This volume provides an analytical and facts-based overview on the progress achieved in water security in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region over during the last decade, and its links to regional development, food security and human well-being. Although the book takes a regional approach, covering a vast of data pertaining to most of the LAC region, some chapters focus on seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru). A full understanding of LAC's trends progress requires framing this region in the global context: an ever more globalized world where LAC has an increasing geopolitical power and a growing presence in international food markets. The book's specific objectives are: (1) exploring the improvements and links between water and food security in LAC countries; (2) assessing the role of the socio-economic 'megatrends' in LAC, identifying feedback processes between the region's observed pattern of changes regarding key biophysical, economic and social variables linked to water and food security; and (3) reviewing the critical changes that are taking place in the institutional and governance water spheres, including the role of civil society, which may represent a promising means to advancing towards the goal of improving water security in LAC. The resulting picture shows a region where recent socioeconomic development has led to important advances in the domains of food and water security. Economic growth in LAC and its increasingly important role in international trade are intense in terms of use of natural resources such as land, water and energy. This poses new and important challenges for sustainable development. The reinforcement of national and global governance schemes and their alignment on the improvement of human well-being is and will remain an inescapable prerequisite to the achievement of long-lasting security. Supporting this bold idea with facts and science-based conclusions is the ultimate goal of the book.

This volume contains the ten most cited articles that have appeared in the journal Atmosphere-Ocean since 1995. These articles cover a wide range of topics in meteorology, climatology and oceanography. Modelling work is represented in five papers, covering global climate model development; a cumulus parameterization scheme for global climate models; development of a regional forecast modelling system and parameterization of peatland hydraulic processes for climate models. Data rehabilitation and compilation in order to support trend analysis work on comprehensive precipitation and temperature data sets is presented in four papers. Field studies are represented by a paper on the circumpolar lead system. While the modelling studies are global in their application and applicability, the data analysis and field study papers cover environments that are specifically, but not uniquely, Canadian. This book will be of interest to researchers, students and professionals in the various sub-fields of meteorology, oceanography and climate science.

Freshwater ecosystems have the greatest species diversity per unit area and many endangered species. This book shows that, rather than being a marginal part of terrestrial protected area management, freshwater conservation is central to sustaining biodiversity. It focuses on better practices for conserving inland aquatic ecosystems in protected areas, including rivers, wetlands, peatlands, other freshwater and brackish ecosystems, and estuaries. The authors define inland aquatic ecosystems, showing just how diverse and widespread they are. They examine the principles and processes that are essential for the conservation of freshwater ecosystems and aquatic species. Major categories of threats to freshwater ecosystems and the flow-on implications for protected area design are described. Practical case studies are used to illustrate principles and practices applied around the world. Specific management needs of the main types of freshwater ecosystems are considered, as well as the management of freshwaters in the broader landscape, showing how natural resource governance processes can be harnessed to better manage freshwater biodiversity. The book offers commentary on how to adapt freshwater conservation practices to climate change and ends with an insightful synthesis.

It is increasingly recognized that the economic value of forests is not merely the production of timber. Forests provide other key ecosystem services, such as being sinks for greenhouse gases, hotspots of biodiversity, tourism and recreation. They are also vitally important in preventing soil erosion and controlling water supplies, as well as providing non-timber forest products and supporting the livelihoods of many local people. This handbook provides a detailed, comprehensive and broad coverage of forest economics, including traditional forest economics of timber production, economics of environmental role of forests, and recent developments in forest economics. The chapters are grouped into six parts: fundamental topics in forest resource economics; economics of forest ecosystems; economics of forests, climate change, and bioenergy; economics of risk, uncertainty, and natural disturbances; economics of forest property rights and certification; and emerging issues and developments. Written by leading environmental, forest, and natural resource economists, the book represents a definitive reference volume for students of economics, environment, forestry and natural resource economics and management.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will not only be Africa's largest dam, but it is also essential for future cooperation and development in the Nile River Basin and East African region. This book, after setting out basin-level legal and policy successes and failures of managing and sharing Nile waters, articulates the opportunities and challenges surrounding the GERD through multiple disciplinary lenses. It sets out its possibilities as a basis for a new era of cooperation, its regional and global implications, the benefits of cooperation and coordination in dam filling, and the need for participatory and transparent decision making. By applying law, political science and hydrology to sharing water resources in general and to large-scale dam building, filling and operating in particular, it offers concrete qualitative and quantitative options that are essential to promote cooperation and coordination in utilising and preserving Nile waters. The book incorporates the economic dimension and draws on recent developments including: the signing of a legally binding contract by Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to carry out an impact assessment study; the possibility that the GERD might be partially operational very soon, the completion of transmission lines from GERD to Addis Ababa; and the announcement of Sudan to commence construction of transmission lines from GERD to its main cities. The implications of these are assessed and lessons learned for transboundary water cooperation and conflict management.

