Across the EU, populations are shrinking and ageing. An increasing burden is being placed on a smaller working population to generate the taxes required for pensions and care costs. Welfare states are weakening in many countries and across Europe, households are being increasingly expected to plan for their retirement and future care needs within this risky environment. At the same time, the proportion of people buying their own home in most countries has risen, so that some two-thirds of European households now own their homes. Housing equity now considerably exceeds total European GDP. This book discusses questions like: to what extent might home ownership provide a potential cure for some of the consequences of ageing populations by realizing housing equity in order to meet the consumption needs of older people? What does this mean for patterns of inheritance and longer-term inequalities across Europe? And to what extent are governments banking on their citizens utilising their housing wealth now and in the future?

This book deals with the early history of agriculture in a defined part of Western Europe: the loess belt west of the river Rhine. It is a well-illustrated book that integrates existing and new information, starting with the first farmers and ending when food production was no longer the chief source of livelihood for the entire population. The loess belt was chosen because it is a region with only one type of soil and climate as these are all-important factors where farming is concerned. Subjects covered are crops, crop cultivation, livestock and livestock handling, the farm and its yard, and the farm in connection with other farms. Crop plants and animals are described, together with their origin. New tools such as the plough, wheen, wagon and scythe are introduced. Groundplans of farm buildings, the history of the outhouse and the presence or absence of hamlets are presented as well, and the impact of farming on the landscape is not forgotten. The loess belt was not an island and the world beyond its boundaries was important for new ideas, new materials and new people. Summarising six millennia of agriculture, the thinking in terms of the Western European loess belt as one agricultural-cultural unit seems justified.

It is in the best interest of all concerned that tourism become sustainable and environmentally compatible. This need for "sustainable development" is and more by the responsible parties. Moreover, in the being recognised more search for solution strategies the realisation is gaining ground that tourism must be viewed as a worldwide phenomenon whose development must be co-ordinated in a co-operative effort spanning regions and continents. That the preservation of biological diversity also requires global co operation has been confirmed by over 170 countries which have already acceded to the "Convention on Biological Diversity". It is thus an important task to provide the foundations for joint action. Germany, one of the largest source countries of international tourism, must feel particularly obligated in this regard. The report published here is the result of a research project com missioned by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. The study pursued and examined the thesis that the Convention on Biological Diversity be used as a central instrument for arriving at international principles and regulations for combining nature conservation and tourism which could lead to a sustainable development of tourism. To further the discussion, the authors brought the study to a logical conclusion by working out a proposal for a "tourism protocol" additional to the existing Convention on Biodiversity. Such a protocol additional to the Convention would entail the stipulation of internationally binding implementation and regulations for achieving sustainable tourism.

Clay Sedimentology is a comprehensive textbook divided into six parts: - clay minerals and weathering - clay sedimentation on land - origin and behaviour of clay minerals and associated minerals in transitional environments (estuaries, deltas) and shallow-sea environments - diverse origins of clay in the marine environment - post-sedimentary processes intervening during early and late diagenesis - use of clay stratigraphic data for the reconstruction of past climate, marine circulation, tectonics, and other paleogeographical aspects. A basic idea on most topics dealing with sedimentary clays is presented and controversial data and uncertainties from the frontiers of knowledge are discussed.

Steppes form one of the largest biomes. Drastic changes in steppe ecology, land use and livelihoods came with the emergence, and again with the collapse, of communist states. Excessive ploughing and vast influx of people into the steppe zone led to a strong decline in nomadic pastoralism in the Soviet Union and China and in severely degraded steppe ecosystems. In Mongolia nomadic pastoralism persisted, but steppes degraded because of strongly increased livestock loads. After the Soviet collapse steppes regenerated on huge tracts of fallow land. Presently, new, restorative steppe land management schemes are applied. On top of all these changes come strong effects of climate change in the northern part of the steppe zone. This book gives an up-to-date overview of changes in ecology, climate and use of the entire Eurasian steppe area and their effects on livelihoods of steppe people. It integrates knowledge that so far was available only in a spectrum of locally used languages.

Water circulates continuously and seamlessly on Earth with little regard for the boundaries we draw. There are natural boundaries as between land and ocean and surface and subsurface environments, as well as human or demographic boundaries between nations, cultures, and religions. Although considered necessary by societies, these human-created boundaries disrupt natural water circulation, leading to serious water-related environmental problems. The dilemma of how to manage water beyond our boundaries remains, and nations have different ways and means of controlling each form of water, whether as vapor, surface water, groundwater, or seawater. Recent findings on the interaction of water from land, oceans, and the atmosphere encourage researchers to undertake collaborative work that goes beyond the boundaries of each discipline, be it oceanography, surface and subsurface hydrology, climatology, or glaciology. Drawing on all these fields, the book focuses on two major boundaries: that between surface water and ground water, and that between terrestrial water and ocean water. This comprehensive work is of great value to experts in academia, international organizations, consulting firms, water resources, fisheries, and urban development planning agencies.

