Plan for your financial future with this interactive guide to everything there is to know about mindful spending, strict saving regimes, clever investments, and sustainable living so you can achieve financial independence early and, ultimately, live a more simple, happier life. F.I.R.E—Financial Independence, Retire Early—is a popular lifestyle movement amongst millennials and Gen Xers. The F.I.R.E. Planner is the first illustrated, interactive guide to putting this philosophy into practice. This accessible book teaches you everything there is to know about strict savings, smart investing, mindful spending, and living sustainably to ensure financial independence for a much simpler and happier life. Start planning for your future life today and make the most of your current income so you can live the life of your dreams.
A comprehensive, A-to-Z set of task planners for more than one hundred psychosocial problems from alcoholism and anxiety to domestic violence and sexual abuse. Each entry includes a menu of actions the client can undertake to affect resolution, a guide to the practitioner's role in facilitating these actions, and a reference list. An accompanying disk allows social workers to update the task planners they are working with and enables keyword searches for specific topics.
Much of the country’s recent population growth is situated in exurban areas. By many accounts exurbanization has become the dominant pattern of land development in the country and there is no indication it will slow in the foreseeable future (Theobald 2005; Brown et al. 2005; Glennon and Kretser 2005). By definition, exurban development takes place beyond the metropolitan fringe, often in rural and remote areas. The development of new exurban communities is a growing trend, especially in the West. In this case, developers and homebuilders seek large tracts of land, up to thousands of acres, in rural areas (typically within 50 miles of a large city) where they plan entire communities consisting of commercial, retail and residential land uses. Recreational amenities such as golf courses and hiking/biking trails are often included in these master-planned developments. Our philosophy is reflected in the book’s two objectives. First, we seek to document the extent and impacts of exurban development across the country. At issue is demonstrating why planners and the public-at-large should be concerned about exurbanization. We will demonstrate that even though exurbanization favors amenity rich regions, it affects all areas of the country through the loss of agricultural and grazing lands, impacts to watersheds and land modification. A summary of environmental impacts is presented, including the loss of wildlands and agricultural productivity, land modification, soil erosion, impacts to terrestrial hydrologic systems, the loss of biodiversity, nonnative and endangered species and other topics. Our second aim is to provide readers from diverse (nonscientific) backgrounds with a working knowledge of how and why exurbanization impacts environmental systems. This is accomplished by working closely to ensure contributors follow a specific outline for each chapter. First, contributors will spell out fundamental concepts, principles and processes that apply to their area of expertise (e.g., riparian areas). Contributors will move beyond a cursory understanding of ecological processes without overwhelming readers with the dense material found typically in specialized texts. For this reason, visuals and other support materials will be integral to each chapter. We have chosen contributors carefully based on their record as research scientists and acumen as educators. Second, once the mechanics have been laid out, authors will explain how and why land development in nearby areas influences ecosystems. Issues of interdependency, modification and adaptation, spatial scale and varying time horizons will be featured. Third, contributors will weigh in on the pros and cons of various land-development schemes. Fourth, authors will share their thinking on the merits of conservation devices such as wildlife corridors, open-space requirements and watershed management districts. Finally, each chapter will conclude by identifying pitfalls to avoid and highlighting "best practices" that will mitigate environmental problems or avoid them altogether. In sum, after completing each chapter, readers should have a firm grasp of relevant concepts and processes, an understanding of current research and know how to apply science to land-use decisions.
In the context of Australia’s developing carbon economy, fire management helps to abate emissions of greenhouse gases and is an important means of generating carbon credits. The vast high-rainfall savannas of northern Australia are one of the world’s most flammable landscapes. Management of fires in this region has the potential to assist with meeting emissions reduction targets, as well as conserving biodiversity and providing employment for Indigenous people in remote parts of Australia’s north. This comprehensive volume brings together recent research from northern Australian savannas to provide an internationally relevant case study for applying greenhouse gas accounting methodologies to the practice of fire management. It provides scientific arguments for enlarging the area of fire-prone land managed for emissions abatement. The book also charts the progress towards development of a savanna fire bio-sequestration methodology. The future of integrated approaches to emissions abatement and bio-sequestration is also discussed.
A First Order Fire Effects Model (FOFEM) was developed to predict the direct consequences of prescribed fire and wildfire. FOFEM computes duff and woody fuel consumption, smoke production, and fire-caused tree mortality for most forest and rangeland types in the United States. The model is available as a computer program for PC or Data General computer.
Food and beverage is the largest portion of a meeting budget, but most meeting and event planners have no formal background in purchasing and managing this expense. This guide helps event, meeting, and convention planners save money, negotiate contracts, deal with catering managers, and successfully manage the food and beverage aspect of their event. Covering everything from styles of service to on-premise and off-premise considerations to food and beverage contract negotiation, this book is a comprehensive and accessible reference for event planners and students.
The United States faces enormous changes in the next 25 years. Arthur C. (Chris) Nelson starts this book with a few projections: The population will grow by one-third to 375 million. We will need 60 million new housing units to house these people. There will be 60 percent more jobs, requiring 50 billion additional square feet of nonresidential space. The bottom line is that half of all development in 2030 will have been built since 2000. Nelson estimates the cost of new construction alone to be at least $20 trillion. This book gives planning practitioners a powerful tool to help decide where to put this new development. It does not advocate one development scenario over another, but it revolutionizes the job of estimating land-use and facility needs. Planner's Estimating Guide offers easy-to-use formulas and worksheets that are formatted in an Excel workbook on CD-ROM and carefully explained in the text. They make it easy to figure future requirements for countless scenarios. The workbook and text deal with a 20-year planning horizon for a fictitious county, but both the time projection and scale are entirely adaptable to myriad local circumstances. The program allows you to gather a first impression of future land-use needs, and revise it to reflect local limitations. For example, if the landscape in question won't support the land-use estimations, change the assumptions in the workbook to devise new estimates. The workbook shows the implications of growth based on standard assumptions; you can change the assumptions as needed to reflect local conditions — including public input — to see how outcomes change. Use the workbook as a model for testing local sensitivities with respect to land supply constraints and changes in policy assumptions. The results won't tell you what to do, but will reveal the numerical implications of different scenarios. The book is written principally for practitioners, and also for planning students as a primary or supplementary text. Used creatively, the powerful tools in Planner's Estimating Guide will help you determine the numerical implications of an almost infinite number of future circumstances that may affect your community.
