The aim of this book is to present qualitative and qualitative aspects of logistics operations and supply chain management which help to implement the sustainable policy principles in the companies and public sector s institutions. Authors in individual chapters address the issues related to reverse network configuration, forward and reverse supply chain integration, CO2 reduction in transportation, improvement of the production operations and management of the recovery activities. Some best practices from different countries and industries are presented. This book will be valuable to both academics and practitioners wishing to deepen their knowledge in the field of logistics operations and management with regard to sustainability issues."

The book reveals how green buildings are currently being adapted and applied in developing countries. It includes the major developing countries such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia, Ghana, Nigeria and countries from the Middle East and gathers the insights of respected green building researchers from these areas to map out the developing world's green building revolution. The book highlights these countries' contribution to tackling climate change, emphasising the green building benefits and the research behind them. The contributing authors explore how the green building revolution has spread to developing countries and how national governments have initiated their own green building policies and agendas. They also explore how the market has echoed the green building policy, and how a business case for green buildings has been established. In turn, they show how an international set of green building standards, in the form of various techniques and tools, has been incorporated into local building and construction practices. In closing, they demonstrate how the developing world is emerging as a key player for addressing the energy and environmental problems currently facing the world. The book helps developers, designers and policy-makers in governments and green building stakeholders to make better decisions on the basis of global and local conditions. It is also of interest to engineers, designers, facility managers and researchers, as it provides a holistic picture of how the industry is responding to the worldwide call for greener and more sustainable buildings.

Gas Chromatographic Environmental Analysis Principles, Techniques, Instrumentation Fabrizio Bruner Gas Chromatographic Environmental Analysis is the first, truly complete, up-to-date, homogeneous coverage in book form, of this analytical technique applied to the chemical study of the environment. The book describes the principles of gas chromatography in environmental analysis. After a critical review of the different column types, the author provides a careful description of the necessary instrumentation, with particular attention devoted to sample injection, detection, and calibration systems. As Dr. Bruner states in the Preface. "It is useless to exploit even the most sophisticated apparatus when the injected sample does not represent the original one." Special attention is paid to trace analysis, which is important in the identification of specific fluorocarbons in the atmosphere, chlorinated compounds in drinking water, and monomers from plastic containers in foodstuffs. In addition, the author looks briefly at other techniques such as HPLC and mass spectrometry to give the reader a complete picture of environmental chemical analysis as it is practiced now and in years to come. Because it is written for analytical chemists in both industrial and academic contexts, chemical engineers, industrial hygienists, environmental biologists, and geologists, Gas Chromatographic Environmental Analysis pays particular attention to the methods that have been officially adopted in the U.S. and other highly industrialized countries. It is certain to be a welcome addition also to the libraries of chemical companies, town and regional administrators, universities, and government research centers.

Understanding the balance of society and nature is imperative when researching ecosystems and their global influence. A method of studying the health of these ecosystems is biodiversity. The more diverse the species that live in an ecosystem, the healthier it is. As the climate continues to transform, small-scale ecosystems are affected, altering their diversity. Environmentalists need a book of research that studies the specific impacts of climate change and how it affects the future of the environment. Current State and Future Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on biological systems and how climate change influences their health. While highlighting topics such as genetic diversity, economic valuation, and climatic conditions, this publication explores the effects of climate change as well as the methods of sustainable management within ecosystems. This book is ideally designed for environmental scientists, environmental professionals, scientists, ecologists, conservationists, government officials, policymakers, agriculturalists, environmentalists, zoologists, botanists, entomologists, urban planners, researchers, scholars, and students seeking research on current and future developments of various ecosystems.

The book presents a collection of selected papers from the I Workshop of the Venezuelan Society of Fluid Mechanics held on Margarita Island, Venezuela from November 4 to 9, 2012. Written by experts in their respective fields, the contributions are organized into five parts: - Part I Invited Lectures, consisting of full-length technical papers on both computational and experimental fluid mechanics covering a wide range of topics from drops to multiphase and granular flows to astrophysical flows, - Part II Drops, Particles and Waves - Part III Multiphase and Multicomponent Flows - Part IV Atmospheric and Granular Flows - and Part V Turbulent and Astrophysical Flows. The book is intended for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students as well as for physicists, chemists and engineers teaching and working in the field of fluid mechanics and its applications. The contributions are the result of recent advances in theoretical and experimental research in fluid mechanics, encompassing both fundamentals as well as applications to fluid engineering design, including pipelines, turbines, flow separators, hydraulic systems and biological fluid elements, and to granular, environmental and astrophysical flows.

