The environmental field is deep and wide. In the flood of information, how can people understand the underlying causes of what they hear about the environment from newspapers and television? This book was originally published in Japanese, with the aim of providing basic information about the ideas and methods to see and understand the interconnection between nature and human activities from a systematic point of view. The author subsequently prepared an English version of the same material for use as a textbook for the Global Environmental Leaders Program at Nagoya University, where he taught many students from Asia and Europe. The book covers diverse environmental issues such as climatic change, biodiversity preservation, energy conservation, and resource recycling. Readers can learn common methods of analysis and thinking to identify the core essence of economic and ecological interdependence, to look at problems from an overarching perspective, and to consider countermeasures to be taken.

Sampling consists of selection, acquisition, and quantification of a part of the population. While selection and acquisition apply to physical sampling units of the population, quantification pertains only to the variable of interest, which is a particular characteristic of the sampling units. A sampling procedure is expected to provide a sample that is representative with respect to some specified criteria. Composite sampling, under idealized conditions, incurs no loss of information for estimating the population means. But an important limitation to the method has been the loss of information on individual sample values, such as, the extremely large value. In many of the situations where individual sample values are of interest or concern, composite sampling methods can be suitably modified to retrieve the information on individual sample values that may be lost due to compositing. This book presents statistical solutions to issues that arise in the context of applications of composite sampling.

For the English edition the book was revised by the authors, taking into account a number of suggestions of the readers of the German edition. Some of the most important publications in the field of iron ore reduction, which appeared since 1967, have been used to bring the manuscript as far as possible up to date. The kind assistance of Dr. K. BOHNENKAMP of the Max-Planck-Institut fUr Eisenforschung, Dusseldorf, was much appreciated in this respect. Ohapters 2.9 and 2.10, dealing with the reduction of molten oxide slags by solid carbon and with the contribution of the water-gas reaction to iron ore reduction, have been added for the English edition. Ohapter 2.9 has been completely revised with the kind assistance of Dr. H. J. GRABKE, Stuttgart. Dipl.-Ing. J. LODDE contributed to this edition by revising the bibliography. Owing to the rapid development of the blast furnace it was necessary to revise Ohapter 5 considerably. In this field many valuable suggestions have been made by Dipl.-Ing. G. LANGE and Dipl.-Ing. P. HEINRICH. Furthermore, Ohapters3 and 4 have been thoroughly revised by Dr.-Ing. E. FORSTER and Dr.-Ing. U. SCHIERLOH. Last, but not least, we have to thank our translators for their excellent work.

The 3rd International Symposium on Monitoring of Gaseous Pollutants by Tunable Diode th Lasers, held at the Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg on October 17th and 18 , continued a tradition, established by the two preceeding meetings held at the same location, in 1986 and 1988. The steadily increasing number of participants and contributions emphasizes the need for such a meeting, which is unique in Europe and appreciated abroad. This third symposium in particular, was specially marked by the presence of the former Eastern Block Countries, with a number of scientists, and contributions, from the USSR (stilI existing at the time of the meeting) and from East Berlin. The large number of contributions proposed, originally, as oral presentations, could not be fitted in the schedule of the two-day limit which the participants to the previous meetings had recommended. To take account of these contributions, poster sessions were held, combined with extended discussion time. This intensified personal interaction was much appreciated by the participants.

To better understand the various processes and interactions that govern the Earth system and to determine whether recent human-induced changes could ultimately de-stabilise its dynamics, both natural system variability and the consequences of human activities have to be observed and quantified. In this context, the European Space Agency (ESA) published in 2006 the document "The Changing Earth: New Scientific Challenges for ESA's Living Planet Programme" as the main driver of ESA's new Earth Observation (EO) science strategy. The document outlines 25 major scientific challenges covering all the different aspects of the Earth system, where EO technology and ESA missions may provide a key contribution. In this framework, and aiming at enhancing the ESA scientific support towards the achievement of "The Challenges", the Agency has launched in 2008 a new initiative - the Changing Earth Science Network - to support young scientists to undertake leading-edge research activities contributing to achieve the 25 scientific challenges of the LPP by maximising the use of ESA data. The initiative is implemented through a number of research projects proposed and led by early-stage scientists at post-doctoral level for a period of two years which are summarized in this SpringerBrief. These projects undertake innovative research activities furthering into the most pressing issues of the Earth system, while exploiting ESA missions data with special attention to the ESA data archives and the new Earth Explorer missions.

