Agriculture increasingly faces the challenge of balancing its multiple functions in a sustainable way. Integrated assessment and modelling (IAM) can provide insight into the potential impacts of policy changes. However, concepts to address the wide range of issues and functions typical for agriculture are still scarce. Environmental and Agricultural Modelling reviews and presents our current understanding of integrated and working tools to assess and compute, ex-ante, alternative agricultural and environmental policy options, allowing: 1. Analysis at the full range of scales (farm to European Union and global) whilst focusing on the most important issues emerging at each scale; 2. Analysis of the environmental, economic and social contributions of agricultural systems towards sustainable rural development and rural viability; 3. Analysis of a broad range of issues and agents of change, such as climate change, environmental policies, rural development options, effects of an enlarging EU, international competition, and effects on developing countries.

Up-to-date coverage of most micro-econometric topics; first half parametric, second half semi- (non-) parametric Many empirical examples and tips in applying econometric theories to data Essential ideas and steps shown for most estimators and tests; well-suited for both applied and theoretical readers

This third edition of the book has been completely re-written, providing a wider scope and enhanced coverage. It covers the general principles of the natural occurrence, pollution sources, chemical analysis, soil chemical behaviour and soil-plant-animal relationships of heavy metals and metalloids, followed by a detailed coverage of 21 individual elements, including: antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gold, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, selenium, silver, thallium, tin, tungsten, uranium, vanadium and zinc. The book is highly relevant for those involved in environmental science, soil science, geochemistry, agronomy, environmental health, and environmental engineering, including specialists responsible for the management and clean-up of contaminated land.

Biological diversity is important for ecosystem function and services, which in turn is essential for human well-being. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, international efforts have been made to achieve a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss. The loss continues, however. The Asia-Pacific region includes both developing countries with high biodiversity and developed countries with sophisticated data collection and analyses, but only limited information about the status quo of biodiversity in this region has been available. Many Asia-Pacific countries have rapidly grown their economies and social infrastructures, causing a loss of biodiversity and requiring an urgent mandate to achieve a balance between development and conservation in the region. In December 2009, scientists successfully organized the Asia-Pacific Biodiversity Observation Network in the region, to establish a network for research and monitoring of ecosystems and biodiversity and to build a cooperative framework. The present volume is the first collection of information on biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific and represents a quantum step forward in science that optimizes the synergy between development and biodiversity conservation.

The key novelty of this book is first of all in the successful attempt to conduct jointly modeling of environment in terms of physical environment related parameters and measuring similar parameters by means of multispectral remote sensing, primarily by means of passive microwave remote sensing technology. Another new step is in the development and utilization of a multilevel approach which includes remote sensing of the land and water parameters like soil moisture, depth to water table, biomass of vegetation, temperature and salinity of water, in situ measurements of similar parameters and incorporation of GIS and data sets into the models of typical environments. The part of book, which contains remote sensing is focused on multipurpose observations from aircraft obtained in many soil-climatic zones in different countries and is reach of the examples of practical application. Applied mathematicians, geophysics, hydrologists, socio-economists, statesmans and other researchers of environmental changes will find a wealth of information and ideas in this book.

Environmental Data Analysis with MatLab is a new edition that expands fundamentally on the original with an expanded tutorial approach, new crib sheets, and problem sets providing a clear learning path for students and researchers working to analyze real data sets in the environmental sciences. Since publication of the bestselling Environmental Data Analysis with MATLAB (R), many advances have been made in environmental data analysis. One only has to consider the global warming debate to realize how critically important it is to be able to derive clear conclusions from often noisy data drawn from a broad range of sources. The work teaches the basics of the underlying theory of data analysis and then reinforces that knowledge with carefully chosen, realistic scenarios. MATLAB (R), a commercial data processing environment, is used in these scenarios. Significant content is devoted to teaching how it can be effectively used in an environmental data analysis setting. This new edition, though written in a self-contained way, is supplemented with data and MATLAB (R) scripts that can be used as a data analysis tutorial. New features include boxed crib sheets to help identify major results and important formulas and give brief advice on how and when they should be used. Numerical derivatives and integrals are derived and illustrated. Includes log-log plots with further examples of their use. Discusses new datasets on precipitation and stream flow. Topical enhancement applies the chi-squared test to the results of the generalized least squares method. New coverage of cluster analysis and approximation techniques that are widely applied in data analysis, including Taylor Series and low-order polynomial approximations; non-linear least-squares with Newton's method; and pre-calculation and updating techniques applicable to real time data acquisition.

