This book explores how natural landscapes are linked to positive mental wellbeing. While natural landscapes have long been represented and portrayed as transformative, the link to mental wellbeing is an area that researchers are still aiming to comprehend. Accompanying five groups of people to rural Scotland, the author considers individual, external and group motivations for journeying from urban environments, examining in what ways these excursions are personally and socially transformative. Far more than traversing mere physical boundaries, this book illustrates the new challenges, experiences, territories and cultures provided by these excursions, firmly anchored in the Scottish countryside. In doing so, the author questions the extent to which people's own narratives link to the perception that the outdoors are positively transformative - and what indeed does have the power to influence transformation. Grounded in extensive qualitative research, this contemplative and ethnographic book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of the outdoors and its connection to wellbeing.

This book provides a comprehensive exploration of some of the most critical issues regarding the EU's Energy Union policy. Applied European energy policies face a number of challenges ranging from the geopolitics of energy and energy regulation, to climate change, advancing renewable and gas technologies, and consumer empowerment structures. This book takes a multi-dimensional look into some of these vital issues regarding the European energy sector with a special focus on the effects the Energy Union policy has in two sensitive regional systems, Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Energy, being by definition a multi-disciplinary field, presents a challenge for readers of any specific disciplinary background that need to grasp an overall understanding of the various aspects of this exciting sector. This book's objective is to offer the opportunity for readers to get a quality, hands-on overview of the Energy Union by the professionals and academics that interact with it on a daily basis.

This book investigates the multifaceted nature of change in today's Nordic Arctic and the necessary research and policy development required to address the challenges and opportunities currently faced by this region. It focuses its attention on the recent efforts of the Nordic community to create specialized Centers of Excellence in Arctic Research in order to facilitate this process of scientific inquiry and policy articulation. The volume seeks to describe both the steps that lead to this decision and the manner in which this undertaking as evolved. The work highlights the research efforts of the four Centers and their investigations of a variety of issues including those related to ecosystem and wildlife management, the revitalization resource dependent communities, the emergence of new climate-born diseases and the development of adequate modeling techniques to assist northern communities in their efforts at adaptation and resilience building. Major discoveries and insights arising from these and other efforts are detailed and possible policy implications considered. The book also focuses attention on the challenges of creating and supporting multidisciplinary teams of researchers to investigate such concerns and the methods and means for facilitating their collaboration and the integration of their findings to form new and useful perspectives on the nature of change in the contemporary Arctic. It also provides helpful consideration and examples of how local and indigenous communities can be engaged in the co-production of knowledge regarding the region. The volume discusses how such research findings can be best communicated and shared between scientists, policymakers and northern residents. It considers the challenges of building common concern not just among different research disciplines but also between bureaucracies and the public. Only when this bridge-building effort is undertaken can true pathways to action be established.

This book explains what makes landscapes resilient. Why are some landscapes able to recover quickly from disruptive events or crises, while others are completely thrown off balance for the foreseeable future? The author sets out in search of the influencing factors and conditional structures of landscape resilience and not only evaluates the current state of the art, but also explores landscapes around the globe that could not be more contrasting: from arid agricultural landscapes to boreal forest landscapes, from atolls to saline landscapes, from terraced landscapes to cities. Just as diverse as the landscape types are the factors considered that can put landscapes under stress. However diverse the case studies are in detail, their fascinating mosaic shows at the same time that there are overarching principles that can be used to increase the resilience of landscapes in a targeted way, so that landscapes emerge from crises strengthened rather than weakened. This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Landschaftliche Resilienz by Catrin Schmidt, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

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 discusses the karst and pseudokarst of the Upper Midwest, USA, consisting of the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois-the first regional synthesis in 40 years. Starting with an overview of the regional geology of what is largely glaciated fluviokarst and paleokarst developed on Paleozoic carbonates, but including other lithologies such as the St. Peter Sandstone and the Ft. Dodge Gypsum, the caves, springs, sinkholes, and karst hydrogeology of each state are described. Special attention is devoted to the region's longest caves: Coldwater Cave, Mystery Cave, and the Minnesota Cave Preserve caves. Application of tools such as data loggers and LiDAR, with new conceptual models such as hypogenic speleogenesis, has been transformative here. Special topics include lead and zinc mining in the Driftless Area, vertebrate and invertebrate cave fauna near the Laurentide ice limit, the impact and policies of nutrient and herbicide intensive modern agriculture on karst, and paleoclimate studies. The discovery, exploration, institutional history of caving organizations, and show caves of the Upper Midwest, from the year 1700 onwards, are brought up to date. The top 10 historical paradigms of cave and karst science in the Midwest are reviewed. Perspectives on paleontology, archeology, and Native American rock art are included.