This book series looks at each of the main coastal habitats – salt marshes, sand dunes and sand/shingle shores, modified coastal grazing marshes/salinas and sea cliffs in turn. Each habitat is described in relation to its natural development and the way this has been influenced by human actions. The different states in which the habitats exist are reviewed against the pressures exerted upon them. Options for management are considered and the likely consequences of taking a particular course of action are highlighted.

The Great Barrier Reef is located along the coast of Queensland in north-east Australia and is the world's largest coral reef ecosystem. Designated a World Heritage Area, it has been subject to increasing pressures from tourism, fishing, pollution and climate change, and is now protected as a marine park. This book provides an original account of the environmental history of the Great Barrier Reef, based on extensive archival and oral history research. It documents and explains the main human impacts on the Great Barrier Reef since European settlement in the region, focusing particularly on the century from 1860 to 1960 which has not previously been fully documented, yet which was a period of unprecedented exploitation of the ecosystem and its resources. The book describes the main changes in coral reefs, islands and marine wildlife that resulted from those impacts. In more recent decades, human impacts on the Great Barrier Reef have spread, accelerated and intensified, with implications for current management and conservation practices. There is now better scientific understanding of the threats faced by the ecosystem. Yet these modern challenges occur against a background of historical levels of exploitation that is little-known, and that has reduced the ecosystem's resilience. The author provides a compelling narrative of how one of the world's most iconic and vulnerable ecosystems has been exploited and degraded, but also how some early conservation practices emerged.

This book provides a non-technical, accessible primer on sustainable agricultural development and its relationship to sustainable development based on three analytical pillars. The first is to understand agriculture as complex physical-biological-human systems. Second is the economic perspective of understanding tradeoffs and synergies among the economic, environmental and social dimensions of these systems at farm, regional and global scales. Third is the understanding of these agricultural systems as the supply side of one sector of a growing economy, interacting through markets and policies with other sectors at local, national and global scales. The first part of the book introduces the concept of sustainability and develops an analytical framework based on tradeoffs quantified using impact indicators in the economic, environmental and social domains, linking this framework to the role of agriculture in economic growth and development. Next the authors introduce the reader to the sustainability challenges of major agroecosystems in the developing and industrialized worlds. The concluding chapter discusses the design and implementation of sustainable development pathways, through the expression of consumers' desire for sustainably produced foods on the demand side of the food system, and through policies on the supply side such as new more sustainable technologies, environmental regulation and payments for ecosystem services.

Artificial mountains are a worldwide reality. Their presence influenced the history of urbanism, architecture, and landscape architecture. Burial sites use, very frequently, the intimidating shape of the man-made mountain. Incense burners in ancient China evoked the Five Sacred Mountains. Mount Parnassus in Greece became an important element in European garden history and a symbol of the Renaissance. In the Baroque Rome of the 17th century the most important artists worked on the constructions of huge ephemeral mounds in order to express more or less codified messages. The model of the artificial mountain was used as well during the French Revolution: the famous celebration of the Supreme Being took place on a gigantic faux mountain. The history of landscape architecture is characterized by the construction of architectural mounds, often built by using local excavation material. The industrial revolution acted as another source for the rise of an anthropic topography, creating forms, which we do not recognise anymore as totally artificial. Architects have found in the form of mountains a model and a gestalt with which to play in an ironic way. In twentieth-century art, mountains are ubiquitous, culminating in Robert Smithson’s masterful exploration of reversed, displaced, and rebuilt mountains. Michael Jakob’s study is the first one to address this fascinating worldwide phenomenon stretching from Antiquity to our days

