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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Applied ecology
Economic development and environmental issues in China are attracting more and more attention internationally as the country's large population and vast demands for food, energy, water, minerals, and other resources play an increasingly important role in deciding the fate of the world. There is great interest in learning more about environmental issues in China, but it is not easy to obtain accurate, relevant information because the issues are diverse and are complex phenomena resulting from the interconnections among natural resource constraints and political, social, and institutional systems. This book originally was published in Japanese with the aim of providing Japanese readers with a holistic picture of what was taking place in China with respect to its air, water, energy, and land. The author then prepared an English edition of the same material to use as a book of readings for the Global Environmental Leaders Program at Nagoya University, where he taught many students from Asia and Europe. The book covers the most important environmental issues in China-climatic change, water, air, energy, and resources-together with ongoing policy responses, based on the author's active involvement in a number of study projects and international cooperation projects in that country. This volume will help readers to understand the causes and results of environmental problems in China and will encourage them to think more deeply about the environmental implications of the country's rapid economic growth.
The Conference on Tropical Rainforest Research: Current Issues was organised by the University of Brunei Darussalam and The Royal Geographical Society, London, and held in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, over 8 days in April 1993. Over 160 participants from 22 countries attended the Conference, which was opened on the 9th April by the Brunei Darussalam Minister for Home Affairs, Yang Berhormat Pehin Orang Kaya Laila Setia Bakti Diraja Dato Laila Utama Haji Awang Isa bin Datu Perdana Menteri Dato Laila Utama Haji Awang Ibrahim. The conference was initially intended to provide a forum to present the results of the expedition into the lowland mixed dipterocarp forest of the Temburong District of Brunei Darussalam, which had been jointly organised by the University of Brunei Darussalam and The Royal Geographical Society, London. The 15-month expedition, lasting from January 1991 to March 1992, was based at the then newly-completed Kuala Belalong Field Studies Centre, a research and education facility set up by the University with funds provided by the Brunei Government and Brunei-Shell Petroleum Sdn Bhd. The expedition, with over 70 scientists taking part, received financial support from a wide range of sponsors and Corporate Patrons, including Royal Brunei Airlines, the Baring Foundation, Daiwa-Dicam, Greencard Trust, the Hongkong Bank, Morgan Grenfell and Nomura-Nimco. The conference itself was supported by donations from Brunei-Shell Sdn Bhd, Royal Brunei Airlines and Standard Chartered Bank.
Islands are special because they promote unique forms of life, and large proportions of the species they hold are found nowhere else on Earth. The mammals of the South-west Pacific are no exception, with many distributed only across single islands or archipelagos. Mammals of the South-west Pacific details the natural history for more than 180 species of marsupials, bats and rodents from 24 Pacific nations and territories. Species profiles are accompanied by distribution maps, illustrations and photographs – many being the first images ever captured for the species. By combining available knowledge with unpublished data collected over years of field work, Mammals of the South-west Pacific forms a definitive guide to the mammals from this region.
This series is dedicated to serving the growing community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the principles and applications of environ mental management. Each volume is a thorough treatment of a specific topic of importance for proper management practices. A fundamental objective of these books is to help the reader discern and implement man's stewardship of our environment and the world's renewable re sources. For we must strive to understand the relationship between man and nature, act to bring harmony to it, and nurture an environment that is both stable and productive. These objectives have often eluded us because the pursuit of other individual and societal goals has diverted us from a course of living in balance with the environment. At times, therefore, the environmental manager may have to exert restrictive control, which is usually best applied to man, not nature. Attempts to alter or harness nature have often failed or backfired, as exemplified by the results of imprudent use of herbicides, fertilizers, water, and other agents. Each book in this series will shed light on the fundamental and applied aspects of environmental management. It is hoped that each will help solve a practical and serious environmental problem."
