"Porous Models for Wave-seabed Interactions" discusses the Phenomenon of wave-seabed interactions, which is a vital issue for coastal and geotechnical engineers involved in the design of foundations for marine structures such as pipelines, breakwaters, platforms, etc. The most important sections of this book will be the fully detailed theoretical models of wave-seabed interaction problem, which are particularly useful for postgraduate students and junior researchers entering the discipline of marine geotechnics and offshore engineering. This book also converts the research outcomes of theoretical studies to engineering applications that will provide front-line engineers with practical and effective tools in the assessment of seabed instability in engineering design.

Prof. Dong-Sheng Jeng works at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.

This book gives a general picture of research-driven activities related to location and map-based services. The interdisciplinary character of the topic leads to a variety of contributions with backgrounds from academia to business and from computer science to geodesy. While cartography is aiming at efficient communication of spatial information, the development and availability of technologies like mobile networking, mobile devices or short-range sensors lead to interesting new possibilities of achieving this aim. By trying to make use of the available technologies, a variety of related disciplines looks specifically at user-centered and context-aware system development, especially in wayfinding and navigation systems.

In tropical latitudes, monsoons trigger regimes of strong seasonal rainfall over the continents. Over the West African region, the rainfall has shown a strong variability from interannual to decadal time scales. The atmospheric response to global sea surface temperatures is the leading cause of rainfall variability in the West African Sahel. This thesis explores changes in the leading ocean forcing of Sahelian rainfall interannual variability. It anaylzes the dynamical mechanisms at work to explain the non-stationary sea surface temperature-forced response of anomalous rainfall. The underlying multidecadal sea surface temperature background is raised as a key factor that favors some interannual teleconnections and inhibits others. Results of this thesis are relevant for improving the seasonal predictability of summer rainfall in the Sahel.

The debate on how mankind should respond to climate change is diverse, as the appropriate strategy depends on global as well as local circumstances.

As scientists are denied the possibility of conducting experiments with the real climate, only climate models can give insights into man-induced climate change, by experimenting with digital climates under varying conditions and by extrapolating past and future states into the future.

But the nature of models is a purely representational one. A model is good if it is believed to represent the relevant processes of a natural system well. However, a model and its results, in particular in the case of climate models which interconnect countless hypotheses, is only to some extent testable, although an advanced infrastructure of evaluation strategies has been developed involving strategies of model intercomparison, ensemble prognoses, uncertainty metrics on the system and component levels. The complexity of climate models goes hand in hand with uncertainties, but uncertainty is in conflict with socio-political expectations. However, certain predictions belong to the realm of desires and ideals rather than to applied science. Today s attempt to define and classify uncertainty in terms of likelihood and confidence reflect this awareness of uncertainty as an integral part of human knowledge, in particular on knowledge about possible future developments. The contributions in this book give a first hand insight into scientific strategies in dealing with uncertainty by using simulation models and into social, political and economical requirements in future projections on climate change. Do these strategies and requirements meet each other or fail?

The debate on how mankind should respond to climate change is diverse, as the appropriate strategy depends on global as well as local circumstances. As scientists are denied the possibility of conducting experiments with the real climate, only climate models can give insights into man-induced climate change, by experimenting with digital climates under varying conditions and by extrapolating past and future states into the future. But the 'nature' of models is a purely representational one. A model is good if it is believed to represent the relevant processes of a natural system well. However, a model and its results, in particular in the case of climate models which interconnect countless hypotheses, is only to some extent testable, although an advanced infrastructure of evaluation strategies has been developed involving strategies of model intercomparison, ensemble prognoses, uncertainty metrics on the system and component levels. The complexity of climate models goes hand in hand with uncertainties, but uncertainty is in conflict with socio-political expectations. However, certain predictions belong to the realm of desires and ideals rather than to applied science. Today's attempt to define and classify uncertainty in terms of likelihood and confidence reflect this awareness of uncertainty as an integral part of human knowledge, in particular on knowledge about possible future developments. The contributions in this book give a first hand insight into scientific strategies in dealing with uncertainty by using simulation models and into social, political and economical requirements in future projections on climate change. Do these strategies and requirements meet each other or fail?

