This volume provides up-to-date information on toxic pollutants in the environment and their harmful effects on human health and nature. The book covers many important aspects of environmental toxicology, such as features, characterization, applications, environmental routes for dispersion, nanotoxicity, ecotoxicity and genotoxicity of nanomaterials, with emphasis on radiation toxicology, polar ecotoxicology, plastic toxicology, microbrial toxicology, nanotoxicology and pesticide toxicology. Also discussed is the use of microbes and nanotechnology for medicinal purposes, which has revealed important chemical prototypes in the discovery of new agents, stimulating the use of refined physical techniques and new syntheses of molecules with pharmaceutical applications for human welfare. The chapters also address the fate of nanoparticles in the environment, as well as nanotoxicology mechanisms impacting human health. The book will be of interest to toxicologists, environmental scientists, chemists, and students of microbiology, nanotechnology and pharmacology.

The book is about climate resilience and environmental sustainability approaches, discussing knowledge at global level and the local challenges, presented by authors from various countries. Environmental sustainability is at stake and implications of climate change are clearly visible in most parts of the world. In the times of the prevailing global environmental crisis, this book discusses key issues of climate change and sustainable energy alternatives, waste management and development. It discusses climate change scenario using simulation models in various Asian countries, signatures of climate change in Antarctica, implications in the Indian Ocean and the Indian scenario of REDD+. A special focus has been given on building climate resilience in our agricultural ecosystems and sustainable agriculture. It discusses the prospects and challenges of renewable energy options including biofuels and energy from wastewaters, explores the technical aspects of eco-friendly bioremediation of pollutants, sustainable solid waste management practices and challenges, carbon footprints of industry, and emphasizes on the significance of combining traditional knowledge with modern technology with novel approaches including involvement of social enterprises and corporate social responsibility to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This is an important document for researchers and policy makers working in multidisciplinary fields of sustainability sciences.

This book provides hands-on conceptual, theoretical, and case study discussions on vulnerability and resilience in the global south. This book covers the core of adaptation strategies in developing countries context in an easy-to-follow theoretical and empirical examples. This book shares contemporary approaches on vulnerability, adaptation strategies, and resilience, which aim to assist its targeted audience (academics, policymakers, and practitioners) to understand and make informed decisions in a wide variety of real-world resilience situations.

This book mainly deals with grassland digitalization and recognition through computer vision, which will make contributions to implement of grass auto recognition and data acquisition. Taking advantage of computer vision, it focuses on intrinsic feature extraction to realize the functions such as auto recognition of forage seeds and microscope images mosaic. The book presents a new approach for identification of grass seeds, with clear figures and detailed tables. It enlightens reader by solving the traditional problems of pratacultural science through the aid of computer science.

This book addresses the improvement and dissemination of knowledge on methods, policies and technologies for increasing the sustainability of development by de-coupling growth from natural resources and replacing them with knowledge-based economy, taking into account its economic, environmental and social pillars, as well as methods for assessing and measuring sustainability of development, regarding water and environment. This book gathers scholar and experts in related fields. All attendees from a vast range of companies, universities and government institutions acquire advanced technical knowledge and are introduced to new fields through discussions that focus on their own specialties as well as a variety of interdisciplinary areas. The authors hope most of scholars can find what they really need in this book.

The subject of tropical cyclones in Southern Africa, also known as hurricanes or typhoons in other regions of the world, has been growing over the past few decades. However, there is still limited literature on foundational and fundamental topics on the matter. To this end, this book addresses this gap, citing some examples from both historic and recent tropical cyclones. The book presents meteorological and climatic aspects of tropical cyclones, including reviews on forecasting, warning message dissemination and public response aspects of early warning systems with a focus on the Tropical Cyclones Idai and Kenneth. Fundamentals in disaster risk reduction (DRR) are also discussed moving from the provisions of the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005-2015), to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030). Climate change issues are central to the publication, as well as the role of information and communication technologies in DRR and management. The book also tackles some challenges and opportunities associated with the implementation of regional legal and institutional frameworks on DRR. The book comes as part of a series with three volumes. The other volumes include "Cyclones in Southern Africa Vol. 1: Interfacing the Catastrophic Impact of Cyclone Idai with SDGs in Zimbabwe" and "Cyclones in Southern Africa Vol 3: Implications for the Sustainable Development Goals". To this end, this book is suitable as a read for several professionals and disciplines such as tourism and hospitality studies, economics, sustainable development, development studies, environmental sciences, arts, geography, life sciences, politics, planning and public health.