Any scientific discipline needs a theoretical framework to guide its development and to sharpen the questions its researchers pursue. In biology, evolution is the grand theoretical framework, and an his torical perspective is necessary to understand present-day biological conditions. In its formative years, the modern study of the fruit-frugivore mutualism was guided by the 'specialist-generalist' paradigm developed by D. Snow, D. McKey, and H. Howe. Howe reviews the current status of this evolution ary paradigm and points out that it has been dismissed by many workers before being adequately tested. This is because ecologists working with the tropical plants and frugivorous birds for which the paradigm was originally developed rarely measure the seed dispersal effectiveness of different disperser species. He indicates that this paradigm still has heuristic value and suggests that several additional ecological paradigms, including the concept ofkeystone species ofplants and frugivores and the role that frugivores play in density-dependent mortality in tropical trees, are worth studying. The concept of seed dispersal quality has been central to discussions of fruit-frugivore coevolution. Schupp thoroughly reviews data bearing on this concept, constructs a hierarchical framework for viewing disperser effectiveness, and points out that disperser effectiveness depends on both the quantity and quality of seed dispersal. Effectiveness, in turn, affects both evolutionary and ecological relationships between dispersers and their food plants."
This book presents the latest developments in optimization and optimal control models; exact, approximate and hybrid methods; and their applications in lean and green supply chains. It examines supply chain network design and modeling, closed loop supply chains, and lean, green, resilient and agile or responsive networks, and also discusses corporate social responsibility and occupational health and safety. It particularly focuses on supply chain management under uncertainty - employing stochastic or nonlinear modeling, simulation based studies and optimization - multi-criteria decision-making and applications of fuzzy set theory, and covers various aspects of supply chain management such as risk management, supplier selection or the design of automated warehouses. Lastly, using experimental applications and practical case studies, it shows the impact of lean and green applications on vehicle/fleet management and operations management.
"An Industrial Product-Service System is characterized by the integrated and mutually determined planning, development, provision and use of product and service shares including its immanent software components in Business-to-Business applications and represents a knowledge-intensive socio-technical system." - Meier, Roy, Seliger (2010) Since the first conference in 2009, the CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems has become a well-established international forum for the review and discussion of advances, research results and industrial improvements. Researchers from all over the world have met at previous IPS(2) conferences in Cranfield (2009), Linkoeping (2010), Braunschweig (2011) and Tokyo (2012). In 2013, the 5th CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems is held in Bochum. Important topics of IPS(2) research presented at the conference are: planning and development, sustainability, business models, operation, service engineering, knowledge management, ICT, modeling and simulation, marketing and economic aspects as well as the role of the human in IPS(2).
Current threats to biodiversity, extinction of species, and major changes in human behavior that experts think are needed to conserve existing biodiversity are all addressed. Successful examples of biodiversity conservation provide a hopeful conclusion for the book. Filled with data, anecdotes, and examples, Biodiversity will capture the interest of a variety of readers from students to scientists.
This book is about video techniques, not video technology. To deal with the latter would be a thankless task, as by the time the book was published it would be out of date, given the rapid rate of development of video hardware. However, these technological advances do help to make it an exciting field. As Joe Riley says in Chapter 1, 'Advances in video technology continually produce improvements in performance and reductions in both the cost and size of equipment, so it seems certain that the technique will prove to be an even more useful resource . . . in the future. ' In selecting the topics and authors represented in this book, I have tried to encompass most of the behavioural and ecological uses to which video is likely to be put over the next decade or so. I believe the book has captured the invaluable accumulated experience of the most active practitioners of the medium in this research area. The idea for the book arose from two workshops on the use of video in ecology and behaviour held at Southampton University, UK, during the 1980s. Three learned societies were involved in these meetings: the Association of Applied Biologists, the British Ecological Society and the Society for Experimental Biology.
The conference "Combating Desertification with Plants" was held in Beer Sheva, Israel, from November 2-5, 1999, and was attended by 70 participants from 30 countries and/or international organisations. Desertification - the degradation of soils in drylands - is a phenomenon occurring in scores of countries around the globe. The number of people (in semiarid regions) affected by the steady decline in the productivity of their lands is in the hundred millions. The measures required to halt and reverse the process of desertification fall into many categories - policy, institutional, sociological-anthropological, and technical. Although technical "solutions" are not currently in vogue, the conference organizers felt that perhaps the pendulum had swung too far in the direction of "participatory approaches." Hence IPALAC - The International Program for Arid Land Crops - whose function is to serve as a catalyst for optimizing the contribution of plant germplasm to sustainable development in desertification-prone regions - felt the time was opportune for providing a platform for projects where the "plant-driven" approach to development finds expression. Some 45 papers were delivered at the conference, falling into the categories of this volume: Overview, Potential Germplasm for Arid Lands, Introduction, Domestication and Dissemination of Arid Land Plants, Land Rehabilitation, and Mechanisms of Plant Transfer. The conference was funded by UNESCO (Division of Ecological Sciences), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, and MASHAV, Israel's Center for International Development Cooperation.
