This book is the final installation in a three-volume series synthesizing 30 years of mercury research in the Florida Everglades. The first part of this book evaluates the occurrence of trends in both biota mercury concentrations and atmospheric mercury deposition. Through both empirical and deterministic analyses, the likely drivers of biota trends are identified. These analyses help lay the predicate for devising an overall strategy to mitigate and manage the Everglades mercury problem. The book concludes with a model analysis of the likely benefits and uncertainty attendant with implementing the leading candidate strategy for best reducing the Everglades mercury problem.

Drylands in East Asia (DEA) are home to more than one billion people with an environment vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic changes. One of the critical needs in the region is to fully understand how dryland ecosystems respond to the changing climate and human activities in order to develop strategies to cope with continued climate change. This book provides state-of-the-art knowledge and information on drylands ecosystem dynamics, changing climate, society, and land use in the region. In addition to the synthesis of the existing research and knowledge of DEA, the book provides a role model for regional ecological assessment. With a wide spectrum of contributions from experts around the globe, the book should be of interest to researchers and students both internationally and in East Asia. Lessons learned from this synthesis effort in DEA should be useful for developing climate adaptation strategies for other similar regions around the globe.

This book highlights both the diversity of perspectives and approaches to Arctic research and the inherent interdisciplinary nature of studying and understanding this incomparable region. The chapters are divided into four liberally-defined sections to provide space for dynamic interpretation and dialogue in search of sustainable solutions to the issues facing the Arctic. From governance to technology, scientific research to social systems, human health to economic development, the authors discuss fundamental questions while looking toward the Arctic's future. Whether the reader is well-versed in the history and complexity of Arctic policy or looking for an insightful introduction to the vast world of Arctic research, everyone will find answers that lead to new questions and even more discoveries in these pages, laying the foundation for tomorrow's discussion on the future of the Arctic. The Arctic's unique geographic and political characteristics pose questions for the international community, indigenous peoples, and economic interests not easily answered through traditional concepts. To that end, the Arctic Summer College has been engaging leading professionals, students, scholars, and policy makers from across the globe to exchange ideas and support further investigation into the Arctic. A joint venture between Ecologic Institute US and Ecologic Institute Berlin (Germany), the College participates at the annual Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, and continues to be at the forefront of international collaboration in this critical area of economic, political, environmental, and humanitarian development.

In this latest edition of the Long Term Ecological Research Network series, John Hobbie and George Kling synthesize the findings from the NSF-funded Arctic LTER project based in Toolik Lake, Alaska, a site that has been active since the mid 1970's. The book presents research concerning the core issues of climate-change science, and addresses the treeless regions of arctic Alaska, as well as the adjoining boreal forests. As a whole, the book examines both terrestrial and freshwater-aquatic ecosystems, and their three typical habitats: tundra, streams and lakes. The book provides a history of the Toolik Lake LTER site, and discusses its present condition and future outlook. It features contributions from top ecologists, biologists, and environmental scientists, creating a multidisciplinary survey of the Alaskan arctic ecosystem. Chapter topics include glacial history, climatology, land-water interactions, mercury found in the Alaskan arctic, and the response of lakes to environmental change. The final chapter brings together these findings in order to make predictions regarding the consequences that arctic Alaska faces due to global warming and climate change, and discusses the future of the LTER site in the region. Alaska's Changing Arctic is the definitive scientific survey of the past, present, and future of the ecology of the Alaskan arctic, and the comprehensive source for the findings from the LTER site in the region.

How can cultivated plant biodiversity contribute to the transformation and the "ecologization" of agriculture in Southern countries? Based on extensive field work in the Southern countries, a great deal of scientific progress is presented in all areas affecting agriculture (agronomy, plant breeding and crop protection, cultivation systems, etc.) in order to intensify the ecological processes in cultivated plots and at the scale of rural landscapes.