From the natural geometry of the Giant's Causeway to the sarsen slabs used to build Stonehenge, we are surrounded by evidence for the extraordinary geological forces that shaped the British Isles. Running coast to coast through Devon is 'Sticklepath', Britain's 'San Andreas', a geological fault with the two sides displaced horizontally by several kilometres, all within the recent geological past. The Sticklepath Fault is just one manifestation of the rich tectonic history of the British region since the asteroid collision that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. Raised out of the Chalk Sea, the original Albion was a thickly forested island a thousand kilometres long, surrounded by chalk cliffs, punctuated with great volcanoes, and the site of two trial 'spreading ridge' plate-boundaries. As the volcanoes shifted west, and Greenland separated from Europe, the wind-blown volcanic ash laid the strata on which London was founded. The vertical Needles, known to every Isle of Wight sailor, are part of the northern foothills of the Pyrenees. When the collision subsided, rifting created a garland of Celtic lakes from Brittany to the Outer Hebrides. In This Volcanic Isle Robert Muir-Wood explores the rich geological history of the British Isles, and its resulting legacy. Along the way he introduces the personalities who shared a fascination for Britain's tectonic history, including Charles Darwin the geologist, Tennyson the science-poet, and Benoit Mandelbrot, the pure mathematician who labelled the west coast of Britain a fractal icon. Here is the previously untold story of how earthquakes and eruptions, plumes and plate boundaries, built the British Isles.

Continuing Tom L. McKnight's well-known thematic focus on landscape appreciation, Darrel Hess offers a broad survey of all of the physical processes and spatial patterns that create Earth’s physical landscape. McKnight’s Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation provides a clear writing style, superior art program, and abundant pedagogy to appeal to a wide variety of students. This new edition offers a truly meaningful integration of visualization, technology, the latest applied science, and new pedagogy, providingessential tools and opportunities to teach and engage students in these processes and patterns.

Climate Ghosts deals with the important issue of climate change and human impact on three species: woodland caribou, common loons, and lake sturgeon. Environmental historian Nancy Langston explores three "ghost species" in the Great Lakes watershed-woodland caribou, common loons, and lake sturgeon. Ghost species are those that have not gone completely extinct, although they may be extirpated from a particular area. Their traces are still present, whether in DNA, in small fragmented populations, in lone individuals roaming a desolate landscape in search of a mate. We can still restore them if we make the hard choices necessary for them to survive. In this meticulously researched book, Langston delves into how climate change and human impact affected these now ghost species. Climate Ghosts covers one of the key issues of our time.

AN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR An extraordinary book by a man with a unique and inspiring perspective, SCARP will change the way you view the places and spaces around you, and reveal a forgotten London you never knew existed. Nick Papadimitriou has spent a lifetime living on the margins, walking and documenting the landscapes surrounding his home in Child's Hill, North London, in a study he calls Deep Topography. Part meditation on nature and walking, part memoir and part social history, his arresting debut is first and foremost a personal inquiry into the spirit of a place: a 14-mile broken ridge of land on the fringes of Northern London known as Scarp. Conspicuous but largely forgotten, a vast yet largely invisible presence hovering just beyond the metropolis, Scarp is a vast storehouse of regional memory. We join the author as he explores and reimagines this brooding, pregnant landscape, meticulously observing his surroundings, finding surprising connections and revealing lost slices of the past. SCARP captures the satisfying experience of a long, reflective walk. Whether talking about the beauty of a bird or a telegraph pole, deaths at a roundabout or his own troubled past, Papadimitriou celebrates the poetry in the everyday. His captivating prose reveals that the world around us is alive and intrinsically valuable in ways that the trappings of day-to-day life lead us to forget, and allows us to re-connect with something more authentic, more immediate, more profound.

This is the first book to describe the ecology of high latitude lakes, rivers and glacial environments in both the North and South polar regions. From the lake-rich floodplains of the Arctic to the deep, enigmatic waters of Lake Vostok, Antarctica, these regions contain some of the most extraordinary aquatic ecosystems on Earth. They provide a fascinating diversity of habitats for plant, animal and microbial communities, and are proving to be valuable model systems for exploring many ecological themes including landscape-lake interactions, adaptation of life to environmental extremes, and controls on the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems. Some of these waters also have direct global implications, including permafrost thaw lakes as sources of greenhouse gases, subglacial aquatic environments as a storehouse of ancient microbes, and Arctic rivers as major inputs of freshwater and organic carbon to the World Ocean. Given that many polar areas are experiencing greater climate warming than at lower latitudes, these ecosystems can also be viewed as sentinels of global change.
This timely volume brings together many of the world's leading researchers in polar limnology to describe these diverse aquatic environments and their ecology. It introduces each major ecosystem type, examines the similarities and differences between Arctic and Antarctic systems as well as their responses to environmental change, and describes new frontiers for future research. A glossary of terms is provided for non-specialists, and a set of colour plates introduces the ecosystems and their biota.
Polar Lakes and Rivers will be of value to students and specialist researchers alike, as well as tothose with a more general interest in aquatic ecology, polar environments or global change who require an authoritative overview of this fast emerging topic.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the assessment and management of potentially dangerous infectious diseases, quarantined pests, invasive (alien) species, living modified organisms and biological weapons, from a multitude of perspectives. Issues of biosecurity have gained increasing attention over recent years but have often only been addressed from narrow disciplines and with a lack of integration of theoretical and practical approaches. The Routledge Handbook of Biosecurity and Invasive Species brings together both the natural sciences and the social sciences for a fully rounded perspective on biosecurity, shedding light on current national and international management frameworks with a mind to assessing possible future scenarios. With chapters focussing on a variety of ecosystems - including forests, islands, marine and coastal and agricultural land - as well as from the industrial scale to individual gardens, this handbook reviews the global state of invasions and vulnerabilities across a wide range of themes and critically analyses key threats and threatening activities, such as trade, travel, land development and climate change. Identifying invasive species and management techniques from a regional to international scale, this book will be a key reference text for a wide range of students and academics in ecology, agriculture, geography, human and animal health and interdisciplinary environmental and security studies.