Meso and Microplastic Risk Assessment in Marine Environment: New Threat and Challenges in Marine Environment presents an interdisciplinary approach, offering key techniques and management of microplastic contamination in the disciplines of environmental science, fisheries, oceanography, geology, chemistry, biology and ocean science. Sections cover an overview of microplastic in the marine environment, deal with the origin, occurrences, distribution and various methodologies (for dealing with microplastics) available for microplastics, address the global case study of microplastic separation using recent techniques, and discuss the impact of microplastics on human health and the surrounding environment. This book is an important step in the field of microplastic pollution mitigation in environmental science as it offers a thorough accounting of the effects of pollutants on the environment, marine organisms, and the public health implications, as such it is relevant for aquatic ecologists, oceanographers, toxicologists, and marine biologists.
The conversation about zoning has meandered its way through issues ranging from housing affordability to economic growth to segregation, expanding in the process from a public policy backwater to one of the most discussed policy issues of the day. In his pioneering 1972 study, Land Use Without Zoning, Bernard Siegan first set out what has today emerged as a common-sense perspective: Zoning not only fails to achieve its stated ends of ordering urban growth and separating incompatible uses, but also drives housing costs up and competition down. In no uncertain terms, Siegan concludes, "Zoning has been a failure and should be eliminated!" Drawing on the unique example of Houston-America's fourth largest city, and its lone dissenter on zoning-Siegan demonstrates how land use will naturally regulate itself in a nonzoned environment. For the most part, Siegan says, markets in Houston manage growth and separate incompatible uses not from the top down, like most zoning regimes, but from the bottom up. This approach yields a result that sets Houston apart from zoned cities: its greater availability of multifamily housing. Indeed, it would seem that the main contribution of zoning is to limit housing production while adding an element of permit chaos to the process. Land Use Without Zoning reports in detail the effects of current exclusionary zoning practices and outlines the benefits that would accrue to cities that forgo municipally imposed zoning laws. Yet the book's program isn't merely destructive: beyond a critique of zoning, Siegan sets out a bold new vision for how land-use regulation might work in the United States. Released nearly a half century after the book's initial publication, this new edition recontextualizes Siegan's work for our current housing affordability challenes. It includes a new preface by law professor David Schleicher, which explains the book's role as a foundational text in the law and economics of urban land use and describes how it has informed more recent scholarship. Additionally, it includes a new afterword by urban planner Nolan Gray, which includes new data on Houston's evolution and land use relative to its peer cities.
The MacArthur grant-winning environmental justice activist's riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America's most vulnerable A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur "genius," grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called "Bloody Lowndes" because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers's life's work-a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America's dirty secret. In this "powerful and moving book" (Booklist), she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. In this inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative, Flowers shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards-not only those of poor minorities.
This volume investigates the challenges facing the Egyptian Northern coastal lakes, focusing on the impact of climate change, their biodiversity and sustainable management. Presenting up-to-date research, it covers the following topics: climate change and water quality modeling and their impacts on the sustainability of the lakes; the economic role of the lakes; the use of remote sensing in monitoring; and the biodiversity of the lakes with detailed discussions. Further, management strategies for the sustainable development of these valuable resources are proposed to maintain the lakes sustainability. The book closes with a concise summary of the conclusions and recommendations presented in the preceding chapters. As such, it offers an invaluable resource for the academic community and postgraduate students, as well as for environmental managers and policymakers.