This book aims at sensitizing readers towards sustainability and encourages them to understand the importance of lean, green and clean (LGC) issues pertaining to everyday life. The necessity of measurement-based evaluations, statistical significance of material use, and energy are discussed. The book focuses on the importance of climate change issues and environmental concerns associated with lean production and manufacturing. Emphasis is laid on understanding and applying the concepts of quality through project management and measurement based assessment methods. A wide range of audience, including students, teachers, quality professionals, management consultants, lean and Six Sigma practitioners, will find this book valuable.

This book explains to governments, decision makers and disaster professionals the potential uses of recent technologies for disaster monitoring and risk reduction based on the knowledge and experience of prominent experts/researchers in the relevant fields. It discusses the application of recent technological developments for emerging disaster risks in today's societies and deliberates on the various aspects of disaster risk reduction strategies, especially through sustainable community resilience and responses. This book consists of selected invited papers on disaster management, which focus on community resilience and responses towards disaster risk reduction based on experiences, and closely examines the coordinated research activities involving all stakeholders, especially the communities at risk. Many regions of the world and aspects of disaster risk and its management are covered. It is described how recent technologies will support better understanding and action to reduce the number and impact of disasters in future. The principal audience for this book is researchers, urban planners, policy makers, as well as students.

This book provides the practical basis for the use of remote sensing to accomplish landscape ecological projects, through the merging of theory and practice, with examples. This is a specialized application and both these topics have evolved rapidly in the past decade. This evolution is not in the previous edition, and indeed this update provides much new information and valuable ideas for the professional and assist in directing the training of new personnel. The new edition will feature a combination of landscape ecology metrics, quantitative field measurements, and geospatial analyses.

This book has been produced as a part of the project 'Social-Ecological Systems at the Indian Rural-Urban Interface: Functions, Scales, and Dynamics of Transition'. It addresses transition processes in agriculture and society triggered by urbanization, focusing on Bengaluru as an example of a rapidly growing megacity in India. Adopting a holistic, multidisciplinary approach embedded within a social-ecological systems research framework, it explores how the physical and socio-economic landscapes have led to changes in economic priorities, which have overpowered ecological and traditional priorities with regard to ecosystem governance. Allowing readers to gain a deeper understanding of this unexplored dimension of socio-ecological systems, this book is a valuable resource for international researchers, scholars and master's students in the field of environmental science, socio-ecology, forestry and agriculture.

This book aims, through its chapters, at providing the knowledge to make competent decisions, convince peers or top management to take appropriate action, or beat out the competition for climate adaptation measures including adjustments for design and operations. Topics discussed include business-as-usual vs. divergence; the effects of public pressure on corporate, industrial and government decision making; techniques for gathering the proper information to assess risks and hazards; the importance determining risk tolerance thresholds; the difference between tolerable risks, intolerable ones that benefit from mitigation and those that require strategic shifts; why common practice approaches such as FMEA, and risk matrices are inadequate in today's world and do not help ensure infrastructural and systemic resilience and sustainability. Case histories and three complete case studies that can be adapted to any industry or project walk the reader step by step from client request to recommendations and conditions of validity. The ultimate aim is to understand how to reduce risks to tolerable and societally acceptable levels while simultaneously creating sustainable and ethical systems.

