New York Times–bestselling author Tristan Gooley opens our eyes to the secret language of trees―and the natural wonders they reveal all around us

Trees are keen to tell us so much. They’ll tell us about the land, the water, the people, the animals, the weather, and time. And they will tell us about their lives, the good bits and bad. Trees tell a story, but only to those who know how to read it.

In How to Read a Tree, Gooley uncovers the clues hiding in plain sight: in a tree’s branches and leaves; its bark, buds, and flowers; even its stump. Leaves with a pale, central streak mean that water is nearby. Young, low-growing branches show that a tree is struggling. And reddish or purple bark signals new growth.

Like snowflakes, no two trees are exactly the same. Every difference reveals the epic story this tree has lived―if we stop to look closely.

Visibility: The Seeing of Near and Distant Landscape Features reviews the science of visibility from how to measure it quantitatively to its impacts by one of the foremost experts in the field. Carefully designed pedagogy allows a diversity of readers, from regulators to researchers to use this book to further their understanding of the field. Topics covered include the interaction of light with the atmosphere and aerosols, the transfer of light through the atmosphere especially as it relates to non-uniform haze layers, perception questions, including visibility metrics, image processing techniques for purposes of visually displaying effects of haze on scenic landscapes, visibility monitoring techniques, and the history of visibility regulatory development.

The world’s economy is fuelled by energy. Depletion of resources and severe environmental effects resulting from the continuous use of fossil fuels has motivated an increasing amount of interest in renewable energy resources and the search for sustainable energy policies. This volume contains research papers presented at the 9th International conference on Energy and Sustainability. The changes required to progress from an economy mainly focussed on hydrocarbons to one taking advantage of sustainable renewable energy resources require considerable scientific research, as well as the development of new engineering systems. Energy policies and management are of primary importance to achieve the development of sustainability and need to be consistent with recent advances in energy production and distribution. In many cases, the challenges lie as much in the conversion from renewable energies (wind, solar, etc.) to useful forms (electricity, heat, fuel) at an acceptable cost including damage to the environment as in the integration of these resources into the existing infrastructure. The diverse topics covered by the papers in this book involve collaboration between different disciplines in order to arrive at optimum solutions, including studies of materials, energy networks, new energy resources, storage solutions, waste to energy systems, smart grids and many others. These research papers put a focus on sustainability across the multidisciplinary components of urban planning, the challenges presented by the increasing size of cities, the number of resources required and the complexity of modern society.

Physics and the Environment directly connects the physical world to environmental issues that the world is facing today and will face in the future. It shows how the first and second laws of thermodynamics limit the efficiencies of fossil fuel energy conversions to less than 100%, while also discussing how clever technologies can enhance overall performance. It also extensively discusses renewable forms of energy, their physical constraints and how we must use science and engineering as tools to solve problems instead of opinion and politics. Dr. Kyle Forinash takes you on a journey of understanding our mature and well developed technologies for using fossil fuel resources and how we are unlikely to see huge gains in their efficiency as well as why their role in climate change ought to be an argument for their replacement sooner rather than later. He also discusses the newest technologies in employing renewable resources and how it is important to understand their physical constrains in order to make a smooth transition to them. An entire chapter is dedicated to energy storage, a core question in renewable energy as well as another chapter on the technical issues of nuclear energy. The book ends with a discussion on how no environmental solution, no matter how clever from a technical aspect, will succeed if there are cheaper alternative, even if those alternatives have undesirable features associated with them.

The Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) has conducted the Environmental exposure related activity pattern research of Chinese population (Adults). Exposure Factors Handbook of Chinese Population (Adults) was compiled based on the results from this study. Highlights of the Chinese Exposure Factors Handbook is a brief introduction to the content of Exposure Factors Handbook of Chinese Population (Adults). In each chapter, definitions, possible influence factors, and survey methods have been introduced, followed by recommended values for urban/rural areas, different genders, age groups and regions with information of mean, median and P5, P25, P75, P95 values. With the abundant data and tables, readers are provided with an accessible and comprehensive overview of Chinese exposure factors.