One of the first priority areas among joint East/West research programs is the rational use of natural resources and sustainable development of regions. In the boreal zone of North America and Eurasia forests are economically very important and, at the same time highly vulnerable to disturbances. Because of its size and ecological functions the boreal forest zone and its most dynamic disturbance factor - fire - play an important role in ecosystem processes on global scale. Interest within the global change research community in Northern Eurasia (Fennoscandia, European Russia, Siberia, and the Far East of Russia) has grown dramatically in the last few years. It is a vast area about which very little is known. It is a region where temperature rise due to anthropogenic climate forcing is predicted to be the greatest, and where the consequent feedbacks to the atmosphere are potentially large. In addition, it is poised to undergo rapid economic development, which may lead to large and significant changes to its land cover. Much of this interest in Northern Eurasia, as in the high latitude regions in general, is centerd on its role in the global carbon cycle, which is likely to be significantly affected under global change. New research initiatives between Western and Eastern countries have been designed to address a series of phenomena, problems and management solutions.
This text looks at the biology, temporal and spatial distribution patterns and the functional role of planktonic protozoa in fresh, brackish and marine waters. In recent years the importance of these organisms in ecological processes such as the flow of energy and the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in planktonic systems has become widely appreciated.
This book is a celebration of the humble gudgeon, the angler's favourite 'tiddler'. This much-loved little fish is long overdue a little book all of its own. Scientist, author and broadcaster Dr Mark Everard tells tales about the biology of the gudgeon, gudgeon fishing, and the diverse social quirks and values of this most popular of little fishes.
Animals are a major link between the water column (pelagic) and the bottom (benthic) habitats in most shallow systems. This coupling is dominated by active processes such as suspension-feeding in which the organism actively uses energy to pump water that is then filtered to remove suspended particles that are consumed while undigested remains are deposited on the bottom. As a result of this feeding on and metabolism of particles, the animals excrete dissolved inorganic and organic waste back into the water column, and thus, become major components in the cycling and feedback of essential elements. With relatively high weight specific filtration rates of 1a" 10 liters/hour/gram dry tissue and a propensity to form large aggregated populations (beds, reefs, schools and swarms), these organisms can play an important role in regulating water column processes. Although estuarine bivalve molluscs such as oysters and mussels dominate the suspension-feeder literature, other groups including plankton and nekton that are found in estuarine as well as other aquatic systems are also potentially important removers of suspended particles. Thus, a significant part of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop focused on suspension-feeders as controllers of plankton abundance, biomass and diversity, system metabolism, nutrient cycling and scale dependency. Systems dominated by suspension-feeders are typically impacted by human activities including recreation, aquaculture, human and industrial pollution, and bilge water from shipping. Suspension-feeders are often impacted by fisheries and over-exploitation. These impacts commonly result in changes in ecosystem structure either through the food chainconcentration of harmful substances or diseases, the introduction of alien species of suspension-feeders, or the instability of suspension-feeders systems through species displacement or phase shifts in the dominance between different suspension-feeding components such as nekton or zooplankton. These issues were addressed near the close of the workshop along with conclusions and syntheses developed by the working groups.
***BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS - FINALIST 2021*** This timely book is a sequel to John Grant's Green Marketing Manifesto (2007) the award-winning and bestselling definitive guide to green marketing (and not greenwashing). Fast forward to mid-2020. Climate Change is back at the top of the public and political agenda. Even after covid-19, hundreds of big-name CEOs are committing to a #greenrecovery. And surveys show widespread global public support for this and recent shifts in sustainable behaviours and attitudes in markets ranging from organic food to flying. Sustainable brands are significantly outperforming conventional ones. As are sustainability related stock prices. Companies like Unilever continue to set ambitious targets related not just to climate, but biodiversity and deforestation, plastics, social justice, regenerative farming. Sustainability related trends such as plant-based foods and electric vehicles are showing steep growth and creating tomorrow's superbrands (Impossible, TESLA...). This book is packed with up to date learnings, case examples and trends, covering everything from eco labelling, transparency and the circular economy; to rebound effects, sustainable finance, blockchain and regenerative farming. A core message being that to drive sustainability, marketers firstly do really need to properly understand sustainability, its many applications and implications. Secondly to be effective, marketers need to understand what it means to their consumers and other significant audiences. Hence the book takes a long hard look at what was driving all the protests, boycotts and petitions in 2019 and what ideas, causes and platforms caught the public imagination. The ultimate goal is to go beyond marketing that simply looks good, to marketing that does good. This book helps in achieving that goal by showing the reader how to: Uncover strategies for sustainable marketing that actually deliver on green and social objectives, not just greenwashing Reconceptualise marketing and business models, and learn to recognise the commercial strategies and approaches that are no longer fit for purpose Learn how hot topics like the climate crisis, biodiversity, social justice, single use plastics and supply chain transparency influence green and social marketing Read about numerous examples and case studies from both brand leaders and challengers that have developed innovations and fresh creative approaches to green and social marketing Get practical tools, models, facts, strategies, workshop and project processes and business case rationales - so that you can build your own plans and proposals This book is intended to assist marketers, by means of clear and practical guidance, through a complex transition towards meaningful marketing that makes a positive creative impact on the climate crisis and on improving human life in troubled times. Aimed both at big companies that are trying to be good, and good companies that are trying to be big.