This book is the second edited compilation of selected, refereed papers submitted to ERTEP 2007. The book is organized into 10 chapters along four of the key themes that were discussed at the conference: Environmental Health Management; Mining and Environment; Environmental Monitoring and Policy Development; and Susta- ability and Social Responsibility. It is hoped that the contents of the book will p- vide an insight into some of the environmental and health management challenges confronting the developing world and the steps being taken to address them. The ?rst three chapters under the Environmental Health and Management theme discusses issues related to food security and related environmental distress in sub- Saharan Africa. Chapter 1 argues that pervasive poverty and low agricultural p- ductivity are important factors in understanding food insecurity in the region, and broader global processes are examined. This chapter maintains that while poverty undermines individual and household access to suf?cient food through market p- chase, land inequalities, corruption, structural adjustment programs, civil con?ict, HIV/AIDS and the role of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agric- ture are decisive. The authors argue that achieving food security in sub-Saharan Africa requires policies and actions that are integrated with efforts to reduce poverty, enhance livelihoods and incomes and increase agricultural output, while also paying attention to underlying structural factors that bear on agriculture in the region.

Environmental sustainability issues in a fragile, semi-arid region and its coastal area, which experience climate changes from extreme drought conditions to the effects of hurricanes over a period of weeks to years, provide specific challenges for the ecosystems and the populations existing within the region. The research presented focuses on the problems and some solutions specific to the South Texas-Mexico border region, on both sides of the Rio Grande, focusing on water and air pollution.

The growing impacts of economic activities and climate change on the conditions of rivers throughout the world, require a new, integrated approach towards river basin management, an approach that can also cope with an uncertain future. In this volume, leading European scientists and representatives of major stakeholder groups present risk-informed management as this new approach, as developed in the European Commission-funded project RISKBASE. It aims to improve the ecological quality of river basins and thus to sustain the goods and services they provide for the benefit of society. Risk-informed management involves the integrated application of three key-principles: * Being well informed * Managing adaptively * Pursuing a participatory approach The authors explain and underpin these principles in detail, offer inspiring examples from practice and connect them to the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). This book is intended for scientists, consultants and practitioners concerned about river basins, world-wide, as well as the drafters and implementers of the WFD River Basin Management Plans.

The second volume of "Adaptation and Evolution in Marine Environments - The Impacts of Global Change on Biodiversity" from the series "From Pole to Pole" integrates the marine biology contribution of the first tome to the IPY 2007-2009, presenting overviews of organisms (from bacteria and ciliates to higher vertebrates) thriving on polar continental shelves, slopes and deep sea. The speed and extent of warming in the Arctic and in regions of Antarctica (the Peninsula, at the present ) are greater than elsewhere. Changes impact several parameters, in particular the extent of sea ice; organisms, ecosystems and communities that became finely adapted to increasing cold in the course of millions of years are now becoming vulnerable, and biodiversity is threatened. Investigating evolutionary adaptations helps to foresee the impact of changes in temperate areas, highlighting the invaluable contribution of polar marine research to present and future outcomes of the IPY in the Earth system scenario.