The book provides a cross-sectoral, multi-scale assessment of development-directed investigations in the main rivers of wider Central Asia and Afghanistan. The book highlights the development of river systems, water reservoirs, ecosystems and risks as well as the impact of climate change on water resources in Central Asian countries and Afghanistan. It provides information on the genesis of river basins, physical and chemical properties of water in rivers, and the hydrological regimes of the rivers of Central Asia and Afghanistan. The book is useful for scientists and researchers whose work focuses on rivers and the use of water resources, irrigation, ecosystems, risks, water supply, climate change and remote sensing, as well as for students and planners, administrations and other stakeholders in the water sector.

This book reviews the economic potential of various natural resources found in the Egyptian deserts that could help fill the food gap in Egypt, e.g., the date palm, olives, and domestic animals. Bearing in mind that the entire country is subject to arid or hyperarid climatic conditions, only a small portion (3% of total area) is agriculturally productive in comparison, the dominant deserts. These aspects, combined with a growing population (ca. 100 million citizens) and water resources scarcity, have produced severe adverse effects on natural resource utilization. This book presents innovative methods for addressing desert soil's key problems (soil erosion, salinity, pollution, decreased fertility, minerals, and weed and pest control). Its goal is to help authorities reclaim the desert and optimally utilize the minerals and the available natural resources to support the sustainability agenda 2030. Besides, it offers researchers guidance on remaining gaps and future research directions. Lastly and importantly, it provides essential information on investment opportunities in desert cultivation, such as the fields of food, fodder, and medicinal plants.

There is evidence that the world has been witnessing more intense tropical cyclones. Accompanying these tropical cyclones are heightened levels of devastation that witness the loss of human life and wildlife, destruction of natural resources and property and the disruption of major economic and social activities. To this end, there is a growing demand for publications focusing on tropical cyclones at various levels that include regional, national and local levels, especially from Africa. One sub-region that has been witnessing the harsh realities of the increasing intensity of tropical cyclones in southern Africa. However, within this region, countries are usually impacted at varying degrees of damage. Among the countries that usually encounter the harshness of these tropical cyclones are the Comoros, Botswana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique, Reunion, the Seychelles, South Africa and Zimbabwe. From the history books, the following tropical cyclones made landfall and hit southern Africa: Eline (2000), Favio (2007), Dineo (2017), Idai (2019), Kenneth (2019), Eliose (2021), and Chalane (2020). Although all these tropical cyclones had negative impacts, it is undoubtedly Tropical Cyclone Idai that shocked the world with its devastation mainly in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in March 2019. Key infrastructure was destroyed, livelihoods were lost, and the environment was degraded. Thousands of people died, many more were injured, many remain unaccounted for and others remained homeless as of the time of finalising this book in February 2021. This book, therefore focuses on the devastating impacts of Tropical Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe. The book interfaces Tropical Cyclone Idai's impacts with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This linkage was deliberate given that there is still time remaining until 2030, and the world has generally agreed to move into the future along the pathways of sustainable development and sustainability. The book adds to the first comprehensive profiling of the impacts of tropical cyclones on southern African economies, particularly that of Zimbabwe. It also comes up as the first in a three-volume series. The other volumes to look out for are Cyclones in Southern Africa Vol 2: Foundational and Fundamental Topics; and Cyclones in Southern Africa Vol 3: Implications for the Sustainable Development Goals. To this end, this book is suitable as a read for several professionals and disciplines such as tourism and hospitality studies, economics, sustainable development, development studies, environmental sciences, arts, geography, life sciences, politics, planning and public health.

This book proposes the concept of urban multiple habitats and then analyzes its corresponding classification, function and potential supply capability. It provides an analysis framework for studying the relationship between urban biodiversity and built environment, and for considering the loss of urban habitats caused by high-density development. It argues that urban biodiversity is a key indicator for assessing urban ecosystem services. On this basis, the book then presents a case study mainly focusing on wild birds in Shanghai, as urban wild birds and their species could be viewed as an essential indicator for evaluating healthy ecosystem of contemporary cities. Based on the empirical findings, the book proposes an assessment model for urban biodiversity performance and a range of principles, strategies and key indicators regarding the optimization of urban planning and design practice to enhance urban biodiversity performance.