An important prerequisite for successful conservation is a good understanding of what we seek to conserve. Nowhere is this more the case than in the fight to protect plant biodiversity, which is threatened by human activity in many regions worldwide. This book is written in the belief that tools that enable more people to understand biodiversity can not only aid protection efforts but also contribute to rural livelihoods. Among the most important of those tools is the field guide.Plant Identification provides potential authors of field guides with practical advice about all aspects of producing user-friendly guides which help to identify plants for the purposes of conservation, sustainable use, participatory monitoring or greater appreciation of biodiversity. The book draws on both scientific and participatory processes, supported by the experience of contributors from across the tropics. It presents a core process for producing a field guide, setting out key steps, options and techniques available to the authors of a guide and, through illustration, helps authors choose methods and media appropriate to their context.
The book traverses several pathways including the basics of science and geography, geopolitics and international relations, strategic and security studies, policy-related and diplomatic dialogues, as-well as socio-cultural and economic perspectives in order to bring out a holistic picture of how environmental change has shaped the international system and India's position in it. The central argument of the book that environmental change can change/is changing geography and in turn can change/is changing international relations has been substantiated by detailed analysis of the drivers of India's environmental policies, international climate change negotiations, role of state and non-state actors in the international environmental discourse both in theory and practice, and finally the interconnectedness between environmental change and national security. The volume tries to find the right balance between the international scene embodied by the negotiations driven by hardcore economics on the one hand, and the domestic realities of India that steer its climate change policy based on energy security and developmental concerns. The need to address the larger issue of environmental change rather than concentrating on one aspect of it - climate change - to reduce the amount of polarisation that surrounds the global environmental debate especially in the wake of the introduction of the issue at the United Nations Security Council, has been reiterated throughout the work. It contains policy recommendations in terms of methods of adaptation, mitigation, energy management/diversification, enhancement of the role of think tanks as well as diplomatic manoeuvring (principles-based) at the climate change negotiations and other international debates. This area of study is comparatively new in India while the West has been dedicating a significant amount of resources towards research in energy and environmental security for the past two decades. Therefore, one of the objectives of the book is to evolve an Indian perspective on these strategic issues in a Western literature-dominated arena. Though the book brings to light several gaping holes in India's policy and strategy, it contends that India has a plethora of options and opportunities to not only maintain its own national security but also help the world 'adapt' and 'mitigate' in times of environmental chang
Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology attempts to provide concise, critical reviews of timely advances, philosophy, and significant areas of accomplished or needed endeavor in the total field of xenobiotics, in any segment of the environment, as well as toxicological implications.
This book addresses the climate change crisis through scientific, historical, and spiritual lenses. Using Bernard Lonergan's functional specialization method, developed to facilitate collaboration among specialists, Raymaker and Durrani not only analyze data and rebut the claims of climate change deniers, but also look for inspiration to motivate and coordinate needed action by persons, groups, and nations. The book is wide-ranging in its historical examination of leaders who have shown us ways to work together constructively in finding solutions to problems. Lonergan's method helps us study the past with a view to change the future. To do so, we must first reform ourselves. |
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