This book describes the huge efforts by the Chinese Government concerning the restoration and future sustainable management of Chinese water systems. It presents the results of a Sino-European joint project concerning the Songhuajiang-Liaohe River Basin (SLRB) in Northeast China conducted by the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany, and the Natural Environment Research Council as represented by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), UK. The book explains in great detail the development of risk assessment and corresponding management methods for (i) controlling water pollution, (ii) assessing river health and ecological restoration options, (iii) characterizing persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and (iv) protecting fragile groundwater resources. It also describes the implemented demonstration sites of SLRB during the project course as well as lessons learnt on efficient project management and the dissemination of knowledge and technologies.

This book deals with reactions to geological discoveries in early nineteenth-century England. How did theologians cope with new scientific evidence of the antiquity of the world which was contrary to accepted biblical chronology? And what repercussions did this picture have on philosophers, poets and novelists?
The first part of the book concentrates on Charles Lyell's religious and scientific views. This is followed by a study of William Buckland, Adam Segdwick and William Whewell, three clergymen who were also geologists. The last section explores the literary reception of the revolutionary discoveries of Lyell and his contemporaries.

This book discusses the entire lithostratigraphy of Iran from the Proterozoic to recent. This unique book manages to elucidate the stratigraphy of Iran, after an exhausting and long-term process; the creation of a comprehensive stratigraphic framework required input from many Iranian specialist stratigraphers - a process which will be ongoing in the future. However, the main purpose of this work is to provide a concise summary of the state of the art of the lithostratigraphy for Iranian formations. The geology of the various sedimentary basins is described for each geological time period, together with the constituent lithostratigraphic units. The available stratigraphic data are summarized in tables, providing all relevant references. Finally, the book presents the spatial and temporal distribution of the various formations, together with their geographic locations, type sections and lithological composition.

A stunning panoramic exploration of some of planet Earth's greatest natural wonders.

This stunning book gives you the big picture on some of the most amazing sights and events on, above and below planet Earth. Discover the epic journeys that animals make to feed and rear their young, explore the breathtaking variety of Earth's natural habitats and the wildlife that inhabits them and dive to the very depths of the vast oceans in this breathtaking celebration of our beautiful world.

Ideal for readers aged 9 and up.

Contents include Big diverse planet, Tropical rainforest, Desert, Temperate rainforest, Mountains, Scrubland, Rivers and lakes, Tropical grassland, The tundra, The Arctic, Big planet journeys, Wildebeest, Humpback whales, Monarch butterflies, Caribou, Salmon, Arctic terns, Christmas Island crabs, Army ants Emperor penguins, Big blue planet, River mouths, Between the tides, Mangroves, Seagrass meadows, Coral reefs, Open ocean, Ocean deep, Southern Ocean.

This monograph presents the state of art of the geologic knowledge about the Spanish coast obtained through scientific research in the last 30 years.From a general point of view, coasts are the most quickly changing systems of the Earth. This is critical, since many human resources, such as the main part of economic and social activities, are located in the coastal areas. Especially in the case of Spain these coasts include cities, wide industrial areas (including harbor complexes), important ecologic systems, and our main economic resource: tourism. Understanding the dynamic functioning of each element of this coast is vital for correct future coastal management, so as to solve problems derived from bad plans developed in the last decades of the twentieth century. This is a valuable text for advanced graduate students and coastal researchers, which connects the specific dynamic functioning of the main Spanish coastal environments and their relationships with human activities.

This book provides a global review of the mechanisms, incidence and control measures related to the problems of soil compaction in agriculture, forestry and other cropping systems. Among the disciplines which relate to this subject are soil physics, soil mechanics, vehicle mechanics, agricultural engineering, plant physiology, agronomy, pedology, climatology and economics.

The volume will be of great value to soil scientists, agricultural engineers, and all those involved with irrigation, drainage and tillage. It will help to facilitate the exchange of information on current work throughout the world, as well as to promote scientific understanding and stimulate the development, evaluation and adoption of practical solutions to these widespread and urgent problems.

Karst aquifers are important sources of drinking water worldwide. This volume presents a discussion of the current state of knowledge on karst science, advances in karst mapping and karst aquifer monitoring technologies, case studies of karst aquifer assessment, and regulatory perspectives on land use and water management in karst environments. It offers valuable reference material for researchers involved in karst science and environmental studies, as well as a guide for experts at governmental agencies, scientists, engineers and other professionals involved in karst aquifer protection and the design of land and water management systems in karst areas around the globe.