This book examines the delimited maritime boundaries of Indonesia with its neighbours. It features carefully drawn maps based on the geographical coordinates of the defined maritime boundaries; the reproduction of a complete set of the primary documents with direct relation to the boundaries; and a comprehensive narrative on the geography and the historical development of the archipelagic State. Indonesia has an immense maritime domain that encompasses much of the sea between Australia and the Asian mainland. In addition, Indonesia is itself made up largely of water: in excess of 17,000 islands, Indonesia's archipelagic and territorial waters together form about three-fifths of the country's sovereign territory. This book offers readers clear, accessible information on the maritime boundaries of the world's largest archipelagic state.

Strabo of Amasia, a Greek geographer of the Augusto-Tiberian period, observed the Roman world of his time. He collected his observations in his magnum opus, the Geography, which he described as a 'Kolossourgia', a colossal statue of a work. This term reflects not only the work's size in seventeen books, but also its multi-faceted nature, composed of many different elements like the detailing on a statue. In this 2005 volume an international team of Strabo scholars explores those details, discussing the cultural, political, historical and geographical questions addressed in the Geography. The collection offers a number of different approaches to the study of Strabo, from traditional literary and historical perspectives to newer material and feminist readings. These diverse themes and approaches inform each other to provide a wide-ranging exploration of Strabo's work, making the book essential reading for students of ancient history and ancient geography.

Globalized Water presents a compilation of voices that forms a unique scientific exploration of contemporary water management models and governance issues. The book describes the water paradox-how a local resource has become a global product-and the implications of this in how we identify challenges and make policy in the water sector. Over the last 20 years, the foundations of local and national water systems have been rocked by a wave of changes. The authors in this book, experts in a wide range of disciplines, address the resulting debates and issues: water as a commodity and patrimony, technological rent, liberalization and privatization, the continuing evolution of water management and policy at the European level, decision making and stakeholder participation, conflict and consensus, and the inevitable growth of counterpowers at the local and international levels, promoted by the advocates of sustainable development. The selected case studies are from Europe (primarily France but also Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Portugal), Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia), the United States, Lebanon, and India. From this diverse collection of comparative perspectives and research methods, Globalized Water seeks to advance interdisciplinary research, contributing to a new and dynamic role for social sciences and governance on water.

Statistics Analysis of Geographical Data: An Introduction provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory and practice of statistical analysis in geography. It covers a wide range of topics including graphical and numerical description of datasets, probability, calculation of confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, collection and analysis of data using analysis of variance and linear regression. Taking a clear and logical approach, this book examines real problems with real data from the geographical literature in order to illustrate the important role that statistics play in geographical investigations. Presented in a clear and accessible manner the book includes recent, relevant examples, designed to enhance the reader s understanding.

H. R. Davies (1865-1950) was an English army officer and member of the British intelligence service. Between 1894 and 1900 he was asked by the British government to lead survey expeditions into the modern Chinese province of Yunnan to discover possible routes for a railway connecting British-occupied Burma with the upper Yangtze river and through to Sichuan. This book contains an account of his travels though Yunnan province, written as a travelogue and first published in 1909. The region had been little explored by westerners before Davies' expeditions, and this is the first detailed description of Yunnan from a European traveller. The society, diverse indigenous cultures, geography, economy and political situation of the province are described in detail, with an introductory three chapters on the political context of the expeditions, and on railway construction in south-east Asia in the late nineteenth century.

Statistics Analysis of Geographical Data: An Introduction provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory and practice of statistical analysis in geography. It covers a wide range of topics including graphical and numerical description of datasets, probability, calculation of confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, collection and analysis of data using analysis of variance and linear regression. Taking a clear and logical approach, this book examines real problems with real data from the geographical literature in order to illustrate the important role that statistics play in geographical investigations. Presented in a clear and accessible manner the book includes recent, relevant examples, designed to enhance the reader s understanding.

Contributors from diverse backgrounds explore a range of issues in relation to the media and journalism's role in ascribing meaning to tourism practices. This fascinating account offers a thoroughly international and interdisciplinary perspective on an increasingly important field of journalism scholarship.

