An annual collection of studies of individuals who have made major contributions to the development of geography and geographical thought. Subjects are drawn from all periods and from all parts of the world, and include famous names as well as those less well known: explorers, independent thinkers and scholars. Each paper describes the geographer's education, life and work and discusses their influence and spread of academic ideas. Each study includes a select bibliography and brief chronology. The work includes a general index and a cumulative index of geographers listed in volumes published to date.

This book examines "New Localism' - exploring how communities have turned towards more local concerns: my street, my town, my state, as an expression of dissatisfaction with globalization. It details the ideas that have created a political force that academics have often misunderstood and provides a template for further investigation with a strong focus on how to harness the motivations behind such changes for the benefit of individuals, communities and the more-than-human environment. The book discusses human progress, both individual and collective, in terms of the interactions of the local and the global, the specific and the universal, and the concrete and the abstract. It also considers how forms of social progress can be understood and reconfigured in the context of the rejection of certain aspects of liberal intelligentsia orthodoxy over recent years. Developing his arguments with specific reference to the evolving, political landscape, the author helps readers to understand major events such as the Trump presidency and the British vote to leave the EU from a fully semiotic perspective. He also explains how educational processes can use and respond to such events in ways that are locally grounded but nevertheless not at odds with more abstract formulations of progress such as sustainability and social justice.

This book introduces readers to the background, general framework, main operators, and other basic characteristics of biogeography-based optimization (BBO), which is an emerging branch of bio-inspired computation. In particular, the book presents the authors' recent work on improved variants of BBO, hybridization of BBO with other algorithms, and the application of BBO to a variety of domains including transportation, image processing, and neural network learning. The content will help to advance research into and application of not only BBO but also the whole field of bio-inspired computation. The algorithms and applications are organized in a step-by-step manner and clearly described with the help of pseudo-codes and flowcharts. The readers will learn not only the basic concepts of BBO but also how to apply and adapt the algorithms to the engineering optimization problems they actually encounter.

This book presents multi-sector practical cases based on the author's own research. It also includes the best practice, which could serve as a benchmark for the creation of smart cities. The global urbanisation index, i.e., the ratio of city dwellers to the total population, has been steadily increasing in recent years. It is highest in the Americas, followed by Europe, Asia and Africa. The city of the future will combine the intelligent use of IT systems with the potential of institutions, companies and committed, creative inhabitants. The administrative boundaries of today's cities put certain constraints on their further growth, but in the future these boundaries will no longer be as relevant. Cities in Europe face the challenge of reconciling sustainable urban development and competitiveness - a challenge that will likely influence issues of urban quality such as the economy, culture, social and environmental conditions, changing a given city's profile as well as urban quality in terms of its composition and characteristics.

This book presents an overview and knowledgeable on water resources management in Balkan countries - Slovenia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Greece, and Bulgaria. The book shows the state of the art and also the latest research findings of the different aspects of water resources management in Balkan countries with case studies that reveal the best practice in water resources management, development, and protection. Researchers and scientists from the Balkan countries present their experiences and expertise on a wide range of water resources topics. Therefore, the book is of particular interest to decisions planners/makers and stakeholders. Also, the book will be useful to experts, professionals, researchers, scientists, practitioners, academics working in the field of water resources management in Balkan countries and analogous regions.

This book explores ancient efforts to explain the scientific, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of water. From the ancient point of view, we investigate many questions including: How does water help shape the world? What is the nature of the ocean? What causes watery weather, including superstorms and snow? How does water affect health, as a vector of disease or of healing? What is the nature of deep-sea-creatures (including sea monsters)? What spiritual forces can protect those who must travel on water? This first complete study of water in the ancient imagination makes a major contribution to classics, geography, hydrology and the history of science alike. Water is an essential resource that affects every aspect of human life, and its metamorphic properties gave license to the ancient imagination to perceive watery phenomena as the product of visible and invisible forces. As such, it was a source of great curiosity for the Greeks and Romans who sought to control the natural world by understanding it, and who, despite technological limitations, asked interesting questions about the origins and characteristics of water and its influences on land, weather, and living creatures, both real and imagined.

Since the 1960s the resource-poor countries have grown much faster that the resource-rich ones. This reflects basic differences in the speed of industrialization and the nature of the political state that are rooted in the natural resource endowment. Most resource-rich countries experienced a growth collapse in the 1960s and 1970s. This book shows how policies for economic recovery must be adapted to reflect differences in the natural resource base and type of political state.

Sicker explores the political history of the Middle East from antiquity to the Arab conquest from a geopolitical perspective. He argues that there are a number of relatively constant environmental factors that have helped "condition"-not determine-the course of Middle Eastern political history from ancient times to the present. These factors, primarily, but not exclusively geography and topography, contributed heavily to establishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Middle East that have remained remarkably consistent throughout the troubled history of the region.