Titles in the Pocket Tutor series give practical guidance on subjects that medical students and foundation doctors need help with "on the go", at a highly affordable price that puts them within reach of those rotating through modular courses or working on attachment. Topics reflect information needs stemming from today’s integrated undergraduate & foundation courses: Common investigations (ECG, imaging, etc) Clinical skills (surface anatomy, patient examination, etc.) Clinical specialties that students perceive as too small to merit a textbook (psychiatry, renal medicine)

This monograph describes ways of using trees and their byproducts in environmental protection technologies and methodologies throughout their lifecycles. The tree, the planet's main source of biomass, is an indispensable tool for sustainable technologies, and the authors present a holistic picture of how and why in this volume. The authors describe the indispensable role of the living tree in phytoremediation and biomonitoring and detail the relationship of the tree with its surrounding ecosystem. The direct and indirect relationships of a tree at its vegetation period with various components of the ecosystem (i.e. atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and soil) contribute to the role of a tree as the medium for integrating aerogenic and edaphic pollutants. Trees phytostabilize pollutants in their organisms and remove them from the soil. The ability of some species of trees to reflect the quality of the environment makes a basis for the environmental bioindication, while quantitative representation of the chemical composition of the surrounding environment allows for the use of trees in biomonitoring. Morphological features of trees (e.g. annual tree rings) allow us to observe environmental conditions in the past and retrospectively evaluate them. This monograph also details how wood products (e.g. biochar, chips, bark, etc.) of a tree after it has died are used in environmental technologies. Due to the specific morphological form and physical and chemical composition of wood products, they may be used as active materials in the technologies aimed at reducing pollution in an effective and sustainable manner.

This book summarizes the current state of knowledge concerning bacteria that use halogenated organic compounds as respiratory electron acceptors. The discovery of organohalide-respiring bacteria has expanded the range of electron acceptors used for energy conservation, and serves as a prime example of how scientific discoveries are enabling innovative engineering solutions that have transformed remediation practice. Individual chapters provide in-depth background information on the discovery, isolation, phylogeny, biochemistry, genomic features, and ecology of individual organohalide-respiring genera, including Dehalococcoides, Dehalogenimonas, Dehalobacter, Desulfitobacterium and Sulfurospirillum, as well as organohalide-respiring members of the Deltaproteobacteria. The book introduces readers to the fascinating biology of organohalide-respiring bacteria, offering a valuable resource for students, engineers and practitioners alike.

I: Grundlagen.- 1 Einleitung.- 1.1 Bedeutung des Themas.- 1.2 Ziele und Aufbau der Arbeit.- 1.3 Begriffsdefinitionen.- 1.3.1 Rating, Ranking, Screening.- 1.3.2 OEkologieorientierte Informationen, oekologieorientierte Daten.- 1.3.3 OEkologieorientierte Berichterstattung.- 1.3.4 OEko-Rating.- 2 OEkologieorientierte Bewertungen als Grundlage oekologieorientierten Handelns.- 2.1 Informieren, Bewerten, Entscheiden, Handeln.- 2.2 Alternativen, Umweltzustande, Ziele und Praferenzen als Determinanten einer Bewertung.- 2.2.1 Ziele und Kriterien.- 2.2.2 Praferenzen.- 2.2.3 Umweltzustande.- 2.2.4 Alternativenraum.- 2.2.5 Bewertungen durch Nutzenfunktionen.- 2.3 Delegation von oekologieorientierten Bewertungen im Rahmen eines OEko-Ratings.- 2.3.1 Delegation als Metaentscheidungsproblem.- 2.3.2 Informationsoekonomische Aspekte.- 2.3.3 Agency-Problematik.- 3 Die Bewertung von OEko-Rating-Ansatzen.- 3.1 Bewertungsziele.- 3.2 Bewertungskriterien.- 3.3 Zielbeziehungen.- II: Bisherige oeko-Rating-Ansatze.- 1 Kurzbeschreibung bestehender OEko-Rating-Organisationen.- 1.1 OEkom.- 1.2 CSH.- 1.3 Eco-Rating International.- 1.4 Hamburger Umweltinstitut.- 2 Vergleich und Analyse eingesetzter Verfahren.- 2.1 Treffsicherheit.- 2.1.1 Alternativenraum.- 2.1.2 Ziele.- 2.1.3 Praferenzen.- 2.1.4 Umweltzustande.- 2.2 Kosten.- 2.3 Transparenz.- 2.4 Verfalschende Anreize.- 3 Zusammenfassende Wurdigung bestehender OEko-Rating-Ansatze.- III: Handlungsorientiertes oeko-Rating.- 1 Ziel der Weiterentwicklung.- 2 Verbesserung der Zielorientierung.- 2.1.1 Arten von Zielen.- 2.1. Arten von Kriterien.- 2.2 Zusammenfassung.- 3 Verbesserung der Praferenzgerechtigkeit der Aggregation.- 3.1 Das zugrundeliegende Aggregationsproblem.- 3.2 Arten von Praferenzen.- 3.3 Nutzwertanalysen: Die Wahl der Praxis.- 3.3.1 Vorgehensweise.- 3.3.2 Pramissen und geeignete Bewertungssituationen.- 3.4 Nutzwertanalyse zweiter Generation: Die theoretische Weiterentwicklung.- 3.4.1 Vorgehensweise.- 3.4.2 Pramissen und geeignete Bewertungssituationen.- 3.5 Scoringverfahren auf der Basis unscharfer Logik.- 3.5.1 Modellierung nicht-linearer Zusammenhange: Das Beispiel Steuerungstechnik.- 3.5.2 Fuzzy Logic: Die Philosophie.- 3.5.3 Fuzzy Control: Die Anwendung.- 3.5.4 Beispiel.- 3.5.5 Pramissen und geeignete Bewertungssituationen.- 4 Aufbau eines handlungsorientierten oeko-Ratings-Ein Ablaufschema.- Iv: Fallstudie.- 1 Analyse der Entscheidungssituation.- 2 Beschreibung und Abgrenzung der Bewertungsaufgabe.- 3 Aufbau des Bewertungsmodells.- 3.1 Instrumentalziel-/Kriteriengenerierung.- 3.2 Feststellung der Praferenzen/Strukturierung.- 3.3 Umsetzung durch Wertfunktionen.- 4 Bewertung.- 5 Analyse des OEko-Ratings der Fallstudie.- V: Zusammenfassung.- Exkurs A: Erweiterung Fuzzy Logic.- 1 Weitere Operatoren.- 2 Verallgemeinerung auf den n-Faktorenfall.- 3 Parametrisierte Operatoren.- 4 Weitere Defuzzifizierungsmethoden.- Exkurs B: Skalentypen, Skalentransformationen.

