Our views and understanding of variations in climate, geomorphological processes and the interrelationships that exist between climatic changes and land surface changes, both now and in the past, have developed greatly over the last decade. This book aims to encapsulate some of these recent advances and focuses on the integration of research that has been conducted by geomorphologists and climatologists on linking climate and land surface changes. This book is divided into two main parts: Section A incorporates research that has concentrated on short-term variations in climate, whilst Section B looks at some of the work on long-term climate variability. The volume concludes with a summary chapter that brings together the various ideas that have been presented in this work and other recent research in this general field. This text will be of interest to upper level students of geomorphology, Quaternary studies, climatology, earth sciences, and environmental studies. It will also be of use to researchers in these fields.

In this thesis, coupling between the delivery of slope material into valley floors and river erosion is considered to be a factor in the evolution of mid-altitude, forested mountains. Analyses of slope-channel interactions were made in ten small catchments with particular emphasis on landsliding-erosion feedback. An original, new dendrogeomorphic approach was applied to determine the cyclic occurrence of landsliding and erosion during recent decades. The results of dendrochronological studies show that the processes studied are strongly interdependent. Fluvial erosion can trigger landsliding by undermining slope bases. Landsliding can intensify erosion by delivering slope material into valley floors. The results of dendrochronological studies have permitted a better understanding of the relief observed in areas where landslides and erosion are coupled. A scheme was establishedwhich describes the importance of coupling in the evolution of mid-mountain landscape."

Remote sensing is the study of a region from a distance, particularly from an airplane or a spacecraft. It is a tool that can be used in conjunction with other methods of research and investigation. This tool is especially applicable to the study of the deserts and arid lands of the Earth because of their immense size and their inaccessibility to detailed study by conventional means. In this book examples are given of the utility of aerial photographs and space images in the study of semi-arid, arid, and hyper-arid terrains. Emphasis is placed on the physical features and terrain types using examples from around the world. The authors I have called upon to prepare each chapter are renowned specialists whose contributions have received international recognition. To the general reader, this book is a review of our knowledge of the relatively dry parts of the Earth, their classification and varied features, their evolution in space and time, and their development potentials. To the specialist, it is a detailed account of the deserts and arid lands, not only in North America, but also their relatively unknown counterparts in North Africa, Australia, China, India, and Arabia.

This is the first comprehensive volume on cave sediments. It provides case-studies from around the world, gives guidance on appropriate applications of techniques, and their limitations, synthesizes methods that can be used to decipher complex deposits, and includes chemical deposits (speleothems) as well as clastic sediments. This book is for any geoscience researcher or student with interests in climate change, paleohydrology, karst geology, and sedimentology.

Supply of sufficient clean drinking water is often taken for granted, but it requires a considerable technical and financial effort to ensure reliable and economic water supply. This volume presents an up-to-date overview of water supply management and aims at efficient management of water supply schemes rather than design of new works. Various chapters of the book are devoted to water demands, management of reservoirs and conjunctive use of alternative sources. Asset management and loss control are also considered. Water quality and provision of water to developing communities are also discussed. Water supply management is of concern to developed urban environments as well as developing communities. The book will be equally valuable to the practising water engineer and the newcomer or graduate student in the subject.

This book draws together a series of studies of spit geomorphology and temporal evolution from around the world. The volume offers some unique insights into how these landforms are examined scientifically and how we as humans impact them, offering a global perspective on spit genesis and evolution. Spits are unique natural environments whose evolution is linked to the adjacent coast and near shore morphology, sediment supply, coastal dynamics and sea-level change. Over the past century, Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 10 to 20 centimetres and many coastal spits represent the first sentinel against coastal submersion. Scientific research indicates that sea levels worldwide have been rising at a rate of 3.5 millimetres per year since the early 1990s, roughly twice the average speed of the preceding 80 years. This trend, linked to global warming will undoubtedly cause major changes in spit morphology. Spits are highly mobile coastal landforms that respond rapidly to environmental change. They therefore represent a signature of past environmental change and provide a landform indicator of climate change.