Gabriele Gramelsberger is Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Research Project is Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Research Project

This book presents valuable insights on a vast array of topics in the field of environmental studies. The works published in the book were presented within the scope of the 2013 Sopot Forum of Young Scientists. The Forum is an annual event which provides a platform for young researchers to present their work and exchange ideas with their peers. The aim of the forum is to make science more popular, so the speakers talked about their work in a way that was easily understandable. The book contains actual scientific papers on their own topics of interest. The papers represent different areas of environmental sciences, from biology to physics. The main umbrella topic for this book is "WHERE THE WORLD IS HEADING" and the papers are constructed in such a way as to try to answer this from each contributor's individual perspective.

With the major growth of the world's population over the past century, as well as rapid urbanisation, people increasingly live in crowded cities. This trend is often accompanied by proliferation of poorly built housing, uncontrolled use of land, occupation of unsafe environments and overstretched services. When a natural hazard strikes such a city many people are vulnerable to loss of life and property. This book explores what these people think and feel about the threats that they face. How do they live with perils ranging from earthquakes to monsoons, from floods to hurricanes, in the 21st century? The authors are drawn from a large range of disciplines: Psychology, Engineering, Geography, Anthropology and Urban Planning. They also reflect on how perils are represented in multiple cultures: the United States, Japan, Turkey, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The book therefore not only brings to light the ways that different cultures represent natural hazards but also the different ways in which various disciplines write about living with perils in the 21st century. The book is addressed both to researchers and to organizations involved with risk management and risk mitigation.

This book review series presents current trends in modern biotechnology. The aim is to cover all aspects of this interdisciplinary technology where knowledge, methods and expertise are required from chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, chemical engineering and computer science. Volumes are organized topically and provide a comprehensive discussion of developments in the respective field over the past 3-5 years. The series also discusses new discoveries and applications. Special volumes are dedicated to selected topics which focus on new biotechnological products and new processes for their synthesis and purification. In general, special volumes are edited by well-known guest editors. The series editor and publisher will however always be pleased to receive suggestions and supplementary information. Manuscripts are accepted in English.

This book presents, in a consistent and unified overview, results and developments in the field of todays spherical sampling, particularly arising in mathematical geosciences. Although the book often refers to original contributions, the authors made them accessible to (graduate) students and scientists not only from mathematics but also from geosciences and geoengineering. Building a library of topics in spherical sampling theory it shows how advances in this theory lead to new discoveries in mathematical, geodetic, geophysical as well as other scientific branches like neuro-medicine. A must-to-read for everybody working in the area of spherical sampling.

"Absoliutno blagopoluchnoe ozero Baikal!" the Russian scientist looking out over the great lake says. "Lake Baikal is Perfect!" And humans can never harm it.
For a man cut loose from his life in the U.S., Lake Baikal-Siberia's sacred inland sea-becomes a place of pilgrimage, the focal point of a 25,000-mile journey by land and sea in search of connection, permanence, restoration and hope.
Following a difficult divorce, veteran environmental journalist Peter Thomson sets off from Boston with his younger brother for one of nature's most remarkable creations, in one of the farthest corners of the planet. Lake Baikal, a gargantuan crack in the Siberian plateau, is the world's largest body of fresh water, its deepest and oldest lake, and a cauldron of evolution, home to hundreds of unique creatures, including the world's only freshwater seal. It's also among the most pristine lakes on earth, with a mythical ability to protect itself from the growing human impact-a "perfect," self-cleansing ecosystem.
A trip halfway around the world by train, cargo ship and rubber raft brings the brothers to a place of sublime beauty, deep history and immense natural power. But at Baikal they also find ominous signs that this perfect piece of nature could yet succumb to the even more powerful forces of human hubris, carelessness and ignorance. They find that despite its isolation, Baikal is connected to everything else on Earth, and that it will need the love and devotion of people around the world to protect it.
On their trek to and from Siberia the author and his brother also encounter a stream of people who are also lonely, displaced and yearning for something beyond the limits of theirown lives, but many of whom are also big-hearted and deeply connected to their own communities and the world around them. What begins as a search for restoration in nature becomes as well a discovery of the restorative power of trust, faith and human connection.

