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Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > General
Of interest to both researchers and policy makers
Oxidation and removal of atmospheric constituents involve complex sequences of reactions which can lead to the production of photo-oxidants such as ozone. In order to understand and model these complex reaction sequences, it is necessary to have a comprehensive understanding of reaction mechanisms and accurate estimates of kinetic parameters for relevant gas-phase atmospheric reactions. This book presents recent advances in the field and includes the following topics: e.g. the oxidation of simple organic compounds, NOx kinetics and mechanisms, OH radical production and rate constants for the OH attack on more complex organic compounds, peroxy and alkoxy radical reactions, photo-oxidation of aromatic and biogenic compounds, and the interaction between radical species.
This is the first study of the karst areas of China to be carried out by a Western geomorphologist, and almost all the sources are from Chinese works, as yet unpublished in the West. Karst areas are sensitive to environmental influences and Chinese attempts to deal with these are discussed here, as are Chinese methods of studying karst since they differ somewhat from those in the West. Finally, the author compares karst areas in Europe and elsewhere with those in China. The book is illustrated by numerous diagrams from Chinese sources as well as the author's own photographs.
Earth scientists, who have worked together for 6 years in the priority pro gram "Hydrogeochemical Processes in the Hydrological Cycle Within the Unsaturated and Saturated Zones," have summarized the results of their research in this volume. This is the occasion to take stock and then look ahead. The priority program was set up by the Senate of The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in October 1981. This was preceded by lengthy and careful preparation by a Program Committee, and was finally recom mended by the Senate Commission for Joint Research in Earth Sciences. The main aim was the interdisciplinary research of geochemical processes in natural systems in the total underground water cycle, whereby water pollution was not to be considered. Officially started on 1 September 1982, the program has received a grant of DM 10. 9 Mio. from the DFG, and this has enabled it to support a total of 50 projects. Although at the beginning, practice-oriented projects, which were funded elsewhere, were not to be included, many of the results are applicable. The four categories presented were investigated with vary ing intensity. An early concentration on certain representative fields of measurement and research areas proved to be the right approach - this avoided a waste of effort in other fields. During the period of the priority program, new and topical questions arose, e. g."
Water is an extremely important factor in global environmental change. Water influences the processes causing change. The human and economic consequences of changes in the water system can be very significant. The aim of this NATO Advanced Study Institute was to present a state-of-the-art assessment of the role of water in global change, ranging from a consideration of atmospheric processes to the social and political impacts of changes in water resources. Many initiatives have recently been developed, such as international conferences and research programmes in particular themes, but there was still a need for information from these diverse activities to be brought together. One of the aims of the ASI was to encourage cross-fertilization between the various disciplines looking at water in the global system. This book contains the expanded written versions of the lectures presented during the AS! held in Italy in May/June 1994. It falls into two basic parts. The first twelve chapters cover the role of water in the climate system and climate modelling. Various areas of the water balance including global budgets, the effect of each element of the water balance on regional and global climates, and procedures used to model hydrological processes at all scales are discussed. Precipitation, ice, lake, groundwater, land surface and atmospheric considerations are included together with hydrological process linkage to climate models. Ocean effects were not covered as they were considered to be outside the scope of this particular AS!.
This volume is a summary of work undertaken since 1978 when I completed my doctoral dissertation at the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMO) of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Since that time, my career has taken me through different countries and institutions, many of which have strong links to climate research in one form or another. It would be difficult to thank the numer ous persons whom I have met in the course of my professional life and who contributed directly (for example as co-authors), or indirectly, to the papers which I have published in various journals. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Gilles Sommeria, who at the time was my thesis supervisor, for his advice during the preparation of my dissertation, and for his enthusiasm which encouraged me to take up a career in scientific research. My thanks also go to Prof. Ernst Augstein, Prof. Hans Hinzpeter, and Prof. Klaus Hasselmann for giving me the opportunity to carry out advanced research at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, from the early to mid-1980s."