Current developments in air pollution modeling are explored as a series of contributions from researchers at the forefront of their field. This newest contribution on air pollution modeling and its application is focused on local, urban, regional and intercontinental modeling; emission modeling and processing; data assimilation and air quality forecasting; model assessment and evaluation; atmospheric aerosols. Additionally, this work also examines the relationship between air quality and human health and the effects of climate change on air quality. This work is a collection of selected papers presented at the 36th International Technical Meeting on Air Pollution Modeling and its Application, held in Ottawa, Canada, May 14-18, 2018. The book is intended as reference material for students and professors interested in air pollution modeling at the graduate level as well as researchers and professionals involved in developing and utilizing air pollution models.

This book provides a snapshot of the research activities of the Institute of Geotechnical Engineering, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. The topics are broad ranged including: * Centrifuge model testing * Constitutive model * Granular physics * Numerical simulation * Soil bioengineering The topics reflect our geotechnical research in a changing world. Traditional topics in foundation engineering are fading out and new topics are emerging. The European Commission is gratefully acknowledged for funding the following projects within its program FP7 and Horizon2020: MUMOLADE (Multiscale modelling of landslide and debris flow), REVENUES (Reinforced Vegetation Numerical Evaluation of Slopes) and GEORAMP (Geohazards - Risk Assessment, Mitigation and Prevention).

Coastal meteorology is an integral part of the total system approach to understanding coastal environments. This book provides information for students who are not necessarily majoring in meteorology or atmospheric sciences but who nonetheless have need of such knowledge. Scientists, engineers, and coastal planners will also find this book a useful resource for familiarizing themselves with meteorological information.

Proposing a series of innovative steps towards better understanding human lives at the interstices of water and land, this volume includes eight ethnographies from deltas around the world. The book presents 'delta life' with intimate descriptions of the predicaments, imaginations and activities of delta inhabitants. Conceptually, the collection develops 'delta life' as a metaphor for approaching continual and intersecting sociocultural, economic and material transformations more widely. The book revolves around questions of hydrosociality, volatility, rhythms and scale. It thereby yields insights into people's lives that conventional, hydrological approaches to deltas cannot provide.

This book deals with a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for humans and their children. It is a discipline that addresses current issues: climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, poor-nation starvation, rich-nation obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control and biodiversity depletion. This series gathers review articles that analyze current agricultural issues and knowledge, then proposes alternative solutions.

Rapid Penetration into Granular Media: Visualizing the Fundamental Physics of Rapid Penetration introduces readers to the variety of methods developed to visualize, observe, and model the rapid penetration of natural and man-made projectiles into earth materials while providing seasoned practitioners with a standard reference that showcases the topic's most recent developments in research and application. There has been a flurry of recently funded research both in the U.S. and Europe on studying the behavior of projectiles in granular media. This book compiles the findings of recent research on the subject and outlines the fundamental physics of rapid earth penetration, and assembles a comprehensive collection of experimental and numerical techniques to study the problem.

The liquid phase of soil (soil solution) is a very thin, penetrating and all-embracing water layer. It has the most extensive surface among the biosphere components and interacts with all these components. Presented in this work is a new complex approach developed for soil liquid phase investigation that is based on "in situ" measurements. Investigation of the soil liquid phase can be of great significance in environmental research.

This volume sums up the vast experience of the authors' research into soil liquid phase composition in various ecosystems of Central and Eastern Europe. It describes the methodological basics of soil liquid phase research: methods of soil solution extraction, the main problems of application of ion-selective electrodes for immediate "in situ" assessment of ionic activity in soil liquid phase and redox potential, and ways to overcome those problems. Data are presented on soil liquid phase composition in natural and agricultural ecosystems, their redox, pH, carbonate and other regimes as well as the relations between the composition of the soil liquid phase and different ecological properties.

This work is devoted to the pursuit of new approaches to soil liquid phase analysis with a goal of discovering the role of soil liquid phase in the functioning of natural and agricultural ecosystems in recent soil-formation, formation of primary biological production, and in bio-geochemical turnover of elements. It includes new field investigation data as well as all data generalization carried out by means of a special complex database (developed by the authors) on soil liquid phase composition and other soil-ecological properties in various ecosystems in Central and Eastern Europe.

This book is the first English edition that integrally considers both methodological aspects and results of investigation of composition, formation, dynamics, spatial heterogeneity, and interrelations of soil liquid phase with other components of ecosystems. Soil scientists, agricultural chemists and ecologists will find this title of great interest.

This volume provides a detailed overview of water pollution and control of several selected Chinese reservoirs. It explores sediment contamination as well as algal blooms and their impact on water quality. Several chapters also discuss various methods of quality control, such as mixing-oxygenation combined with microbial remediation technologies. Due to their broad geographical distribution and different nutrition levels, the investigated reservoirs, the Jinpen, Shibianyu, Fenhe, Zhelin and Zhoucun reservoirs, can be regarded as representative for China. This comprehensive work will appeal to researchers, advanced students and reservoir managers.

