* Multidisciplinary approach of risk assessment and management, which can provide more efficient earthquake mitigation. * Transfer of Geo-scientific and engineering knowledge to Civil Protection and insurance agents * Approaches and common practices directly related to the preparation of earthquake emergency plans * Illustrated examples of actual applications, including web sites * Case-studies and information on relevant international projects

This book presents results of scientific studies ranging from hydrological modelling to water management and policy issues in the Nile River basin. It examines the physical, hydrometeorological and hydrogeological description of the basin along with analysis in understanding the hydrological processes of the basin under the changing land-use stemming from population pressure and increased natural resources tapping. The book discusses the increased impact of climate change on the river flows, and such issues as water availability and demand, management and policy to offset the imbalance between demand and available resources. This book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, water resources mangers, policy makers as well as graduate and undergraduate students. It is a useful reference text for ecohydrology, arid zone hydrology, hydrology of transboundary rivers and similar courses.

Eco-city planning is a key element of urban land use planning in perspective and of ongoing debate of environmental urban sustainable development with a spatial and practical dimension. The conceptual basis of ecological planning is that we can no longer afford to be merely human-centred in approach. Instead, the interdependency of human and non-human species has forced us to appreciate the 'rights' and 'intrinsic values' of non-human species in our pursuit for a sustainable ecosystem. This volume has as approach an emphasis on environmental planning policies whereby, for example, energy saving, anti-pollution measures, use of non-car modes, construction of green buildings, safeguarding of nature and natural habitats in urban areas, and use of more renewable resources are promotional norms. Their aims and leading outcome serve to protect the Earth from adverse effects of global warming and different sources of pollution threatening the quality of life of human societies.

Wildfires, changing glaciers, deforestation, open-pit mining, increasing demands for food and bio-fuel production and the growth of megacities change our landscape. The book comprehensively reviews the current knowledge on how natural and anthropogenic land-use/cover changes affect weather, air quality and climate worldwide and explains how these changes may trigger further land-use/cover changes. It discusses how anthropogenic land-use/cover changes have affected local and regional climate and air quality since the settlement of America and the industrialisation. It addresses the topichow long-range transport of pollutants and dust of devasted areas as well as teleconnections may cause changes far away from the areas where the land-use/cover changes occurred, for which land-use/cover change may become an international issue similar to CO2. It also discusses relations to global change and future societal and scientific challenges related to land-use/cover changes."

The Holocene is unique when compared to earlier geological time in that humans begin to alter and manipulate the natural environment to their own needs. Domestication of crops and animals and the resultant intensification of agriculture lead to profound changes in the impact humans have on the environment. Conversely, as human populations began to increase geologic and climatic factors begin to have a greater impact on civilizations. To understand and reconstruct the complex interplay between humans and the environment over the past ten thousand years requires examination of multiple differing but interconnected aspects of the environment and involves geomorphology, paleoecology, geoarchaeology and paleoclimatology. These Springer Briefs volumes examine the dynamic interplay between humans and the natural environment as reconstructed by the many and varied sub-fields of the Earth Sciences.

This book describes the algorithms, validation and preliminary analysis of the Global LAnd Surface Satellite (GLASS) products, a long-term, high-quality dataset that is now freely available worldwide to government organizations and agencies, scientific research institutions, students and members of the general public.

The GLASS products include leaf area index, broadband albedo, broadband emissivity, downward shortwave radiation and photosynthetically active radiation. The first three GLASS products cover 1981 to 2012 with 1km and 5km spatial resolutions and 8-day temporal resolution, and the last two GLASS products span 2008 to 2010 with 3-hour temporal resolution and 5km spatial resolution. These GLASS products are unique. The first three are spatially continuous and cover the longest period of time among all current similar satellite products. The other two products are the highest spatial-resolution global radiation products from satellite observations that are currently available.

These products can be downloaded from Beijing Normal University at http: //glass-product.bnu.edu.cn/and the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility at http: //www.glcf.umd.edu/

The GLASS productsare the outcome of a key research project entitled Generation & Applications of Global Products of Essential Land Variables, supported by funding from the High-Tech Research and Development Program of China and involving dozens of institutions and nearly one hundred scientists and researchers.Following an introduction, the book contains five chapters corresponding to these five GLASS products: background, algorithm, quality control and validation, preliminary analysis and applications. It discusses the long-term environmental changes detected from the GLASS products and other data sources at both global and local scales and also provides detailed analysis of regional hotspots where environmental changes are mainly associated with climate change, drought, land-atmosphere interactions, and human activities.

The book is based primarily on a set of published journal papers about these five GLASS products and includes updated information. Since these products have now begun to be widely used, this bookis an essential reference document. It is also a very helpful resource to anyone interested in satellite remote sensing and its applications."