This book critically engages with how the conservation of tropical coral reefs is financed. Beginning with the context of tropical coral reef degradation and loss, alongside an overview of tropical ecology, global environmental policy and finance, the book reviews several conservation financing instruments. These include ecotourism, debt-for-nature swaps, impact investments, and government domestic budgetary expenditures. From the Great Barrier Reef, to the Coral Triangle, to the Mesoamerican Reef, tropical coral reef degradation and loss are serious global environmental issues, contributing to loss revenue and food insecurity for coastal communities, and species extinction. Yet, many leading companies, individuals, and governments are making a positive impact on tropical coral reef conservation through the use of conservation finance. Conservation of Tropical Coral Reefs, using 30 case studies which span 23 countries and 6 continents, tells the history of international conservation finance and provides a variety of options for individuals, businesses, and governments to support conservation financing projects.

Before any other influences began to fashion life and its lavish diversity, geological events created the initial environments--both physical and chemical--for the evolutionary drama that followed. Drawing on case histories from around the world, Arthur Kruckeberg demonstrates the role of landforms and rock types in producing the unique geographical distributions of plants and in stimulating evolutionary diversification. His examples range throughout the rich and heterogeneous tapestry of the earth's surface: the dramatic variations of mountainous topography, the undulating ground and crevices of level limestone karst, and the subtle realm of sand dunes. He describes the ongoing evolutionary consequences of the geology-plant interface and the often underestimated role of geology in shaping climate. Kruckeberg explores the fundamental connection between plants and geology, including the historical roots of geobotany, the reciprocal relations between geology and other environmental influences, geomorphology and its connection with plant life, lithology as a potent selective agent for plants, and the physical and biological influences of soils. Special emphasis is given to the responses of plants to exceptional rock types and their soils--serpentines, limestones, and other azonal (exceptional) substrates. Edaphic ecology, especially of serpentines, has been his specialty for years. Kruckeberg's research fills a significant gap in the field of environmental science by connecting the conventionally separated disciplines of the physical and biological sciences. Geology and Plant Life is the result of more than forty years of research into the question of why certain plants grow on certain soils and certain terrain structures, and what happens when this relationship is disrupted by human agents. It will be useful to a wide spectrum of professionals in the natural sciences: plant ecologists, paleobiologists, climatologists, soil scientists, geologists, geographers, and conservation scientists, as well as serious amateurs in natural history.

Dunes is the first book in over a decade to incorporate the latest research in this active and fast-developing field. It discusses the shapes, sizes, patterns, distribution, history and care of wind-blown dunes, and covers all aspects of dunes, terrestrial and in the Solar System. * The only book to cover all dunes, terrestrial and in the Solar System, in deserts, on coasts, and in the past * Represents the most current update on the research of dunes for over a decade * Incorporates the latest research to come out of China where the field is most rapidly expanding * Discusses the most recent range of skills and technology now focused on the study of dunes * Brings up-to-date a rapidly expanding field