This volume, also available as part of the collection "Geomorphology: Critical Concepts in Geography" [set ISBN 0-415-27608-X], constitutes an instant archive of esential benchmark papers and makes available in one place key published material on its area.

Soil degradation, a decline in soil quality due to anthropogenic perturbations, is a serious threat with negative impacts on agriculture and the environment. The assessment and monitoring of all forms of degradation is essential to the evaluation of negative trends and implementation of mitigating technologies. Soil Degradation in the United States: Extent, Severity, and Trends is an assessment of current trends and geographic hot spots. It not only describes the types of soil degradation, but also evaluates the processes and triggers that cause the damage.

Written by world-renowned leaders in the field of soil science, the book is thematically divided into three sections: Section I addresses basic processes and discusses concepts and definitions, land use change, and global trends. Section II provides the data on soil degradation by various processes such as water and wind erosion, salt build-up, and soil contamination. Section III summarizes the magnitude and severity of degradation and addresses policy issues in relation to economic and environmental impact. Several appendices provide much needed information on past trends and future projections.

This book is a state-of-the-art compendium that provides a ready reference and data source for soil scientists, agronomists, environmentalists, land managers, and policy makers.

This book is the first of its kind on environmental change research devoted to monsoon-arid environment evolution history and its mechanism involved. Capturing the most prominent features of Asian climate and environmental changes, it gives a comprehensive review of the Asian Monsoon records providing evidence for spatial and temporal climatic and environmental changes across the Asian continent since the Late Cenozoic. The dynamics underlying these changes are explored based on various bio-geological records and in particular based on the evidence of loess, speleothems as well as on mammal fossils. The Asian monsoon-arid climate system which quantifies the controlling mechanisms of climate change and the way it operates in different time scales is described. Attempts to differentiate between natural change and human-induced effects, which will help guide policies and countermeasures designed to support sustainable development on the Chinese Loess Plateau and the arid west.

At present, we have been living in an ice age for around 2.5 million years, a geological epoch in which there is ice on Earth and in which the curve of the global mean temperature is subject to significant fluctuations (current trend: temperature increase). At nearly 16 million square kilometers, about ten percent of the land surface is currently covered by glacial ice-and glacial ice plays a major role in shaping landscapes. This compact textbook sharpens the eye for such landscapes. It makes the forms and the shaping processes comprehensible, which the author illustrates with numerous regional examples, especially from Central Europe, such as the North German Plain and the Alpine foothills, but also from Iceland. What traces have the glaciers and their meltwaters left behind? What formation processes can be inferred? How can recent climate history, in particular that of the Ice Age, be reconstructed? It is exciting to look at current developments in glaciated areas and also to take a look at the (climate) future of the Earth. For example, the question arises as to what influence glaciers have on sea level and on future climate change. In this context, natural processes such as the ice age cycles, for which there are various ice age formation hypotheses, and anthropogenic influences in global warming must be weighed against each other. Practice questions help to deepen understanding.

With climate change and deforestation, debris flows and debris avalanches have become the most significant landslide hazards in many countries. In recent years there have been numerous debris flow avalanches in Southern Europe, South America and the Indian Subcontinent, resulting in major catastrophes and large loss of life. This is therefore a major high-profile problem for the world's governments and for the engineers and scientists concerned.

Matthias Jakob and Oldrich Hungr are ideally suited to edit this book. Matthias Jakob has worked on debris flow for over a decade and has had numerous papers published on the topic, as well as working as a consultant on debris flow for municipal and provincial governments. Oldrich Hungr has worked on site investigations on debris flow, avalanches and rockfall, with emphasis on slope stability analysis and evaluation of risks to roads in built-up areas. He has also developed mathematical models for landslide dynamic analysis. They have invited world-renowned experts to joint them in this book.

An exploration of the relationship between river behaviour and environmental change. The research involves a wide range of disciplines including geomorphology, geophysics, archaeology, palaeoecology, engineering and planning.