In addition to geography and topography, the implications of which are explored in depth, religion has also played a major political role in conditioning the pattern of Middle Eastern history. The Greeks first introduced the politicization of religious belief into the region in the form of pan-Hellenism, which essentially sought to impose Greek forms of popular religion and culture on the indigenous peoples of the region as a means of solidifying Greek political control. This ultimately led to religious persecution as a state policy. Subsequently, the Persian Sassanid Empire adopted Zoroastrianism as the state religion for the same purpose and with the same result. Later, when Armenia adopted Christianity as the state religion, followed soon after by the Roman Empire, religion and the intolerance it tended to breed became fundamental ingredients, in regional politics and have remained such ever since. Sicker shows that the political history of the pre-Islamic Middle East provides ample evidence that the geopolitical and religious factors conditioning political decision-making tended to promote military solutions to political problems, making conflict resolution through war the norm, with the peaceful settlement of disputes quite rare. A sweeping synthesis that will be of considerable interest to scholars, students, and others concerned with Middle East history and politics as well as international relations and ancient history.

This book is intended for researchers, practitioners and students who are interested in the current trends and want to make their GI applications and research dynamic. Time is the key element of contemporary GIS: mobile and wearable electronics, sensor networks, UAVs and other mobile snoopers, the IoT and many other resources produce a massive amount of data every minute, which is naturally located in space as well as in time. Time series data is transformed into almost (from the human perspective) continuous data streams, which require changes to the concept of spatial data recording, storage and manipulation. This book collects the latest innovative research presented at the GIS Ostrava 2017 conference held in 2017 in Ostrava, Czech Republic, under the auspices of EuroSDR and EuroGEO. The accepted papers cover various aspects of dynamics in GIscience, including spatiotemporal data analysis and modelling; spatial mobility data and trajectories; real-time geodata and real-time applications; dynamics in land use, land cover and urban development; visualisation of dynamics; open spatiotemporal data; crowdsourcing for spatiotemporal data and big spatiotemporal data.

Cities are home to over fifty percent of the world's population, a figure which is expected to increase enormously by 2050. Despite the growing demand on urban resources and infrastructure, food is still often overlooked as a key factor in planning and designing cities. Without incorporating food into the design process - how it is grown, transported, and bought, cooked, eaten and disposed of - it is impossible to create truly resilient and convivial urbanism. Moving from the table and home garden to the town, city, and suburbs, Food and Urbanism explores the connections between food and place in past and present design practices. The book also looks to future methods for extending the 'gastronomic' possibilities of urban space. Supported by examples from places across the world, including the UK, Norway, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Australia and the USA, the book offers insights into how the interplay of physical design and socio-spatial practices centred around food can help to maintain socially rich, productive and sustainable urban space. Susan Parham brings together the latest research from a number of disciplines - urban planning, food studies, sociology, geography, and design - with her own fieldwork on a range of foodscapes to highlight the fundamental role food has to play in shaping the urban future.

This book systematically discusses the vegetation dynamics in northern China since the LGM, with a focus on three dominant tree species (Pinus, Quercus and Betula). By integrating methods of palaeoecology, phylogeography and species distribution model, it reconstructs the glacial refugia in northern China, demonstrating that the species were located further north than previously assumed during the LGM. The postglacial dynamics of forest distribution included not only long-distance north-south migration but also local spread from LGM micro-refugia in northern China. On the regional scale, the book shows the altitudinal migration pattern of the three dominant tree genera and the role of topographical factors in the migration of the forest-steppe border. On the catchment scale, it analyzes Huangqihai Lake, located in the forest-steppe ecotone in northern China, to indentify the local forest dynamics response to the Holocene climatic change. It shows that local forests have various modes of response to the climate drying, including shrubland expansion, savannification and replacement of steppe. In brief, these studies at different space-time scales illustrate the effects of climate, topography and other factors on forest migration.

This new textbook and lab manual on remote sensing and digital image processing of natural resources includes numerous practical, problem-solving exercises, and case studies that use the free and open-source platform R. It explains the basic concepts of remote sensing and its multidisciplinary applications using R language and R packages, and engages students in learning theory through hands-on real-life projects. Features 1. Aims to expand theoretical approaches of remote sensing and digital image processing through multidisciplinary applications using R and R packages. 2. Engages students in learning theory through hands-on real-life projects. 3. All chapters are structured with solved exercises and homework and encourages readers to understand the potential and the limitations of the environments. 4. Covers data analysis in free and open-source (FOSS) R platform, which makes remote sensing accessible to anyone with a computer. 5. Explores current trends and developments in remote sensing in homework assignments with data to further explore the use of free multispectral remote sensing data, including very high spatial resolution information. Students in upper-level undergraduate or graduate programs with Remote Sensing Course and Geoprocessing Course, civil and environmental engineering, geosciences, and environmental sciences, electrical engineering, biology, hydrology, agriculture Engineering. Professionals in different areas who use remote sensing and image processing. Students in upper-level undergraduate or graduate programs taking courses in Remote Sensing and Geoprocessing, civil and environmental engineering, geosciences, and environmental sciences, electrical engineering, biology, hydrology, agricultural engineering, as well as professionals in different areas who use remote sensing and image processing, will gain a deeper understanding and first-hand experience with remote sensing and digital processing, with a learn-by-doing methodology using applicable examples in natural resources. .