This book on electromagnetic resonance phenomena describes a general approach to physical problems, ways to solve them, and properties of the solutions obtained. Attention is given to the discussion and interpretation of formal and experimental data and their links to global atmospheric conditions such as the dynamics of global thunderstorm activity, variations of the effective height of the lower ionosphere, etc.

Schumann resonance is related to worldwide thunderstorm activity, and simultaneously, to global properties of the lower ionosphere. Transverse resonance is predominantly a local phenomenon containing information on the local height and conductivity of the lower ionosphere and on nearby thunderstorm activity.

Transient events in ELF-VLF radio propagation are also treated. These are natural pulsed radio signals and/or abrupt changes of manmade VLF radio signals. The transients associated with cloud-to-ionosphere discharges (red sprites, blue jets, trolls) are discussed, and clarification of the underlying physical ideas and their practical applications to pioneer results achieved in the field recently are emphasised.

In the last decades, new experimental and numerical techniques have taken many advanced features of porous media mechanics down to practical engineering applications. This happened in areas that sometimes were not even suspected to be open to engineering ideas at all. The challenge that often faces engineers in the field of geomechanics, biomechanics, rheology and materials science is the translation of ideas existing in one field to solutions in the other. The purpose of the IUTAM symposium from which this proceedings volume has been compiled was to dive deep into the mechanics of those porous media that involve mechanics and chemistry, mechanics and electromagnetism, mechanics and thermal fluctuations of mechanics and biology. The different sections have purposely not been formed according to field interest, but on the basis of the physics involved.

Recent progress in numerical methods and computer science allows us today to simulate the propagation of seismic waves through realistically heterogeneous Earth models with unprecedented accuracy. Full waveform tomography is a tomographic technique that takes advantage of numerical solutions of the elastic wave equation. The accuracy of the numerical solutions and the exploitation of complete waveform information result in tomographic images that are both more realistic and better resolved. This book develops and describes state of the art methodologies covering all aspects of full waveform tomography including methods for the numerical solution of the elastic wave equation, the adjoint method, the design of objective functionals and optimisation schemes. It provides a variety of case studies on all scales from local to global based on a large number of examples involving real data. It is a comprehensive reference on full waveform tomography for advanced students, researchers and professionals.

What is the progress in hydraulic research? What are the new methods used in modeling of transport of momentum, matter and heat in both open and conduit channels? What new experimental methods, instruments, measurement techniques, and data analysis routines are used in top class laboratory and field hydro-environment studies? How to link novel findings in fundamental hydraulics with the investigations of environmental issues? The consecutive 32nd International School of Hydraulics that took place in Lochow, Poland brought together eminent modelers, theoreticians and experimentalists as well as beginners in the field of hydraulics to consider these and other questions about the recent advances in hydraulic research all over the world. This volume reports key findings of the scientists that took part in the meeting. Both state of the art papers as well as detailed reports from various recent investigations are included in the book

THE quadrupling of oil prices within a few months in late 1973 and early 1974 brought to an abrupt end the era of inexpensive oil. Since then the continuing increases in the price of oil traded in the international market and the higher prices of imports of manu factured goods have seriously disrupted the foreign exchange balances of many developing countries and forced them to replan their development programmes. The impact of high oil prices is felt in every country, whether developed or developing, and has brought to world attention the fact that not only are petroleum resources in limited supply and exhaustible but also that substitutes cannot be found easily or quickly. In a world faced with the certainty of declining supplies of petroleum there is widespread interest and concern among all the oil producing countries to evaluate the extent of their petroleum resources and to examine more closely the problems of their development, rates of depletion and methods of conservation. The present work reviews some of the above issues and problems in relation to Indonesia, an OPEC member, and the major oil producing country in South-East Asia. More specifically, it seeks to provide the reader with an overview of the petroleum resources of the country their nature, extent, distribution as well as the problems of their development.

