Discover the latest available knowledge on ways to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere! The problem of quickly mounting CO2 emissions in the fast-developing Latin American region was addressed in a symposium held in Piracicaba, Brazil, in June 2004. Carbon Sequestration in Soils of Latin America presents the latest available knowledge in soil C sequestration and improved land and soil management which can also lead to other positive effects, such as greater fertility of soil and higher crop yields. This text, in easy-to-understand language, comprehensively reviews ways to best transform various soils from being a source of carbon released into the atmosphere to become a sink for carbon absorption. Carbon Sequestration in Soils of Latin America presents a full-rounded explanation of this information in four sections. The first section gives detailed background information about the region, its climate, and the differing soils, along with basic concepts behind the science. The second section describes recommended management practices and rates of soil C sequestration. The third section thoroughly deals with methods of assessment of soil C. The last section provides a summary of recommendations for further research and development. The book is extensively referenced and contains numerous figures, tables, and photographs. Topics in Carbon Sequestration in Soils of Latin America include: soil eco-regions and principal biomes of Latin America soil carbon stock in principal ecosystems of Latin America rates of carbon sequestration in different eco-regions for predominant land use and management the role of the Amazon region in mitigating climate change the importance of tropical savannas of Latin America in mitigating global warming innovative methods of assessment of soil carbon pool trading carbon credits designing pilot soil carbon sequestration projects potential of soil carbon sequestration in Latin America priorities and recommendations for future research Carbon Sequestration in Soils of Latin America is a comprehensive, essential resource for land managers, policymakers, educators, students, and researchers.

• Introduces LEED and green building principles for anyone in a built environment discipline • No expectation of prior knowledge, suitable for high school students to seasoned industry professionals • 100 question practice exams provided as online resources

Environmental Interactions of Clays is the companion volume of Bruce Velde's book on Origin and Mineralogy of Clays. In dealing with the role of clays in specific environmental issues, it is unique in its subject matter.
Individual chapters are written by recognized international experts in their field. Subjects covered are radioactive waste disposal, trace metals, soil quality and productivity, pesticides, landfill, fibrous minerals and health.
The approach is one of combining review with current research, thus it is an invaluable resource for students, researchers and practitioners alike.

We think vulnerability still matters when considering how people are put at risk from hazards and this book shows why in a series of thematic chapters and case studies written by eminent disaster studies scholars that deal with the politics of disaster risk creation: precarity, conflict, and climate change. The chapters highlight different aspects of vulnerability and disaster risk creation, placing the stress rightly on what causes disasters and explaining the politics of how they are created through a combination of human interference with natural processes, the social production of vulnerability, and the neglect of response capacities. Importantly, too, the book provides a platform for many of those most prominently involved in launching disaster studies as a social discipline to reflect on developments over the past 50 years and to comment on current trends. The interdisciplinary and historical perspective that this book provides will appeal to scholars and practitioners at both the national and international level seeking to study, develop, and support effective social protection strategies to prevent or mitigate the effects of hazards on vulnerable populations. It will also prove an invaluable reference work for students and all those interested in the future safety of the world we live in.

The second edition of the popular RFF Reader brings together much of the best work published by researchers at Resources for the Future.

Many articles in the Reader were originally published in RFF's quarterly magazine, Resources. Wally Oates has supplemented that with material drawn from other RFF works, including issue briefs and special reports. The readings provide concise, insightful background and perspectives on a broad range of environmental issues including benefit-cost analysis, environmental regulation, hazardous and toxic waste, environmental equity, and the environmental challenges in developing nations and transitional economies. Natural-resource topics include resource management, biodiversity, and sustainable agriculture. The articles address many of today's most difficult public policy questions, such as environmental policy and economic growth, and "When is a Life Too Costly to Save?" New to the second edition is an expanded set of readings on global climate change and sustainability, plus cutting-edge policy applications on topics like the environment and public health and the growing problem of antibiotic and pesticide resistance.

For general readers, the RFF Reader has been an accessible, nontechnical, authoritative introduction to key issues in environmental and natural resources policy. It has been especially effective in demonstrating the contribution that economics and other social science research can make toward improving public debate and decisionmaking. Organized to follow the contents of popular textbooks in environmental economics and politics, it has also found wide use in beginning environmental policy courses.

