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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Physical geography > General
This book analyses the threat posed by the continued use of fossil
fuels. By utilizing Elizabeth Shove's social practices approach and
Murphy's own social closure framework, the book examines the
accelerating treadmill of carbon-polluting practices. It
incorporates externalities theory to investigate how the full cost
of fossil fuels is paid by others rather than users, and to
demonstrate that the environmental commons is a medium for
conveying intergenerational monopolisation and exclusion in the
Anthropocene. Murphy uncovers a pattern of opposition to change
when exploiting valuable but dangerous resources. He argues that a
new faith in mastering nature is emerging as a belief in
just-in-time technological solutions to circumvent having to change
fossil-fuelled practices. The book then moves on to assess proposed
solutions, including Beck's staging of risk and his hypothesis that
the anticipation of global catastrophe will incite emancipation. It
proposes a novel approach to enhancing foresight and avoid
incubating disaster. It will appeal to readers interested in an
original social science analysis of this creeping crisis and its
resolution.
This book focuses on geochemical behavior and ancient records of
the specific biomarker levoglucosan in Tibetan glaciers, Based on
samples from the Zangsegangri (ZSGR) ice cores obtained from the
central Tibetan Plateau, it presents annually resolved levoglucosan
records and fire changes over the past 430 years. It also discusses
the interaction between fire, climate change, and human activities.
This is the first effort to reconstruct annual resolution fire
records in Tibetan ice, providing crucial information and
substantially improved analytical methods toward a better
understanding of past fire changes.
This book examines how crop diversification strategies can help to
ensure sustainable agricultural development across different
land-size categories, with a focus on Malda District in West
Bengal, India. Using Malda as the study area, a region with nearly
4 million people, the book assesses the extent, pattern, factors
and future of crop diversification and its contribution to the
development of agriculture in Malda and in India as a whole. The
work presents data from 1995-2015 concerning changing cropping
patterns at various land-size distributions, and analyzes the
information over the twenty year period to understand the link
between crop diversification and agricultural development, in order
to combat major agricultural issues and make suitable policy
recommendations at micro (rural) and macro (urban) levels of
agricultural planning. The study is a unique contribution to the
field of agricultural geography, and will be of use to students and
researchers, as well as government organizations, city/community
planners and agriculture managers.
This book introduces what sclerotia grains are, and where and how
they exist in soils, by compiling the results obtained from the
studies on fungal sclerotia formed by Cenococcum geophilum (Cg) and
related species, the visible black small grains persistent for a
few thousand to ten thousands of years in forest soils and
sediments. The chapters contain the results and discussions on the
ecological distribution and regulating factors, characteristics,
and function of Cg sclerotia grains, carried out by researchers
from soil geography, soil science, soil microbiology, physiology,
forestry, analytical chemistry, environmental chemistry, material
science, and related disciplines. The anatomy of sclerotia grains
in soil was realized in terms of interdisciplinary joint
researches, which resulted in deepening understanding of the
ecological function of the mesoscale organic component in soils.
This book covers the natural history of sclerotia in soils,
pedo-sclerotiology.
In the last two hundred years, the earth has increasingly become
the private property of a few classes, races, transnational
corporations, and nations. Repeated claims about the "tragedy of
the commons" and the "crisis of capitalism" have done little to
explain this concentration of land, encourage solution-building to
solve resource depletion, or address our current socio-ecological
crisis. The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty presents a new
explanation, vision, and action plan based on the idea of commoning
the land. The book argues that by commoning the land, rather than
privatising it, we can develop the foundation for prosperity
without destructive growth and address both local and global
challenges. Making the land the most fundamental priority of all
commons does not only give hope, it also opens the doors to a new
world in which economy, environment, and society are decolonised
and liberated.
This book is highly informative and carefully presented, providing
scientific insights into the flood resources utilization in the
Yangtze River Basin both for scholars and decision-makers. The book
is for the purpose of analyzing the potential utilization of flood
resources in the Yangtze River Basin and exploring effective ways
to put forward the countermeasures against the risks. Major
objectives of this book include: (1) revealing the characteristics
of the inflow and the sediment variation in the upper reaches of
the Yangtze River, quantitatively evaluating the potential
utilization of the flood resources in the Yangtze River and
demonstrating the feasibility of its utilization in the Basin; (2)
proposing the necessity and feasibility of utilizing the flood
resources by the Three Gorges Project; (3) shedding new light on
the characteristics of the flood resources, presenting different
methods of flood resources utilization in different regions over
the Basin and raising the overall risk-optimized strategies of the
flood resources utilization in the Yangtze River; (4) analyzing the
risk of flood resources utilization for the Three Gorges Project
regarding flood control, sediment, ecology, etc., and putting
forward the risk-optimized countermeasures of flood resources
utilization for the Three Gorges Project.
