environment and international development, and the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World reports.
Sand dunes are an important part of the coast as they are land's first defence against the forces of the ocean. Because of this, management of sand dunes will focus on the natural authenticity and values of the dunes themselves including flora, fauna, and the ecosystem as a whole. The concept of integrated management can be incorporated into ...
In the industrial world demand management has slowed absolute usage rates but increasingly water is being transported over vast distances from water-rich natural areas to population-dense urban areas and energy-hungry desalination is becoming more widely used. Greater emphasis is now being placed on the improved management of blue (harvestable ...
The company has recently (2007) won a case in the Environment Court which will allow it to continue extracting sand from the Mangawhai-Pākiri embayment, with the court agreeing that the removal was environmentally sustainable, mainly due to the argument that the removal would not exceed the natural buildup of new sand, a point that had been ...