This book examines the "oil-tourism interface", the broad range of direct and indirect contact points between offshore oil extraction and nature-based tourism. Offshore oil extraction and nature-based tourism are pursued as development paths across the North Atlantic region. Offshore oil promises economic benefits from employment and royalty payments to host societies, but is based on fossil fuel-intensive resource extraction. Nature-based tourism, instead, is based on experiencing natural environments and encountering wildlife, including whales, seals, or seabirds. They share social-ecological space, such as oceans, coastlines, cities and towns where tourism and offshore oil operations and offices are located. However, they rarely share cultural or political space, in terms of media coverage, public debate, or policy discussion that integrates both modes of development. Through a comparative analysis of Denmark, Iceland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Norway, and Scotland, this book offers important lessons for how coastal societies can better navigate relationships between resource extraction and nature-based tourism in the interests of social-ecological wellbeing.

This edited volume reviews the latest advances in policies and actions in understanding the science, impacts and management of climate change in Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change due to its geographical, physical, and social-economic situations. There are many initiatives to understand and deal with the impacts in the country. The national government has issued key guiding policies for climate change. International agencies together with local stakeholders are working on strengthening the capacity in the policy formulations and implement actions to build community resilience. Universities are conducting research on climate change related at different scales. Cities and local governments are implementing innovations in adapting to the impacts of climate change and transiting toward green economy. This book summarizes and discusses the state-of-the-art regarding climate change in Indonesia including adaptation and mitigation measures. The primary readership of the book includes policy makers, scientists and practitioners of climate change actions in Indonesia and other countries facing similar challenges. Chapter "Carbon Stocks from Peat Swamp Forest and Oil Palm Plantation in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

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 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.

This volume presents an in-depth analysis of climate change problems and discusses the proliferation of renewable energy worldwide-in conjunction with such important questions as social justice and economic growth, providing an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable development. Exploring various responses to human-induced climate change, the book offers a critical reflection on climate change and clean energy and highlights the fundamental problems of international energy justice and human rights. Examining these and other climate-related issues from legal, business, political, and scientific perspectives, the volume also analyzes the impact of economic factors and policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

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.

The book compares different approaches to urban development in Singapore and Seoul over the past decades, by focusing on community participation in the transformation of neighbourhoods and its impact on the built environment and communal life. Singapore and Seoul are known for their rapid economic growth and urbanisation under a strong control of developmental state in the past. However, these cities are at a critical crossroads of societal transformation, where participatory and community-based urban development is gaining importance. This new approach can be seen as a result of a changing relationship between the state and civil society, where an emerging partnership between both aims to overcome the limitations of earlier urban development. The book draws attention to the possibilities and challenges that these cities face while moving towards a more inclusive and socially sustainable post-developmental urbanisation. By applying a comparative perspective to understand the evolving urban paradigms in Singapore and Seoul, this unique and timely book offers insights for scholars, professionals and students interested in contemporary Asian urbanisation and its future trajectories.

This book discusses Nevada in the context of the history of soil investigations; soil-forming factors; general soil regions; soil geomorphology; taxonomic structure of the soils; taxonomic soil regions; soil-forming processes; benchmark, endemic, rare, and endangered soils; and use of soils. With an average mean annual precipitation of 175 mm (7 in), Nevada is the driest state in the USA. More than three-quarters (89%) of the state has been mapped and the first soil survey was completed in 1909. Nevada is divided into 10 major land-resource areas and features two large deserts (the Great Basin Desert and the Mojave Desert), and over 100 north-south trending enclosed basins separated by mountain ranges (Basin and Range Province), several of which have peaks exceeding 3,400 m. Further, the soils of Nevada represent seven of the 12 globally recognized orders, 29 suborders, 69 great groups, and over 1,800 soil series, and some of the classic research on the origin of duripans and petrocalcic horizons was conducted in the state. This book presents the first report on the soils of Nevada and provides the first soil map of Nevada utilizing soil.