Found in every plant species, the diversity of endophytic micro-organisms can be extremely high within different plant organs and tissue types. In trees, their ecological roles with respect to host tree can vary from latent pathogens or saprophytes to neutral commensalists and mutualists. Given their high diversity, and their bio-active nature, endophytes are currently being associated with a role in tree health against insect herbivores and fungal pathogens, as well as improving tree properties in phytoremediation. Meanwhile there is increasing interest in the potential of some tree endophytes as new sources of drug compounds. The first book on tree endophytes in several years, and containing contributions from leading authors in the field, this book provides an important reference text for professional researchers and advanced students.

Large terrestrial mammalian herbivores play critical roles in ecosystems by acting as regulators of energy and nutrient cycles, modulators of plant community composition and grassland-woodland transitions, agents of seed dispersal, and as prey for large carnivores. Though large herbivores represent a prominent component of mammalian assemblages throughout South and Southeast Asia, little is known about their roles in ecosystems in the region. This volume presents, for the first time, a collection of studies on the ecology of the rich and diverse large herbivore assemblages of South and Southeast Asia. Prepared by experts on herbivores of the region, it covers a comprehensive range of topics, including their evolutionary history, behavioural, nutritional, and population ecology, patterns of diversity across environmental gradients, roles as seed dispersers and regulators of plant growth, community compositions, and their conservation in the face of hunting and global change.

This book provides excellent techniques for detecting and evaluating biofilms: sticky films on materials that are formed by bacterial activity and produce a range of industrial and medical problems such as corrosion, sanitary problems, and infections. Accordingly, it is essential to control biofilms and to establish appropriate countermeasures, from both industrial and medical viewpoints. This book offers valuable, detailed information on these countermeasures. It also discusses the fundamentals of biofilms, relates various substrates to biofilms, and presents a variety of biofilm reactors. However, the most important feature of this book (unlike others on the market) is its clear focus on addressing the practical aspects from an engineering viewpoint. Therefore, it offers an excellent practical guide for engineers and researchers in various fields, and can also be used as a great academic textbook.

Feeding the increasing global population, which is projected to reach ~10 billion by 2050, there has been increasing demands for more improved/sustainable agricultural management practices that can be followed by farmers to improve productivity without jeopardizing the environment and ecosystem. Indeed, about 95% of our food directly or indirectly comes from soil. It is a precious resource, and sustainable soil management is a critical socio-economic and environmental issue. Maintaining the environmental sustainability while the world is facing resource degradation, increasing climate change and population explosion is the current challenge of every food production sectors. Thus, there is an urgent need to evolve a holistic approach such as conservation agriculture to sustain higher crop productivity in the country without deteriorating soil health. Conservation Agriculture (CA), is a sustainable approach to manage agro-ecosystems in order to improve productivity, increase farm profitabilty and food security and also enhance the resource base and environment. Worldwide, it has been reported various benefits and prospects in adopting CA technologies in different agro-climatic conditions. Yet, CA in arid and semi-arid regions of India and parts of south Asia raises uncertainities due to its extreme climates, large scale residue burning, soil erosion and other constraints such as low water holding capacity, high potential evapotranspiration, etc . Thus, the proposed book has 30 chapters addressing all issues relevant to conservation agriculture/no-till farming system. The book also gives further strengthening existing knowledge in relation to soil physical, chemical and biological processes and health within close proximity of CA as well as machinery requirements. Moreover, the information on carbon (C) sequestration, C credits, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, mitigation of climate change effects and socio-economic view on CA under diverse ecologies namely rainfed, irrigated and hill eco-region is also deliberated. For large scale adoption of CA practices in South Asian region especially in India and other countries need dissemination of best-bet CA technologies for dominant soil types/cropping systems through participatory mode, strong linkages and institutional mechanism and public-private-policy support. We hope this book gives a comprehensive and clear picture about conservation agriculture/no-till farming and its associated problem, challenges, prospects and benefits. This book shall be highly useful reference material to researchers, scientists, students, farmers and land managers for efficient and sustainable management of natural resources.

