The "Concise Encyclopedia of Environmental Systems" provides a concise overview of the current state of the art in the study of environmental systems. Contains specially commissioned articles and updated and revised articles from the acclaimed "Systems & Control Encyclopedia." The subjects covered include: agricultural systems; atmospheric processes and air quality; ecosystems; environmental chemistry; geology, soil processes and geophysics; hydrology, fluid dynamics and water quality; marine processes; meteorology; and climatology. In addition, many of the articles cover the methodological procedures used in environmental systems analysis, with contributions on automatic control and management; computers in modelling and management; environmental planning; environmetric methods, including time-series analysis; mathematical modelling, including data-based, physically based and simulation modelling; remote sensing and image processing; uncertainty in environmental systems; and sensitivity analysis. The encyclopedia is extensively cross-referenced on two levels - to articles of direct relevance as well as to other articles which will provide the reader with more general background information.

Analyzes environmental problems and policies in developing countries around the world and discusses new prospects for international cooperation and funding. Considers hard political choices, who is to blame for environmental decay, who should pay to overcome problems, and how policies should be administered. Experts from different countries offer their perspectives about the role of multilateral agencies, the North-South dimensions of environmental problems since 1972, internal and external factors that have affected Third World development, new measures and opportunities since the Rio Summit conference, and case studies of representative countries--India, China, Indonesia, Africa, Nigeria, Chile, and Mexico. A bibliography enhances this authoritative study for the use of political scientists, economists, and public administrators, for teachers, students, and professionals.

Active researchers in the areas of geography and psychology have contributed to this book. Both fields are capable of increasing our scientific knowledge of how human behavior is interfaced with the molar physical environment. Such knowledge is essential for the solution of many of today's most urgent environmental problems. Failure to constrain use of scarce resources, pollution due to human activities, creation of technological hazards and deteriorating urban quality due to vandalism and crime are all well known examples. The influence of psychology in geographical research has long been appreciated but it is only recently that psychologists have recognized they have something to learn from geography. In identifying the importance of two-way interdisciplinary communication, a psychologist and a geographer have been invited to each write a chapter in this book on a designated topic so that close comparisons can be drawn as to how the two disciplines approach the same difficulties. Since the disciplines are to some extent complementary, it is hoped that this close collaboration will have synergistic effects on the attempts of both to find solutions to environmental problems through an increased understanding of the many behavior-environment interfaces.

Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Earth and Environment for a Sustainable Future presents the outcomes of the InTeGrate project, a community effort funded by the National Science Foundation to improve Earth literacy and build a workforce prepared to tackle environmental and resource issues. The InTeGrate community is built around the shared goal of supporting interdisciplinary learning about Earth across the undergraduate curriculum, focusing on the grand challenges facing society and the important role that the geosciences play in addressing these grand challenges. The chapters in this book explicitly illustrate the intimate relationship between geoscience and sustainability that is often opaque to students. The authors of these chapters are faculty members, administrators, program directors, and researchers from institutions across the country who have collectively envisioned, implemented, and evaluated effective change in their classrooms, programs, institutions, and beyond. This book provides guidance to anyone interested in implementing change-on scales ranging from a single course to an entire program-by infusing sustainability across the curriculum, broadening access to Earth and environmental sciences, and assessing the impacts of those changes.

These cards are offered as an educational resource for contemplating the 99 Names of God found within Islam. Designed to appeal to young and old alike, each card has the following features: A Name of Allah in beautiful Arabic script. A translation, transliteration, and pronunciation guide for the Name. An illustrated sign of the Name we can witness in the world around or within us. A suggestion for exploring the Name using action, reflection, consultation, meditation, research, or reference to the Quran.The cards are based on material from the book, The 99 Names of God.

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers run through the heart of the Middle East and merge in the area of Mesopotamia known as the "cradle of civilization." In their long and volatile political history, the sixteenth century ushered in a rare era of stability and integration. A series of military campaigns between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf brought the entirety of their flow under the institutional control of the Ottoman Empire, then at the peak of its power and wealth. Rivers of the Sultan tells the history of the Tigris and Euphrates during the early modern period. Under the leadership of Sultan Suleyman I, the rivers became Ottoman from mountain to ocean, managed by a political elite that pledged allegiance to a single household, professed a common religion, spoke a lingua franca, and received orders from a central administration based in Istanbul. Faisal Husain details how Ottoman unification institutionalized cooperation among the rivers' dominant users and improved the exploitation of their waters for navigation and food production. Istanbul harnessed the energy and resources of the rivers for its security and economic needs through a complex network of forts, canals, bridges, and shipyards. Above all, the imperial approach to river management rebalanced the natural resource disparity within the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Istanbul regularly organized shipments of grain, metal, and timber from upstream areas of surplus in Anatolia to downstream areas of need in Iraq. Through this policy of natural resource redistribution, the Ottoman Empire strengthened its presence in the eastern borderland region with the Safavid Empire and fended off challenges to its authority. Placing these world historic bodies of water at its center, Rivers of the Sultan reveals intimate bonds between state and society, metropole and periphery, and nature and culture in the early modern world.