This engaging and accessible introduction to geographic thought explores the major thinkers and key theoretical developments in the field of human geography. * Covers the complete range of the development of theoretical knowledge of the field, from ancient geography to contemporary non-representational theory * Presents theories in an accessible manner through the author's engaging writing style * Examines the influence of Darwin and Marx, the emergence of anarchist geographies, the impact of feminism, and myriad other important bodies of thought * Stresses the importance of geographic thought and its relevance to our understanding of what it is to be human, and to the people, places, and cultures of the world in which we live

This book discusses modern aspects of Japanese religion in terms of cultural geography. To understand the function of religion, it is essential to examine it in the context of local societies. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Japanese religion is its diversity; indeed, it is often remarked that "Japan is a museum of religions." In this work, the author clarifies some geographical aspects of the complex situation of Japanese religion. Chapter 1 discusses the trend of geographical studies of religion in Japan, of which four types can be identified. Chapter 2 focuses on certain characteristics of Japanese religious traditions by discussing tree worship and the landscape of sacred places. Chapter 3 clarifies regional divisions in the catchment areas of Japanese Shintoism by analyzing the distribution of certain types of believers. The author discusses two case studies: the Kasama Inari Shrine and the Kanamura Shrine. Chapter 4 discusses some modern aspects of sacred places and tourism through two case studies. The first part of the chapter focuses on changes in the types of businesses at the Omotesando of the Naritasan Shinshoji-Monzenmachi, and the following sections examine the revitalization of the local community through the promotion of religious tourism.

Value distribution theory studies the behavior of mermorphic maps. Let f: M - N be a merom orphic map between complex manifolds. A target family CI ~ (Ea1aEA of analytic subsets Ea of N is given where A is a connected. compact complex manifold. The behavior of the inverse 1 family ["'(CI) = (f- {E )laEA is investigated. A substantial theory has been a created by many contributors. Usually the targets Ea stay fixed. However we can consider a finite set IJ of meromorphic maps g : M - A and study the incidence f{z) E Eg(z) for z E M and some g E IJ. Here we investigate this situation: M is a parabolic manifold of dimension m and N = lP n is the n-dimensional projective space. The family of hyperplanes in lP n is the target family parameterized by the dual projective space lP* We obtain a Nevanlinna theory consisting of several n First Main Theorems. Second Main Theorems and Defect Relations and extend recent work by B. Shiffman and by S. Mori. We use the Ahlfors-Weyl theory modified by the curvature method of Cowen and Griffiths. The Introduction consists of two parts. In Part A. we sketch the theory for fixed targets to provide background for those who are familar with complex analysis but are not acquainted with value distribution theory.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Antarctica is poised at the edge of a warmer and busier world. Leading Antarctic researchers examine the needs and challenges of Antarctic environmental management today and tomorrow. Through: (i) investigating the impacts of human activities on specific ecosystems and species, (ii) examining existing environmental management and monitoring practices in place in various regions and (iii) interrogating stakeholders, they address the following questions: What future will Business-As-Usual bring to the Antarctic environment? Will a Business-As-Usual future be compatible with the objectives set out under the Antarctic Treaty, especially its Protocol on Environmental Protection? What actions are necessary to bring about alternative futures for the next 50 years? This volume is an outcome of the International Polar Year (2007-2009) Oslo Science Conference (8-12, June, 2010).

Covering radiogenic, radioactive, and stable isotopes, this comprehensive text contains five sections that present fundamentals of atomic physics; dating methods for terrestrial and extraterrestrial rocks by means of radiogenic isotopes; geochemistry of radiogenic isotopes; dating by means of U, Th-series and cosmogenic radionuclides; and the fractionation of the stable isotopes of H, C, N, O, and S, as well as Li, B, Si, and Cl. Additionally, this edition provides: - Expanded coverage of the U-Pb methods -the most accurate available dating technique - Applications to the petrogenesis of igneous rocks - Summaries of the use of isotopic data for study of the oceans - New examples from the fields of archeology and anthropology - Radiation-damage methods of dating including fission tracks, thermoluminescence, and electron spin resonance (ESR) - Information on the dispersal of fission-product radionuclides and the disposal of radioactive waste - Extensive chapter-by-chapter problems and solutions

The analysis of polar ice cores has proven to be very instructive about past environmental conditions on the time scale of several climatic cycles, and recent drilling operations have provided information of great value for global change issues.
The book presents the most recent data extracted from Greenland ice cores and surface experiments and compares them with former Antarctic results. It contains background articles, original contributions and group reports of interest to scientists, climatologists, atmospheric chemists, and glaciologists involved in global change research.

