Natural and Laboratory-Simulated Thermal Geochemical Processes compares a series of thermal natural geochemical events with thermally laboratory-simulated processes. The emphasis is on the geothermal events occurring in nature compared with those simulated in the laboratory, thus furnishing important information at the molecular level for such processes. The book covers the following topics:

-Generation of petroleum and its thermal cracking;
-Pyrolysis of oil-shales;
-Formation of coal and its gasification and liquification;
-Thermal liquification of biomass;
-Geothermal energy;
-Thermal generation of fullerenes;
-Thermal formation of diamonds;
-Thermal analysis of organo-clay complexes;
-Geochemical conditions for life emergence.

The Ebro is a typical Mediterranean river characterized by seasonal low flows and extreme flush effects, with important agricultural and industrial activity that has caused heavy contamination problems. This volume deals with soil-sediment-groundwater related issues in the Ebro river basin and summarizes the results generated within the European Union-funded project "AquaTerra." The following topics are highlighted: Hydrology and sediment transport and their alterations due to climate change, aquatic and riparian biodiversity in the Ebro watershed, occurrence and distribution of a wide range of priority and emerging contaminants, effects of chemical pollution on biota and integration of climate change scenarios with several aspects of the Ebro s hydrology and potential impacts of climate change on pollution.

The primary objective of the book is to lay the foundation for a better understanding of the behavior of environmental pollutants and their fluxes with respect to climate and land use changes."

Sustainable agriculture is a rapidly growing field aiming at producing food and energy in a sustainable way for humans and their children. Sustainable agriculture is a discipline that addresses current issues such as climate change, increasing food and fuel prices, poor-nation starvation, rich-nation obesity, water pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, pest control, and biodiversity depletion. Novel, environmentally-friendly solutions are proposed based on integrated knowledge from sciences as diverse as agronomy, soil science, molecular biology, chemistry, toxicology, ecology, economy, and social sciences. Indeed, sustainable agriculture decipher mechanisms of processes that occur from the molecular level to the farming system to the global level at time scales ranging from seconds to centuries. For that, scientists use the system approach that involves studying components and interactions of a whole system to address scientific, economic and social issues. In that respect, sustainable agriculture is not a classical, narrow science. Instead of solving problems using the classical painkiller approach that treats only negative impacts, sustainable agriculture treats problem sources. Because most actual society issues are now intertwined, global, and fast-developing, sustainable agriculture will bring solutions to build a safer world. This book series gathers review articles that analyze current agricultural issues and knowledge, then propose alternative solutions. It will therefore help all scientists, decision-makers, professors, farmers and politicians who wish to build a safe agriculture, energy and food system for future generations.

On June 28 through July 1 of 2006, a NATO Advanced Research Workshop was held in Kyiv, Ukraine. This workshop brought the top researchers in Fuzzy GIS together, both from NATO countries as well as partner countries. The workshop focused on how uncertainty and fuzziness can be better modelled and implemented in Geographic Information Science to help decision makers make more informed choices, especially as they pertain to environmental security and protection.

A profound meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene and an urgent search for the fossils-industrial, chemical, geological-that humans are leaving behind A Times Book of the Year * A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year What will the world look like ten thousand or ten million years from now? In Footprints, David Farrier explores what traces we will leave for the very deep future. From long-lived materials like plastic and nuclear waste, to the 50 million kilometres of roads spanning the planet, in modern times we have created numerous objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to tell remarkable stories about how we lived in the twenty-first century. Through literature, art, and science, Footprints invites us to think about how we will be remembered in the myths, stories, and languages of our distant descendants. Travelling from the Baltic Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, and from an ice core laboratory in Tasmania to Shanghai, one of the world's biggest cities, David Farrier tells a story of a world that is changing rapidly, and with long-term consequences. Footprints will not only alter how you think about the future, it will change how you see the world today.

This book offers an in-depth study of two well-known models of "avalanche" dynamics, modified minimally by the inclusion of relaxation. Many complex systems respond to continuous inputs of energy by accumulation of stress over time, interrupted by sudden energy releases called avalanches. The first model studied is the viscoelastic interface driven over disorder, which is shown to display the fundamental features of friction. In the mean-field limit, the friction force derived semi-analytically is compatible with laboratory experiments (displaying both velocity weakening and contact aging). In two dimensions, large-scale numerical simulations are in good agreement with the basic features of real earthquakes (Gutenberg-Richter Law, aftershock migration). The second model is a non-Markovian variant of Directed Percolation, in which we observe that the universality class is only partly modified by relaxation, a promising finding with respect to our first model.