This empirical study provides an introduction to the dynamics of regulatory federalism and is the first book to focus on the major surface mining regulations. A broad spectrum of contributors, most with first-hand experience, describe the forces that have shaped the implementation of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act since 1972. They offer varying perspectives for understanding interest group conflicts, technological and market considerations, intergovernmental procedures and problems. They describe the forces shaping the policy implementation process at the federal, state, and local level. This case study is intended for political scientists, public administrators, citizen activists and experts, historians, and students dealing with mining and regulatory policy.

The edited collection opens with an overview of policy formation and implementation in the United States, drawing upon theoretical studies of pluralism, federalism, interest group politics, and intergovernmental dynamics. The case study defines the legislative and administrative history of surface mining regulation; the impact of interest groups, courts, and the states on the implementation of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act; the influence of the coal industry and of environmental interests, federal and state relations, and the intergovernmental process.

Climb a mountain and experience the landscape. Try to grasp its holistic nature. Do not climb alone, but with others and share your experience. Be sure the ways of seeing the landscape will be very different. We experience the landscape with all senses as a complex, dynamic and hierarchically structured whole. The landscape is tangible out there and simultaneously a mental reality. Several perspectives are obvious because of language, culture and background. Many disciplines developed to study the landscape focussing on specific interest groups and applications. Gradually the holistic way of seeing became lost. This book explores the different perspectives on the landscape in relation to its holistic nature. We start from its multiple linguistic meanings and a comprehensive overview of the development of landscape research from its geographical origins to the wide variety of today's specialised disciplines and interest groups. Understanding the different perspectives on the landscapes and bringing them together is essential in transdisciplinary approaches where the landscape is the integrating concept.

A fascinating handbook providing a rare synthesis of the environmental history of northern Europe from the Paleolithic era to the present day. Of interest to students and academics alike, this book provides a much-needed synthesis of the recent literature on northern Europe's environmental history. Beginning with the Paleolithic period and the recolonization of Europe after the Ice Age, this book maps out the key environmental trends in the history of the region's environment and its interaction with the human population. The book also highlights how dramatic events outside Europe, such as the Tomboro volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1815, had dramatic consequences for the region's climate. Given the culturally diverse nature of modern Europe, a vital aspect of the book is its identification of the common themes that unite the interaction of the region's nation-states with the natural environment. Part of ABC-CLIO's Nature and Human Societies series, the book enables readers to better grasp the extent of humanity's effect on our world.

Prehistoric North Americans lived on, in, and surrounded by nature. As a result, everything they were resulted from this co-existence. From interpersonal relations to supernatural beliefs, from housing size and function to the food they ate and clothing they wore, the life of Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans was intimately intertwined with the environment. What is known about these societies is often sketchy at best, having survived largely through archaeological remains and oral tradition. Scholars have tried to understand Native American history on its own terms, trying to understand who and what they were in reality - a complex, diverse multitude of populations that defined themselves entirely through what they saw, heard, and experienced everyday - their natural environment. Nature and the Environment in Pre-Columbian American Life provides an overview of all aspects of how native peoples interacted with the environment: How did prehistoric North Americans use their knowledge of the environment to hunt and gather for food, or raise crops? What was the interaction between humans and animals? How did Native Americans find entertainment and leisure in their environments? How and where did people live in conjunction with and often in spite of the elements? This accessible resource provides an excellent introduction for those needing a first step to researching the daily lives of Native Americans in the centuries before the arrival of Europeans.

A complete, forward-thinking guide to environmental community relations procedures and program development
The Practical Guide to Environmental Community Relations offers a comprehensive hands-on framework for working successfully with community residents and other stakeholders to prevent, resolve, or minimize conflicts on environmental issues. Featuring detailed checklists, forms, and worksheets, the book equips you with ready-to-use knowledge and skills in key areas of environmental community relations development:
* Community assessment--how to identify stakeholders and concerns, determine assessment parameters, conduct interviews, analyze data, and report findings
* Communications--how to develop a powerful communications program through written materials, personal communications, and focused media strategy, and how the essential principles of technical, crisis, and risk communication fit within the context of community relations
* Community relations techniques--how to manage public meetings, tours, availability sessions, and other events, plus advice on how to create and run Community Advisory Panels (CAPs)
* Community relations programs--how to plan and implement programs effectively, including establishing common goals and working with stakeholders constructively to achieve positive results
* Environmental regulations--including RCRA, CERCLA/SARA, NCP, NPDES, EPCRA, and Clean Air Act Accidental Release Prevention and Risk Management Programs
* Cutting-edge issues--investigation and cleanup of contaminated sites, permitting of facilities, federal facilities programs, environmental justice, and more

Complete with mini-case studies revealing important do's and don'ts of community outreach in action, this accessible guide is a vital resource for private and public sector professionals working in environmental and facilities management, community relations, public affairs, and law.