In a book that is part memoir and part history, David Roberts looks back at his personal relationship to extreme risk and tries to make sense of why so many have committed their lives to the desperate pursuit of adventure. In the wake of his diagnosis with throat cancer, Roberts seeks the answer with sharp new urgency. He explores his own lifelong commitment to adventuring, as well as the cultural contributions of explorers throughout history. He looks at what it meant in 1911 for Amundsen to reach the South Pole or in 1953 for Hillary and Norgay to summit the highest point on earth. And he asks what the future of adventure is in a world we have mapped and trodden all the way to the most remote corners of the wilderness.

Intense uplift of the Tibetan Plateau in Late Cenozoic Era is one of the most important events in geological history of the Earth. The plateau offers an ideal region for studying of lithospheric formation and evolution, probing into the mechanism of crustal movement, and understanding of changes in environments and geo-ecosystems in Asia. Intense uplift ofthe plateau resulted in drastic changes of natural environment and apparent regional differentiation on the plateau proper and neighboring regions. The plateau therefore becomes a sensitive area of climate change in Asian monsoon region, which is closely related to the global change. As a special physical unit, its ecosystems occupy a prominent position in the world. Due to its extremely high elevation and great extent, natural types and characteristics of physical landscapes on the plateau are quite different from those in lowlands at comparable latitudes, and environments are also different from those in high latitudinal zones. Consequently, the Tibetan Plateau has been classified as one of three giant physical regions in China and considered as a unique unit on Earth. Scientific surveys and expeditions to the Tibetan Plateau on large scale began from 1950's. Amongst them, a number of comprehensive scientific expeditions to the Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region, Hengduan Mts. areas, Karakorum and Kunlun Mts. regions, as well as the Hoh Xii Mts. areas, have been successively carried out by the Integrated Scientific Expedition to Tibetan Plateau, sponsored by Chinese Academy of Sciences since 1973.

Africa, the cradle of many old civilizations, is the second largest world continent, and the homeland of nearly one-eighth of the world population. Despite Africa's richness in natural resources, the average income per person, after excluding a few countries, is the lowest all over the world, and the percentage of inhabitants infected with contagious diseases is the highest. Development of Africa to help accommodate the ever-increasing population and secure a reasonable living standard to all inhabitants, though an enormous challenge is extremely necessary. Water is the artery of life, without it all living creatures on earth cannot survive. As such, a thorough knowledge of the meteorological and hydrological processes influencing the yield and quality of the water resources, surface and subsurface, and their distribution and variability in time and space is unavoidable for the overall development of any part of the world. It is highly probable that the said knowledge is at present a top priority to Africa, a continent that has been for so long-and probably still-devastated by the endless ambitions of colonial powers not to forget the corruption and destruction practiced by the internal powers, at least in some countries. The present book "Hydrology and Water Resources of Africa" is written with the aim of bringing together in one volume a fair amount of knowledge any professional involved in hydrology and water resources of Africa needs to know.

The Carpatho-Balkan Geomorphological Commission and the International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG) Carpatho-Balkan-Dinaric Regional Working Group, promote networking between researchers and the exchange of research experience. Following a brief introduction into the geology, climate, hydrology and land cover of the Carpatho-Balkan-Dinaric region, the book provides detailed information on research applying both traditional and innovative techniques and summarizes contemporary knowledge on recent geomorphic processes. It also presents studies of exogenic geomorphic processes from each country. The chapters on Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia examine the geomorphic processes in shaping the topography of each country. This volume also examines key geomorphic processes influencing land use and economic activities as well as contributions discussing processes under climate change.

This book is the result of ten years of scientific research carried out by the authors on Isla de los Estados. The research includes their doctoral thesis and many published scientific papers related to the island.

The book is divided into two principal parts. The first part covers different social and natural aspects of this remote island and includes chapters on the scientific and historical background, physiography with topographical and hydrographical descriptions, climate and oceanographic circulation, vegetation and geology (including stratigraphy, structural geology and geological history).

The second part comprises a reconstruction of the paleoenvironmental, paleoclimatic and paleogeographic history of the island from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present, correlating with other paleoecological records from the southern part of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. This second part also includes a geomorphological chapter with a characterization of the principal erosive glacial landforms on Isla de los Estados constructed by means of morphometric analysis, inventories, maps, paleogeographic and glacial models, and a paleoecological chapter evaluating the palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimatic conditions that prevailed during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene times based on pollen and diatom analysis from three 14C-dated peat bogs and lakes. Finally, the book concludes with a review of the island s archaeology and the relationship between the palaeoenvironmental history and human occupation of this island.