Land use change is driven by a variety of forces, including spatial policies formulated at supra-national, national, regional and local levels. The main focus of this book is to contextualise, explain and illustrate a new methodology for simulating land use change in different parts of Europe. It considers some of the more important causal factors and identifies state-of-the-art approaches to modelling human and environmental systems, and for evaluating and visualising altenative scenarios. The last part of the volume presents material from two case studies, one from The Netherlands and one from Portugal, of the implementation of a new simulation model called EuroScanner.
"Audience: " This work will be of interest to researchers and practioners whose work involves geography, simulation and modelling, environmental planning, spatial decision making, the methodology of social sciences, and economics.

In Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Hsuan L. Hsu examines how literature represents different kinds of spaces ranging from the single-family home to the globe. He focuses on authors such as Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett, who drew on literary tools such as rhetoric, setting, and point of view to mediate between individuals and different kinds of spaces. These authors used forms such as the regional sketch, the domestic novel, and the detective story to re-examine how local spaces and communities would change when incorporated into global economic and political networks. Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature is valuable reading for American literature scholars, and for all concerned with intersections between literature and geography.

This book offers a close examination of water scarcity as a developmental challenge facing member nations of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the interventions that have been implemented to combat the situation and the challenges still outstanding. The first chapter paints the backdrop of the water scarcity problem, reviewing historical approaches from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) to the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development (2012), and recapping principles and agreements reached during and after these conferences. Chapter two examines the Southern Africa region's efforts to combat water scarcity including principles, policies and strategies and the responsibility of each member to implement them. Written by the editor, J.P. Msangi, the chapter describes Namibia's efforts to ensure management of scarce water. Beyond enacting management and pollution control regulations and raising public awareness, Namibia encourages research to ensure attainment of the requirements of both the SADC Protocol and its own water scarcity management laws. The next three chapters offer Namibia-based case studies on impacts of pollution on water treatment; on the effects of anthropogenic activities on water quality and on the effects of water transfers from dams upstream of Von Bach dam. The final chapter provides detailed summaries of the issues discussed in the book, highlighting conclusions and offering recommendations. Combating Water Scarcity in Southern Africa synthesizes issues pertinent to the SADC countries as well as to other regions, and offers research that up to now has not been conducted in Namibia.

The goal of this Third Edition is to update long-term data presented in earlier editions and to generate new syntheses and conclusions about the biogeochemistry of the Hubbard Brook Valley based on these longer-term data. There have been many changes, revelations, and exciting new insights generated from the longer data records. For example, the impact of acid rain peaked during the period of the HBES and is now declining. The longer-term data also posed challenges in that very marked changes in fluxes occurred in some components, such as hydrogen ion and sulfate deposition, calcium and nitrate export in stream water and biomass accumulation, during the almost 50 years of record. Thus, presenting "mean" or "average" conditions for many components for such a long period, when change was so prominent, do not make sense. In some cases, pentads or decades of time are compared to show these changes in a more smoothed and rational way for this long period. In some cases, a single period, often during periods of rapid change, such as acidification, is used to illustrate the main point(s). And, for some elements a unique mass balance approach, allowing the calculation of the Net Ecosystem Flux (NEF), is shown on an annual basis throughout the study.

Various effects of the atmosphere have to be considered in space geodesy and all of them are described and treated consistently in this textbook. Two chapters are concerned with ionospheric and tropospheric path delays of microwave and optical signals used by space geodetic techniques, such as the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), or Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR). It is explained how these effects are best reduced and modelled to improve the accuracy of space geodetic measurements. Other chapters are on the deformation of the Earth's crust due to atmospheric loading, on atmospheric excitation of Earth rotation, and on atmospheric effects on gravity field measurements from special satellite missions such as CHAMP, GRACE, and GOCE. All chapters have been written by staff members of the Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation at TU Wien who are experts in the particular fields.

This book aims to draw readers' attention to the benefits once present nature in Azerbaijan. Over the past hundred years, much of this has been lost because of the neglect of the intrinsic values of nature by both managers and local authorities, and the overuse of natural resources. For example, oil pollution and overfishing in the Caspian Sea have almost destroyed its fish and caviar resources. In this volume, the authors distinguish between the concepts of "gain" and "income" and show readers that short-term benefits based solely on monetary income deprive people and nature itself of long-term, lasting value. The book provides readers with real historical information, discusses the interactions between humans and nature, and shows, with real data and trends, the consequences of anthropogenic activity on natural resources in Azerbaijan. The authors cover fish, water, forest, mountain, and pasture ecosystems, draw attention to the impacts that pollution and other forms of environmental degradation have had on these resources, and the show the impact that resource depletion on people's livelihoods. The book is intended primarily for managers, policymakers, students, and academics, and will be of interest to natural scientists, historians, and students of culture.