The Mediterranean Basin, California, Chile, the western Cape of South Africa and southern Australia share a Mediterranean climate characterized by cool wet winters and hot dry summers. These five regions have differing patterns of human settlement but similarities in natural vegetation and some faunal assemblages. The similarities are being enhanced by an increasing level of biotic exchange between the regions as time passes since European settlement in each region. This unique documentation of the introduced floras and faunas in these five regions of Mediterranean climate both increases our understanding of the ecology of biological invasions, and points the way to more effective management of the biota of these regions. This book is an initiative of a subcommittee of SCOPE (Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment) which realized that the integrity of many natural ecosystems was being threatened by the ingress of invasive species.

The period since World War II, and especially the last decade influenced by the International Biological Program, has seen enormous growth in research on the function of ecosystems. The same period has seen an exponential' rise in environmental problems including the capacity of the Earth to support man's population. The concern extends to man's effects on the "biosphere"-the film of living organisms on the Earth's surface that supports man. The common theme of ecologic research and environmental concerns is primary production the binding of sunlight energy into organic matter by plants that supports all life. Many results from the IBP remain to be synthesized, but enough data are available from that program and other research to develop a convincing sum mary of the primary production of the biosphere-the purpose of this book. The book had its origin in the parallel interests of the two editors and Gene E. Likens, which led them to prepare a symposium on the topic at the Second Biological Congress of the American Institute of Biological Sciences in Miami, Florida, October 24, 1971. Revisions of the papers presented at that symposium appear as Chapters 2, 8, 9, 10, and 15 in this book. We have added other chapters that complement this core; these include discussion and evaluation of methods for measuring productivity and regional production, current findings on tropical productivity, and models of primary productivity."

All coastal areas are facing a growing range of stresses and shocks, the scale of which now poses threats to the resilience of both human and environmental coastal systems. Responsible agencies are seeking better ways of managing the causes and consequences of the environmental change process in coastal zones. This volume discusses the basic principles underpinning a more integrated approach to coastal management and highlights the obstacles that may be met in practice in both developed and developing countries. Successful strategies will have to encompass all the elements of management, from planning and design through financing and implementation, as highlighted in this book.

This book provides a unique perspective on the destruction - both natural and human-caused - of coral reef ecosystems. Reconstructing the ecological history of coral reefs, the authors evaluate whether recent dramatic changes are novel events or part of a long-term trend or cycle. The text combines principles of geophysics, paleontology, and marine sciences with real-time observation, examining the interacting causes of change: hurricane damage, predators, disease, rising sea-level, nutrient loading, global warming and ocean acidification. Predictions about the future of coral reefs inspire strategies for restoration and management of ecosystems. Useful for students and professionals in ecology and marine biology, including environmental managers.

This book provides a detailed description of light absorption and absorbents in seawaters with respect to provenance, region of the sea, depth of the occurrence and trophicity. The text is based on a substantial body of contemporary research results taken from the subject literature (over 400 references) and the work of the authors over a period of 30 years.

Southeast Asia constitutes one of the world's most extended rainforest regions. It is characterized by a high degree of biodiversity and contains a large variety of endemic species. Moreover, these forests provide a number of important and sin gular ecosystem services, like erosion protection and provision of high quality wa ter, which cannot be replaced by alternative ecosystems. However, various forms of encroachment, mostly those made by human interventions, seriously threaten the continuance of rainforests in this area. There is ample evidence that the rainforest resources, apart from large scale commercial logging, are exposed to danger particularly from its margin areas. These areas, which are characterized by intensive man-nature interaction, have been identified as extremely fragile systems. The dynamic equilibrium that bal ances human needs and interventions on the one hand, and natural regeneration capacity on the other, is at stake. The decrease of rainforest resources is, to a sub stantial degree, connected with the destabilization of these systems. Accordingly, the search for measures and processes, which prevent destabilization and promote stability is regarded as imperative. This refers to both the human and the natural part of the forest margin ecosystem."

New demands on landscapes and natural resources call for multifunctional approaches to land development. Tools are required to identify the effects of land management on landscape sustainability and to support the decision-making process on the multipurpose utilisation of landscape resources. Scientists from across Europe installed the "Landscape Tomorrow" network to be prepared for new challenges in research to sustainable land development in an international perspective. This publication analyses general principles of landscape multifunctionality, develops methods to assess the sustainability of agricultural and forestry land management and identifies strategies of sustainable land management. Moreover, it contributes to the scientific basis for future land development strategies and helps support land use decision-making on the political, planning and management level.

The theory of the scattering of light by small particles is very important in a wide range of applications in atmospheric physics and atmospheric optics, ocean optics, remote sensing, astronomy and astrophysics and biological optics. This book summarises current knowledge of the optical properties of single small particles and natural light scattering media such as snow, clouds, foam aerosols etc. The book considers both single and multiple light scattering regimes, together with light scattering and radiative transfer in close-packed media. The third edition incorporates new findings in the area of light scattering media optics in an updated version of the text.