Reports on waste valorization in the winemaking industry and converting the waste into more useful products including oils, antioxidants and other valuable materials. Explores research which contributes to environmental sustainability and circular economy in the winemaking industry. Describes other ways to reduce the ecological footprint of the wine industry such as using less fertilizer, more benign pesticides and reduction of water footprint. Proposes options for a potential wine waste biorefining. Reviews alternative uses of agro-industrial wine wastes as sources of additives for the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.

This book guides process-industry professionals from the implementation of the basic foundations of Continuous Improvement (CI) through to an organization where CI is a "way of life" and a defining feature of the culture of the organization. The readers of this book are seeking solutions to such pressing issues as: * Eliminating accidents and near misses. * Reducing customer complaints. * Improving customer delivery performance. * Elimination of accidents and near misses. * Reducing customer complaints. * Improving customer delivery performance. * Introducing new products. * Improving staff productivity. * Removing costs to meet the budget. * Dealing with absence and poor morale. * Improving staff retention. This book provides them with guidance on how to address issues in these areas in a way that enables improvements to be realized quickly but not at the expense of a long-term goal of a sustainable Continuous Improvement culture. In addition, this book presents the implementation of CI as a cyclical journey with no endpoint. The stages are ordered in a sequence that enables the reader to get started in their area of the company and build up the elements without the need for an overall organizational strategy at the beginning. Continuous Improvement is a vast subject with many takes on principles, approaches, and tools. This book is about how all the fundamentals of these areas fit together and, as such, covers only some of them. However, within the bibliography, I have signposted the books that have guided me during my career and which go into the principles, approaches, and tools further.

Focusing on how visual information is represented, stored and extracted in the human brain, this book uses cognitive neural modeling in order to show how visual information is represented and memorized in the brain. Breaking through traditional visual information processing methods, the author combines our understanding of perception and memory from the human brain with computer vision technology, and provides a new approach for image recognition and classification. While biological visual cognition models and human brain memory models are established, applications such as pest recognition and carrot detection are also involved in this book. Given the range of topics covered, this book is a valuable resource for students, researchers and practitioners interested in the rapidly evolving field of neurocomputing, computer vision and machine learning.

Landslide Risk Management comprises the proceedings of the International Conference on Landslide Risk Management, held in Vancouver, Canada, from May 31 to June 3, 2005. The first part of the book contains state-of-the-art and invited lectures, prepared by teams of authors selected for their experience in specific topics assigned to them by the JTC-1 Committee. The second part is a selection of papers submitted to the conference, most of which serve as case-history illustrations of projects on landslide risk management. This reference work presents the current status of landslide risk management as viewed by experts from around the world.

- Presents the reasons behind the decisions taken by automated algorithms - Frames eXplainable AI as a bridge between computer scientists and physicians - Emphasizes transparency in data analysis within healthcare - Covers computer vision and deep learning in tandem - Creates space to discuss human-AI relationships in future healthcare

Forestland investment has surged in the past few decades as a result of land ownership change in the forestry industry. Timberland investment and management organizations and real estate investment trusts have bought up land and resources that were divested by vertically integrated forest products companies. This book provides a seminal coverage of this seismic shift in the industry, exploring the philosophy, driving factors, valuation, theory, research, implementation, practice, and effects of forestland investment. Across 15 chapters the book reviews the history of forestland investment; discusses the optimal forest rotation; explains timberland appraisal; examines the return drivers of forestland; analyzes timberland index construction methods and results; prices timberland assets; reviews financial and real options; investigates real option values in forestland management; evaluates timber harvest contracts; examines new opportunities in the emerging woody bioenergy market; and eventually offers prospects on forestland investment in the future. It also discusses how forest carbon can be used as a nature-based climate solution. This book is essential reading for forestry business students and scholars, as well as practitioners and policymakers in the industry.

The book is the only technical volume that explains how equivalency analysis methods mentioned in Annex II of the European Environmental Liability Directive should be implemented. It uses case studies to illustrate real-world application of the methods, which are based on the experience in the USA and in the European Union and have been tested in three years of training programs funded by the European Commission. Academically rigorous and technically comprehensive, the book is intended for technical experts wanting to assess damage and remediation options as well as for decision-makers wishing to commission such assessments and judge their quality. These include competent authorities, operators, financial security providers, academics, consultants and NGOs.