Delivering a synthesis of almost one hundred and fifty years of research into the Jordan Rift Valley, this genuinely comprehensive text presents a model explaining the tectonic evolution of this part of the Syrian-African Rift Valley, which may affect opinions regarding the geotectonic pattern of the entire western Levant.
Also including datings and paleoenvironmental reconstructions for all important phases in the history of the Jordan Valley, particular focus is placed on the last two million years, when numerous habitation sites, the oldest of which represents the initial spread of Man out of Africa, indicate the region was almost continuously populated.

This book appears a century after the discovery of radioactivity. It was in 1896, when Henri Becquerel reported his first results about the penetrating radiation, which could darken the packed photographic plates. The initial fascination of radioactivity, e.g., the discovery of new radioactive elements, the first real description of the structure of atoms and their nuclei, the applications of radiotracers, the high sensitivity of activation analysis, etc., was followed by the use of atomic bomb in 1945. The mushroom cloud became a symbol of destructive nuclear power. And even nuclear energy production (which provides about 20% of the world's electricity) is overshadowed by radioactive waste. However, the latest results suggest that the Accelerator-Driven Transmutation Technology (ADTT) will solve this problem, since this technique can decrease the lifetime of the fission products comparatively to the human lifespan. Practical control of fusion may also be possible in the first decades of the next millennium.

Greenhouse-induced climate warming increasingly appears to be a reality, and the warming climate will be accompanied by an accelerated sea level rise - as much as 60-100 cm over the next century. What is commonly absent in the discussion of rising sea level, however, is the role played by the subsidence of low-lying coastal areas, which can have a far greater local effect than the eustatic rise of the sea. The combined sea-level rise and land subsidence will almost certainly make the greatest impact on coastal societies in the densely populated regions of southern Asia, but its effects will be felt globally. This volume explores the concepts of sea-level rise and coastal subsidence, both natural and anthropogenically accelerated, in the form of a series of case studies in such diverse locations as Bangkok, Bangladesh, Venice, and the Niger and Mississippi deltas, as well as a discussion of the economic, engineering and policy responses that must be considered if the effects of local sea-level rise are to be mitigated.

This book comprehensively presents the geography of landforms linked to periglacial processes across Europe. The landscape of the European cold climate regions, both at high latitudes and in mountainous environments, represent the lingering, minimal expression of the glaciers. In addition, periglacial elements can be found in temperate regions, where temperatures no longer favor periglacial processes, so landforms are therefore inherited from previous cold phases. The book is divided into five parts: an introductory section on climate variability responsible for periglacial dynamics across Europe; a second part including 3 blocks on periglacial landforms in southern, central and northern Europe; and a final chapter providing a more general perspective on the impact of periglacial processes on the landscape of Europe. The book offers a valuable reference guide for scientists from all disciplines interested in cold climate processes, as well as readers outside academia (territorial managers, environmentalists, mountaineers, politicians, engineers, etc.).

This monograph deals with the part of the field of experimental rock deformation that is dominated by the phenomena of brittle fracture on one scale or another. Thus a distinction has been drawn between the fields of brittle and ductile behaviour in rock, corresponding more or less to a distinction between the phenomena of fracture and flow. The last chapter deals with the transition between the two fields. In this new edition an attempt has been made to take into account new developments of the last two and a half decades. To assist in this project, the original author greatly appre- ates being joined by the second author. The scope of the monograph is limited to the mechanical properties of rock viewed as a material on the laboratory scale. Thus, the topic and approach is of a "materials science" kind rather than of a "structures" kind. We are dealing with only one part of the wider field of rock mechanics, a field which also includes structural or boundary value problems, for example, those of the stability of slopes, the collapse of mine openings, earthquakes, the folding of stratified rock, and the convective motion of the Earth's mantle. One topic thus excluded is the role of jointing, which it is commonly necessary to take into account in applications in engineering and mining, and pr- ably often in geology too. Shock phenomena have also not been covered.