Microbial systems in extreme environments and in the deep biosphere may be analogous to potential life on other planetary bodies and hence may be used to investigate the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. This book examines the mode and nature of links between geological processes and microbial activities and their significance for the origin and evolution of life on the Earth and possibly on other planets. This is a truly interdisciplinary science with societal relevance.

This study analyzes carbon-cycle conditions controlling the state of the Arctic ecosystem and their seasonal variations. Territory covered includes the Barents, White, Kara, Laptev, East-Siberian and Chukchi Seas, considering inter-correlations between sources of organic carbon, their fluxes, recycling and burial in bottom sediments. All biological communities (phythoplankton, macrophythobenthos, microphythobentos, bacterioplankton, zooplankton and zoobenthos) are taken into account regarding their participation in the carbon cycle.

Based on material delivered at several summer schools, this book is the first comprehensive textbook at the graduate level encompassing all aspects associated with the emerging field of astrobiology.

Volume II gathers another set of extensive lectures covering topics so diverse as the formation and the distribution of elements in the universe, the concept of habitability from both the planetologists' and the biologists' point of view and artificial life. The contributions are held together by the common goal to understand better the origin of life, its evolution and possible existence outside the Earth's realm.
The volume ends with 120 pages of a very useful appendix comprising "Some Astrophysical Reminders," "Useful Astrobiological Data" and "An Astrobiological Glossary."

This book fills a gap in knowledge of breaking waves and their influence on the generation of marine fluxes from ocean surfaces. Based on published data as well as on the author's experience, the text explores in detail the relationship chain of breaking waves, whitecaps coverage, rate of wave energy dissipation, amount of aerosol fluxes rising from a given sea basin, and possible seasonal variations.

This book offers exchanges between the fields of paleontology and zoology as patterns of biodiversity have long attracted the attention of both biologists and paleontologists. It covers the development of isolated island faunas, paleogeography and zoomorphology. The book shows that patterns are not always what they seem if looked at without a spatial or temporal reference.

This book presents a global hydrographic description of the thermohaline circulation, an introduction to the theoretical aspects of this phenomenon, and observational evidence for the theory. The hydrographic description and the observational evidence are based on data sources available via internet, mainly from the World Oceanographic Experiment (WOCE). The book also offers an introduction to hydrographic analysis and interpretation.

This is the first truly ecosystem-oriented book on peatlands. It adopts an ecosystems approach to understanding the world's boreal peatlands. The focus is on biogeochemical patterns and processes, production, decomposition, and peat accumulation, and it provides additional information on animal and fungal diversity. A recurring theme is the legacy of boreal peatlands as impressive accumulators of carbon as peat over millennia.

This volume deals with many aspects of the physical and chemical limnology of the Salton Sea, California's largest lake and a lake that may soon to be the object of a multi-billion dollar restoration project. Formed in 1905 by an accidental breaching of outtake structures on the Colorado River, and maintained since then by large and steady inflows of agricultural wastewaters, it has long served as an important habitat for fish and waterbirds and as a major recreational area for people. Highlly eutrophic and with a salinity that is steadily rising and now nearly 50 g/L, it is a lake in great trouble. Most fish species have disappeared, and large fish and bird dieoffs have been common in recent decades. Many of the papers in this volume represent studies undertaken with the aim of informing the re-engineering of this ecosystem so that its value to wildlife and man can be restored or enhanced.

Observational, experimental and analytical data show that C60, larger fullerenes, and related structures of elemental carbon exist in interstellar space, meteorites, and on Earth and are associated with meteorite in impact events and in carbon-rich environments such as coals (shungite) and bitumen. The existence of natural fullerenes is at best contested and incompletely documented; realistically it is still controversial. Their presence in astronomical environments can be experimentally constrained but observationally they remain elusive. Fullerenes formation in planetary environments is poorly understood. They survived for giga-years when the environmental conditions were exactly right but even then only a fraction of their original abundance survived. Natural fullerenes and related carbon structures are found in interstellar space, in carbonaceous meteorites associated with giant meteorite impacts (including at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary) as well as in soot, coal and natural bitumen.
This book provides an up-to-date summary of the state of knowledge on natural fullerenes occurrences and the laboratory techniques used to determine their presence at low concentration in rock samples. It demonstrates that natural fullerenes exist and should be searched for in places not yet considered such as carbon-containing deep-seated crustal rocks.
"Natural Fullerenes and Related Structures of Elemental Carbon" is written for professional astronomers, meteoriticists, earth and planetary scientists, biologists and chemists interested in carbon and hydrocarbon vapor condensation. It is an invaluable resource for practicing research scientists and science teachers in Earth and Planetary Science, Astronomy and Carbon Science.