Environmental rights, also known as the human rights or constitutional rights that are used for the protection of the environment, have proliferated over the last forty-five years. However, the precise levels of protection that they represent has since been a major question associated with this phenomenon. Environmental Rights: The Development of Standards systematically investigates this question by analyzing the emerging standards of environmental protection that are associated with such rights and the way that those associations are becoming formalized. It covers all of the relevant human rights treaties to illustrate how environmental rights standards are emerging in this dynamic area. Bringing together an elite group of scholars, this book discusses significant new insights into the way that environmental rights are developing, the standards of protection that they confer, and the way that standards in the field of environmental rights can potentially be further developed in the future.

Water pollution is a matter of concern for both developing and developed parts of the world. This book presents an overview on water pollution and its sustainable management. The book discusses the fundamental aspects of water pollution as well as advanced sustainable technologies for abating water pollution. It is a comprehensive collection of information related with water pollutants which are extremely harmful to man, other living organisms and to the ecosystems. It is all-inclusive coverage of technical, socio-political, scientific as well as social issues revolving around water pollution and management. The book brings out innovative ideas promoting sustainable technologies and extensively covers the diversity of modern technologies related to prevention of water pollution. Book also covers social aspects of water related issues. It is an essential reading for upper level graduates and undergraduates pursuing environmental studies and researchers in the field of waste water management

Energy and water have been fundamental to powering the global economy and building modern society. This cross-disciplinary book provides an integrated assessment of the different scientific and policy tools around the energy-water nexus. It focuses on how water use, and wastewater and waste solids produced from fossil fuel energy production affect water quality and quantity. Summarizing cutting edge research, it describes the scientific methods for detecting contamination sources in the context of policy and regulations. The authors highlight the growing evidence that fossil fuel production, from both conventional and unconventional sources, leads to water quality degradation, while regulations for the water and energy sector remain fractured and highly variable across and within countries. This volume will be a key reference for scholars, industry professionals, environmental consultants and policy makers seeking information on the risks associated with the energy cycle and its impact on the environment, particularly water resources.

The book introduces two domains namely Remote Sensing and Digital Image Processing. It discusses remote sensing, texture, classifiers, and procedures for performing the texture-based segmentation and land cover classification. The first chapter discusses the important terminologies in remote sensing, basics of land cover classification, types of remotely sensed images and their characteristics. The second chapter introduces the texture and a detailed literature survey citing papers related to texture analysis and image processing. The third chapter describes basic texture models for gray level images and multivariate texture models for color or remotely sensed images with relevant Matlab source codes. The fourth chapter focuses on texture-based classification and texture-based segmentation. The Matlab source codes for performing supervised texture based segmentation using basic texture models and minimum distance classifier are listed. The fifth chapter describes supervised and unsupervised classifiers. The experimental results obtained using a basic texture model (Uniform Local Binary Pattern) with the classifiers described earlier are discussed through the relevant Matlab source codes. The sixth chapter describes land cover classification procedure using multivariate (statistical and spectral) texture models and minimum distance classifier with Matlab source codes. A few performance metrics are also explained. The seventh chapter explains how texture based segmentation and land cover classification are performed using the hidden Markov model with relevant Matlab source codes. The eighth chapter gives an overview of spatial data analysis and other existing land cover classification methods. The ninth chapter addresses the research issues and challenges associated with land cover classification using textural approaches. This book is useful for undergraduates in Computer Science and Civil Engineering and postgraduates who plan to do research or project work in digital image processing. The book can serve as a guide to those who narrow down their research to processing remotely sensed images. It addresses a wide range of texture models and classifiers. The book not only guides but aids the reader in implementing the concepts through the Matlab source codes listed. In short, the book will be a valuable resource for growing academicians to gain expertise in their area of specialization and students who aim at gaining in-depth knowledge through practical implementations. The exercises given under texture based segmentation (excluding land cover classification exercises) can serve as lab exercises for the undergraduate students who learn texture based image processing.

