This volume investigates crucial ways in which nature has been apprehended, understood and valued in different cultures and over time. It is grounded in current global concerns about growing threats to the natural environment. Through a critical appraisal of specific examples, it ranges widely over historical and contemporary attitudes and behaviours. It presents a wide ranging analysis of selected ideas and attitudes in the evolution mainly of western civilisation, from the time of the cave artists to the present day. It argues for preservation and conservation of the natural resources and beauty of the earth in the face of religious supernatural arguments and the rise of consumer capitalism and consumerism.

Students taking undergraduate degrees in geography, ecology, earth science, and environmental science frequently take an introductory unit in Physical Geography. Some will have not done any geography since their early teens, while others have more recent knowledge. This range of backgrounds can be challenging for both the instructor and the student, this primer aims to help. A primer is a readable introduction to a subject, more technical than a piece of popular science, but less detailed than a specialist textbook. It aims to give the reader a platform in a subject with which they may be unfamiliar, so that they can proceed simultaneously, or sequentially, to more advanced texts and information. Ideally the primer should have something for those without any knowledge, while also challenge and entertaining those who do. Not quite bedtime reading, but a step in that direction. Our Dynamic Earth introduces students to the Earth's origins, to plate tectonics, atmospheric and oceanographic circulation, as well as to a range of Earth surface processes. Idea to get you started in your studies.

This volume reviews recent hydrological and environmental issues resulting from human-induced water pollution practices while providing case studies on the physical, chemical, and eco-biological techniques used to mitigate the impacts of river ecosystem pollution in South Asian countries. The book demonstrates the key methods of measurement, monitoring, mapping, and modeling of river water quality and how it is impacted by pollution and incorporates contemporary geospatial technological applications for the management and sustainability of future water resources. The major topics that the book addresses are the fundamental concepts of river ecosystem health, riverine ecology and habitats, risk assessment of riverine pollution, and technology-based river pollution control strategies. The book will serve as an interdisciplinary guide for researchers, students, and GIS specialists working in various disciplines, including pollution hazards, river ecosystem restoration, water quality, remote sensing, zoology, natural resources management, and environmental geography.

This book focuses on the application of geospatial technologies to study the land use land cover (LULC) dynamics, agricultural water management, water resources assessment and modeling, and studies on natural disasters. LULC dynamics is one of the major research themes for studying global environmental change using remote sensing data. The section on LULC dynamics covers the multi-variate criteria for land use and land cover classification and change assessment in the mountainous regions. Further, LULC change detection of the Tons river basin and LULC dynamics at decadal frequency are studied to derive adaptation and mitigation strategies. Landscape-level forest disturbance modeling, together with conservation implications, is also included. The watershed management approach is necessary for comprehensive management of land and water resources of any region, where studies on multi-criteria analysis for rainwater harvesting planning and its impact on land use land cover transformations in rain-fed areas using geospatial technologies are presented in this book. The book will be useful for academics, water practitioners, scientists, water managers, environmentalists, and administrators, NGOs, researchers, and students who are actively involved in the application of geospatial technologies in LULC studies, agricultural water management and hydrological modelling and natural disasters for addressing the challenges being posed by climate change while addressing issues of food and water securities

Islands represent unique opportunities to examine human interaction with the natural environment. They capture the human imagination as remote, vulnerable and exotic, yet there is comparatively little understanding of their basic geology, geography, or the impact of island colonization by plants, animals and humans. This detailed study of island environments focuses on nine island groups, including Hawaii, New Zealand and the British Isles, exploring their differing geology, geography, climate and soils, as well as the varying effects of human actions. It illustrates the natural and anthropogenic disturbances common to island groups, all of which face an uncertain future clouded by extinctions of endemic flora and fauna, growing populations of invasive species, and burgeoning resident and tourist populations. Examining the natural and human history of each island group from early settlement onwards, the book provides a critique of the concept of sustainable growth and offers realistic guidelines for future island management.

This book provides a detailed treatment of the ecological, economic and social impacts in the context of environmental impact assessment (EIA) and makes clear the necessary link between EIA and the sustainability principles of protecting biodiversity, risk aversion, and inter and intra-generational equity. It proposes that the benefits and costs of a project need to be weighted according to who bears them, giving particular attention to the planet's poor. Furthermore, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of environmental offsetting which has come to be commonly resorted to when negative impacts cannot be mitigated. In this context, the book argues that offsetting is only viable if advanced offsets are quarantined through a Strategic Environmental Impact approach. Finally, the book explores the role of the various disciplines which need to be mastered in undertaking an EIA. This book takes you on a journey from the beginning of environmental impact assessment to the present day. It is a scholarly warts and all study. For each trial and tribulation, Hundloe presents a remedy. It is essential reading and an invaluable reference for environmental practitioners, politicians, policy makers, academics and, the most important group, future environmental practitioners.

