This book is intended as an introduction to the field of planetary systems at the postgraduate level. It consists of four extensive lectures on Hamiltonian dynamics, celestial mechanics, the structure of extrasolar planetary systems and the formation of planets. As such, this volume is particularly suitable for those who need to understand the substantial connections between these different topics.

The book covers the international state-of-the-art research in the field of 3D geo-information modeling. It focuses on comparing several types of 3D models. Due to the rapid developments in sensor techniques more and more 3D data becomes available. Effective algorithms for (semi) automatic object reconstruction are required. 3D analysis and 3D simulation techniques explore and extend the possibilities in spatial applications.

This volume is devoted to the Persistent Scatterer Technique, the latest development in radar interferometric data processing. It is the only book on Permanent Scatterer (PS) technique of radar interferometry, and it details a newly developed stochastic model and estimator algorithm to cope with possible problems for the application of the PS technique. The STUN (spatio-temporal unwrapping network) algorithm, developed to cope with these issues in a robust way, is presented and applied to two test sites.

This book is a collection of papers that are devoted to various aspects of interactions between mineralogy and material sciences. It will include reviews, perspective papers and original research papers on mineral nanostructures, biomineralization, micro- and nanoporous mineral phases as functional materials, physical and optical properties of minerals, etc. Many important materials that dominate modern technological development were known to mineralogists for hundreds of years, though their properties were not fully recognized. Mineralogy, on the other hand, needs new impacts for the further development in the line of modern scientific achievements such as bio- and nanotechnologies as well as by the understanding of a deep role that information plays in the formation of natural structures and definition of natural processes. It is the idea of this series of books to provide an arena for interdisciplinary discussion on minerals as advanced materials.

The present monograph as well as the next one (Dorman, M2005) is a result of more than 50 years working in cosmic ray (CR) research. After graduation in December 1950 Moscow Lomonosov State University (Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics Division, the Team of Theoretical Physics), my supervisor Professor D. I. Blokhintsev planned for me, as a winner of a Red Diploma, to continue my education as an aspirant (a graduate student) to prepare for Ph. D. in his very secret Object in the framework of what was in those time called the Atomic Problem. To my regret the KGB withheld permission, and I, together with other Jewish students who had graduated Nuclear Divisions of Moscow and Leningrad Universities and Institutes, were faced with a real prospect of being without any work. It was our good fortune that at that time there was being brought into being the new Cosmic Ray Project (what at that time was also very secret, but not as secret as the Atomic Problem), and after some time we were directed to work on this Project. It was organized and headed by Prof. S. N. Vernov (President of All-Union Section of Cosmic Rays) and Prof. N. V. Pushkov (Director of IZMIRAN); Prof. E. L. Feinberg headed the theoretical part of the Project.

Shortly, this book is the written up-graded version of the topics discussed during the Small Meeting of the 2nd International School Congress: Natural Resources, Sustainability and Humanity, held in Braga, Portugal, 5-8 May 2010 with the diverse participation of scientists, educators and governmental representatives. The Earth hosts an immense ecosystem, colonized by millions of species for billions of years but only for a few tens of thousands of years by humans. Environmental history tells though that it was humankind that shaped the environment as no other species. History, geography, religion and politics among other reasons have differentiated populations with respect to access to safe food and water, education, health, and to space and natural resource utilization. The globalization era of trade, information and communication is shortening distances and increasing overall wealth, but, as is pointed out in this book, it is also contributing to the propagation of diseases, and to the modification or even destruction of native ecosystems by exotic invasive species. Man is the only species that has the perception of its history, evolution, of the consequences of its decisions, and that there is a future ahead. It is also the only species that has the potential to change it. This awareness can be a source of anxiety and contradictory behaviours, but it is also the key to changing attitudes towards the construction of a common sustainable home, by committed education, interdisciplinary approaches, mobilization and empowerment of people and political consonant actions.

This foreword deals exclusively with the planning, organization, and execution of the Workshop's scientific as well as cultural programs. It is opened with a synopsis on how the global political changes that occurred immediately after the Workshop caused the ~elay in producing the proceedings, followed by a brief exposition on need, timeliness, and importance of this second ARW in the field of electromagnetic imaging, radar remote sensing, and target versus clutter di~rimination; and an outline of the objectives. An informal discussion about some of the organizational details, a retrospective summary of events, and a preview of the third workshop, planned for 1993 September 19-25, is intended to recapture the spirit of this second NATO Advanced Research Workshop (1988 September 18-24), and will reveal how successful it was in compar ison to the first of 1983 September 18-24, how its accomplishments may be appreciated and why a third and last workshop was requested by its participants to take place during 1993 September 19-25.

