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About half the land in this country is farmland. About a third is national parks and forests.
The rest? It’s cities, towns, industrial parks, lakes, rivers, and streams.
Right now, our whole planet is in trouble. Do you know why? It’s us. We’re the problem. We’re eating, burning, drinking, trashing, and just using too much. We’re changing the planet a lot. And not all the changes we’re making are good. In fact, a lot of them are really bad.
Yes, people are a problem for Earth. But we’re also part of the solution. We can take care of our planet. Taking care of Earth means taking care of its land, water, plants, animals, and air. Everyone—including you—has a part to play. That’s where conservation comes in. Conservation is a word that means protecting and managing Earth’s natural resources.
Water
Guess how much of you is water. Half? A third? Try 70 percent! More than two-thirds of you is water. Every day you lose about two and a half quarts. That’s ten glasses of water! You lose water in many ways, including breathing! So you have to drink enough water to replace it. You get some water in the food you eat. But you get most of it through drinking: water, juice, and other things. In fact, if you didn’t have water for more than a couple days, you would not survive. You can’t drink polluted water—it will make you very sick. Our tap water is cleaned and filtered, so it’s safe to drink. But the water in rivers, streams, and lakes is not. It is often very dirty and full of bad chemicals and worse. When wild waterways get polluted, the fish, animals, and people who depend on them are harmed.
Topsoil
Do you like apples? Carrots? Peanuts? To grow these foods, farms need rich topsoil. Topsoil is the top layer of dirt. It’s where food crops grow. We call it rich when it’s full of minerals and other things plants need to grow and be healthy. Farmers protect their topsoil by planting windbreaks. Those are rows of trees that stand around the edges of fields. They slow down the wind so it doesn’t blow the rich topsoil off the fields.
Trees
Trees aren’t just pretty, or fun to climb on, or good for shade. They’re all those things, but they’re also very important for keeping us alive. In a year’s time, one tree gives off enough oxygen for a family of four. That’s not all it does. It also removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees cool down the Earth. They suck up water from the soil and release it back into the air. Trees help prevent drought by adding moisture to the air. That’s just one reason our parks and forests are protected lands.
Air
Everyone who breathes needs air. You, your mom, dogs, cats, cows, whales, grasshoppers, and even snakes. We need clean air every single minute. When you breathe in air, your body gets the oxygen it needs. But if the air is dirty, your body also takes in dust, smoke, fumes, and all kinds of teeny-tiny particles floating in it. These are called pollutants. They can hurt your lungs and make it harder for them to work right.