This book provides a critical study of environmental regulation and its enforcement in New Zealand, situated within green criminology. It seeks to address the question of whether the offences in the Resource Management Act 1991 are 'working', by drawing on a range of sources including: central government data, local government policies and reports on enforcement, information requests of councils, studies of local authority enforcement behaviour and case law to. Through highly layered and richly textured analysis, the project exposes the problems that can arise when an expansive approach is taken to offences, penalties and institutional arrangements in an environmental regulatory statute. It emphasizes how discussions of harm and what should be unlawful will ensure that law-makers' enforcement tools will align with their goals for punishment. It examines higher-level issues such as 'wrongfulness' and 'criminality' in the environmental regulatory context and explores the relevance of its findings to jurisdictions outside of New Zealand. It also discusses the pros and cons of criminalisation and punishment versus restoration. It speaks to those interested in green criminology, regulatory compliance and enforcement, and applications of criminal law.

This textbook provides a modern, quantitative and process-oriented approach to equip students with the tools to understand geomorphology. Insight into the interpretation of landscapes is developed from basic principles and simple models, and by stepping through the equations that capture the essence of the mechanics and chemistry of landscapes. Boxed worked examples and real-world applications bring the subject to life for students, allowing them to apply the theory to their own experience. The book covers cutting edge topics, including the revolutionary cosmogenic nuclide dating methods and modeling, highlights links to other Earth sciences through up-to-date summaries of current research, and illustrates the importance of geomorphology in understanding environmental changes. Setting up problems as a conservation of mass, ice, soil, or heat, this book arms students with tools to fully explore processes, understand landscapes, and to participate in this rapidly evolving field.

This monograph is a fundamental study of watershed erosion and runoff processes. It utilizes decades of soil erosion data to take a comprehensive and balanced approach in covering various watershed erosion processes. While there are many works on soil erosion and conservation, this book fills the gaps in previously published research by focusing more on mass movement, gully erosion, soil piping/tunnel erosion, and the spatial interactions of different erosion processes. Additionally, the book examines erosion processes in extreme rainfall events, something typically absent in short-term studies but discussed in detail here as the book draws on 60 years of research and observations, including 30 years of the author's own investigations of erosion under a wide range of rainfall conditions. The book is divided into 3 parts, and is intended for soil erosion researchers and practitioners, and postgraduate students studying soil erosion and water conservation. Part 1 opens with a comprehensive and critical review of existing literature on soil erosion processes, discusses this book's place among existing literature, and examines the major erosion processes (rainwash, gully erosion, tunnel erosion, and mass movements) including their controlling factors and mechanisms. Part 2 explores the spatial interactions of these different erosion processes to provide a prerequisite for effective design of comprehensive soil erosion control measures in a watershed. Part 3 evaluates the relative significance of these erosion processes in sediment production, the effectiveness of comprehensive soil and water conservation programs, and the applications of watershed modelling in determining the impact of land-use changes on soil erosion and other ecological processes.

This book examines the interplay between urban growth and the environmental issues in India. The contributors, who are coming from diverse disciplines, examine socioeconomic, administrative, and environmental threats emanating from urbanization (e.g. climate change, health governance, energy issues, pollution, and e-waste management) and suggest various measures for dealing with the challenges of rapid urbanization. Offering a valuable resource for all those interested in understanding the multifaceted dimensions of urban growth, the book appeals to researchers, students, and policymakers, interested in the development studies and urban studies.

This book discusses how Coal Bed Methane (CBM) could help the acceleration of the energy transition in a 'just' way in Indonesia, due to the country's potential CBM reserves (and current dependence on climate damaging coal). Developing countries face multiple challenges in achieving their energy transitions. CBM in Indonesia could potentially be a catalyst for energy transition and subsequently improve access to energy. However, CBM faces numerous challenges and although Indonesia first developed its domestic CBM sector over more than a decade ago, they are still to implement this successfully. This book exposes the challenges and opportunities of CBM, exploring what lessons other countries could learn from Indonesia to improve the industry with a view to achieving energy transition and climate change targets. This book will be an invaluable reference for researchers and practitioners working in this field.