Written for a broad audience this book offers a comprehensive account of early warning systems for hydro meteorological disasters such as floods and storms, and for geological disasters such as earthquakes. One major theme is the increasingly important role in early warning systems played by the rapidly evolving fields of space and information technology. The authors, all experts in their respective fields, offer a comprehensive and in-depth insight into the current and future perspectives for early warning systems. The text is aimed at decision-makers in the political arena, scientists, engineers and those responsible for public communication and dissemination of warnings.

This book is about the theoretical and practical aspects of the statistics of Extreme Events in Nature. Most importantly, this is the first text in which Copulas are introduced and used in Geophysics. Several topics are fully original, and show how standard models and calculations can be improved by exploiting the opportunities offered by Copulas. In addition, new quantities useful for design and risk assessment are introduced.

* Multidisciplinary approach of risk assessment and management, which can provide more efficient earthquake mitigation. * Transfer of Geo-scientific and engineering knowledge to Civil Protection and insurance agents * Approaches and common practices directly related to the preparation of earthquake emergency plans * Illustrated examples of actual applications, including web sites * Case-studies and information on relevant international projects

This book provides information on the Earth science remote sensing data information and data format such as HDF-EOS. It evaluates the current data processing approaches and introduces data searching and ordering from different public domains. It further explores the remote sensing and GIS migration products and WebGIS applications. Both volumes are designed to give an introduction to current and future NASA, NOAA and other Earth science remote sensing.

The science of geostatistics is now being employed in an increasing number of disciplines in environmental sciences. This book surveys the latest applications of Geostatistics in a broad spectrum of fields including air quality, climatology, ecology, groundwater hydrology, surface hydrology, oceanography, soil contamination, epidemiology and health, natural hazards, and remote sensing.

This book provides information on the Earth science remote sensing data information and data format such as HDF-EOS. It evaluates the current data processing approaches and introduces data searching and ordering from different public domains. It further explores the remote sensing and GIS migration products and WebGIS applications. Both volumes are designed to give an introduction to current and future NASA, NOAA and other Earth science remote sensing.

Although upwards of 50,000 environmental assessments (EAs) are prepared annually-compared to some 500 environmental impact statements (EISs)-the focus of U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations is on defining requirements for preparing EISs. Written by Charles Eccleston and J. Peyton Doub, who have established themselves among the top environmental experts in the world, Preparing NEPA Environmental Assessments: A User's Guide to Best Professional Practices fills the need for an authoritative and comprehensive guide on how to prepare EAs. Bridging the regulatory gap, this book identifies relevant EIS regulatory requirements that can be logically interpreted to also apply to EAs. It compiles and synthesizes information scattered throughout NEPA's regulations, executive orders, and guidance documents, and incorporates case law to provide additional clarification. The authors also draw on the professional experiences and best professional practices (BPP) of NEPA practitioners. From the fundamentals to more advanced topics, the book presents a consistent methodology to help beginners, students, and professionals manage, analyze, and write legally sufficient EAs. It addresses dilemmas that have traditionally plagued preparation of EAs, provides BPPs, tools, and approaches for resolving problems, and introduces methods for streamlining the EA process. Building on Eccleston's previous guide to EAs, Effective Environmental Assessments: How to Manage and Prepare NEPA Assessments (2001), this book reflects the rapid changes in government policy over the past ten years. An indispensable source of practical information, it provides readers with step-by-step direction and best practices for preparing defensible EAs.