It is well known that the biochemical processes of life on Earth are maintained by the external solar radiation and can be reduced to the synthesis and decomposition of organic matter. Man has added the synthesis and decomposition of various in dustrial products to these natural processes. On one hand, biological synthesis may only be conducted within the rather narrow margins of parameters of the environ ment, including temperature, humidity, concentrations of the inorganic substances used by life (such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, etc.) On the other hand, the physical and chemical composition of the environment suffers significant changes during those processes of synthesis and decomposition. The maximum possible rate of such change due to the activity of living beings can exceed the average geophysical rates of change of the environment due to activity ofterrestrial depths and cosmic processes by a factor often thousand. In the absence of a rigid correlation between the biological synthesis and decomposition, the environment would be greatly disturbed within a decade and driven into a state unfit for life. A lifeless Earth, however would suffer similar changes only after about a hundred thousand years. Preservation of the existing state of the environment is only possible with strict equality between the rates of biological synthesis and decomposition, that is, when the biochemical cycles of matter are virtually closed."
Numerical weather prediction on the one hand needs a very large number of floating point calculations, but on the other hand is very time-critical. Therefore, the largest computers available, i.e., the "supercomputers," have usually been acquired by the national meteorological services long before they were used in other fields of research or business. Since the available technology limits the speed of any single computer, parallel computations have become necessary to achieve further improvements in the number of results produced per time unit. This book collects the papers presented at two workshops held at ECMWF on the topic of parallel processing in meteorological models. It provides an insight into the state-of-the-art in using parallel processors operationally and allows extrapolation to other time-critical applications. It also shows trends in migrating to massive parallel systems in the near future.
This book is primarily concerned with the space planning of restaurants and, since their basic elements are much the same throughout the civilised world, is directed at an international readership. Although concentrating on the average restaurants, we also look at the wider commercial range-banquet ~ooms, cafeterias, fast food establishments, drug stores, sandwich bars and cafes-as well as private dining rooms, outdoor and in-transit situations. Where a particular environment is not specifically singled out, its elements can be deduced by comparison to similar spaces. At a detailed planning level, the design of dining spaces is not a well investigated and documented field. The present work attempts to fill this gap and address the designer's need for hard facts, dimensions, and sound spatial guidelines. The author of this book firmly believes that given rigorous scrutiny of all relevant data almost any design problem can be solved; and that the process of arriving at a solution (or recommendation) can and should be explicable in unequivocal terms.
This book is of interest to mathematicians, geologists, engineers and, in general, researchers and post graduate students involved in spline function theory, surface fitting problems or variational methods. From reviews: The book is well organized, and the English is very good. I recommend the book to researchers in approximation theory, and to anyone interested in bivariate data fitting." (L.L. Schumaker, Mathematical Reviews, 2005).
Researchers in the natural sciences are faced with problems that require a novel approach to improve the quality of forecasts of processes that are sensitive to environmental conditions. Nonlinearity of a system may significantly complicate the predictability of future states: a small variation of parameters can dramatically change the dynamics, while sensitive dependence of the initial state may severely limit the predictability horizon. Uncertainties also play a role. This volume addresses such problems by using tools from chaos theory and systems theory, adapted for the analysis of problems in the environmental sciences. Sensitive dependence on the initial state (chaos) and the parameters are analyzed using methods such as Lyapunov exponents and Monte Carlo simulation. Uncertainty in the structure and the values of parameters of a model is studied in relation to processes that depend on the environmental conditions. These methods also apply to biology and economics. For research workers at universities and (semi)governmental institutes for the environment, agriculture, ecology, meteorology and water management, and theoretical economists.