This book presents an integrated approach to the study of the evolution of the Archean lithosphere, biosphere and atmosphere, and as such it is a unique contribution to our understanding of the early Earth and life. The structural and geochemical make-up of both the oceanic and continental crust of the Archean Earth is documented in some case studies of various cratons, and the implications of the Phanerozoic plate and plume tectonic processes for the Archean geology are discussed in several chapters in the book. All chapters are process-oriented and data-rich, and reflect the most recent knowledge and information on the Archean Earth. The interdisciplinary approach of examining the evolution of the Archean crust, oceans, and life that we adopt in this book sets it apart from previous publications on Precambrian geology. The book will be attractive to researchers in academia and in industry, and to senior undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty in earth and natural sciences.

The 25 papers collected together in this volume present comprehensive coverage of all major aspects of landslide risk assessment, including the risk assessment framework, and methods for estimating probability of landsliding vulnerability and risk.

This book presents the study of limnogeomorphology, in which past proxy data such as lacustrine sediments with information on landform development can be linked to modern observed data acquired by instruments, including hydro-geomorphological and sedimentary data. Traditionally, in the field of earth sciences, it has been thought that geophysical studies dealing mainly with the present process were not smoothly linked to geological studies that originated from historical studies. Although such earth-surface process studies are closely related to those on historical landform development in the field of geomorphology, they have been studied separately. Those two geomorphology studies correspond to process geomorphology (dynamic geomorphology) and historical geomorphology. There have been some attempts to combine them; however, they lacked past quantitative records available for further analyses. In the study of limnogeomorphology, proxy data can be converted to quantitative information to be utilized in future environmental discussions. This book also covers information not only on large lake-catchment systems, but on small systems. Those include long-term and short-term and large-scale and small-scale environmental changes in east Eurasia such as Lake Baikal, Lake Khuvsgul, Lake Biwa, and small lakes in Japan, Mongolia, China, and Korea.

This text contains the proceedings of the fifth conference on karst geohazards. It presents 65 papers that cover topics such as: groundwater contamination through sinkholes and the karst surface; stormwater drainage and flooding problems; and foundation considerations and improvements in karst.

This book is an up-to-date review of research and practice on the use of vegetation for slope stabilization and control of surface erosion caused by water and wind. From a basic understanding of the principles and practices of vegetation growth and establishment, it describes how vegetation can be treated as an engineering material and used to solve erosion and slope stability problems.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203362136

Until now no overview of the Quaternary deposits of northeastern Europe has been available. This book fills the gap. It presents the state of research on Quaternary stratigraphy and geology, with emphasis on glacial deposits, discusses the general scientific ideas and gives an overview of the methods of investigation, some of which have rarely been applied elsewhere. It has become apparent that the region covered has many environmental problems, and a proper understanding of the Quaternary deposits is a basic requirement for dealing with them. The same is true for civil engineering. In the formerly glaciated areas almost all construction sites for roads and houses will encounter glacial deposits. This volume provides an authoritative and fascinating overview for anyone planning to venture into this field. In its 53 regional chapters the book covers Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, the Czech Republic and eastern Germany. From the text it becomes clear that not all the stratigraphical schemes are yet fully compatible or comprehensible. There can be no doubt, however, that the east was subjected to very extensive ice advances during the earlier Pleistocene. Also, in contrast to western Europe, there was a significant Early Weichselian ice advance, although not as extensive as the last, Late Weichselian event. The book is illustrated by 421 figures and 74 colour plates (mostly photographs). There are 23 tables, a detailed index and a list of over 1000 references, providing a unique collection of northeastern European geoscience literature, much of which has so far escaped the attention of western scientists. The volume, composed of contributions by 60 scientists, completes the trilogy on glacial deposits of northern Europe. Together with its two companion volumes, the Glacial deposits in North-West Europe and the Glacial Deposits in Great Britain and Ireland, it represents an invaluable source of information for the geoscientist, the advanced student or the amateur.