Stable isotope ratio variation in natural systems reflects the dynamics of Earth systems processes and imparts isotope labels to Earth materials. Carbon isotope ratios of atmospheric CO2 record exchange of carbon between the biosphere and the atmosphere; the incredible journeys of migrating monarchs is documented by hydrogen isotopes in their wings; and water carries an isotopic record of its source and history as it traverses the atmosphere and land surface. Through these and many other examples, improved understanding of spatio-temporal isotopic variation in Earth systems is leading to innovative new approaches to scientific problem-solving. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the theory, methods, and applications that are enabling new disciplinary and cross-disciplinary advances through the study of "isoscapes": isotopic landscapes. "This impressive new volume shows scientists deciphering and using the natural isotope landscapes that subtly adorn our spaceship Earth.", Brian Fry, Coastal Ecology Institute, Louisiana State University, USA "An excellent timely must read and must-have reference book for anybody interested or engaged in applying stable isotope signatures to questions in e.g. Anthropology, Biogeochemistry, Ecology, or Forensic Science regarding chronological and spatial movement, changes, or distribution relating to animals, humans, plants, or water.", Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification, University of Dundee, UK "Natural resources are being affected by global change, but exactly where, how, and at what pace? Isoscapes provide new and remarkably precise answers.", John Hayes, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA "This exciting volume is shaping a new landscape in environmental sciences that is utilizing the remarkable advances in isotope research to enhance and extend the capabilities of the field.", Dan Yakir, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Mohamed Medhat Gaber "It is not my aim to surprise or shock you - but the simplest way I can summarise is to say that there are now in the world machines that think, that learn and that create. Moreover, their ability to do these things is going to increase rapidly until - in a visible future - the range of problems they can handle will be coextensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied" by Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001) 1Overview This book suits both graduate students and researchers with a focus on discovering knowledge from scienti c data. The use of computational power for data analysis and knowledge discovery in scienti c disciplines has found its roots with the re- lution of high-performance computing systems. Computational science in physics, chemistry, and biology represents the rst step towards automation of data analysis tasks. The rational behind the developmentof computationalscience in different - eas was automating mathematical operations performed in those areas. There was no attention paid to the scienti c discovery process. Automated Scienti c Disc- ery (ASD) [1-3] represents the second natural step. ASD attempted to automate the process of theory discovery supported by studies in philosophy of science and cognitive sciences. Although early research articles have shown great successes, the area has not evolved due to many reasons. The most important reason was the lack of interaction between scientists and the automating systems.

Over the last three decades drought episodes have resulted in severe social problems in Mediterranean countries, receiving broad attention from the international scientific and policy communities. The experiences in the development and implementation of drought management plans highlight the success and challenges of coping with drought for societies with different vulnerabilities and emphasize risk-based drought management as a critical approach to mitigate the impacts associated to drought-induced water shortages. Based on these experiences and the current methods for evaluating risk, the book synthesises guidelines for drought management that link science and policy and that can be applied to other regions. The book comprises a collection of papers divided into four sections that appeal to a broad audience. First, the social and hydrological context of Mediterranean countries is presented, discussing the interactions that have resulted in the complex institutional framework, and highlighting the importance of stakeholder involvement and awareness building for successful drought management. This section emphasises the role of organizations, institutions, and civil stakeholders involved in drought preparedness and mitigation and/or on water management for designing effective risk based strategies that mitigate the effects of drought in agriculture and water supply systems. Second, the book presents an academic approach to risk evaluation, including characterization of drought episodes, development of indicators of risk in hydrological and agricultural systems, and analysis of the role of economic instruments and groundwater for risk mitigation. This section finalises with the description of an integrated method for evaluating social vulnerability based on indicators that include the capacity to anticipate, cope, and respond to drought. The third section includes a collection of case studies that include the description of effective measures taken in the past. These case studies provide the context for developing demand driven guidelines that may be applied to other regions. The authors of these chapters can be viewed as stakeholders in drought management, since they represent a broad range of sectors and institutions from Mediterranean European and North African countries. The topics addressed have implications for the international policy community interested in disaster mitigation, agricultural policy, and development. Finally a synthesis of the management actions is presented in four chapters. Monitoring and preparedness planning is the essential first step for moving from disaster to risk management in response to drought. The management actions related to agriculture and water supply systems are presented in two different chapters but with a common conceptual framework based on the use of drought indicators for evaluating the levels of drought risk (pre-alert, alert, and emergency), that allow establishing linkages between science and policy. The final chapter discuses the lessons learned and application to other regions.

This volume employs an improved Integrated Assessment methodology to analyze the impact of several climate change scenarios on agriculture, water resources, unmanaged ecosystems, irrigation, and land use in the United States, along with their economic implications. The text addresses a range of possible consequences, including impacts on international trade in agricultural commodities, and their consequences for producers and consumers.