The soil water retention curve, the saturated hydraulic conductivity and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity function are basic soil hydraulic functions and parameters. Ample apprehension of the soil hydraulic functions and parameters is required for a successful formulation of the principles leading to sustainable soil management, agricultural production and environmental protection. From these, all the other parameters, required in the solution of the practical tasks, are derived. The basic soil hydraulic functions are strongly dependent upon the soil porous system. The development of models is characteristic by the gradual transition from the simplest concepts up to the sophisticated approaches, which should correspond to the visual reality studied by soil micromorphology. 2 Soil Porous System and Soil Micromorphometry 2.1 An Overview on the Quantification of the Soil Porous System Quanti? cation of the soil porous system consists of classi? cation of soil pores, ch- acterization of the soil pores shapes and the estimation of the pore size distribution function. When the hydraulic functions of the soil pores are considered, the following laws of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics are applied as best ? tting to the classi? cation criteria of the size of the pores (Kutilek and Nielsen 1994, p. 20, Kutilek 2004): A. Submicroscopic pores that are so small that they preclude clusters of water molecules from forming ? uid particles or continuous water ? ow paths.

Soil Ecology deals with the interactions among soil organisms and between such organisms and the environment. Soil Ecology has gained increasing attention d- ing the past years and has contributed to the understanding of ecological processes in many ecosystems. Wetlands, which are unique and very sensitive ecosystems, function as a habitat for many organisms, including soil organisms. Although information on soil ecological processes in wetlands is still lacking, such kno- edge is very much needed for landscape planning purposes and for climate change predictions. This book on the ecology of wetland soils in Central Europe focuses on wetlands as habitats for soil organisms, on soil ecological processes in fens and floodplains, on carbon and nitrogen dynamics in soils with different water regimes, and on trace gas emissions. Papers are based on presentations made at a workshop on soil ecological p- cesses in wetlands held at the Centre for Agricultural Landscape and Land Use Research (ZALF) in Mi. incheberg, Germany in 1998. This workshop was organised by the Working Group on Soil Ecology of the German Soil Society. The production of this book was accomplished with much valuable assistance. Manuscripts were reviewed, and constructive suggestions made, by Karl-Georg Bernardt (Vienna, Austria), Hans-Peter Blume (Kiel, Germany), Wolfram Dunger (Gorlitz, Germany), Karl-Heinz Feger (Dresden, Germany), Catherine Fox (L- don, Canada), Thomas Katterer (Uppsala, Sweden), Christian Knoblauch (Bremen, Germany), Pertti Martikainen (Kuopio, Finland), Heinz-Ulrich Neue (Halle, G- many), William H. Patrick (Baton Rouge, U. S. A.

The authors of this book are pioneers of the passive, integrative sampling approach and developers of globally applied semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs). The book will boost understanding of how passive samplers such as SPMD function by examining basic exchange processes that mediate the concentration of SVOCs in a sampling matrix. The book delineates fundamental theory and modeling techniques, while providing a practical guide for its proper application.

The present volume studies the application of concepts from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to a variety of research topics. Emphasis is on the Maximum Entropy Production (MEP) principle and applications to Geosphere-Biosphere couplings. Written by leading researchers from a wide range of backgrounds, the book presents a first coherent account of an emerging field at the interface of thermodynamics, geophysics and life sciences.

Systematically explores the early origins and basic definition of life.

Investigates the major theories of the origins of life in light of modern research with the aim of distinguishing between the necessary and the optional and between deterministic and random influences in the emergence of what we call life.

Treats and views life as a cosmic phenomenon whose emergence and driving force should be viewed independently from its Earth-bound natural history.

Synthesizes all the fundamental life-related developments in a comprehensive scenario, and makes the argument that understanding life in its broadest context requires a material-independent perspective that identifies its essential fingerprints

Coastal zones play a key role in Earth System functioning and form an "edge for society" providing a significant contribution to the life support systems. Goods and services derived from coastal systems depend strongly on multiple transboundary interactions with the land, atmosphere, open ocean and sea bottom. Increasing demands on coastal resources driven by human habitation, food security, recreation and transportation accelerate the exploitation of the coastal landscape and water bodies. Many coastal areas and human activities are subject to increasing risks from natural and man-induced hazards such as flooding resulting from major changes in hydrology of river systems that has reached a global scale. Changes in the hydrological cycle coupled with changes in land and water management alter fluxes of materials transmitted from river catchments to the coastal zone, which have a major effect on coastal ecosystems. The increasing complexity of underlying processes and forcing functions that drive changes on coastal systems are witnessed at a multiplicity of temporal and spatial scales.

This book offers a thorough and up-to-date treatment of the use of morphometric procedures in a wide variety of contexts. As one of the most dynamic and popular fields on the contemporary biological scene, morphometrics is gaining notice among researchers and students as a necessary complement to molecular studies in the understanding and maintenance of biodiversity. This is the first reference to meet that growing need.

This book presents contributions by experts from diverse disciplines, estimating the global levels of biogeogenic and anthropogenic emissions of organometal(loid) compounds, and thus presenting insight into processes which influence the genesis, as well as the distribution and stability of these species and their interaction with each other and other matrix compounds. The authors evaluate identify potential "hot spots" of organometal(loid)s, which can negatively influence ecosystems and human health.