Throughout the last 20 years, the study of disasters has developed into a well respected body of know ledge in the social sciences. Disaster research has found its way to several disciplines and it has been remarkably receptive to multi and interdisciplinary impulses. Many disaster studies show how important and stimulating it is to explore events and developments which reach beyond the usual business of the social and political fabric. There. is quite a difference between the daily routines of social and political life, and the upheaval, stress, and shock of a life-threatening danger which may fall upon society. Even when the danger does not materialize to the fullest and society gets off with a fright, the population as well as the authorities may experience demanding situations and critical moments which ask for an effective and quick response. Although the study of disasters is in steady progress, there still remains a lot to be done. One of the blind spots in disaster research continues to be cross national knowledge of disasters and disaster management. Certainly, during the last decade a number of encouraging efforts have been made to promote a more international perspective in disaster management. But as disasters and crises will increasingly feature transnational and even global characteristics, in that sense disaster and crisis research are lagging behind. Students of disasters and crises cannot limit themselves to typically domestic and local events."
Provided here is up-to-date and in-depth information on various swelling phenomena occurring in living organisms and in the unanimated world. Thebook is arranged in six parts, which cover fundamentals, special topics, analytical and experimental methods and applications relevant to swelling insoils, cells and tissues of plants and animals. Specifically, it includes all aspects of osmotic phenomena leading to swelling in clays, cells, tissues, gels, blisters, colloidal systems, surfaces and membranes. Forces between surfactant, lipid and protein membranes and in polymeric systems are also considered.
----- One of the arguments most frequently raised by objectors to nuclear power production is the spectrum of the hazard from the nuc.lear waste. In the public's perception one of the most dangerous features of this waste is the threat to future generations due to the long life of the radio-emitting nuclides. People's concern for this hazard seems to be greater than that for other types of toxic wastes, widely produced and released to the environment (heavy metals, PCBs, arsenic etc.) though these might last even longer. In fact public attitude toward risk depends very strongly on the nature of the risk, as clearly illustrated ill the initial papers of these proceedings. On this basis it appears that tile safety of the nuclear practice, including waste disposal, cannot be assessed only by comparison with other practices or risks. For this reason the analysts have accepted the challenge of investigating the long term safety of this type of waste, taking it much further than for many other known pollution problems affecting mankind. Moreover, for one of the first times lhis is being dulle IJi2fure disp, )sal. The c, )ntributiolls tu these pruceedillljs attempt to describe the specific nature of this type of assessment, pi esent ing Ilew developments which have been made in the field. These include the recourse to system variability analysis, the use of natural and archaeulugical analogues and predictive geology.
Karst is characterized particularly by special landforms and sub surface drainage. The various actions of water result in numerous variations of surface and sub-surface karst forms. They also bring about distinctive geologic-morphologic forms, and more striking ly, specific flora and fauna. The scientific discipline of hydrology, although a long-established science, cannot easily be applied to karst regions with their very complex drainage system. A special approach is therefore necessary to understand and predict water circulation in these areas. This is the viewpoint we must adopt if hydrology is to solve the complex problems of karst phenomena. This book can be seen as the appeal of a hydrologist to experts from different scientific dis ciplines (geology, hydrology, geomorphology, geography, geo physics, meteorology, ecology, civil engineering, forestry, agricul ture, etc.) to collaborate towards a better understanding of karst areas. Evidently, karst phenomena have not been sufficiently and carefully studied worldwide. It is equally true that the first theories on water circulation in karst were developed according to ex periences in the Dinaric karst. This can easily be explained. In habitants in those areas had no place to which to escape, as was the case in other countries."
In November 1988 the "'Third Oberursel Symposium" devoted to the problems of input of pollutions into forest-ecosystems and their effects on plants or soil convened. After several years of intensive research on the effects of pollutions on forest ecosystems it is obvious that not a single specific pollutant can be made responsible but a mixture of several components act together or interact with each other. The contributions of the workshop _ reflect to a large extend the results of research projects which were started at the beginning of the eighties. They review our improved knowledge on the patterns of concentration, of the mechanism of wet and dry deposition and fog interception, modelling studies and the effect of the processes on plant receptors and surfaces. Since the 1985 symposium the pathways of pollutants leading to biological damage have been examined and are more clearly recognised. The book reflects the common interest and the continuous effort of scientists from many different disciplines to better understand the physical and chemical processes which finally lead to the observed damage of forest-trees. Comparing the conclusions of the contributions of this book _ with the results of the first Oberursel symposium in 1981, our knowledge on the relevance of the different mechanisms leading to forest-decay has been considerably improved. The book indicates also in which directions future work should be concentrated. Again, I have to thank the authors for their cooperation by submitting their recent research-results."