Tarquin Teale, a sedimentology/stratigraphy postgraduate student at the Royal School of Mines, was killed in a road accident south of Rome on 17 October 1985. Premature death is a form of tragedy which can make havoc of the ordered progress which we try to impose on our lives. As parents, relatives and friends, we all know this, and yet somehow when it touches our own world there is no consolation to be found anywhere. In Tarquin's case the enormity of the loss felt by those of us who knew him can barely be expressed in words. Tarquin had everything which we aspire to. His fellow graduate students envied his dramatic progress in research. We his advisors, in appreciating this progress, marvelled at how refreshingly rare it was to see such precocious talent combined with such a caring, modest and well-balanced personality. He was des tined for the highest honours in geoscience and there is no doubt that he would have lived a life, had he been granted the chance, which would have spread colour, intellectual insight and goodness."

This book presents operational modal analysis (OMA), employing a coherent and comprehensive Bayesian framework for modal identification and covering stochastic modeling, theoretical formulations, computational algorithms, and practical applications. Mathematical similarities and philosophical differences between Bayesian and classical statistical approaches to system identification are discussed, allowing their mathematical tools to be shared and their results correctly interpreted. The authors provide their data freely in the web at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/7EVTXG Many chapters can be used as lecture notes for the general topic they cover beyond the OMA context. After an introductory chapter (1), Chapters 2-7 present the general theory of stochastic modeling and analysis of ambient vibrations. Readers are first introduced to the spectral analysis of deterministic time series (2) and structural dynamics (3), which do not require the use of probability concepts. The concepts and techniques in these chapters are subsequently extended to a probabilistic context in Chapter 4 (on stochastic processes) and in Chapter 5 (on stochastic structural dynamics). In turn, Chapter 6 introduces the basics of ambient vibration instrumentation and data characteristics, while Chapter 7 discusses the analysis and simulation of OMA data, covering different types of data encountered in practice. Bayesian and classical statistical approaches to system identification are introduced in a general context in Chapters 8 and 9, respectively. Chapter 10 provides an overview of different Bayesian OMA formulations, followed by a general discussion of computational issues in Chapter 11. Efficient algorithms for different contexts are discussed in Chapters 12-14 (single mode, multi-mode, and multi-setup). Intended for readers with a minimal background in mathematics, Chapter 15 presents the 'uncertainty laws' in OMA, one of the latest advances that establish the achievable precision limit of OMA and provide a scientific basis for planning ambient vibration tests. Lastly Chapter 16 discusses the mathematical theory behind the results in Chapter 15, addressing the needs of researchers interested in learning the techniques for further development. Three appendix chapters round out the coverage. This book is primarily intended for graduate/senior undergraduate students and researchers, although practitioners will also find the book a useful reference guide. It covers materials from introductory to advanced level, which are classified accordingly to ensure easy access. Readers with an undergraduate-level background in probability and statistics will find the book an invaluable resource, regardless of whether they are Bayesian or non-Bayesian.

The Baltic Sea area is an old cultural landscape with a well developed international framework for monitoring, assessing and managing its marine ecosystems. It provides a good case study for other regions where such management is being set up. The chapters in this book are based on lectures given at a summer school on the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm in the summer of 2009. They cover a range of topics, spanning from detailed descriptions of political agreements that protect the marine environment, to basic modelling instructions, to an assessment of the possible impacts of climate change on the marine ecosystem, to a reflection on the role of climate scientists and their responsibility in society. This interdisciplinary book is primarily directed at students and lecturers of the environmental disciplines to provide an overview of the possible impacts of climate change on the Baltic Sea. It is also intended to serve as a background reference for scientists and policy makers, both for the Baltic Sea area and more generally. The book is a contribution to the BALTEX programme and to the BONUS+ projects ECOSUPPORT and Baltic-C.

Proceedings of a Workshop in the EEC Programme of Coordination and Research on Effluents from Livestock

This book summarise advanced knowledge and methods to recycle waste and fertilise soils in agriculture. In the near future, waste recycling will no longer be an option because natural resources become rare and costly, urbanisation is blooming and population is growing. In theory, most waste could be recycled. In practice, most waste is wasted. Remarkable aspects include the concepts of waste hierarchy eco-houses in smart cities, microbes and fungi for plant nutrition, and benefits of legume cultivation, biochar application and agropastoralism.