Polar Seas Oceanography describes a new tool called the Generic Model System for simulations and assessment of potential radioactive spreading in the Arctic regions, through rivers, estuaries, regional seas and the Arctic and Atlantic basin. It considers the present and future potential for spreading of radionuclear pollution from sources, such as from the major Russian processing plants through Siberian rivers as well as from European sources such as the UK Sellafield plant. The book provides support for decision making involving risk prevention, forecasting and readiness for probable crises, alerting and detection, relief and mitigation and damage assessment. The book combines the expertise of professionals from the radionuclear and climate-change sciences."

This book is written for ecologists interested in capturing their understandings of how natural systems work in software - to help inform their work and communicate the consequences of proposed management plans. Historically, ecologists had to rely on the skills of trained computer programmers to modeling natural systems, but now a new generation of software is allowing ecologists to directly capture their understandings of systems in software. This book is a compilation of spatially explicit simulation models developed by ecologists and planners without any formal computer programming skills. Readers will be inspired to believe that they too can create similar models of the systems with which they are familiar."

This Brief examines the impact of the Oxford Transport Strategy in central Oxford as a means of assessing the effect of reduced traffic congestion in the city centre on its sustainability. Air pollution (from vehicular traffic) has been monitored at three locations in central Oxford on the High Street, St Aldates and St Ebbes (background monitoring station). There is a further monitoring site situated in East Oxford, but this one is not considered to be central. Based on long-term monitoring at these monitoring stations, a deliberation of urban sustainability is presented. Implications are considered for long-term planning and green design in particular is part of the discussion. More specifically, urban greening strategies are presented as (soft engineering) approaches to controlling air pollution problems at this urban location. In the context of low carbon cities, green walls are assessed as they affect urban greening and energy conservation, as they enhance insulation on the exterior of solid wall buildings. Urban sustainability is best monitored using decades of data rather than just years. The Oxford Transport Strategy (OTS) was implemented in central Oxford, UK in 2001 and now a record of at least a decade of monitoring data is available for such a longer-term assessment. This work revisits the OTS from long after its implementation in the Oxford city centre and specifically examines the impact of reduced traffic congestion on sustainability. This includes address of traffic congestion, air pollution (from vehicular or traffic pollution) and the effects on the urban environment, including buildings. In parallel to this, the role of urban vegetation is considered as a sink for a variety of pollutants. Green walls, as part of urban greening, have implications for low carbon cities in the context of urban heat islands and global warming.

Progressing towards sustainable development raises important challenges to conducting performance evaluations in governments because there are neither generally accepted methods nor specific standards to be met at present. Sustainability Performance Evaluation System in Government, makes a conceptual contribution to public sustainability performance evaluation and develops a set of framework indicators with the help of the strategic and comprehensive approach "Sustainability Balanced Scorecard". As a conceptual basis for the further research and application, this volume will be of great interest to researchers and practitioners at many levels of environmental / sustainability, public management and strategic control studies. Evaluators will find methodological approaches and applied tools for their work. Decision-makers and managers will find it valuable to manage the social, economic and environmental issues in a balanced and integrated manner. Governments will also find it helpful in assisting them in establishing an evaluation system towards sustainable development.

This book is for all graduate students who are specializing in any environmental issue and who wish to grasp the fundamentals of physics that are required in various fields of science and engineering. The book provides the structural concept of the system state equation and its dynamics, which can be applicable to numerical solutions in several important areas such as heat and mass transfer and fluid dynamics. As a first step, there is a description of how to solve a linear system by conducting an analysis of temperature distribution in an infinite soil as a practical example. This exercise helps readers to fully understand what time and space discretizations are, and how actual numerical solutions should work. Because the concept of the system state equation relies on a vector-matrix form, the book shows how that particular form is applicable to other practical procedures: linear multi regression analysis, the least square method, and others. The book also gives the solution to non-linear dynamical systems and their applications. Although this book may appear to take an unusual approach, the author believes it will be inspiring and greatly helpful for the beginner who seeks a solid understanding of the basis of mathematics and physics for any environmental problems.

