Since ancient times, cultures around the world have believed that four essential elements—fire, air, earth, and water—make up the foundation of all terrestrial matter. Over time, scholars from virtually every liberal-arts discipline have studied, theorized about, and represented the elements in their work, and they continue to be common tropes in popular culture today. While our current understandings of these elements are radically different from those of the past, fascination with them has continuously inspired human thought throughout the ages.

Humanity’s relationship with fire, air, earth and water has always been both positive and negative. This challenge tasks your group to identify and study a problem related to these elements that impacts a particular place, community, or culture, and to design an innovative project to address it. To be successful, you must conduct extensive research on a problem, determine what has already been done to try to improve it, and propose a solution that satisfies the needs of humankind while protecting the natural environment.

Get started here.

Reference resources provide a starting point for your research projects.

Credo Reference

Credo Reference provides hundreds of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and more in one place. Below is a sample of keyword searches in Credo Reference related to this topic.

Call Numbers and Subject Headings

You can use the list of call numbers and subject headings below as keyword searches in our catalog and databases, or you can go to these sections of the library to find books on these topics.

Fire ecology

Hydrology

Ozone—Environmental aspects—United States

Air—Pollution—United States

Air quality management—United States

Water-supply—Management

QH540-549.5 Ecology

SD411-428 Conservation and protection

HC79 Special topics, including air pollution

HD1635-1702 Utilization and special classes of lands

S590-599.9 Soils

Books

Books from Lane Library

All books in this list are located either in the Franzen Center on Floor 3A or are e-books.

Firestorm : how wildfire will shape our future | Franzen Center south wall & e-book

The great displacement : climate change and the next American migration | Franzen Center south wall & e-book

Fire in America : a cultural history of wildland and rural fire | Franzen Center south wall

Flames in our forest : disaster or renewal? | Franzen Center south wall

Disaster management of earthquakes & volcanoes | e-book

Earthquakes : triggers, environmental impact, and potential hazards | e-book

Plate tectonics and great earthquakes : 50 years of earth-shaking events | e-book

Framing the challenge of urban flooding in the United States | e-book

The West without water : what past floods, droughts, and other climatic clues tell us about tomorrow | e-book

Know soil, know life | Franzen Center south wall

Articles

Databases

The following databases are useful places to search for animal related articles. Contact a librarian if you would like more information on how to search for articles on your specific topic.

Academic Search Complete: Wide range of academic disciplines, including for scholarly and popular journals.
New York Times: Access to news and archival content from NY Times. If you run into a paywall, here is more information on how to sign up.
ProQuest Research Library: Includes both popular and scholarly periodicals covering a variety of subjects, with over 3300 titles available in full text.
ProQuest Social Science Journals: Social science topics.

Get articles from other libraries

If you cannot find a full-text version of the article you need, request it through interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan is a free service that allows you to borrow books and articles from other libraries. Find answers to frequently asked questions about ILL here.