This collection of articles provides a unique overview of the state of the science in the prediction of and response to natural disaster events. The uniqueness of this volume is that it comprises more than just the physical science perspective. For each natural hazard included in this text, social scientists have provided research summaries of how public perceptions are related to the actions that are likely to be undertaken when people are confronted with information about the existence of a natural hazard threat. In this book the reader can find a truly international characterization of both hazard perception and prediction. The American and European contributors provide state-of-the-science overviews of empirically-based research knowledge that expands beyond any national boundaries. This approach has resulted in broader understanding of what is currently known about predicting natural hazard events and predicting how those events, or warnings of them, will be responded to by different types of societies.

The main objective of this research is to investigate the governing processes and characteristics that drive morphodynamic evolution in alluvial estuaries by application of a process-based numerical model (Delft3D). It is of utmost importance to understand estuarine processes so that impact of human interference (like dredging and land reclamation) and long-term changes (like sea level rise) can be evaluated. The research addresses a number of cases ranging from an rectangular basins to real estuaries like the Western Scheldt in the Netherlands or San Pablo Bay in California. The more schematized approach allow to study morphodynamic evolution over several millennia under constant forcing and answers more fundamental questions related to conditions of equilibrium and related time scales. The more realistic cases give insight into the skill of the approach in predicting decadal morphodynamic developments. More processes are included to mimic realistic conditions and model results are compared to bathymetric measurements over the last century. The research shows that the modeling approach is good capable of describing stable morphodynamic calculations over a timescale of millennia with patterns similar to patterns observed in reality. Additionally, the approach shows that it is possible to predict decadal morphodynamic developments in real estuaries with significant skill.

Of huge relevance in a number of fields, this is a survey of the different processes of soil clay mineral formation and the consequences of these processes concerning the soil ecosystem, especially plant and mineral. Two independent systems form soil materials. The first is the interaction of rocks and water, unstable minerals adjusting to surface conditions. The second is the interaction of the biosphere with clays in the upper parts of alteration profiles.

The authors have synthesized 16 years of geological and geophysical studies which document an 85-km-wide impact crater buried 500 m beneath Chesapeake Bay in south eastern Virginia, USA. In doing so, they have integrated extensive seismic reflection profiling and deep core drilling to analyze the structure, morphology, gravimetrics, sedimentology, petrology, geochemistry, and paleontology of this submarine structure. Of special interest are a detailed comparison with other terrestrial and extraterrestrial craters, as well as a conceptual model and computer simulation of the impact. The extensive illustrations encompass more than 150 line drawings and core photographs. An accompanying CD-ROM includes selected seismic profiles, scaled cross sections, detailed maps, and downhole geophysical logs.

This book presents the materials of the XIII General Meeting of the Russian Mineralogical Society. Over 190 participants prepared the result of their scientific work on mineralogy: mineral diversity and the evolution of mineral formation (S1); minerals as markers of petro- and ore genesis and new methods of their determination (S2); mineralogy and formation conditions of deposits of strategic minerals (S3); problems of applied (technological and ecological) mineralogy and geochemistry (S4); natural stone in art and architecture (S5); modern research in the field of stone and gemological studies (S6); mineralogical crystallography, crystallochemistry, and new minerals (F1); history of science, museumification, and popularization of natural science knowledge (F2). The Russian Mineralogical Society is the oldest mineralogical Society in Russia (from 1817). The Russian Mineralogical Society joins more than 1200 researchers from universities, academic and industry institutes, and production organizations in Russia's major scientific centers. The Society has 17 sections, including crystallochemistry, radiography and spectroscopy of minerals, ore mineralogy, technological mineralogy, experimental mineralogy, ecological mineralogy and geochemistry, and new mineral nomenclature classification. The main scientific and organizing event for the Russian Mineralogical members is the meeting session, organized every fourth year.

Plants often encounter abiotic stresses including drought, salinity, flooding, high/low temperatures, and metal toxicity, among others. The majority of these stresses occur simultaneously and thus limit crop production. Therefore, the need of the hour is to improve the abiotic stresses tolerance of crop plants by integrating physiology, omics, and modern breeding approaches. This book covers various aspects including (1) abiotic stress responses in plants and progress made so far in the allied areas for trait improvements, (2) integrates knowledge gained from basic physiology to advanced omics tools to assist new breeding technologies, and (3) discusses key genes, proteins, and metabolites or pathways for developing new crop varieties with improved tolerance traits.

Plants often encounter abiotic stresses including drought, salinity, flooding, high/low temperatures, and metal toxicity, among others. The majority of these stresses occur simultaneously and thus limit crop production. Therefore, the need of the hour is to improve the abiotic stresses tolerance of crop plants by integrating physiology, omics, and modern breeding approaches. This book covers various aspects including (1) abiotic stress responses in plants and progress made so far in the allied areas for trait improvements, (2) integrates knowledge gained from basic physiology to advanced omics tools to assist new breeding technologies, and (3) discusses key genes, proteins, and metabolites or pathways for developing new crop varieties with improved tolerance traits.