Human induced global climate change is the biggest challenge humankind faces today. Increasing amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases play a crucial role in the evolution of the climate. Without the understanding of the contributing processes, feedbacks and interactions we cannot predict the future changes and develop effective mitigation strategies. To decrease the uncertainty of the global studies detailed regional studies are needed surveying the regional characteristics of the atmospheric greenhouse gas budget and the influencing factors. Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases: The Hungarian Perspective covers a coherent subset of the Hungarian climate change oriented research that is directly related to greenhouse gases. Topics discussed in the book range from the monitoring of the concentrations and fluxes of atmospheric greenhouse gases, through the modeling of atmosphere-biosphere interaction and greenhouse gas exchange processes, to the review of the anthropogenic contribution of Hungary to the greenhouse gas budget of the atmosphere. The studies call the attention to the regional properties which may modulate the European scale or global picture on the variation of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Due to their unparalleled effectiveness and efficiency, polyfluorinated chemicals (PFC") "have become essential in numerous technical applications. However, many PFCs brought to market show limited biodegradability, and their environmental persistence combined with toxic and bioaccumulative potential have become a matter of concern in some instances. This volume highlights the synthesis of PFCs, focusing on substances with improved application and environmental properties, which are a challenge for synthetic chemists. Further, modern mass spectrometric techniques for the detection and identification of biotransformation products of PFCs are described. The sorption and leaching behavior of PFC in soil is also addressed in order to predict their fate in the environment. Several contributions discuss the monitoring of PFCs in European surface, ground and drinking waters, treatment options for PFC removal from drinking water, occurrence in food, and the human biomonitoring of PFCs.

In most natural sciences, modeling is a widespread method of gaining new knowledge about natural and technical systems. This book analyses the concepts of 'model' and 'modeling' in different fields of research. The different methods of modeling as well as the potentials and limits of this concept are reflected and discussed. The book presents a variety of modeling techniques, from mathematical models in climatology, meteorology or oceanography to methods used in morphology, decision-making in ecology and physical modeling in oceanography. In this broad overview regarding modeling, the book is unique.

Environmental Chemistry is a relatively young science. Interest in this subject, however, is growing very rapidly and, although no agreement has been reached as yet about the exact content and limits of this interdisciplinary discipline, there appears to be increasing interest in seeing environmental topics which are based on chemistry embodied in this subject. One of the first objectives of Environmental Chemistry must be the study of the environment and of natural chemical processes which occur in the environment. A major purpose of this series on Environmental Chemistry, therefore, is to present a reasonably uniform view of various aspects of the chemistry of the environment and chemical reactions occurring in the environment. The industrial activities of man have given a new dimension to Environmental Chemistry. We have now synthesized and described over five million chemical compounds and chemical industry produces about hundred and fifty million tons of synthetic chemicals annually. We ship billions of tons of oil per year and through mining operations and other geophysical modifications, large quantities of inorganic and organic materials are released from their natural deposits. Cities and metropolitan areas ofup to 15 million inhabitants produce large quantities of waste in relatively small and confined areas. Much of the chemical products and waste products of modern society are released into the environment either during production, storage, transport, use or ultimate disposal. These released materials participate in natural cycles and reactions and frequently lead to interference and disturbance of natural systems.

An important purpose of The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry is to aid the understanding of distribution and chemical reaction processes which occur in the environment. Volume 1, Part E of this series is dedicated to Environmental Systems, Physical Properties of the Atmosphere, Global Transport and the Thermodynamics of Ecosystems.

A variety of optimization and simulation models are now com- monly used to help water resource planners and managers identify, evaluate and predict themultiple impacts from va- rious actions or decisions one can make regarding the deve- lopment and management of a region's water resources. Cur- rent developments in computer technology are making it pos- sible to link these models to programs that provide an in- terface betwe- en the decision maker and their models and compu- ters. The volume discusses how these so-called deci- sion support systems can be best developed and used bythose involved in water resources planning and management.