The advances in microsystems offer new opportunities and capabilities to develop systems for biomedical applications, such as diagnostics and therapy. There is a need for a comprehensive treatment of microsystems and in particular for an understanding of performance limits associated with the shrinking scale of microsystems. The new edition of Microsystems for Bioelectronics addresses those needs and represents a major revision, expansion and advancement of the previous edition. This book considers physical principles and trends in extremely scaled autonomous microsystems such as integrated intelligent sensor systems, with a focus on energy minimization. It explores the implications of energy minimization on device and system architecture. It further details behavior of electronic components and its implications on system-level scaling and performance limits. In particular, fundamental scaling limits for energy sourcing, sensing, memory, computation and communication subsystems are developed and new applications such as optical, magnetic and mechanical sensors are presented. The new edition of this well-proven book with its unique focus and interdisciplinary approach shows the complexities of the next generation of nanoelectronic microsystems in a simple and illuminating view, and is aimed for a broad audience within the engineering and biomedical community.

How to sustain our world for future generations has perplexed us for centuries. We have reached a crossroads: we may choose the rocky path of responsibility or continue on the paved road of excess that promises hardship for our progeny. Independent efforts to resolve isolated issues are inadequate. Different from these efforts and from other books on the topic, this book uses systems thinking to understand the dominant forces that are shaping our hope for sustainability. It first describes a mental model - the bubble that holds our beliefs - that emerges from preponderant world views and explains current global trends. The model emphasizes economic growth and drives behavior toward short-term and self-motivated outcomes that thwart sustainability. The book then weaves statistical trends into a system diagram and shows how the economic, environmental, and societal contributors of sustainability interact. From this holistic perspective, it finds leverage points where actions can be most effective and combines eight areas of intervention into an integrated plan. By emphasizing both individual and collective actions, it addresses the conundrum of how to blend human nature with sustainability. Finally, it identifies primary three lessons we can learn by applying systems thinking to sustainability. Its metaphor-rich and accessible style makes the complex topic approachable and allows the reader to appreciate the intricate balance required to sustain life on Earth.

How will chemists of the future balance competing concerns of environmental stewardship and innovative, cost-effective product development? For chemists to accept the idea that environmental quality and economic prosperity can be intertwined, the concept of the food-energy-water nexus must first be integrated into underlying thought processes. Food, Energy and Water: The Chemistry Connection provides today's scientists with the background information necessary to fully understand the inextricable link between food, energy and water and how this conceptual framework should form the basis for all contemporary research and development in chemistry in particular, and the sciences in general.

Consisting of presented papers from the 15th International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability, the included works address various aspects of the urban environment and provide solutions leading towards sustainability. Urban areas result in a series of environmental challenges varying from the consumption of natural resources and the subsequent generation of waste and pollution, contributing to the development of social and economic imbalances. As cities continue to grow all over the world, these problems tend to become more acute and require the development of new solutions. The challenge of planning sustainable contemporary cities lies in considering the dynamics of urban systems, exchange of energy and matter, and the function and maintenance of ordered structures directly or indirectly supplied and maintained by natural systems. The task of researchers is to improve the capacity to manage human activities, pursuing welfare and prosperity in the urban environment. Any investigation or planning on a city ought to consider the relationships between the parts and their connections with the living world. The dynamics of its networks (flows of energy matter, people, goods, information and other resources) are fundamental for an understanding of the evolving nature of today’s cities. Large cities represent a fertile ground for architects, engineers, city planners, social and political scientists, and other professionals able to conceive new ideas and time them according to technological advances and human requirements. Coastal areas and coastal cities are an important area covered in this volume as they have some specific features. Their strategic location facilitates transportation and the development of related activities, but this requires the existence of large ports, with the corresponding increase in maritime and road traffic and all its inherent negative effects. This requires the development of well-planned and managed urban environments, not only for reasons of efficiency and economics but also to avoid inflicting environmental degradation that causes the deterioration of natural resources, quality of life and human health. These research papers put a focus on sustainability across the multidisciplinary components of urban planning, the challenges presented by the increasing size of cities, the number of resources required and the complexity of modern society.