An annual collection of studies of individuals who have made major contributions to the development of geography and geographical thought. Subjects are drawn from all periods and from all parts of the world, and include famous names as well as those less well known: explorers, independent thinkers and scholars. Each paper describes the geographer's education, life and work and discusses their influence and spread of academic ideas. Each study includes a select bibliography and brief chronology. The work includes a general index and a cumulative index of geographers listed in volumes published to date.

This volume addresses major evolutionary changes that took place during the Ediacaran and the Paleozoic. These include discussions on the nature of Ediacaran ecosystems, as well as the ichnologic signature of evolutionary radiations, such as the Cambrian explosion and the Great Ordovician biodiversification event, the invasion of the land, and the end-Permian mass extinction. This volume set provides innovative reviews of the major evolutionary events in the history of life from an ichnologic perspective. Because the long temporal range of trace fossils has been commonly emphasized, biogenic structures have been traditionally overlooked in macroevolution. However, comparisons of ichnofaunas through geologic time do reveal the changing ecology of organism-substrate interactions. The use of trace fossils in evolutionary paleoecology represents a new trend that is opening a window for our understanding of major evolutionary radiations and mass extinctions. Trace fossils provide crucial evidence for the recognition of spatial and temporal patterns and processes associated with paleoecologic breakthroughs.

Combining impartial analysis with reliable facts and figures, this fully revised and updated 24th edition provides up-to-date commentary on these vast North American nations. General Survey Essays by leading experts analyse topics of regional importance, including: - US-Canadian integration, US foreign policy in the Arctic region, and the COVID-19 pandemic in North America. Country Surveys Each country is dealt with in greater detail within its own section. Country chapters include: - a chronology of political events - essays covering key socio-political and economic themes, including: recent political developments; foreign policy; constitution; the economy; energy policy; agriculture; trade; health and social policy - additional essays examining timely subjects such as religion in US politics and the US Judicial system - historical, political and economic surveys of each of the US states and Canadian provinces and territories - statistical surveys of economic and demographic indicators - comprehensive directory sections covering public affairs, the economy and society, which provide contact details and other useful information for the most significant institutions in the region.

Landscape, politics and history: the Italian mountains as a crucible of national and natural identity. This book is part of a wider current in environmental history, that explores the links between nature and nation. It uncovers how Italian identity and mountains have constituted one another. It argues that state regimes since unification in 1861 have made mountains into national symbols and resources, thereby affecting mountain communities and ecosystems. The nationalisation of Italian mountains has been a story of military conquest and resistance, ecological and social transformation, expropriating resources and imposing meanings. The wind of 'big' history was rolling through the Alps and the Apennines: State building and national identities, totalitarianism and democracy, economic development and environmental protection, scientific knowledge and vernacular practices are the substance of this book. The book starts with the revaluation of mountains as the repository of the last Italian wilderness and chronicles the discovery/ invention of mountains as wild, primitive, and rebellious places needing to be tamed. War World I permanently transformed mountain landscapes and people, nationalising both. When the Fascists came to power, the process of politicisation of mountains reached its acme; the regime constructed and exploited mountains both rhetorically and materially, on one hand celebrating ruralism and rural people and, on the other, giving mountain natural resources to large hydro-electric corporations. Having been the sanctuary of Resistance against the Nazi-Fascist occupation, the Italian mountains were emptied by the economic boom of the 1960s; only recently have the green of natural parks and the white of the ski resorts become the distinctive colors of the new, tourist-oriented Italian mountains.

David Livingstone (1813-1873) was one of the supreme representatives of the British Empire. Yet his career suffered many set-backs during his own life-time, and since his death his reputation has swung between extremes of adulation and dismissal. Were his epic journeys through Africa purely to save souls and counter the slave trade? Or were they the first steps towards bringing the peoples of Central Africa under the control of Europeans who would destroy their values and exploit them economically? Beyond these questions, there lies the puzzle of Livingstone's own character and its contradictions.
Livingstone's career was certainly an extraordinary one. Born in poverty in Blantyre, Scotland, he educated himself by heroic endeavor, later proving him-self to be a remarkable linguist and scientist. His missionary journeys brought him into contact with a wide range of African peoples, for whom he showed remarkable sympathy. "David Livingstone: Mission and Empire is a scholarly and readable account of Livingstone's life and of his achievements.