This book examines how the news media in general, and investigative journalism in particular, interprets environmental problems and how those interpretations contribute to the shaping of a discourse of risk that can compete against the omnipresent and hegemonic discourse of modernisation in Chinese society.

This book describes the relationship between the atmosphere and the external plasma of Earth in an unconventional manner. While the main mechanical energy is located in the dense atmosphere, the presence of Earth's plasma environment, which is immersed in the magnetosphere, causes a number of very interesting effects on the atmosphere. A list of such effects includes magnetic substorms, magnetic storms and aurora to the dynamics of the upper atmosphere, heating, thermal expansion, and vertical and horizontal winds. Particle precipitation produces excess ionization and electric currents, causes electric fields, affects recombination and modifies chemical reactions. These are processes which may become important in the climate. The collected articles provide an overview of these effects. This volume is aimed at graduate students and researchers active in the areas of atmospheric science and space science. Previously published in Space Science Reviews, Vol. 168/1-4, 2012.

Light scattering by densely packed inhomogeneous media is a particularly ch- lenging optics problem. In most cases, only approximate methods are used for the calculations. However, in the case where only a small number of macroscopic sc- tering particles are in contact (clusters or aggregates) it is possible to obtain exact results solving Maxwell's equations. Simulations are possible, however, only for a relativelysmallnumberofparticles,especiallyiftheirsizesarelargerthanthewa- length of incident light. The ?rst review chapter in PartI of this volume, prepared by Yasuhiko Okada, presents modern numerical techniques used for the simulation of optical characteristics of densely packed groups of spherical particles. In this case, Mie theory cannot provide accurate results because particles are located in the near ?eld of each other and strongly interact. As a matter of fact, Maxwell's equations must be solved not for each particle separately but for the ensemble as a whole in this case. The author describes techniques for the generation of shapes of aggregates. The orientation averaging is performed by a numerical integration with respect to Euler angles. The numerical aspects of various techniques such as the T-matrix method, discrete dipole approximation, the ?nite di?erence time domain method, e?ective medium theory, and generalized multi-particle Mie so- tion are presented. Recent advances in numerical techniques such as the grouping and adding method and also numerical orientation averaging using a Monte Carlo method are discussed in great depth.

Taking an engineering, rather than a mathematical, approach, Bounding uncertainty in Civil Engineering - Theoretical Background deals with the mathematical theories that use convex sets of probability distributions to describe the input data and/or the final response of systems. The particular point of view of the authors is centered on the applications to civil engineering problems, and the theory of random sets has been adopted as a basic and relatively simple model. However, the authors have tried to elucidate its connections to the more general theory of imprecise probabilities, Choquet capacities, fuzzy sets, p-boxes, convex sets of parametric probability distributions, and approximate reasoning both in one dimension and in several dimensions with associated joint spaces. If choosing the theory of random sets may lead to some loss of generality, it has, on the other hand, allowed for a self-contained selection of the topics and a more unified presentation of the theoretical contents and algorithms. With over 80 examples worked out step by step, the book should assist newcomers to the subject (who may otherwise find it difficult to navigate a vast and dispersed literature) in applying the techniques described to their own specific problems.

In recent years, the increased availability and fidelity of broadband seismic instruments have effectively narrowed the gap between exploration and global seismic applications. Global seismologists are now able to take advantage of high-resolution, often exploration-based, tools to examine rock properties tens to hundreds of kilometers below surface. This book reviews the key assumptions, algorithms and prospects of several important array-based methods in today's global and regional seismic surveys. A short list of topics includes data migration, PP and SS precursors, Radon transform, mantle triplication, P-to-S and S-to-P converted waves, shear-wave splitting, high-resolution seismic tomography, and ambient-noise interferometry. Each approach is presented in a 'cookbook' fashion for easy comparison, implementation and critique by the general readership.

The authors in this volume make a case for LTSER's potential in providing insights, knowledge and experience necessary for a sustainability transition. This expertly edited selection of contributions from Europe and North America reviews the development of LTSER since its inception and assesses its current state, which has evolved to recognize the value of formulating solutions to the host of ecological threats we face. Through many case studies, this book gives the reader a greater sense of where we are and what still needs to be done to engage in and make meaning from long-term, place-based and cross-disciplinary engagements with socio-ecological systems.