This book focuses on the robustness analysis of high accuracy surface modeling method (HASM) to yield good performance of it. Understanding the sensitivity and uncertainty is important in model applications. The book aims to advance an integral framework for assessing model error that can demonstrate robustness across sets of possible controls, variable definitions, standard error, algorithm structure, and functional forms. It is an essential reference to the most promising numerical models. In areas where there is less certainty about models, but also high expectations of transparency, robustness analysis should aspire to be as broad as possible. This book also contains a chapter at the end featuring applications in climate simulation illustrating different implementations of HASM in surface modeling. The book is helpful for people involved in geographical information science, ecological informatics, geography, earth observation, and planetary surface modeling.

Deep inside caves, at the bottoms of oceans and lakes, beneath the ground: these concealed habitats are absent of sunlight. This strange and fascinating world of complete darkness is not a solitary place-it is inhabited by millions of life forms. Yet most humans-creatures of daylight-have never seen any of them. Until now. In this fascinating-sometimes eerie-book, extreme wildlife photographer and scientist Dante Fenolio brings the denizens of these shadowy haunts into focus. Life in the Dark shows us the many ways in which life forms have adapted to lightless environments, including refinements of senses, evolution of unique body parts, and illumination using "biological flashlights." With more than 200 mesmerizing color photographs, Life in the Dark unveils bizarre creatures like the firefly squid, the giant Amazonian catfish, the Chinese cavefish, and even the human bot fly, which lives in the darkness beneath its host's skin. Fenolio's rich and vibrant images shed new light on the world's fascinating creatures of darkness.

This volume summarizes recent advances in our understanding of the mechanisms that produce successful symbiotic partnerships involving microorganisms. It begins with a basic introduction to the nature of and mechanistic benefits derived from symbiotic associations. Taking that background knowledge as the starting point, the next sections include chapters that examine representative examples of coevolutionary associations that have developed between species of microbes, as well as associations between microbes and plants. The authors conclude with a section covering a broad range of associations between microbes and invertebrate animals, in which they discuss the spectrum of hosts, with examples ranging from bryozoans and corals to nematodes, arthropods, and cephalopods. Join the authors on this journey of understanding!

Arising from a scientific conference marking the 100th anniversary of her birth, this book honors the life and work of the social scientist and diplomat Ester Boserup, who blazed new trails in her interdisciplinary approach to development and sustainability.

This book reviews the unique ecosystem of the Lake Skadar/Shkodra and its basin, and discusses the latest advances made in this region to face the impact of climate change. Divided into 23 chapters, the book gathers leading expertise from various scientific and engineering communities and provides readers with extensive discussions of core issues, including the water and sediment chemistry of Lake Skadar/Shkodra and the metal pollution that is evident in plants, aquatic invertebrates and fish. Readers will discover how a sustainable science-based management approach can be applied to the Lake Skadar/Shkodra region, and will learn about the environment prospects for the region. This book is intended as an essential tool for all scientists interested in the Lake Skadar/Shkodra environment - in particular those investigating the interactions between land and water, between limnology and biota, and between natural and cultural resources.

The book provides an up-to-date account of mangrove forests from Asia, together with restoration techniques, and the management requirements of these ecosystems to ensure their sustainability and conservation. All aspects of mangroves and their conservation are critically re-examined. The book is divided into three sections presenting the distribution and status of mangrove ecosystems in Asia, the challenges they are facing, their issues and opportunities, and the management strategies for their conservation.

The present book describes in detail all aspects of rainwater harvesting, including the basic concepts, procedures, opportunities and practice of rainwater harvesting mainly focusing its application in buildings of various occupancies and sizes. It provides a user-friendly methodology for the planning, design, construction and maintenance of rainwater harvesting infrastructure, in buildings and its premise, as a supplement to conventional water supplies. It highlights the application of plumbing technology, which is an important aspect of rainwater harvesting in buildings. It also includes global rainfall scenario and brief notes on all the elements of rainwater harvesting used in buildings. It is a valuable reference resource for policy and decision-makers, as well as for engineers, architects and students.