The book Computer Applications in Engineering and Management is about computer applications in management, electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and civil engineering. It covers the software tools for office automation, introduces the basic concepts of database management, and provides an overview about the concepts of data communication, internet, and e-commerce. Additionally, the book explains the principles of computing management used in construction of buildings in civil engineering and the role of computers in power grid automation in electronics engineering. Features Provides an insight to prospective research and application areas related to industry and technology Includes industry-based inputs Provides a hands-on approach for readers of the book to practice and assimilate learning This book is primarily aimed at undergraduates and graduates in computer science, information technology, civil engineering, electronics and electrical engineering, management, academicians, and research scholars.

The demand on land to produce food, for urban development such as housing, industry, shopping areas, infrastructure and also for recreation has increased during the history of mankind. This has resulted in such activities as the reclamation of swamps, flood plains, tidal areas and even lakes by impoldering. Model simulations can be use to gain insight into the system behaviour of different land use and soil composition under temperate humid and humid tropic conditions, The existing package OPOL, based on a non steady model, was further developed to the version OPOL5 for the simulation of hydrological conditions and optimization of the main components of water management systems in polder areas in the temperate humid and humid tropical zone. This model reveals a system's behaviour as well as the effects of variation in the main components of the systems to the overall costs. For example, the designs of pumped drainage systems in polder areas can be optimized by varying the main components until the annual equivalent costs are minimum. A GIS tool has been used to complement OPOL5 for the simulation of the real situation in an area with respect to land use, damage, topography, and soil type. The model package has been applied to two case studies: one in the temperate humid zone, namely the Netherlands and to Thailand in the humid tropical zone.

There is an urgent need to develop and improve low cost technologies for wastewater treatment. Simultaneously treating wastewater and producing duckweed in a pond system is, therefore, an attractive solution contributing to both environmental protection and food production. Duckweed has excellent qualities: a high protein content, a high growth rate and is an easy crop to handle. The small plant turns nitrogen from wastewater into a food source. This thesis reports on the effect of different operational variables, like anaerobic pre-treatment, the combination of algae and duckweed ponds and pond depth. Improved nitrogen removal was obtained through the combination of duckweed ponds with algae ponds. Duckweed pond systems could be designed with shallow depth without affecting nitrogen removal efficiency. This research is the result of the cooperative effort between the EIDENAR, Univalle, Cali, Colombia and the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, the Netherlands.

1) Deals openly and objectively with tricky issues that can put a resources development company out of business. 2) Provides practical approaches and suggests solutions to environmental and social risks. 3) Examines issues that have only recently emerged: climate change, biodiversity, social responsibility, mine closure liabilities, etc. 4) Provides a concise, readily accessible reference. 5) Will help decision-makers to communicate informed on material financially relevant environmental and social risks.

Every engineer must eventually face their first daunting design project. Scheduling, organization, budgeting, prototyping: all can be overwhelming in the short time given to complete the project. While there are resources available on project management and the design process, many are focused too narrowly on specific topics or areas of engineering. Practical Engineering Design presents a complete overview of the design project and beyond for any engineering discipline, including sections on how to protect intellectual property rights and suggestions for turning the project into a business. An outgrowth of the editors' broad experience teaching the capstone Engineering Design course, Practical Engineering Design reflects the most pressing and often-repeated questions with a set of guidelines for the entire process. The editors present two sample project reports and presentations in the appendix and refer to them throughout the book, using examples and critiques to demonstrate specific suggestions for improving the quality of writing and presentation. Real-world examples demonstrate how to formulate schedules and budgets, and generous references in each chapter offer direction to more in-depth information. Whether for a co-op assignment or your first project on the job, this is the most comprehensive guide available for deciding where to begin, organizing the team, budgeting time and resources, and, most importantly, completing the project successfully.

Ecology at the ecosystem level has both necessitated and benefited from new methods and technologies as well as those adapted from other disciplines. With the ascendancy of ecosystem science and management, the need has arisen for a comprehensive treatment of techniques used in this rapidly-growing field. Methods in Ecosystem Science answers that need by synthesizing the advantages, disadvantages and tradeoffs associated with the most commonly used techniques in both aquatic and terrestrial research.The book is divided into sections addressing carbon and energy dynamics, nutrient and water dynamics, manipulative ecosystem experiements and tools to synthesize our understanding of ecosystems. Detailed information about various methods will help researchers choose the most appropriate methods for their particular studies. Prominent scientists discuss how tools from a variety of disciplines can be used in ecosystem science at different scales.