This book discusses the conditions that underpin configuration of specific places as resource peripheries and the consequences that such a socio-spatial formation involves for those places. The book thereby provides an interdisciplinary approach underpinned by economic geography, political ecology, resource geography, development studies and political geography. It also discusses the different technological, political and economic changes that make the ongoing production of resource peripheries a distinctive socio-spatial formation under the global economy. Through a global and interdisciplinary perspective that uncovers ongoing political processes, socio-economic changes and socio-ecological dynamics at resource peripheries, this book argues that it is critical to take a more profound appraisal about the socio-spatial processes behind the contemporary way in which capitalism is appropriating and transforming nature.

In this comprehensive Handbook, scholars from across the globe explore the relationships between workers and nature in the context of the environmental crises. They provide an invaluable overview of a fast-growing research field that bridges the social and natural sciences. Chapters provide detailed perspectives of environmental labour studies, environmental struggles of workers, indigenous peoples, farmers and commoners in the Global South and North. The relations within and between organisations that hinder or promote environmental strategies are analysed, including the relations between workers and environmental organisations, NGOs, feminist and community movements.

This book shares graduate student experiences, lessons, and life learnings from research with Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic. The results of graduate student research are often disseminated in a thesis or dissertation, but their personal experiences building relationships with Inuit, working together to design and conduct research, and how this shaped their research approach and outcomes, are rarely captured. As such, there are limited resources available to new researchers that share information about the practical aspects of community-based research in the Arctic. The book is intended to provide a glimpse into what it is like to do research together with Inuit, and in doing so, contribute to the development of more productive and equitable relationships between Inuit and researchers. The chapters are written as structured narratives in the first-person and include reflections, and lessons learned.

This book offers readers a thorough introduction to the Dinaric Karst System in Croatia. As the first comprehensive book on the country's caves and karst, it presents a wealth of fascinating photographs from its karst underground. To date, ca. 12,000 caves and pits have been confirmed in Croatia, approximately 35% of which contain constant groundwater. Knowing the amount, direction and quality of groundwater that has been discovered in caves of the Croatian karst allows us to predict with greater certainty the hydrogeological situation of some karst areas where no special drilling or borehole measurements were performed. In the process of building highways in the country's karst regions over the last thirty years, thousands of caverns (speleological features without natural entrances) were discovered and thoroughly explored. All of them were geologically mapped, surveyed, and photographed in detail. Extensive research was systematically carried out in Croatian karst regions on sections of roads, highways, cuttings, slides, tunnels, bridge foundations, viaducts, etc., while creating ca. 800 kilometers of highways (such as the Zagreb-Rijeka highway, Zagreb-Split-Dubrovnik highway, Y-Ipsilon of Istria semi-highway, Rijeka-Rupa highway, Zagreb-Zadar semi-highway, and the Rijeka bypass). Some of these caverns contain major chambers like in the "Sveti Rok" tunnel and in some of them, like in the "Vrata" tunnel, it was even necessary to build a bridge. This bridge is the longest one in the world built in a tunnel over a cavern. The book describes this and many more features of the cave exploration of the Dinaric Karst System of Croatia, making it a valuable resource for researchers, engineers, cavers, and all other readers interested in karst.

'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.

This book introduces systematically the cryospheric science, covering the formation, development, evolution, and research methods of each component of the cryosphere, the interaction between the cryosphere and the other spheres of the climate system and the anthroposphere, and the hot topics of social and economic sustainable development and geopolitics. The authors are world-renowned experts and scientists working in the related fields. They have a deep understanding and accurate grasp of the basic theory, evolution mechanism, and international frontiers of the cryosphere, as well as rich teaching experience, which makes this book suitable also as textbook for graduate students. It is also the first book that introduces the knowledge of cryospheric science systematically. In addition to theoretical knowledge, the book also introduces field work and experimental analysis. It should be of interests for the scholars and graduate student working in the fields of geography, hydrology, geology, geomorphology, atmosphere, ecology, environment, oceanography, and regional economic and social sustainable development.

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.