West of Kendal, there are escarpments and ridges with spectacular
vistas of the Lake District Fells, the Kent Estuary and Morecambe
Bay. Much more than a series of viewpoints, this is a limestone
landscape worth looking into closely. Cunswick Scar and Scout Scar
are sites of special scientific interest and of European importance
for wildlife. The National Trust locations of Helsington Barrows
and Brigsteer Park are habitats offering a rich diversity of birds,
butterflies and flora. The Lyth Valley, between Scout Scar and
Whitbarrow, is a different geology and a contrasting landscape. In
the tradition of nature writing, "About Scout Scar" is a detailed
portrait of a landscape. It is about the thrill of making
discoveries through the seasons: of looking, listening, seeing. The
theme of how we relate to the natural world is at the heart of it.
Farming and conservation are integral, and underpinning this book
are the voices of the custodians of this landscape.
This book unravels the profound implications of biodiversity
offsetting for nature-society relationships and its links to
environmental and social inequality. Drawing on people's resistance
against its implementation in several urban and rural places across
England, it explores how the production of equivalent natures, the
core promise of offsetting, reframes socionatures both discursively
and materially transforming places and livelihoods. The book draws
on theories and concepts from human geography, political ecology,
and Marxist political economy, and aims to shift the trajectory of
the current literature on the interplay between offsetting,
urbanization and the neoliberal reconstruction of conservation and
planning policies in the era following the 2008 financial crash. By
shedding light on offsetting's contested geographies, it offers a
fundamental retheorization of offsetting capable of demonstrating
how offsetting, and more broadly revanchist neoliberal policies,
are increasingly used to support capitalist urban growth producing
socially, environmentally and geographically uneven outcomes.
Nature Swapped and Nature Lost brings forward an understanding of
environmental politics as class politics and sees environmental
justice as inextricably linked to social justice. It effectively
challenges the dystopia of offsetting's ahistorical and asocial
non-places and proposes a radically different pathway for gaining
social control over the production of nature by linking struggles
for the right to the city with struggles for the right to nature
for all.
This book proves, through empirical research, that indigenous and
traditional agricultural communities have experienced severe
climate change impacts, and have developed corresponding livelihood
strategies to strengthen their resilience in a variable climate.
With a focus on indigenous minority farming communities in the
developing region of South-Western Zimbabwe, the study presents
both qualitative and quantitative approaches of data analysis to
assess sustainability problems amid climate change and climate
variability challenges, and proposes potential solutions. In eight
chapters, the book expands on the scarce availability of
community-based research on climate change and variability in
Zimbabwe. The book is meant for college and university students and
stakeholders involved in development work in rural minority farmer
communities, especially in climate change prone regions of Africa
and other developing countries who have very few options of
adaptation and mitigation.
This book is a comprehensive resource for climate change impacts
and scenarios on cross-cutting issues in Bangladesh and other
tropical low-lying countries in Asia. The book promotes mitigation
and adaptation strategies for learning and innovation to tackle
climate change impacts, reduce inequality, as well as include
changes in food, energy, health, education, and social protection
policies in Bangladesh and Asian low-lying countries. Through
several case studies, this book provides a powerful framework for
identifying management tools and their applications in environment
and governance including; climate change and natural hazards,
climate change and energy framework, gender inequality and capacity
building, and community participants and the actions needed to
protect them. The aim of this book is to provide information to
scientists, practitioners, academics, and government and
non-government policy-makers to help them better understand the
particularities of climate change adaptation and mitigation
strategies for cross-cutting issues in Bangladesh.
This book presents the polycentric and multiscale view of landscape
which has been developed in Russia within a framework of physical
geography since the early twentieth century. The authors develop
the ideas of hierarchical organization of a landscape and strong
relationships between abiotic and biotic components with equal
attention to both vertical fluxes and lateral transfer.