The tension between nature and culture, which accompanies the rise of any large society, has become a subject of great concern in our time. In this compelling study, Gunther Barth, acclaimed author of City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, identifies fleeting moments of concord between nature and culture in the course of American history. During the search for the Wilderness Passage, the progress of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the building of park cemeteries and big city parks, Americans realized that nature was not merely a force to be reckoned with, not merely a resource to be exploited, but also an integral component of their lives. Through the engineering of nature and culture in the urban environment, the energetic attempts to conserve large-scale nature in the United States emerged as an offspring of the big city. Heightening our understanding of the historical complexity of the relationship between nature and culture, and suggesting that harmony between the two is a mark of civilization, this original study will be an invaluable guide to anyone concerned with the quality of life in America, past and future.

Academic writing on environmental communication proliferated in the 1990's. A few of us had been calling for such work and making initial investigations throughout the 1980's, but the momentum in the field built slowly. Spurred by coverage in the mass media, academic publishers finally caught the wave of interest. In this exciting new volume, the editors demonstrate more fully than ever before how environmental rhetoric and technical communication go hand in hand. The key link that they and their distinguished group of contributors have discovered is the ancient concern of communication scholars with public deliberation. Environmental issues present technical communicators with some of their greatest challenges, above all, how to make the highly specialized and inscrutably difficult technical information generated by environmental scientists and engineers usable in public decision making. The editors encourage us to accept the challenge of contributing to environmentally conscious decision making by integrating technical knowledge and human values. For technical communicators who accept the challenge of working toward solutions by opening access to crucial information and by engaging in critical thinking on ecological issues, the research and theory offered in this volume provide a strong foundation for future practice.

The constant increase in the consumption of mineral resources, as well as the growing awareness of their exploitation, is causing deep concern within the scientific community. This concern is justified by the fact that the energy transition will increase the pressure on these resources, as renewable energies require an increased and more diversified quantity of mineral materials. This book presents an overview of the exploitation of these mineral resources, where the natural, regulatory and environmental constraints interfere with economic, financial and geopolitical interests. By mobilizing the fields of the humanities, geosciences and engineering, it also analyzes the challenges that the energy transition will encounter, challenges related to the contradictory effects that the acceleration of the extraction of these resources will have on their physical availability, the economies that exploit them and the populations that live off of them

The matsutake mushroom continues to be a highly sought delicacy, especially in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cuisine. Matsutake Worlds explores this mushroom through the lens of multi-species encounters centered around the matsutake's notorious elusiveness. The mushroom's success, the contributors of this volume argue, cannot be accounted for by any one cultural, social, political, or economic process. Rather, the matsutake mushroom has flourished as the result of a number of different processes and dynamics, culminating in the culinary institution we know today.

This compendium of primary sources examines British architectural history from the accession of King George III in 1760 to the outbreak if the First World War in 1914. The collection of two volumes contains a mixture of architectural treatises, biographical material on architects, works on different types of building, and contemporary descriptions of individual buildings. This title will be of great interest to students of Art History and Architecture.

A stunning panoramic exploration of some of planet Earth's greatest natural wonders.

This stunning book gives you the big picture on some of the most amazing sights and events on, above and below planet Earth. Discover the epic journeys that animals make to feed and rear their young, explore the breathtaking variety of Earth's natural habitats and the wildlife that inhabits them and dive to the very depths of the vast oceans in this breathtaking celebration of our beautiful world.

Ideal for readers aged 9 and up.

Contents include Big diverse planet, Tropical rainforest, Desert, Temperate rainforest, Mountains, Scrubland, Rivers and lakes, Tropical grassland, The tundra, The Arctic, Big planet journeys, Wildebeest, Humpback whales, Monarch butterflies, Caribou, Salmon, Arctic terns, Christmas Island crabs, Army ants Emperor penguins, Big blue planet, River mouths, Between the tides, Mangroves, Seagrass meadows, Coral reefs, Open ocean, Ocean deep, Southern Ocean.