The book comprises innovative research presented at the 14th Conference of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE), held in 2011 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The scientific papers cover a large variety of fundamental research topics as well as applied research in Geoinformation Science including measuring spatiotemporal phenomena, quality and semantics, spatiotemporal analysis, modeling and decision support as well as spatial information infrastructures. The book is aimed at researchers, practitioners and students who work in various fields and disciplines related to Geoinformation Science and technology.
The variability of the Sun is well established, as well as that of the Earth's climate. To what extent the two are connected, in the sense that solar variability drives climate, is the subject of considerable research and, in some cases, controversy. After an earlier workshop at the International Space Science Institute (ISS!) on Solar Composition and its Evolution, two ofthe participants came up with the idea to initiate a similar project on the topic of Solar Variability and Climate, a work shop aimed at obtaining an overview of the current knowledge of the variability of the Sun and of the Earth's Climate, and of their possible connections. A further, equally important objective was the strengthening of the interaction between the two, often diverse communities of solar physicists and climatologists. ISSI took up this idea and invited six convenors, E. Friis-Christensen, C. Froh lich, J. Haigh, J. Hansen, M. Schussler, and S. Solanki, who subsequently formu lated the aims and goals of the workshop, nominated a list of invitees, drafted a programme of introductory talks, and structured the workshop into three sections. For each section there was a concluding discussion session moderated by two co chairs. Moreover, there was a number of contributed poster papers for which there were two viewing sessions. The main intent of this format was to leave ample time for open, informal discussions, which is one of the principal aims of ISSI.
The historical and epistemological reflection on the applications of mathematical techniques to the Sciences of Nature - physics, biology, chemistry, and geology - today generates attention and interest because of the increasing use of mathematical models in all sciences and their high level of sophistication. The goal of the meeting and the papers collected in this proceedings volume is to give physicists, biologists, mathematicians, and historians of science the opportunity to share information on their work and reflect on the and mathematical models are used in the natural sciences today and in way mathematics the past. The program of the workshop combines the experience of those working on current scientific research in many different fields with the historical analysis of previous results. We hope that some novel interdisciplinary, philosophical, and epistemological considerations will follow from the two aspects of the workshop, the historical and the scientific* This proceedings includes papers presented at the meeting and some of the results of the discussions that took place during the workshop. We wish to express our gratitude to Sergio Monteiro for all his work, which has been essential for the successful publication of these proceedings. We also want to thank the editors of Kluwer AcademidPlenum Publishers for their patience and constant help, and in particular Beth Kuhne and Roberta Klarreich. Our thanks to the fallowing institutions: -Amministrazione Comunale di Arcidosso -Comunita Montana del Monte Amiata *Center for the History of Physics, UCLA -Centre F.
The existence and crucial role played by large-scale, organized motions in turbulent flows are now recognized by industrial, applied and fundamental researchers alike. It has become increasingly evident that coherent structures influence mixing, noise, vibration, heat transfer, drag, etc. This volume contains selected papers from the IUTAM symposium entitled Eddy Structure Identification in Free Turbulent Shear Flows' which was held in Poitiers, France, October 12--14, 1992. The purpose of the IUTAM symposium was to address some important questions, which are documented in this volume: What is the state of the art of structure identification? How do these approaches work? How do the results from different techniques compare with one another? What kind of information can be obtained from the various methods (e.g., instantaneous results, vorticity, averages, statistics, etc...)? What are the new directions in detection methods and, correspondingly, what are their implications for turbulent flow analysis and prediction methods? /LIST This book will contribute to the knowledge of coherent structure identification processes and will help guide future experimental, numerical and theoretical research in this area. Turbulence researchers will find this volume an invaluable reference."