Plant nutrition in greenhouse cultivation differs in many essential aspects from field crops and justified the development of a special publication on this subject. The high productions realised and the specific produce quality requirements ensure high uptakes of nutrients and a careful tuning of the application. The covering with glass or plastic is responsible for specific climatic conditions, which in modern greenhouse can be fully adjusted to the requirements of the crop by automatic climate control. The natural precipitation is excluded, thus, the water has to be applied in greenhouses by artificial irrigation of water from different origin. On thing and another involves that the growing conditions are more or less completely controlled. This especially holds when the crops are grown in substrates.The high uptake of minerals in greenhouses requires high fertilizer additions. The quantities absorbed by many crops are that high, that it is impossible to supply the required quantities of nutrients as a base dressing at once. Therefore, top dressings are common practice and are carried out together with the supply of the irrigation water. Therefore, fertigation is common practice and in greenhouses already for many years. Specific systems have been developed for the application of the right concentrations to keep the level of nutrients in the root environment on the optimum level for the performance of the crop.Beside the management of the nutrient application, greenhouse growers also need a close control on the salt accumulation. This accumulation is closely connected with the quality of the irrigation water. Moreover, also the addition of the fertilizers plays a role in the salt accumulation in the root environment. Therefore, choice of the fertilizers used is important to prevent accumulations of residual salts possibly supplied with the fertilizers. On the other hand, for a number of crops the level of fertilizer supply is not only focussed on the nutrient requirements, but also utilized to realize a certain salt concentration in the irrigation water. In this way the osmotic potential of the soil solution is affected and this characteristic is an important tool for the grower for the regulation of the growth of the crop and the quality of the produce. When the salinity passes certain threshold values, the growth and production of crops is reduced, but the quality of the harvested produce of some crops is improved. Such regulations are very precisely adjusted to the crops grown and to the growing conditions in the greenhouse. Another line is the development of sustainable production methods. For the main subject discussed in this book, namely plant nutrition, methods for an optimum use of fertilizers with a minimum environmental pollution were developed last decennia. In this field the development of the cultivation in substrates offered excellent possibilities for an optimal use of water and nutrients. With this growing method it has been proved that it is possible to grow greenhouse crops without any discharge of minerals to the environment. The conditions required for such cultivation are thoroughly discussed. Moreover, growing in substrates offers suitable opportunities for optimization of yield and quality, because of the adequate control on the conditions in the root environment, like the supply of water and nutrients. However, this requires a perfect management of water and nutrient supply. Not only for the fact that plants are grown in very small rooting volumes and therefore, mistakes with irrigation and fertilizer supply easily will damage the crop, but also for the fact that the fertilizer supply is complicated. For substrate growing it is not enough that some nutrient elements are controlled, like with soil grown crops, but the full packet of nutrients essential for plant growth will be kept in view. This means that the addition of six macro nutrients and at least six micro nutrients will be regulated, with respect to the right concentration and mutual ratios in the irrigation water. Physical and chemical properties of substrates essentially differ and a right use of these properties is necessary for a right interpretation of the nutrient and salinity status. To this purpose the grower is supplied with detailed recommendations developed by the research stations founded in The Netherlands. The horticultural research stations in The Netherlands developed numerous tools to the growers often in cooperation with the horticultural industries and laboratories. An example of such cooperation is the development of soil and substrate testing methods by the research stations. These methods offered excellent possibilities for a frequent control for the salt and nutrient status in the root environment. Together with these methods schedules for interpretation and recommendation were developed and adjusted for computerized information to the growers.
The book contains information about soil testing methods, in relation to a universal interpretation based on the composition of soil solution. Methods for interpretations of tissue tests are supplied. Crop response on salinity and water supply is discussed in relation to fertilizer application. The management of fertilizer addition in relation to analytical data of soil and substrate samples is presented for a wide range of crops grown in greenhouses. The specific requirements in relation with the climatic conditions and the crop grown are discussed.
The management as described is especially focussed on a sustainable production of vegetable and ornamental crops. The water supply, fertilization and the realisation of the osmotic potential in the root environment is focussed on the production of the high quality products required on the consumer market as appeared last decennia in the Western world. Such a market is characterized by diversity, quality and immediate answers to demands of luxurious productions. Greenhouse production

The main goal of this introductory course is to demonstrate how basic concepts in soil mechanics can be used as a "forensic" tool in the investigation of geotechnical failures. This, in turn, provides a good opportunity to show how to use available procedures in the formulation of useful simple geotechnical models. Geotechnical failure is understood here in a broad sense as the failure of a structure to function properly due to a geotechnical reason.