This multi-contributor, international volume synthesizes contributions from the world's leading soil scientists and ecologists, describing cutting-edge research that provides a basis for the maintenance of soil health and sustainability. The book covers these advances from a unique perspective of examining the ecosystem services produced by soil biota across different scales - from biotic interactions at microscales to communities functioning at regional and global scales. The book leads the user towards an understanding of how the sustainability of soils, biodiversity, and ecosystem services can be maintained and how humans, other animals, and ecosystems are dependent on living soils and ecosystem services.

The focus of this work is the development of models to estimate evapotranspiration (ET), investigating the partitioning between soil evaporation and plant transpiration at field and regional scales, and calculating ET over heterogeneous vegetated surfaces. Different algorithms with varying complexities as well as spatial and temporal resolutions are developed to estimate evapotranspiration from different data inputs. The author proposes a novel approach to estimate ET from remote sensing by exploiting the linkage between water and carbon cycles. At the field scale, a hybrid dual source model (H-D model) is proposed. It is verified with field observations over four different ecosystems and coupled with a soil water and heat transfer model, to simulate water and heat transfer in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. At the regional scale, a hybrid dual source scheme and trapezoid framework based ET model (HTEM), using remote sensing images is developed. This model is verified with data from the USA and China and the impact of agricultural water-saving on ET of different land use types is analyzed, in these chapters. The author discusses the potential of using a remote sensing ET model in the real management of water resources in a large irrigation district. This work would be of particular interest to any hydrologist or micro-meteorologist who works on ET estimation and it will also appeal to the ecologist who works on the coupled water and carbon cycles. Land evapotranspiration is an important research topic in hydrology, meteorology, ecology and agricultural sciences. Dr. Yuting Yang works at the CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, Australia.

In recent decades, significant advances in new methodologies like DNA sequencing and high-throughput sequencing have been used to identify microorganisms and monitor their interactions with different environments. Microbial genomics techniques are opening new approaches to microbiology by revealing how microorganisms affect human beings and the environment. This book covers four major areas: 1) Environmental microbial genomics, 2) Microbial genomics in human health, 3) Microbial genomics in crop improvement and plant health protection, and 4) Genome analysis of microbial pathogens. Within these areas, the topics addressed include: microbial genome diversity, evolution, and microbial genome sequencing; bioinformatics and microarray-based genomic technologies; functional genomics of bioremediation of soil and water from organic and inorganic pollutants and carbon management; functional genomics of microbial pathogens and relevant microorganisms; functional genomics of model microorganisms; and applied functional genomics. Given its scope, the book offers a comprehensive source of information on the latest applications of microorganisms and microbial genomics to enhance the sustainability of agriculture and the environment.

Yeasts are a versatile group of eukaryotic microorganisms, exhibiting heterogeneous nutritional profiles and an extraordinary ability to survive in a wide range of natural and man-associated ecosystems, including cold habitats. Cold-adapted yeasts inhabit numerous low-temperature environments where they are subjected to seasonal or permanent cold conditions. Hence, they have evolved a number of adaptation strategies with regard to growth and reproduction, metabolic activities, survival and protection. Due to their distinctive ability to thrive successfully at low and even subzero temperatures, cold-adapted yeasts are increasingly attracting attention in basic science and industry for their enormous biotechnological potential.

This book presents our current understanding of the diversity and ecology of cold-adapted yeasts in worldwide cold ecosystems, their adaptation strategies, and their biotechnological significance. Special emphasis is placed on the exploitation of cold-adapted yeasts as a source of cold-active enzymes and biopolymers, as well as their benefits for food microbiology, bioremediation and biocontrol. Further, aspects of food biodeterioration are considered.

The object of this book is to highlight how the nascent field of sustainability science is addressing a key challenges for scientists; that is, understanding the workings of complex systems especially when humans are involved. A consistent thread in the sustainability science movement is the wide acknowledgement that greater degrees of integration across what are now segmented dimensions of extant Science and Technology systems will be a key factor in matching the most appropriate science and technology solutions to specific sustainability problems in specific places.