Governing Arctic Seas introduces the concept of ecopolitical regions, using in-depth analyses of the Bering Strait and Barents Sea Regions to demonstrate how integrating the natural sciences, social sciences and Indigenous knowledge can reveal patterns, trends and processes as the basis for informed decisionmaking. This book draws on international, interdisciplinary and inclusive (holistic) perspectives to analyze governance mechanisms, built infrastructure and their coupling to achieve sustainability in biophysical regions subject to shared authority. Governing Arctic Seas is the first volume in a series of books on Informed Decisionmaking for Sustainability that apply, train and refine science diplomacy to address transboundary issues at scales ranging from local to global. For nations and peoples as well as those dealing with global concerns, this holistic process operates across a 'continuum of urgencies' from security time scales (mitigating risks of political, economic and cultural instabilities that are immediate) to sustainability time scales (balancing economic prosperity, environmental protection and societal well-being across generations). Informed decisionmaking is the apex goal, starting with questions that generate data as stages of research, integrating decisionmaking institutions to employ evidence to reveal options (without advocacy) that contribute to informed decisions. The first volumes in the series focus on the Arctic, revealing legal, economic, environmental and societal lessons with accelerating knowledge co-production to achieve progress with sustainability in this globally-relevant region that is undergoing an environmental state change in the sea and on land. Across all volumes, there is triangulation to integrate research, education and leadership as well as science, technology and innovation to elaborate the theory, methods and skills of informed decisionmaking to build common interests for the benefit of all on Earth.

This book offers an alternative analysis of the various theories and dimensions of green and environmental justice which are rooted in political economy. Much green criminological literature sidelines political economic theoretical insights and therefore with this work the authors enrich the field by vigorously exploring such perspectives. It engages with a number of studies relevant to a political economic approach to justice in order to make two key arguments: that capitalism has produced profound ecological injustices and that the concept of ecological justice (human and ecological rights) itself needs critiquing. Green Criminology and Green Theories of Justice is a timely text which urges the field to revisit its radical roots in social justice while broadening its disciplinary horizons to include a meaningful analysis of political economy and its role in producing and responding to environmental harm and injustice.

This book brings together original and novel perspectives on major developments in human rights law and the environment in Africa. Focusing on African Union law, the book explores the core concepts and principles, theory and practice, accountability mechanisms and key issues challenging human rights law in the era of global environmental change. It, thus, extend the frontier of understanding in this fundamental area by building on existing scholarship on African human rights law and the protection of the environment, divulging concerns on redressing environmental and human rights protection issues in the context of economic growth and sustainable development. It further offers unique insight into the development, domestication and implementation challenges relating to human rights law and environmental governance in Africa. This long overdue interdisciplinary exploration of human rights law and the environment from an African perspective will be an indispensable reference point for academics, policymakers, practitioners and advocates of international human rights and environmental law in particular and international law, environmental politics and philosophy, and African studies in general. It is clear that there is much to do, study and share on this timely subject in the African context.

Is safe and sustainable water and sanitation for all an unaffordable pipedream? This book surveys the worldwide development of water and sewage services and the challenges in meeting Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) along with climate change, population growth and urbanisation. It explores the reasons why current SDG6 progress is failing, including weak policy implementation, staff shortages and inadequate funding, as well as the limited impact of aid funding. The author contends that despite a series of innovations, debt finance remains too small to address needs of developing economies. Therefore, instead of advocating new funding, this book proposes addressing the funding gap through technological innovation and more efficient management and procurement through a series of examples that have challenged traditional assumptions. After four decades of good intentions, SDG6 is making a difference in monitoring shortfalls for the first time, allowing for more effective responses. This book outlines the role of innovation in hardware development, procurement and installation, and discusses how network management and operations can most effectively address funding gaps. The potential for savings is considerable, if effectively replicated. New approaches are driving forward affordable resilience, including nature-based solutions such as upstream habitat enhancement to retain water and improve downstream water quality; the circular economy, including water, nutrient, energy and heat recovery from wastewater; and demand management. This book will be of great value to scholars, policy makers and practitioners interested in the global finance of sustainable water and sanitation.