Modern Earth System Monitoring represents a fundamental change in the way scientists study the Earth System. In Oceanography, for the past two centuries, ships have provided the platforms for observing. Expeditions on the continents and Earth's poles are land-based analogues. Fundamental understanding of current systems, climate, natural hazards, and ecosystems has been greatly advanced. While these approaches have been remarkably successful, the need to establish measurements over time can only be made using Earth observations and observatories with exacting standards and continuous data. The 19 peer-reviewed contributions in this volume provide early insights into this emerging view of Earth in both space and time in which change is a critical component of our growing understanding.

This book provides information about microbial mats, from early fossils to modern mats located in marine and terrestrial environments. Microbial mats layered biofilms containing different types of cells are most complex systems in which representatives of various groups of organisms are found together. Among them are cyanobacteria and eukaryotic phototrophs, aerobic heterotrophic and chemoautotrophic bacteria, protozoa, anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria, and other types of microorganisms.

These mats are perfect models for biogeochemical processes, such as the cycles of chemical elements, in which a variety of microorganisms cooperate and interact in complex ways. They are often found under extreme conditions and their study contributes to our understanding of extremophilic life. Moreover, microbial mats are models for Precambrian stromatolites; the study of modern microbial mats may provide information on the processes that may have occurred on Earth when prokaryotic life began to spread."

This is an updated and revised second edition of the book presenting new developments in the field of cloud-resolving modeling. The first edition of the book introduces the framework of cloud-resolving model, methodologies for analysis of modeling outputs, and validation of simulations with observations. It details important scientific findings in the aspects of surface rainfall processes, precipitation efficiency, dynamic and thermodynamic processes associated with tropical convection, diurnal variations, radiative and cloud microphysical processes associated with development of cloud clusters, air-sea coupling on convective scales, climate equilibrium states, and remote sensing applications. In additional to the content from the first edition of the book, the second edition of the book contains the new scientific results in the development of convective-stratiform rainfall separation scheme, the analysis of structures of precipitation systems, the thermal effects of doubled carbon dioxide on rainfall, precipitation predictability, and modeling depositional growth of ice crystal. The book will be beneficial both to graduate students and to researchers who do cloud, mesoscale and global modeling.

The dynamics of the universe are explained in this easy-to-understand book that looks beyond Earth and our solar system to ask and answer life's essential questions. Key topics include the following: How Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Edward Morley, Nicolaus Copernicus, and other important thinkers contributed to our understanding of the universe Various conundrums, such as how the principles of refraction explain why the bottom edge of the sun appears to just touch the horizon even though it is actually below the horizon at sunset How the Hubble telescope has helped us determine the age of the galaxy and answer questions revolving around the Big Bang Theory, as well as how other important telescopes are adding to our knowledge How orbits function and why Halley's comet continues to loop around the sun like a driver with road rage How outer space treaties are determining who can use space, and who might end up owning the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies Find the answers to these and other astronomical questions, and improve your understanding of how Earth and humanity fits into the big picture with "Astronomy: Selected Topics."

The contents of this monograph are two-scope. First, it intends to provide a synthetic but complete account of the thermodynamic and kinetic foundations on which the reaction path modeling of geological CO2 sequestration is based. In particular, a great effort is devoted to review the thermodynamic properties of CO2 and of the CO2-H2O system and the interactions in the aqueous solution, the thermodynamic stability of solid product phases (by means of several stability plots and activity plots), the volumes of carbonation reactions, and especially the kinetics of dissolution/precipitation reactions of silicates, oxides, hydroxides, and carbonates.
Second, it intends to show the reader how reaction path modeling of geological CO2 sequestration is carried out. To this purpose the well-known high-quality EQ3/6 software package is used. Setting up of computer simulations and obtained results are described in detail and used EQ3/6 input files are given to guide the reader step-by-step from the beginning to the end of these exercises.
Finally, some examples of reaction-path- and reaction-transport-modeling taken from the available literature are presented. The results of these simulations are of fundamental importance to evaluate the amounts of potentially sequestered CO2, and their evolution with time, as well as the time changes of all the other relevant geochemical parameters (e.g., amounts of solid reactants and products, composition of the aqueous phase, pH, redox potential, effects on aquifer porosity). In other words, in this way we are able to predict what occurs when CO2 is injected into a deep aquifer.
* Provides applications for investigating and predicting geological carbon dioxide sequestration
* Reviews the geochemical literature in the field
* Discusses the importance of geochemists in the multidisciplinary study of geological carbon dioxide sequestration