Solutions for soil engineering and soil-structure interaction problems need realistic and pertinent experimental and modelling tools. In this work, extensive developments proposed by the invited speakers of the Lyon International Symposium held in September 2003 are presented, including experimental investigations into deformation properties; laboratory, in-situ and field observation interpretations; behaviour characterisation and modelling; and case histories. The contributions include recent investigations into anisotropy and non-linearity, the effects of stress-strain-time history, ageing and time effects, yielding, failure and flow, cyclic and dynamic behaviour. In addition, advanced geotechnical testing is applied to real engineering problems, and to ways of synthesising information from a range of sources while engaging in practical site characterisation studies.

The learning objectives of this book are to: Show how individual objectives drive towards the organizational objectives Answer the question, "How do I influence leadership and get everyone on board"? Build on the principles of enterprise excellence Understand the relationship between behaviors, systems, principles, and how they drive to results Learn how KBIs drive KPIs and how this leads to excellent results.

Climate change is modifying, in varying measure, the coastal geography of States. The phenomenon is not temporary but is expected to carry on during the 21st century and beyond. A distinctive feature of modern international law is the concept of maritime zones. Each maritime area is subject to an intricate scheme of States’ rights and obligations. Coastal geography is a fundamental component of a long-standing method, developed and agreed upon between States, to establish the outward limits of these areas. A feature of this method is the baseline. In international law it is the only reference line from where the outward limits of maritime zones are measured. There are clear rules on how this is established along a coast. There is a concern amongst a number of States that rising sea water levels as a result of climate change may compel them to shift their baselines inward thus affecting the outward limits of their maritime zones. It is clear that the stability of maritime boundaries is put into question and this may bring about serious political, legal and economic repercussions. This concern may also affect the outcome of dispute settlement procedures before a competent international court or tribunal the purpose of which is to resolve overlapping maritime claims. Key questions emerge. What is the role played by coastal geography in the legal regime determining the outward limits of maritime zones? What are the consequences of changes to coastal geography? To what extent are dispute settlement procedures before a Court or Tribunal immune from this concern? Is international law able to address this? If so, in what way and what are its limits? What can be done to resolve this?

- The book discusses the recent techniques in NGS data analysis which is the most needed material by biologists (students and researchers) in the wake of numerous genomic projects and the trend toward genomic research. - The book includes both theory and practice for the NGS data analysis. So, readers will understand the concept and learn how to do the analysis using the most recent programs. - The steps of application workflows are written in a manner that can be followed for related projects. - Each chapter includes worked examples with real data available on the NCBI databases. Programming codes and outputs are accompanied with explanation. - The book content is suitable as teaching material for biology and bioinformatics students. Meets the requirements of a complete semester course on Sequencing Data Analysis Covers the latest applications for Next Generation Sequencing Covers data reprocessing, genome assembly, variant discovery, gene profiling, epigenetics, and metagenomics

A unique core text that provides both a framework and roadmap for lecturers designing a teaching programme as well as the core text for them to use with their students Fully updated with a new chapter on climate change education, along with coverage of many rising topics such as risk and resilience, blockchain, AI, and social justice issues The roadmap can also be used by lecturers that need to embed Sustainable Development Goals into their teaching on a range of business and management programmes, including marketing, HR, Economics, Operations Management and financial reporting Supported by a teacher's manual and PowerPoint slides

Nutrient Cycling in Terrestrial Ecosystems presents a comprehensive overview of nutrient cycling processes and their importance for plant growth and ecosystem sustainability. The first part of the book presents the fundamentals of nutrient cycling. Topics included are cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and micronutrients. Particular attention is paid to the role of root exudates and rhizosphere microorganisms in facilitating nutrient cycling. The second part discusses nutrient cycling at an ecosystem scale, covering cropping systems, pastures, natural grasslands, arid lands, tundras and forests. The final chapter reviews current models of nutrient cycling.

By comprehensively covering nutrient cycling at a range of scales and emphasising multidisciplinary approaches, this volume will support scientists and practitioners alike, providing links between those involved in improving sustainable economic output from managed ecosystems and those interested in conservation of natural ecosystems.

The Sustainable Forestry Handbook is widely considered to be the essential aid to understanding and implementing sustainable forest management. Providing a clear and concise guide to the practicalities of implementing international standards for sustainable forest management, this fully updated second edition covers new Forest Stewardship Council requirements, High Conservation Value Forests, clearer requirements on pesticides and developments in policy and forest governance. Aimed at forest managers, and employing extensive cross referencing and easy-to-understand illustrations, this highly practical handbook explains in clear terms what the standards require forest managers to do and how they might go about implementing them.