Reports of natural disasters fill the media with regularity. Places in the world are affected by natural disaster events every day. Such events include earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, wildfires - the list could go on for considerable length. In the 1990s there was a concentrated focus on natural disaster information and mitigation during the International Decade for Natural Disasters Reduction (IDNDR). The information was technical and provided the basis for major initiatives in building structures designed for seismic safety, slope stability, severe storm warning systems, and global monitoring and reporting. Mitigation, or planning in the event that natural hazards prevalent in a region would suddenly become natural disasters, was a major goal of the decade-long program. During the IDNDR, this book was conceptualized, and planning for its completion began. The editors saw the need for a book that would reach a broad range of readers who were not actively or directly engaged in natural disasters relief or mitigation planning, but who were in decision-making positions that provided an open window for addressing natural disaster issues. Those people were largely elected public officials, teachers, non-governmental organization staff, and staff of faith-based organizations. Those people, for the most part, come to know very well the human and physical characteristics of the place in which they are based. With that local outreach in mind, the editors intended the book to encourage readers to: 1.

Hotspots are enigmatic surface features that are not easily explained in the framework of plate tectonics. Investigating their origin is the goal of this thesis, using field evidence collected in the Cape Verde Islands, a prominent hotspot archipelago in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. The approach taken is to document uplift of the islands relative to sea level and use the uplift features to test various models of hotspot development. Island uplift is thought to arise from the growth of the anomalously shallow seafloor on which the islands rest, known as the bathymetric swell, which is characteristic of hotspots. The work comprises a geological summary and detailed mapping of paleo sea level markers on Cape Verde. Isotopic dating of the markers shows that uplift on the islands over the last 6 Myr is up to 400 m, and that the uplift chronology varies among islands. Two processes act to raise the Cape Verde Islands. The dominant process is one that is local to individual islands. The regional, swell-related component is smaller, and possibly episodic. The observations provide strong constraints on swell development and on hotspot models.

Academics and practitioners from across Asia and beyond revisit the issues and impact of climate change in Asia. They examine the preconditions for good governance regarding climate change, and the role of state and non-state actors in climate change governance, and explore different political-legal frameworks.

Experts from business, academia, governmental agencies and non-profit think tanks to form a transnational and multi-disciplinary perspectives on the combined challenges of environmental sustainability and energy security in the United States and Germany.

In the advent of important crises of both climate change and energy supply (in)security, questions are being asked about changes in energy governance. Caroline Kuzemko explains how and why change takes place and discusses the convoluted UK energy governance system that has emerged between 2000 and the present day. She applies a complex theoretical approach based on new institutional concepts of policy paradigm change, but which also utilises concepts of (de)politicisation and securitization. UK energy governance, like energy policy elsewhere, is moving from one heavily influenced by neoliberal economic ideas to one where state intervention is more commonplace. Moreover, the new governance system is informed not by one but by multiple perspectives on energy and governance geopolitical, climate change and pro-market.

Beth Edmondson and Stuart Levy examine why it is so difficult for the international community to respond to global climate change. In doing so, they analyse and explain some of the strategies that might ultimately provide the foundations for appropriate responses.

It is an honor and pleasure for me to write the foreword of this book comprising the of Forest Resources for proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on the Improvement Recyclable Forest Products. The symposium was organized by Dr. Toshihiro Ona, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan, as part of the "Development of Forest Resources with High Performance for Paper Recycling" research project. This was supported by the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) team at the Japan Science and Technology Agency Foundation (lST) and by Kyushu University. As a colleague of Dr. Ona, I commend his efforts in organizing the symposium and editing this book. In the forest, there is a multitude of resources, including trees, herbal plants, fruits, fungi, mammals, birds, insects, fishes, reptiles, water, landscapes, and tourist attractions. Nowadays, even the environment is regarded as a kind of forest resource. These resources can provide a diversity of forest products, such as timber for buildings, pulp and paper, charcoal, herbal medicines, wild vegetables, animal protein, edible mushrooms, and nonwoody fibers. From these resources, major forest products are produced using various species of trees. For example, softwood is suitable as building material, while hardwood is suitable for furniture production; pulp and paper are produced from both softwood and hardwood. Therefore, forest locations and forest management methods should vary according to the tree species used for production of different forest products.

The Middle East region holds the world's largest oil and natural gas proven reserves. Several Middle Eastern States are major oil producers and consumers. Given price fluctuations and environmental concerns many countries have sought to diversify their energy mix. The Middle East is no exception. Gawdat Bahgat analyzes the geopolitical, economic and strategic forces behind this diversification in the Middle East. He highlights the main advantages and disadvantages of each source of energy.

From climate change over shale gas to the race for the Arctic, energy makes headlines in international politics almost daily. Thijs Van de Graaf argues that energy is in dire need of global governance. He traces the history of international energy cooperation from the notorious 'Seven Sisters' oil-companies cartel to the recent creation of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). He analyses how international institutions have been created for securing oil rents, coordinating consumer-countries' energy security policies, promoting producer-consumer dialogue, managing regional gas markets, and dealing with energy-related environmental externalities. Drawing on the emerging regime complexity literature, he constructs a novel analytical framework to explain the fragmented architecture of global energy governance, and studies prospects for institutional reform at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the G8/G20.