Three-dimensional representation of landscape involves strong
emphasis on abiotic drivers of pattern development including
relief, geological structures and runoff. The objective of this
book is to demonstrate the multiplicity of models and multiscale
approach to description and explanation of landscape pattern,
functioning, dynamics, and evolution. The contributions deal with
various hierarchical levels ranging from within-unit interior
variability to between-units interaction at landscape level, as
well as regional and supra-regional zonal patterns. Divided into 8
clear parts, the 28 chapters treat spatial pattern in one of the
following aspects: indicator of actual matter and energy flows
control over actual processes including disturbance expansion as
well as determinant of future development indicator of genesis and
prerequisite for future trends driver for short-term dynamics of
processes response to climatic and anthropogenic influences factor
of settlement network and land use adaptation at various historical
epochs framework for actual land use spatial arrangement. This
contributed volume is written for researchers and students in the
field of landscape ecology, physical geography, environmental
impact assessment, and ecological planning.
This book presents a survey, dynamic monitoring and comprehensive
analysis of Sri Lanka's land, vegetation, surface water, ocean and
other environmental resources, as well as its economic,
transportation, urban, agricultural and tourism development. It
offers readers accurate, systematic and comprehensive information
on Sri Lanka's ecological setting and socio-economic development.
It also sheds light on policies for the protection of the
environment and biodiversity.
Globalization is not a new phenomenon, but it is posing new
challenges to humans and natural ecosystems in the 21st century.
From climate change to increasingly mobile human populations to the
global economy, the relationship between humans and their
environment is being modified in ways that will have long-term
impacts on ecological health, biodiversity, ecosystem goods and
services, population vulnerability, and sustainability. These
changes and challenges are perhaps nowhere more evident than in
island ecosystems. Buffeted by rising ocean temperatures, extreme
weather events, sea-level rise, climate change, tourism, population
migration, invasive species, and resource limitations, islands
represent both the greatest vulnerability to globalization and also
the greatest scientific opportunity to study the significance of
global changes on ecosystem processes, human-environment
interactions, conservation, environmental policy, and island
sustainability. In this book, we study islands through the lens of
Land Cover/Land Use Change (LCLUC) and the multi-scale and
multi-thematic drivers of change. In addition to assessing the key
processes that shape and re-shape island ecosystems and their land
cover/land use changes, the book highlights measurement and
assessment methods to characterize patterns and trajectories of
change and models to examine the social-ecological drivers of
change on islands. For instance, chapters report on the results of
a meta-analysis to examine trends in published literature on
islands, a satellite image time-series to track changes in
urbanization, social surveys to support household analyses, field
sampling to represent the state of resources and their limitations
on islands, and dynamic systems models to link socio-economic data
to LCLUC patterns. The authors report on a diversity of islands,
conditions, and circumstances that affect LCLUC patterns and
processes, often informed through perspectives rooted, for
instance, in conservation, demography, ecology, economics,
geography, policy, and sociology.
'The Ganges: Cultural, Economic, and Environmental Importance' is a
geographical, cultural, economic, and environmental interpretation
of the Ganga River. The Ganga River originates from Gaumukh-
situated in the high Himalaya, flows through the world's biggest
fertile alluvial plain, and inlets into the Bay of Bengal at Ganga
Sagar. It makes a unique natural and cultural landscape and is
believed to be the holiest river of India. The Hindus called it
'Mother Ganga' and worship it. The towns/cities, situated on its
bank, are world-famous and are known as the highland and valley
pilgrimages. The water of the Ganga is pious, and the Hindus use it
on different occasions while performing the rituals and customs.
This book is unique because no previous study which presents a
complete and comprehensive geographical description of the Ganga
has been composed. This book presents the historical and cultural
significance of the Ganga and its tributaries. Empirical, archival,
and observation methods were applied to conduct this study. There
are a total of 10 chapters in this book such as 'Introduction',
'the Ganga Basin', 'Geography of the Ganga Basin', 'the Ganges
System: Ganga and its Tributaries', 'Ganga between Gaumukh and
Uttarkashi', 'the Major Cultural Towns', 'Major Fairs and
Festivals', 'Economic Significance of the Ganga', 'Environmental
Issues', and 'Conclusions'. The contents of the book are enriched
by 89 figures, 15 tables, and substantial citations and references.
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