Among the chemical and physical processes involved in the transformation of pollutants between their sources and their ultimate deposition, those associated with clouds, aerosols and precipitation must be rated as the most difficult both to study and to understand. This book presents a variety of recent advances in this field, including the properties and composition of aerosol particles, chemical transformation and scavenging processes, the relationship between liquid-phase chemistry and cloud micro-physics, entrainment, evaporation and deposition, trends in high Alpine pollution, transport processes, and developments in instrumentation. This book is Volume 5 in the ten-volume series on Transport and Chemical Transformation of Pollutants in the Troposphere.
Investigations of atmospheric pollution have recently reached a new stage. In addition to the estimation and the monitoring of pollutant concentrations in the air around their sources, by way of observational data and also by calcu lations on the basis of theoretical research, it is now possible to make short term forecasts of air pollution and to use them to regulate industrial emissions. Many countries are interested in such forecasts. In the Soviet Union the organizations of the State Committee of the USSR for Hydrometeorology (Goskomgidromet) are carrying out a wide-scale scientific programme on the devising of methods to forecast atmospheric pollution. Prognostic groups are organized in territorial hydrometeocenters; in essence a new forecasting service has been established. Nowadays, in more than 200 towns of the USSR predictions are made and transmitted to large enterprises for the purpose of taking the necessary steps to preserve air qua lity. To ensure an operative working of this service, Methodological Instruc (1979) have been issued, as well as other instructions and guides. Wide tions scale verifications of proposed calculating methods have been made. Prob lems of forecasting and regulating air pollution have become evident lately in other countries as well. Much attention to these problems is payed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). They have been widely dis cussed in a number of international conferences and meetings for modelling and investigating pollutant distribution in the atmosphere. The number of publications on this subject is rapidly increasing."
Do changes in stratospheric ozone relate to changes in UV-B irradiance and do both relate to life on Earth? This volume presents the latest data available in the basic scientific disciplines associated with these questions. The key topics are the interactive factors between the various research elements and the measurements needed to both validate ozone depletion and monitor UV flux changes in the biosphere.
The Arctic troposphere (0 to ca. 8 km) plays an important role in environmental concerns for global change. It is a unique chemical reactor influenced by human activity and the Arctic ocean. It is surrounded by industrialized continents that in winter contribute gaseous and particulate pollution (Arctic haze). It is underlain by the flat Arctic ocean from which it is separated by a crack-ridden ice membrane 3 to 4 m thick. Ocean to atmosphere exchange of heat, water vapor and marine biogenic gases influence the composition of the reactor. From September 21 to December 21 to March 21, the region north of the Arctic circle goes from a completely sunlit situation to a completely dark one and then back to light. At the same time the lower troposphere is stably stratified. This hinders vertical mixing. During this light period, surface temperature reaches as low as -40 DegreesC. In this environment, chemical reactions involving sunlight are generally much slower than further south. Thus, the abundance of photochemically reactive compounds in the atmosphere can be high prior to polar sunrise. Between complete dark in February and complete light in April, a number of chemical changes in the lower troposphere take place.
The rapid increase in environmental measurements during the past few decades is associated with (1) increasing awareness of the complex relations linking biological responses to atmospheric variables, (2) development of improved data acquisition and handling equipment, (3) the application of modeling to environmental problems, and (4) the implementation of large, cooperative studies of international scope. The consequences of man's possible alteration of the environment have increased our interest in the complex nature of biological responses to meteorological variables. This has generated activity in both measurements and in the application of modeling techniques. The virtual explosion of modeling activity is also associated with the development oflarge computers. The testing of these models has demonstrated the need for more, different, and better environmental data. In addition, technological developments, such as integrated circuits, have reduced the cost, power consumption, and complexity of data acquisition systems, thus promoting more environmental measurements. The emergence of scientific cooperation on a global scale has increased measurement activities markedly. The International Geophysical Year (1958) has been followed by the International Hydrologic Decade, the Inter national Biological Program, the Global Atmospheric Research Program, and a host of environmental studies of a regional nature that have all emphasized field data collection." |
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