Some of the geotechnical failures selected are well known for their impact on the geotechnical community. Others are closer to the authors' experience. They have been organized into three main topics: Settlement, Bearing Capacity and Excavations. They cover a significant proportion of every day activities of professional geotechnical engineers. No attempt has been made to create a comprehensive handbook of failures. Instead, the emphasis has been given to creative applications of simple mechanical concepts and well known principles and solutions of Soil Mechanics. The book shows how much can be learned from relatively simple approaches. Despite this emphasis on simplicity, the book provides a deep insight into the cases analyzed. A non-negligible number of new analytical closed-form solutions have also been found. Their derivation can be followed in detail.

In all the cases described an effort was made to provide a detailed and step by step description of the hypothesis introduced and of the analysis performed.

Each of the eight chapters of the book addresses a certain type of failure, illustrated by a case history. The chapters are self-contained. They provide a review of soil mechanics principles and methods required to understand and explain the failure described. In some cases the analysis offered provides a non-conventional application of basic principles. All chapters are completed with a summary of lessons learned from the failure and its analysis. They also include a short account on advanced topics to help the interested readers to go beyond the approaches used in the book.

Readers are expected to be familiar with the basic concepts of soil mechanics and foundation engineering. The target audience is graduate students, faculty and practicing professionals in the fields of civil and geotechnical engineering.

This textbook profits from experience accumulated in teaching a course in forensic engineering at the ETH Zurich.

The present book is the result of work carried out over a period of about ten years by the author and his co-workers in order to describe more accurately the slow irreversible deformation in time of the rocks surrounding underground openings. To begin with, our efforts were directed toward a better under standing of the mechanical behaviour of rocks and to the formulation of more precise mathematical models for their dominant mechanical properties, mainly irreversible dilatancy and/or compressibility during creep. Subsequent efforts were focused on finding improved solutions to important mining and oil engineering problems, such as, for instance, the creep of rocks around wells and tunnels, short-term failure which may occur around an underground opening, damage and failure which take place after long-time intervals, the tunnel support analysis incorporating rock creep, etc. The book is the result of a great number of questions posed either by mining engineers or by the author himself, and of the corresponding answers (unfor tunately often only partial answers). This dialogue must certainly be continued in order to improve the models and to formulate models for other kinds of rocks, or, ultimately to obtain solutions for other important engineering problems. It is hoped that the book will also contribute to a better description, by means of mathematical models, of the mechanical behaviour of rocks."

Shear waves and closely related interface waves (Rayleigh, Stoneley and Scholte) play an important role in many areas of engineering, geophysics and underwater acoustics. In some cases interest is focused on large-amplitude waves of low frequency such as those associ ated with earthquakes and nuclear explosions; in other cases low amplitude waves, which have often travelled great distances through the sediment, are of interest. Both low and high frequency shear and interface waves are often used for seafloor probing and sediment characterization. As a result of the wide spectrum of different interests, different disciplines have developed lines of research and a literature particularly suited to their own problems. For example water-column acousticians view the seafloor sediment as the lower boundary of their domain and are interested in shear and interface waves in the near bottom sediments mainly from the standpoint of how they influence absorption and reflection at this boundary. On the other hand, geophysicists seeking deep oil deposits are interested in the maximum penetration into the sediments and the tell-tale characteristics of the seismic waves that have encountered potential oil or gas bearing strata. In another area, geotechnical engineers use shear and interface waves to study soil properties necessary for the design and the siting of seafloor structures.

GOLD: History and Genesis of Deposits is the product of an effort by the Society of Economic Geologists to publish materials that will expand knowl edge concerning timely, specific topics important to the study of economic geology and to economic geologists. A volume on gold was selected for a general review-type publication because of the importance of the gold mining industry in the 1980s. The officers and council of the Society of Economic Geologists authorized the preparation of this book on gold in 1981, and Dr. Robert W. Boyle was selected as its author. Dr. Boyle has extensive experience in the study of gold deposits. He has an international reputation and a broad interest and understanding of the gold mining industry, the origin of gold deposits, and the history of gold as a metal and ore from prehistoric times to recent. Dr. Boyle uses important publications on gold deposits as source materials to document the various pathways of geological thought over time to introduce the reader to modern concepts. The book contains a wealth of information concerning gold."