This comprehensive contributed volume presents an account of current research and applications of chemical processes occurring at the interfaces of water with naturally occurring solids. Interactions of solutes with the solid surfaces are looked at from a mechanistic and dynamic point of view rather than a descriptive one. Processes discussed and concepts presented are applicable to all natural waters (oceans and fresh waters as well as soil and sediment water systems) and to the surfaces of natural solids such as minerals, soils, sediments, biota, and humus. Chapters progress from theoretical models and laboratory studies to applications in natural water, soil, and geochemical systems, emphasizing those processes that regulate the distribution and concentration of elements and compounds. Topics covered include adsorption mechanisms in aquatic surface chemistry, the electric double layer at the solid-solution interface, aspects of molecular structure in surface complexes: spectroscopic investigations, interpretation of metal complexation by heterogeneous complexants, the role of colloids in the partitioning of solutes in natural waters, and from molecules to planetary environments and understanding global change.

John K. DeLaski, M.D. practiced medicine in the Penobscot Bay region of Maine and, in addition, was a naturalist with keen powers of observation. His study of the landscape led to the conclusion that a thick glacier had overtopped the highest hills, flooded all of Penobscot Bay, extended far to the east and west and probably was part of a greater continental glacier. He published these very critical field observations and inferences in numerous articles in local newspapers and magazines, and in the American Journal of Science in 1864. His work put him on the "team" of Benjamin Silliman, James D. Dana and Louis Agassiz as an advocate for glaciation as the regional land shaping force opposed to that of the Biblical Deluge, a major scientific conflict of the day both in North America and Europe. He remained a shadowy player, in the background, but clearly contributed critical observations to the argument through personal interactions with Agassiz and other prominent naturalists. They incorporated DeLaski's observations into their own presentations, often without giving him credit. John DeLaski's summary work, a 400 page handwritten manuscript for the book, "The Ancient Great Glacier of North America", was dated 1869. He died in 1874 and the book was not published. The historic significance of DeLaski's unpublished book is based upon its startling contribution to one of the major scientific questions of the day of whether the surficial geology of northern U.S. and Canada was caused by the actions of the Biblical Flood or by continental glaciation. If published, this would have been the first book on this continent, at least, to present a holistic discussion of the controversy in which he presented his critical observations of the surficial geology in Maine, southern New England and New Brunswick, Canada and concluded that these depositional and erosional features must be of glacial origin. DeLaski then incorporated other evidence into the book for glaciation reported by others from the region during a decade or two, and from the mid and far west and Canada to advocate that the entire region was covered by an ice sheet that was at least 5,000 feet and probably much thicker over interior northern U.S. and Canada and which terminated along a glacial margin which extended from southern new England as far westward along the courses of the Ohio, and Missouri Rivers. All this was done while most "naturalists" still advocated the Biblical Flood to explain the major components of the surficial geology in North America and abroad. DeLaski's book containing his critical observations of clearly so many landscape features of glacial origin, if published would have been a pivotal document that would have strongly supported those arguing for glaciations in the glaciations vs. flood international argument.

Geology of the Himalayan Belt: Deformation, Metamorphism, Stratigraphy presents sophisticated metamorphic and igneous rock data across various Himalayan geographic sectors, capturing their petrography, metamorphism, structure, mineralization, and regional tectonic research. With an east-west extension of about 3000 kilometers and numerous 8000 meter peaks, the Himalayas are the most spectacular mountain ranges on earth. Since the 19th century, they have provided a testing ground of global importance for the development of geodynamic concepts, from isostasy over continental collision, to more recently, feedback mechanisms between tectonics and climate. This book collects the broad range of data that's been gathered on the Himalayas over the past 50 years, providing a comprehensive analysis and interpretation on the available data that brings the scientific community a better understanding of the geological diversity and structure of the Himalayan belt, along with new techniques that have applications in a host of global geological settings.

The world is changing. Human population is surging towards 10 billion, food, water, climate and energy security are all at risk. Nitrogen could be our life raft in this global 'perfect storm'. Get it right and it can help to feed billions, fuel our cars and put a dent in global warming. Get it wrong and it will make things a whole lot worse.

This book helps to establish a simple framework to identify and use bird species as a bioindicator for high nature value (HNV) farmlands. This book focuses on suitable methods for monitoring the HNV areas, and presents the results of several case studies. The chapters put forward ways to integrate ecosystems assessment, geographical information systems (GIS) and strategies for conservation of local biodiversity. An innovative framework focuses on the use of species distribution models (SDMs) in order to explore the importance of each characteristic of HNV farmlands. Furthermore, the book examines the relationships among bird species richness, land use diversity and landscape metrics at a local scale in the farmlands.