A revolutionary new understanding of the precarious modern human-nature relationship and a path to a healthier, more sustainable world.
Amidst all the wondrous luxuries of the modern world--smartphones, fast intercontinental travel, Internet movies, fully stocked refrigerators--lies an unnerving fact that may be even more disturbing than all the environmental and social costs of our lifestyles. The fragmentations of our modern lives, our disconnections from nature and from the consequences of our actions, make it difficult to follow our own values and ethics, so we can no longer be truly ethical beings. When we buy a computer or a hamburger, our impacts ripple across the globe, and, dissociated from them, we can't quite respond. Our personal and professional choices result in damages ranging from radioactive landscapes to disappearing rainforests, but we can't quite see how.
Environmental scholar Kenneth Worthy traces the broken pathways between consumers and clean-room worker illnesses, superfund sites in Silicon Valley, and massively contaminated landscapes in rural Asian villages. His groundbreaking, psychologically based explanation confirms that our disconnections make us more destructive and that we must bear witness to nature and our consequences. "Invisible Nature "shows the way forward: how we can create more involvement in our own food production, more education about how goods are produced and waste is disposed, more direct and deliberative democracy, and greater contact with the nature that sustains us.

Fundamental environmental challenges such as climate change, resource depletion, and pollution are still widely relevant in today's world. Many of these problems have been associated with the architecture, engineering, and construction industries due to the level of resources used in these professions. In recent years, many manufacturers in these fields have expressed the motivation to make necessary changes that would be beneficial to the environment. Despite this progress, there remains a lack of research and assessment on the methods to achieve environmental stability within these architectural fields. Examining the Environmental Impacts of Materials and Buildings provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of ecological performance within modern building design and materials-based construction. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as life cycle assessment, material flows analysis, and sustainability, this book is ideally designed for architects, civil engineers, construction professionals, environmentalists, ecologists, business practitioners, scientists, policymakers, designers, researchers, and academicians seeking research on current trends in environmental performance within building design.

The principles and procedures used to obtain structural measurements of terrestrial vegetation communities are presented in this text/reference. Designed to be the standard work on the topic, it provides a balance between conceptual and practical aspects of measurement procedures and techniques. The four commonly used measurements of vegetation - frequency, cover, density, and biomass - are introduced, along with their associated units. There is also up-to-date coverage of vegetation measurement using remote sensing techniques.

Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology attempts to provide concise, critical reviews of timely advances, philosophy and significant areas of accomplished or needed endeavor in the total field of xenobiotics, in any segment of the environment, as well as toxicological implications.

This book analyses the state of the natural environment and the causes of its degradation using the biosphere approach. Further, those issues that must be resolved immediately on the global level are identified following the ideas defined by V.I. Vernadsky, and new principles of Man-Nature interaction are pursued. The modern world currently faces three global trends inducing biosphere degradation and the aggravation of ecological hazards, namely: a) rapid and uncontrolled growth of human population on the Earth and insufficient natural resources to sustain it; (b) technogenesis development; and (c) global climate change and the aggravation of natural disasters. Ecological safety and military security are becoming the crucial conditions for the survival of modern civilization. To mitigate the ecological strain on the Earth, the technogenesis strategy should be changed and many other pressing issues must be resolved. These problems should be addressed using the biosphere approach, because the individual human being is the biosphere constituent, and his or her safety cannot be provided without maintaining the entire natural system on our planet.