Air pollution has historically been viewed as a local or regional scale problem with attention focused on acute episodes such as the sulphur dioxide and smoke smogs of London in the 1950s and 1960s and the photochemical smogs of southern California first recognized by Haagen Smit in the early 1950s. In recent years, however, it has become apparent that human activity has, and still is, changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere on a global scale. The composition of the atmosphere has seen enormous changes due to natural processes since the formation of the planet. Data obtained from air bubbles trapped in polar ice are beginning to reveal information about these changes over the last tens of thousands of years and geochemical models of the evolution of the Earth give us insights into the changes over much longer periods of time. Perhaps the crucial differences between these natural changes and those now being induced by man are their rel ative rates of change. The magnitude of present day fluxes of some com pounds released as air pollutants is in some cases much larger than those arising naturally. In other cases, for example carbon dioxide, the an thropogenic emission rates are small compared with that of the natural cycle, but the kinetics of the system are such that the steady state concent rations of the compounds in the atmosphere are now being perturbed."

Twenty years ago, researchers wishing to identify contaminated areas in aquatic environments generally took water samples, and analysed them badly (as we have since discovered) for a few "pollutants" which were of topical note at the time (and which could be quantified by the methods then available). Today, the use of aquatic organisms as biomonitors in preference to water analysis has become commonplace, and many national and interna tional programmes exist around the world involving such studies. We believe that this trend will continue, and have complete faith in the methodology (when it is employed correctly). We hope that the following text assists in some part in attaining this goal, such that the quality of our most basic global resource -water - is adequately protected in the future. DAVE PHILLIPS, PHIL RAINBOW England, March 1992 vii Acknowledgements Our thanks for contributions to this book are due to several individuals and groups, for varying reasons. Firstly, a co-authored book is always a triumph, and we trust that the following text is an acceptable compromise of the views of two individual authors, on a complex and developing topic. Secondly, many of the ideas herein have crystallised over the last two decades as the field has grown, and we are individually and collectively grateful to a number of researchers for their insight and assistance."

This book is dedicated to Prof. Peter Young on his 70th birthday. Professor Young has been a pioneer in systems and control, and over the past 45 years he has influenced many developments in this field. This volume comprises a collection of contributions by leading experts in system identification, time-series analysis, environmetric modelling and control system design - modern research in topics that reflect important areas of interest in Professor Young's research career. Recent theoretical developments in and relevant applications of these areas are explored treating the various subjects broadly and in depth. The authoritative and up-to-date research presented here will be of interest to academic researcher in control and disciplines related to environmental research, particularly those to with water systems. The tutorial style in which many of the contributions are composed also makes the book suitable as a source of study material for graduate students in those areas.

Environmental Chemistry is a relatively young science. Interest in this subject, however, is growing very rapidly and, although no agreement has been reached as yet about the exact content and limits of this interdisciplinary discipline, there appears to be increasing interest in seeing environmental topics which are based on chemistry embodied in this subject. One of the first objectives of Environmental Chemistry must be the study of the environment and of natural chemical processes which occur in the environment. A major purpose of this series on Environmental Chemistry, therefore, is to present a reasonably uniform view of various aspects of the chemistry of the environment and chemical reactions occurring in the environment. The industrial activities of man have given a new dimension to Environmental Chemistry. We have now synthesized and described over five million chemical compounds and chemical industry produces about hundred and fifty million tons of synthetic chemicals annually. We ship billions of tons of oil per year and through mining operations and other geophysical modifications, large quantities of inorganic and organic materials are released from their natural deposits. Cities and metropolitan areas of up to 15 million inhabitants produce large quantities of waste in relatively small and confined areas. Much of the chemical products and waste products of modern society are released into the environment either during production, storage, transport, use or ultimate disposal. These released materials participate in natural cycles and reactions and frequently lead to interference and disturbance of natural systems.