After the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War in 1763, British America stretched from Hudson Bay to the Florida Keys, from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, and across new islands in the West Indies. To better rule these vast dominions, Britain set out to map its new territories with unprecedented rigor and precision. Max Edelson's The New Map of Empire pictures the contested geography of the British Atlantic world and offers new explanations of the causes and consequences of Britain's imperial ambitions in the generation before the American Revolution. Under orders from King George III to reform the colonies, the Board of Trade dispatched surveyors to map far-flung frontiers, chart coastlines in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sound Florida's rivers, parcel tropical islands into plantation tracts, and mark boundaries with indigenous nations across the continental interior. Scaled to military standards of resolution, the maps they produced sought to capture the essential attributes of colonial spaces-their natural capacities for agriculture, navigation, and commerce-and give British officials the knowledge they needed to take command over colonization from across the Atlantic. Britain's vision of imperial control threatened to displace colonists as meaningful agents of empire and diminished what they viewed as their greatest historical accomplishment: settling the New World. As London's mapmakers published these images of order in breathtaking American atlases, Continental and British forces were already engaged in a violent contest over who would control the real spaces they represented. Accompanying Edelson's innovative spatial history of British America are online visualizations of more than 250 original maps, plans, and charts.

This book provides a critical approach to research on the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures and on energy transitions in general by questioning prevalent principles and proposing specific research pathways and lines of inquiry that look beyond depoliticised, business-as-usual discourses and research agendas on green growth and sustainability. It brings together authors from different socio-geographical and disciplinary backgrounds within the social sciences to reflect upon, discuss and advance what we propose to be five cornerstones of a critical approach: overcoming individualism and socio-cognitivism; repoliticisations - recognising and articulating power relations; for interdisciplinarity; interventions - praxis and political engagement with research; and overcoming localism and spatial determinism: As such, this book offers academics, students and practitioners alike a comprehensive perspective of what it means to be critical when inquiring into the social acceptance of renewable energy and associated infrastructures.

Dokuchaev carried out most of his research in Ukraine. His student and friend, Volodymyr Vernadsky, went on to create trans-disciplinary environmental sciences and the concept of Earth as a living organism, famously taken up by James Lovelock. That spring of ideas still flows and the researches captured in this volume are relevant to present-day problems, and not only in Ukraine. Soils have always been under stress but, in the Anthropocene, mankind is in the driving seat. As a sequel to Soil Science Working for a Living: Applications of soil science to present-day problems, we consider issues of policy as well as soil genesis, attributes and functions in various environments, natural and man-made. We consider human impacts on the soil cover through its use and misuse, highlight methods of research and assessment of soil quality, and the threats of soil degradation. The distinguished contributors also describe and propose various options for evaluation and remediation of degraded soils, drawing on the latest methods of modelling and cartography as well as long-term field experiments and long experience. The book will be invaluable to researchers and practitioners in soil science including graduate and post-graduate education, academics and professionals.

This edited book provides a comprehensive overview of the past, present and future climate development in Poland. The book consists of three main parts. The first part presents the results of the study of climate change before instrumental measurements in Poland in the last millennium. The second part analyses the long-term changes and variability of 36 climate characteristics for 14 climate elements, indices, meteorological phenomena and weather types using data from 79 weather stations in the base period 1951-2018 and for long series up to 239 years (1780-2018). The particular attention is paid to climate extremes. The third part of the book deals with projected changes in temperature, precipitation and thermal indices related to the agriculture and energy sectors. Two future time horizons are carried out: 1) near future: 2021-2050 and 2) far future: 2071-2100. The results for Poland are compared to those from Europe and other parts of the world. The book is addressed to scientists (climatologists, geographers, etc.), academic teachers, students, journalists and all those interested in Poland and climate change in Poland.

In this exciting new collection, leading and emerging Lacanian scholars seek to understand what psychoanalysis brings to debates about the environment and the climate crisis. They argue that we cannot understand climate change and all of its multifarious ramifications without first understanding how our terrifying proximity to the real undergirds our relation to the environment, how we mistake lack for loss and mourning for melancholy, and how we seek to destroy the same world we seek to protect. The book traces Lacan's contribution through a consideration of topics including doomsday preppers, forest suicides, Indigenous resistance, post-apocalyptic films, the mathematics of climate science, and the relevance of Kant. They ask: What can you do if your neighbour is a climate change denier? What would Bartleby do? Does the animal desire? Who is cleaning up all the garbage on the internet? Why is the sudden greening of the planet under COVID-19 no help whatsoever? It offers a timely intervention into Lacanian theory, environmental studies, geography, philosophy, and literary studies that illustrates the relevance of psychoanalysis to current social and environmental concerns.