This book provides a didactic overview of techniques for inferring information from soil spectroscopic data, and the codes in the R programming language for performing such analyses. It is intended for students, researchers and practitioners looking to infer soil information from spectroscopic data, focusing mainly on, but not restricted to, the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Little prior knowledge of the R programming language or digital soil spectra is required. We work through the steps to process spectroscopic data systematically.

This book discusses and studies the basic course of ecological civilization construction in the 70 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China and summarizes the experience and lessons. It contains 75 articles from 75 top experts and government officials in the field of ecological civilization policy-making and basic theory research in China, including Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, ecological culture, green industry economy, environmental quality, legal system, ecological security and so on, so as to provide reference for understanding and studying the progress of ecological environment protection since the founding of China.

This book contains some contributions presented at the Applied Mathematics for Environmental Problems minisymposium during the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) held July 15-19, 2019 in Valencia, Spain. The first paper addresses a simplified physical wildfire spread model, based on partial differential equations solved with finite element methods and integrated into a GIS to provide a useful and efficient tool. The second paper focuses on one of the causes of the unpredictable behavior of wildfire, fire-spotting, through a statistical approach. The third paper addresses low -level wind shear which represents one of the most relevant hazards during aircraft takeoff and landing. It presents an experimental wind shear alert system that is based on predicting wind velocities obtained from the Harmonie-Arome model. The last paper addresses the environmental impact of oil reservoirs. It presents high-order hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin formulation combined with high-order diagonally implicit Runge-Kutta schemes to solve one-phase and two-phase flow problems through porous media. All the contributions collected in this volume are interesting examples of how mathematics and numerical modelling are effective tools in the field of environmental problems.

More than half of the world population now lives in cities, and urban expansion continues as rural people move to cities. This results in the loss of land for other purposes, particularly soil for agriculture and drainage. This book presents a review of current knowledge of the extension and projected expansion of urban areas at a global scale. Focusing on the impact of the process of 'land take' on soil resources and the ecosystem services that they provide, it describes approaches and methodologies for detecting and measuring urban areas, based mainly on remote sensing, together with a review of models and projected data on urban expansion. The most innovative aspect includes an analysis of the drivers and especially the impacts of soil sealing and land take on ecosystem services, including agriculture and food security, biodiversity, hydrology, climate and landscape. Case studies of cities from Europe, China and Latin America are included. The aim is not only to present and analyse this important environmental challenge, but also to propose and discuss solutions for the limitation, mitigation and compensation of this process.

This book presents a survey, dynamic monitoring and comprehensive analysis of Sri Lanka's land, vegetation, surface water, ocean and other environmental resources, as well as its economic, transportation, urban, agricultural and tourism development. It offers readers accurate, systematic and comprehensive information on Sri Lanka's ecological setting and socio-economic development. It also sheds light on policies for the protection of the environment and biodiversity.

This book demonstrates the measurement, monitoring and mapping of environmental contaminants in soil & sediment, surface & groundwater and atmosphere. This book explores state-of-art techniques based on methodological and modeling in modern geospatial techniques specifically focusing on the recent trends in data mining techniques and robust modeling. It also presents modifications of and improvements to existing control technologies for remediation of environmental contaminants. In addition, it includes three separate sections on contaminants, risk assessment and remediation of different existing and emerging pollutants. It covers major topics such as: Radioactive Wastes, Solid and Hazardous Wastes, Heavy Metal Contaminants, Arsenic Contaminants, Microplastic Pollution, Microbiology of Soil and Sediments, Soil Salinity and Sodicity, Aquatic Ecotoxicity Assessment, Fluoride Contamination, Hydrochemistry, Geochemistry, Indoor Pollution and Human Health aspects. The content of this book will be of interest to researchers, professionals, and policymakers whose work involves environmental contaminants and related solutions.