Year by year the Earth sciences grow more diverse, with an inevitable increase in the degree to which rampant specialization isolates the practitioners of an ever larger number of subfields. An increasing emphasis on sophisticated mathematics, physics and chemistry as well as the use of advanced technology have set up barriers often impenetrable to the uninitiated. Ironically, the potential value of many specialities for other, often non-contiguous ones has also increased. What is at the present time quiet, unseen work in a remote corner of our discipline, may tomorrow enhance, even revitalize some entirely different area. The rising flood of research reports has drastically cut the time we have available for free reading. The enormous proliferation of journals expressly aimed at small, select audiences has raised the threshold of access to a large part of the literature so much that many of us are unable to cross it. This, most would agree, is not only unfortunate but downright dangerous, limiting by sheer bulk of paper or difficulty of compre hension, the flow of information across the Earth sciences because, after all it is just one earth that we all study, and cross fertilization is the key to progress. If one knows where to obtain much needed data or inspiration, no effort is too great. It is when we remain unaware of its existence (perhaps even in the office next door) that stagnation soon sets in.

Effects of Climate Change and Viarability on the Agricultural Production Systems provides an integrated assessment of global climate change's impact on agriculture at the farm level, in the context of farm level adaptation decisions. Ten agricultural areas in the Upper Midwest region - the heart of the United States' corn belt - were subjected to climate change and changing climate variability scenarios through simulations of future climate using results from general circulation models. Crop growth models, calibrated to the study sites, were used to simulate yields under varying climate conditions. Farm level production and economic analyses were performed to determine what adaptation strategies might be best utilized to maintain production and profitability for producers under conditions of global climate change and changing climate variability. Similar integrated analyses from Australia and Argentina provide comparisons from different regions.

Reliability-based design is the only engineering methodology currently available which can ensure self-consistency in both physical and probabilistic terms. It is also uniquely compatible with the theoretical basis underlying other disciplines such as structural design. It is especially relevant as geotechnical design becomes subject to increasing codification and to code harmonization across national boundaries and material types. Already some codes of practice describe the principles and requirements for safety, serviceability, and durability of structures in reliability terms. This book presents practical computational methods in concrete steps that can be followed by practitioners and students. It also provides geotechnical examples illustrating reliability analysis and design. It aims to encourage geotechnical engineers to apply reliability-based design in a realistic context that recognises the complex variabilities in geomaterials and model uncertainties arising from a profession steeped in empiricism. By focusing on learning through computations and examples, this book serves as a valuable reference for engineers and a resource for students.

The 35th OHOLO Conference, which provided the basis for the present book covered a broad range of topics. Basic studies and newly developed methods in modeling atmospheric flows are discussed, besides analyses of concentration fluctuations in different atmospheric conditions, and techniques of data acquisition. The book gives an excellent state-of-the-art impression of the situation in turbulent diffusion and transport.

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.

Failure by the international community to make substantive progress in reducing CO2 emissions, coupled with recent evidence of accelerating climate change, has brought increasing urgency to the search for additional remediation approaches. This book presents a selection of state-of-the-art geoengineering methods for deliberately reducing the effects of anthropogenic climate change, either by actively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or by decreasing the amount of sunlight absorbed at the Earth's surface. These methods contrast with more conventional mitigation approaches which focus on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Geoengineering technologies could become a key tool to be used in conjunction with emissions reduction to limit the magnitude of climate change. Featuring authoritative, peer-reviewed entries from the Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology, this book presents a wide range of climate change remediation technologies.