This book explores the use of recent advanced multiple stage conversion technologies. These applications combine conventional fluidised bed systems with new plasma technologies to efficiently generate different energy outputs from waste materials with minimum cleaning effort. Using a mix of modelling and experimental approaches, the author provides fundamental insights into how the key operating variables of the two-stage process may impact the final quality of syngas. This thesis serves as a useful reference guide on the modelling and design of single and multiple-stage systems for thermal waste treatment. Its extended section on plant configuration and operation of waste gasification plants identifies the main technical challenges, and is of use to researchers entering the field.

This book is intended to support the forestry institutions in the tropical countries in the planning, assessment and systematic observation of forests required to fulfill their obligations as laid in international conventions such as the CBD and UNFCCC. Following the Rio Conference, a number of countries, donors and international organizations have implemented capacity-building projects with varying degrees of success. One main reason for the varying success rates seems to lie in the design of technical assistance programs, which have been formulated on the traditional lines of mainly generating forest resources information or transferring technology; whereas Agenda 21 requires fundamental changes in countries' institutions and approaches to planning and implementing the conservation and sustainable development of forests through a process of continuing research and analysis. The book is intended to serve the basic needs of national planning strategies and international and donor support.

This book investigates geological CO2 storage and its role in greenhouse gas emissions reduction, enhanced oil recovery, and environmentally responsible use of fossil fuels. Written for energy/environmental regulators at every level of government (federal, state, etc.), scientists/academics, representatives from the power and fossil energy sectors, NGOs, and other interested parties, this book uses the characterization of the Rock Springs Uplift site in Wyoming as an integrated case study to illustrate the application of geological CO2 storage science, principles, and theory in a real-world scenario.

This book provides new insights on the study of global environmental changes using the ecoinformatics tools and the adaptive-evolutionary technology of geoinformation monitoring. The main advantage of this book is that it gathers and presents extensive interdisciplinary expertise in the parameterization of global biogeochemical cycles and other environmental processes in the context of globalization and sustainable development. In this regard, the crucial global problems concerning the dynamics of the nature-society system are considered and the key problems of ensuring the system's sustainable development are studied. A new approach to the numerical modeling of the nature-society system is proposed and results are provided on modeling the dynamics of the system's characteristics with regard to scenarios of anthropogenic impacts on biogeochemical cycles, land ecosystems and oceans. The main purpose of this book is to develop a universal guide to information-modeling technologies for assessing the function of environmental subsystems under various climatic and anthropogenic conditions.

This volume represents the most important deliverable of the European-funded project Radio-Past (www.radiopast.eu). It is intended to disseminate the key results achieved in the form of methodological guidelines for the application of non-destructive approaches in order to understand, visualize and manage complex archaeological sites, in particular large multi-period settlements whose remains are still mostly buried. The authors were selected from among the project research staff but also from among leading international specialists who served as speakers at the two international events organized in the frameworkof the project (the Valle Giulia Colloquium of Rome 2009 and the Colloquium of Ghent 2013) and at the three Specialization Fora, the high formation training activities organized in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

As such, the book offers contributions on diverse aspects of the research process (data capture, data management, data elaboration, data visualization and site management), presenting the state of the art and drafting guidelines for good practice in each field.

The sea is steadily rising, presently at ~3.4 mm/y, already costing Billions in Venice, on the Thames River and in New York City, to counter sea-level-related surges. Experts anticipate an accelerated rise, and credible predictions for sea level rise by the year 2100 range from 12 inches to above 6 feet. Study of the Earth's geologic history, through ice-core samples, links sea level rise to temperature rise. Since the lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is measured in centuries, and it has upset the balance of incoming and outgoing energy, the Earth's temperature will continue to rise, even if carbon burning ceases. Engineering the Earth's solar input appears increasingly attractive and practical as a means to lower Earth's temperature, and thus, to lower sea level. The cost of engineering the climate appears small, comparable, even, to the already-incurred costs of sea level rise represented by civil engineering projects in London, Venice and New York City. Feasible deployment of geoengineering, accompanied by some reduction in carbon burning, is predicted to lower the sea level by the order of one foot by 2100 AD, negating the expected rise, to provide an immense economic benefit. The accompanying lower global temperature would reduce the severity of extreme weather, and restore habitability to lethally hot parts of the world. This book is primarily conceived to aid and inform the educated citizen: aspects may also interest climate workers.