This volume describes important sites in the Pleistocene deposits of the Thames terrace system laid down by the Thames and its tributaries. It correlates the Thames sequence with deposits found elsewhere in Britain, on the European continent and on the ocean floor.

Despite our growing awareness of the vital role they play in the global environment, wetlands remain among the most endangered ecosystems on Earth and are still being destroyed and degraded at an alarming rate. This much-needed publication, which includes contributions from leading researchers and practitioners, presents a holistic perspective on the restoration of wetland ecosystems such as shallow lakes, streams, floodplains and bogs. Through the use of carefully chosen case studies, the authors examine European wetland restoration projects from Scandinavia to Bulgaria and from Ireland to Belarus, focusing on the lessons they can teach to a new generation of conservationists. As well as reviewing the sum of current knowledge on the subject, the text is a store of practical know-how, covering a wide range of conservation approaches and techniques. It analyzes the major problems in the field and identifies key principles for achieving sustainability in wetland restoration. The topics covered include: * the role of wetlands in landscape functioning * human interference with natural processes such as water and matter cycles and energy dissipation * the impact of land use on global problems such as climate change, floods and droughts * the role played by diversity in wetland functioning The work shows that without sustainable land use over the totality of their catchment areas, and without cohesive inter-agency cooperation, individual restoration projects will have a short life span. The balance between scientific background and practical restoration makes this book a valuable resource for scientists as well as wetland managers, decision makers and land use planners, as well as students of ecology, nature conservation and environmental protection.

Sedimentation and Tectonics in Rift Basins: Red Sea - Gulf of Aden presents new case studies and synthesises the results of recent research on the sedimentological evolution of the Red Sea - Gulf of Aden rift system. This rift basin is generally regarded as the best natural geological laboratory in the world in which to study the processes of rift formation. Uplift of the rift margins in an arid climate results in extensive three-dimensional exposures of pre- and syn-rift strata and associated structures. These serve as analogues for the understanding and hydrocarbon exploration of deeper buried rift-systems on continental margins such as the North Sea and the Atlantic margins. The Red Sea - Gulf of Aden rift is also exceptional in that its stratigraphy spans all stages from pre-rift environments, syn-rift continental to marine environments through the rift to drift transition to post-rift sea-floor spreading. The work is arranged in eight sections: following a review of the sedimentology and stratigraphy of rift basins, the magmatism and structural evolution of the Red Sea - Gulf of Aden rift is reviewed. Subsequently, new case studies are presented of the early rifting environment, syn-rift sedimentation, tectonics and diagenesis, evaporites and salt tectonics. Post-rift sediments of the axial trough are then discussed along with studies of reefs, coastal zone and shelf sediments, and the tectonic geomorphology of the rift margin escarpment. This work results from extensive new research in the rift basin largely carried out under collaborative research projects by European and Middle Eastern geologists. It will be an invaluable reference work for geoscientists in the hydrocarbon, groundwater and mineral extraction industries, as well as for researchers in university departments of earth sciences, mining and physical geography.

Accretionary prisms in convergent margins are natural laboratories for exploring initial orogenic processes and mountain building episodes. They are also an important component of continental growth both vertically and laterally. Accretionary prisms are seismically highly active and their internal deformation via megathrusting and out-of-sequence faulting are a big concern for earthquake and tsunami damage in many coastal cities around the Pacific Rim. The geometries and structures of modern accretionary prisms have been well imaged seismically and through deep drilling projects of the Ocean Drilling Program (and recently IODP) during the last 15 years. Better understanding of the spatial distribution and temporal progression of accretionary prism deformation, structural and hydrologic evolution of the decollement zone (tectonic interface between the subducting slab and the upper plate), chemical gradients and fluid flow paths within accretionary prisms, contrasting stratigraphic and deformational framework along-strike in accretionary prisms, and the distribution and ecosystems of biological communities in accretionary prism settings is most important in interpreting the evolution of ancient complex sedimentary terrains and orogenic belts in terms of subduction-related processes. This book is a collection of interdisciplinary papers documenting the geological, geophysical, geochemical, and paleontological features of modern accretionay prisms and trenches in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, based on many submersible dive cruises, ODP drilling projects, and geophysical surveys during the last 10 years. It also includes several papers presenting the results of systematic integrated studies of recent to ancient on-land accretionary prisms in comparison to modern analogues. The individual chapters are data and image rich, providing a major resource of information and knowledge from these critical components of convergent margins for researchers, faculty members, and graduate and undergraduate students. As such, the book will be a major and unique contribution in the broad fields of global tectonics, geodynamics, marine geology and geophysics, and structural geology and sedimentology.