In 1837 a comprehensive discussion of lightning appeared in the Annual of the French Bureau des Longitudes with a section on ball lightning which provided for the first time a readily available source in the scientific literature of the basic properties of this curious natural phenomenon. The author, Francois Arago, was the dominant influence in the French Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth century, having become a member of that august body at the age of twenty-three. His attention alone doubtless served at that time to establish the validity of scientific interest in the problem. In addition his discussion covered some of the major questions associated with ball lightning in a nota bly clear-sighted, effective style. Later reconsideration of the same questions often provided no significant improvement over Arago's discussion. There followed a dauntless band of varying but always small number who attempted to account for an apparently simple natural occurrence, a ball of fire usually seen in thunderstorms, with the best knowledge that advancing science could provide. All attempts to deal with this phenomenon were in variably frustrated. The characteristics of ball lightning could be readily cataloged, but they firmly resisted both experimental reproduction and theo retical explanation. One may say that to this day there is no explanation accepted by a large number of scientists. Several investigators of great ability and considerable accomplishment in different fields of science, including Faraday, Kelvin, and Arrhenius, took note of the problem.

Processes of synchronization and interaction play a very special role in different physical problems concerning the dynamics of the Earth's interior; they are of particular importance in the study of seismic phenomena, and their complexity is strongly affected by the variety of geological structures and inhomogeneities of the medium that hamper the course of these processes and their intensity. The attempt to tackle these problems is a great challenge from experimental, observational and theoretical point of view. We present in this Monograph the theoretical and experimental results achieved in the frame of the European Project "Triggering and synchronization of seismic/ acoustic events by weak external forcing as a sign of approaching the critical point" (INTAS Ref. Nr 05-1000008-7889); in this Project, which was inspired by Professor Tamaz Chelidze, our aim was to give grounds for better understanding and interpretation of dynamical interactive processes of physical ?elds, both found in the laboratory experiments as well as in ?eld observations. One of the leading problems - related to synchronization and interaction of different physical ?elds in fracture processes concerns triggering and initiation of rupture and displa- ments within the Earth interior. From this point of view, the results from laboratory studies on synchronization and interaction and those found and involved in ?eld observations, helped to improve the theoretical background. Reversely, some of the presented new theoretical approaches have served to stimulate laboratory and ?eld studies.

Stromatolites are the most intriguing geobiological structures of the entire earth history since the beginning of the fossil record in the Archaean. Stromatolites and microbialites are interpreted as biosedimentological remains of biofilms and microbial mats. These structures are important environmental and evolutionary archives which give us information about ancient habitats, biodiversity, and evolution of complex benthic ecosystems. However, many geobiological aspects of these structures are still unknown or only poorly understood. The present proceedings highlight the new ideas and information on the formation and environmental setting of stromatolites presented at the occasion of the Kalkowsky Symposium 2008, held in Gottingen, Germany."

Since founding at the 23rd International Geological Congress in Prague in 1968, the International Association for Mathematical Geology has organized sessions in conjunction with the Congress. The 27th IGC in Moscow was no exception and the IAMG again held sessions and assisted the Congress in organizing Section 20 -Mathematical Geology and Geological Information ( D. F. Merriam, D. A. Rodionov, and R. Sinding-Larsen, conveners). All together 128 abstracts were published in the technical proceedings. Several of the papers were published prior to the Congress, others were not available, and others deemed not appropriate for publication in this volume. This collection then contains those papers aVailable and representative of the sessions. The collection is truly international with contributions from Canada, China, France, Poland, the UK, USA, and USSR. They are representative of the state-of-the-art as of the early 1980s in a variety of fields. The application of geomathematics/geostatistics to geological problems has been hastened by the availability of computers. These papers reflect that orientation -most of the results would not have been possible without the use of computers. Most of the approaches utilize techniques readily aVailable and adapted to solving geological problems -simulation, image analysis, decision theory, fuzzy sets, etc. However, one area, that of geostatistiques which includes Kriging, has been designed especially for use by earth scientists of the French school to solve geological problems.