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 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.

With the rapid increase of world population, the global water shortage is set to be the major crises of the twenty-first century; that is, population dynamics (growth, age distribution, urbanization and migration) create pressures on freshwater resources due to the increased water demands and pollution. Moreover, water resources management faces a new uncertainty- i.e. the potential for longer-term and more persistent climate change nowadays, which, in coming years, may significantly affect the availability of supply and patterns of water demand. This book mainly focuses on the impact of climate change and human activities on water quality and water resources in Asia Countries. It begins by describing the characteristics of water related disasters in the world. Then, the book analyzes the changes of floods and associated socio-economic damages for whole China over the last century, and assesses water quality and pollution source for the Yangtze River Basin, suggesting water-related disasters would become more intense, longer lasting, and/or more frequent in a future warmer climate. Then, after investigating spatiotemporal trends and causes of water quality and water quality incidents (Chapter 4) and precipitation extreme events (Chapter 5) in Japan, subsequent two chapters mainly evaluate the climate and human impacts on precipitation variations, water quality and water resources in the Hokkaido area. The final chapter comprehensively analyzes climate change impacts on water resources in the Aral Sea Basin, and then estimate the water requirements and water deficits for irrigation, future agricultural yields of seven major crops, and land and water productivity in four provinces of Turkmenistan considering climate change, population growth, and three socio-economic development scenarios. All results obtained from this book may provide a means to reduce water quality incidents and mitigate future negative impacts by adapting water management. Furthermore, the improved methods for water quality modeling in data scarce regions are transferable to other study areas and applicable in future research.

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.

Disasters in Australia and New Zealand brings together a collection of essays on the history of disasters in both countries. Leading experts provide a timely interrogation of long-held assumptions about the impacts of bushfires, floods, cyclones and earthquakes, exploring the blurred line between nature and culture, asking what are the anthropogenic causes of 'natural' disasters? How have disasters been remembered or forgotten? And how have societies over generations responded to or understood disaster? As climate change escalates disaster risk in Australia, New Zealand and around the world, these questions have assumed greater urgency. This unique collection poses a challenge to learn from past experiences and to implement behavioural and policy change. Rich in oral history and archival research, Disasters in Australia and New Zealand offers practical and illuminating insights that will appeal to historians and disaster scholars across multiple disciplines.

With the consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss becoming more and more apparent, both the protection of water resources and water-related ecosystems as well as protection from water, that is flood protection policies, have become increasingly important. This book explores the latest applications of network analysis concepts and measures to the study and practice of water governance. Given the holistic complexity of water governance, it covers individual water governance aspects such as flood protection and fisheries, as well as overarching concepts like integrated water management and social-ecological interactions. The book provides an overview of current water governance issues, network analytic concepts as well as implications for practice. The main body of the text is made up of eight case studies by world-leading environmental governance scholars, each of which addresses one water-related challenge by applying a variety of network approaches. The first part of the book highlights network dispersion and fragmentation, the second focuses on how such fragmentation in networks can be overcome and the third deals with specific roles of actors in networks. This collection is a key resource for scholars and practitioners interested in water governance all over the world. It provides readers with an overview of the potential of network analytic concepts for research on complex governance problems.

The Juan Fernandez Archipelago is located in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile at 33 Degrees S latitude. Robinson Crusoe Island is 667 km from the continent and approximately four million years old; Alejandro Selkirk Island is an additional 181 km west and only one million years old. The natural impacts of subsidence and erosion have shaped the landscapes of these islands, resulting in progressive changes to their subtropical vegetation. The older island has undergone more substantial changes, due to both natural causes and human impacts. After the discovery of Robinson Crusoe Island in 1574, people began cutting down forests for lumber to construct boats and homes, for firewood, and to make room for pastures. Domesticated plants and animals were introduced, some of which have since become feral or invasive, causing damage to the local vegetation. The wealth of historical records on these activities provides a detailed chronicle of how human beings use their environment for survival in a new ecosystem. This book offers an excellent case study on the impacts that people can have on the resources of an oceanic island.