The Physical Geography of Southeast Asia examines the complex mosaic of physical environments which comprise Southeast Asia, and the current environmental problems and management practices which have arisen in this part of the world. The book is in three sections. The first section introduces the basic environmental components (geology, landforms, rivers, vegetation, and others) across the entire region. The second section discusses specific environments that are characteristic of this assemblage of continental and maritime landscapes (volcanic islands, coastal environment, granitic terrains, karst, etc.). The third and final section illustrates the ecological relationship between the environment and people (volcanic hazards, urban environment, coastal zone development, coral reefs, and others). The physical environment of Southeast Asia is examined at different levels, covering a world region that ranges from ancient, stable landmasses to dynamic, unstable plate boundaries, from aged, primary rainforests to brash, vibrant, resource-demanding built environments. Southeast Asia has been perceived as a laboratory for studying plate tectonics. It is an assemblage of large river basins, peninsulas and archipelagos, and seas surrounded by islands. It is an area of great physical variations where parts of the physical environment have been significantly degraded anthropogenically, following rapid population growth and development. In large parts of the region, the forms and processes on land and offshore should no longer be seen as entirely natural. As this book repeatedly illustrates, plate tectonics and people are both important contributors to the physical geography of Southeast Asia. The contributors to this volume are distinguished, scholarly, and have a long association with Southeast Asia. The chapters are not only skilfully built on state-of-the-art research findings but also include new material from the on-going research activities of the authors. The book goes beyond being the first comprehensive and detailed volume of the biophysical geography of Southeast Asia in that it also deals with the tropical environment and the relationship between environment and people in a rapidly developing world region.

This book is the only comprehensive summary of natural resources of Oregon and adds to World Soil Book Series state-level collection. Due to broad latitudinal and elevation differences, Oregon has an exceptionally diverse climate, which exerts a major influence on soil formation. The mean annual temperature in Oregon ranges from 0 DegreesC in the Wallowa and Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon to 13 DegreesC in south-central Oregon. The mean annual precipitation ranges from 175 mm in southeastern Oregon to over 5,000 mm at higher elevations in the Coast Range. The dominant vegetation type in Oregon is temperate shrublands, followed by forests dominated by lodgepole pine, Douglas-fir, and mixed conifers, grasslands, subalpine forests, maritime Sitka spruce-western hemlock forests, and ponderosa pine-dominated forests. Oregon is divided into 17 Major Land Resource Areas, the largest of which include the Malheur High Plateau, the Cascade Mountains, the Blue Mountain Foothills, and Blue Mountains. The single most important geologic event in Oregon was the deposition of Mazama ash 7,700 years by the explosion of Mt. Mazama. Oregon has soil series representative of 10 orders, 40 suborders, 114 great groups, 389 subgroups, over 1,000 families, and over 1,700 soil series. Mollisols are the dominant order in Oregon, followed by Aridisols, Inceptisols, Andisols, Ultisols, and Alfisols. Soils in Oregon are used primarily for forest products, livestock grazing, agricultural crops, and wildlife management. Key land use issues in Oregon are climate change; wetland loss; flooding; landslides; volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis; coastal erosion; and wildfires.

Volcanoes are some of the most dramatic expressions of the powerful tectonic forces at work in the Earth beneath our feet. But volcanism, a profoundly important feature of Earth, and indeed of other planets and moons too, encompasses much more than just volcanoes themselves. On a planetary scale, volcanism is an indispensable heat release mechanism, which on Earth allows the conditions for life. IIt releases gases into the atmosphere and produces enormous volumes of rock, and spectacular landscapes - landscapes which, during major eruptions, can be completely reshaped in a matter of hours. Through geological time volcanism has shaped both climate and biological evolution, and volcanoes can affect human life, too, for both good and ill. Yet, even after much study, some of the fundamental aspects of volcanicity remain mysterious. This Very Short Introduction takes the readers into the inferno of a racing pyroclastic current, and the heart of a moving lava flow, as understood through the latest scientific research. Exploring how volcanologists forensically decipher how volcanoes work, Michael Branney and Jan Zalasiewicz explain what we do (and don't) understood about the fundamental mechanisms of volcanism, and consider how volcanoes interact with other physical processes on the Earth, with life, and with human society. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This open access edited collection explores various aspects of how oceanic im/ mobilities have been framed and articulated in the literary and cultural imagination. It covers the entanglements of maritime mobility and immobility as they are articulated and problematized in selected literature and cultural forms from the early modern period to the present. In particular, it brings cultural mobility studies into conversation with the maritime and oceanic humanities. The contributors examine the interface between the traditional Eurocentric imagination of the sea as romantic and metaphorical, and the materiality of the sea as a deathbed for racialized and illegalized humans as well as non-human populations

As a continent of extreme, rare and complex environments, Australia has produced a startling group of ecological pioneers. Australian thinkers and innovators have made some truly original contributions to ecological thought. This study traces the emergence of ecological awareness in Australia. By constructing a social history with chapters focusing on different fields in the arts, sciences, politics and public life, Martin Mulligan and Stuart Hill are able to bring to life the work of significant individuals.