Concern for the environment is not new; it has always existed. One of the flash points in the inner conflicts within human societies of the past was fuelled by the continuous effort to resolve the legitimate use of the natural world. Nature is one of those spaces where we observe the most intense form of class struggle and power politics -- the more privileged control the natural resources. The rapid unfolding of power relations, the rise of new technology to exploit the environment, the growing resource crunch, and a perceived 'environmental crisis' have resulted in the development of a new field of study -- environmental history, an important gateway to knowledge in general and Environmental Studies in particular. Situating Environmental History, brings together several eminent scholars who share a common interest in the environmental history of South Asia. The work is divided in four sections. In Section I, Understanding Environmental History, Karl Jacoby, Alok Kumar Ghosh, Arun Bandopadhyay and Archana Prasad contribute to our understanding of environmentalism, its historiography and the role of state legislation and the popular response thereto. In Section II, Communities on the Margin, Vinita Damodaran and Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay focus on different communities in the periphery lying outside the supposed 'mainstream' and their fight for their own perceptions of 'justice' and 'legitimate claims'. In Section III, Colonialism, Post-Colonialism, the State and the Management of Nature, Kaushik Roy, Arabinda Samanta, Amal Das, Sahara Ahmed, Jagdish N Sinha and Sumit Guha look at the evolution of state policy on environmental questions through different periods of Indian history. In Section IV, Beyond India, Rita Pemberton, Lawrence Gundersen and Tridib Chakrabarti study environmental issues in the countries beyond India.

The field of environmental history emerged just decades ago but has established itself as one of the most innovative and important new approaches to history, one that bridges the human and natural world, the humanities and the sciences. With the current trend towards internationalizing history, environmental history is perhaps the quintessential approach to studying subjects outside the nation-state model, with pollution, global warming, and other issues affecting the earth not stopping at national borders. With 25 essays, this Handbook is global in scope and innovative in organization, looking at the field thematically through such categories as climate, disease, oceans, the body, energy, consumerism, and international relations.

Handbook on the Toxicology of Metals, Volume II: Specific Metals, Fifth Edition provides complete coverage of 38 individual metals and their compounds. This volume is the second volume of a two-volume work which emphasizes toxic effects in humans, along with discussions on the toxic effects of animals and biological systems in vitro when relevant. The book has been systematically updated with the latest studies and advances in technology. As a multidisciplinary resource that integrates both human and environmental toxicology, the book is a comprehensive and valuable reference for toxicologists, physicians, pharmacologists, and environmental scientists in the fields of environmental, occupational and public health.

'Think globally, act locally' has become a call to environmentalist mobilization, proposing a closer connection between global concerns, local issues and individual responsibility. "A History of Environmentalism" explores this dialectic relationship, with ten contributors from a range of disciplines providing a history of environmentalism which frames global themes and narrates local stories.Each of the chapters in this volume addresses specific struggles in the history of environmental movements, for example over national parks, species protection, forests, waste, contamination, nuclear energy and expropriation. A diverse range of environments and environmental actors are covered, including the communities in the Amazonian Forest, the antelope in Tibet, atomic power plants in Europe and oil and politics in the Niger Delta. The chapters demonstrate how these conflicts make visible the intricate connections between local and global, the body and the environment, and power and nature. "A History of Environmentalism" tells us much about transformations of cultural perceptions and ways of production and consuming, as well as ecological and social changes. More than offering an exhaustive picture of the entire environmentalist movement, "A History of Environmentalism" highlights the importance of the experience of environmentalism within local communities. It offers a worldwide and polyphonic perspective, making it key reading for students and scholars of global and environmental history and political ecology.

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS ON THE HISTORY, MEANING AND MATERIALITY OF THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT There is a blue hole in environmental history. The thirteen essays in this very accessible collection fill it by closing the gap between land and sea, by exploring the ways the earthly and maritime realms influence one another. What has too often been described as the 'eternal sea' is shown to be remarkably dynamic. Ranging widely from Australia to the Arctic, from ocean depths to high islands, a new generation of humanists and scientists trespass the boundaries of their own fields of inquiry to tie together human and natural histories. They reflect contemporary concerns with declining fisheries, damaged estuaries, and vanishing coastal communities. Here the history of oceanic sciences meets that of literary and artistic imagination, offering vivid insights into the meanings as well as the materiality of waves and swamps, coasts and coral reefs. In their introduction, John Gillis and Franziska Torma suggest the directions in which the fluid frontiers of marine environmental history are moving.

Translation of the principle of sustainable development into policy and practice, and the evaluation of the outcomes of these strategic interventions, are some of the most pressing challenges facing policymakers in Europe and beyond. The chapters in this book contribute to the debate surrounding these challenges. By exploring the conceptual and methodological issues relating to the evaluation of sustainable development and analysing European practice and experience, this work provides a coherent and integrated contribution to our understanding of these issues. With contributions from a distinguished international group of authors, this book will be of interest to researchers, policy analysts and practitioners in the area of impact assessment and sustainable development.