These papers stem from the ISOTT Meeting held at Churchill College, Cambridge, from July 27th to 30th, 1986. Although the sun did not shine so brightly as during the Cambridge meeting in 1977, the communications and discussions were as lively and informative and some heat, as well as light, was generated in the presentation of differing views. The meeting was conducted in a generally informal way which allowed maximum time for discussion but the relatively unstructured nature of the debates made them unsuitable for publication. The amount of editing necessary meant that the printed version of the exchanges would bear little resemblance to the original, hence their omission. All the papers presented here have been scrutinized and retyped in a standard format. However, the diverse interests of ISOTT's members, reflected in the wide spectrum of the material submitted, made total editorial uniformity an unrealistic goal. Complete consistency in the use of symbols, abbreviations and units seemed less important than speed of publication.

Groundwater is one of the most important resources in the world. In many areas, water supplies for industrial, domestic, and agricultural uses are de pendent on groundwater. As an "open" system, groundwater may exchange mass and energy with its neighboring systems (soil, air, and surface water) through adsorption, ion-exchange, infiltration, evaporation, inflow, outflow, and other exchange forms. Consequently, both the quantity and quality of groundwater may vary with environmental changes and human activities. Due to population growth, and industrial and agricultural development, more and more groundwater is extracted, especially in arid areas. If the groundwater management problem is not seriously considered, over extraction may lead to groundwater mining, salt water intrusion, and land subsidence. In fact, the quality of groundwater is gradually deteriorating throughout the world. The problem of groundwater pollution has appeared, not only in developed countries, but also in developing countries. Ground water pollution is a serious environmental problem that may damage human health, destroy the ecosystem, and cause water shortage."

This volume is a collection of reports presented at the International NATO Advanced Research Workshop Conservation of the Biological Diversity as a Prerequisite for Sustainaible Development of the Black Sea Region. The seminar was held at Batumi - Kobuleti, Georgia, on the Black Sea during October 5 -12, 1996 with participants from the countries of the Black Sea Region -Georgia, Russia, the Ukraine, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, as well as Germany, Italy and the United States of America. The Black Sea Region is an essential and unique part of southern Europe because of its geographical, cultural and historical features. It is the cradle of European civilisation, together with Greece and Rome. For centuries it neighboured onto and interacted with the cultures of the northern and southern Mediterranean, the Christian and Moslim worlds, and was the route of conquerors and migrations of whole nations. Here are closely interwoven the cultures and customs of nations, economic and trade relations, the history of wars and civilised relations of neighbouring countries.

Engineers wishing to build structures on or in rock use the discipline known as rock mechanics. This discipline emerged as a subject in its own right about thirty five years ago, and has developed rapidly ever since. However, rock mechanics is still based to a large extent on analytical techniques that were originally formulated for the mechanical design of structures made from man made materials. The single most important distinction between man-made materials and the natural material rock is that rock contains fractures, of many kinds on many scales; and because the fractures - of whatever kin- represent breaks in the mechanical continuum, they are collectively termed 'discontinuities' . An understanding of the mechanical influence of these discontinuities is essential to all rock engineers. Most of the world is made of rock, and most of the rock near the surface is fractured. The fractures dominate the rock mass geometry, deformation modulus, strength, failure behaviour, permeability, and even the local magnitudes and directions of the in situ stress field. Clearly, an understanding of the presence and mechanics of the discontinuities, both singly and in the rock mass context, is therefore of paramount importance to civil, mining and petroleum engineers. Bearing this in mind, it is surprising that until now there has been no book dedicated specifically to the subject of discontinuity analysis in rock engineering."