The interactions between the plant, soil and microbes are complex in nature. Events may be antagonistic, mutualistic or synergistic, depending upon the types of microorganisms and their association with the plant and soil in question. Multi-trophic tactics can therefore be employed to nourish plants in various habitats and growth conditions. Understanding the mechanisms of these interactions is thus highly desired in order to utilize the knowledge in an ecofriendly and sustainable way. This holistic approach to crop improvement may not only resolve the upcoming food security issues, but also make the environment greener by reducing the chemical inputs. Plant, soil and microbe, Volume 1: Implications in Crop Science, along with the forthcoming Volume 2: Mechanisms and Molecular Interactions, provide detailed accounts of the exquisite and delicate balance between the three critical components of agronomy. Specifically, these two titles focus on the basis of nutrient exchange between the microorganisms and the host plants, the mechanism of disease protection and the recent molecular details emerged from studying this multi-tropic interaction. Together they aim to provide a solid foundation for the students, teachers, and researchers interested in soil microbiology, plant pathology, ecology and agronomy.

This book on multiscale seismic tomography, written by one of the leaders in the field, is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and professionals in Earth and planetary sciences who need to broaden their horizons about seismotectonics, volcanism, and interior structure and dynamics of the Earth and Moon. It describes the state-of-the-art in seismic tomography, with emphasis on the new findings obtained by applying tomographic methods in local, regional, and global scales for understanding the generating mechanism of large and great earthquakes such as the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake (Mw 9.0), crustal and upper mantle structure, origin of active arc volcanoes and intraplate volcanoes including hotspots, heterogeneous structure of subduction zones, fate of subducting slabs, origin of mantle plumes, mantle convection, and deep Earth dynamics. The first lunar tomography and its implications for the mechanism of deep moonquakes and lunar evolution are also introduced.

When did life first appear on Earth and what form did it take? The answer to this intriguing and fundamentally important question lies somewhere within the early Archean rock record. The young Earth was, however, a very different place to that we know today and numerous pitfalls await our interpretation of these most ancient rocks.

The first half of this practical guide equips the reader with the background knowledge to successfully evaluate new potentially biological finds from the Archean rock record. Successive steps are covered, from locating promising samples in the field, through standard petrography and evaluation of antiquity and biogenicity criteria, to the latest state of the art geochemical techniques. The second half of the guide uniquely brings together all the materials that have been claimed to comprise the earliest fossil record into an easily accessible, fully illustrated format.

This will be a handbook that every Archean geologist, palaeobiologist and astrobiologist will wish to have in their backpack or on their lab-bench.

This book brings together contributions from groundwater researchers and scientists on underground water resources in Egypt's deserts. The aquifers' quantity and quality are evaluated in many regions of the Egyptian deserts using established methods that can be effectively employed to investigate the potential for sustainable development in Egypt and similarly arid countries. The water resources in Egypt's deserts are subject to deterioration, mainly by land salinization and water deficiency. This book presents the best management practices, water quantity and quality, and optimal and sustainable usage of available groundwater. The book offers a unique guide for all readers interested in groundwater, modeling, and assessment for sustainable development in Egypt and countries with similar weather and water conditions.

Playing a critical role in both influencing climate change and mitigating its impacts, the world's diverse wetlands have become one of the world's most threatened ecosystems as unsustainable land-use practices coupled with irrational use of water have already resulted in large-scale wetlands loss and degradation. To develop sound management and conservation schemes to assure wetlands sustainability in the long term requires long-term understanding of wetlands ecology. Yet until now, long-term interdisciplinary research into these systems has been limited to only a few systems from tropical or temperate climates (such as the Florida Everglades, and Czech biosphere reserve). This new book adds to the existing wetlands literature, providing a unique reference in basic and applied Mediterranean wetland ecology, based on results from long-term interdisciplinary research at the RAMSAR and UNESCO Biosphere site, of Las Tablas de Daimiel, Spain. Dating back to the early 1990s the research highlights changes in the biotic and abiotic environment in response to cumulative anthropogenic stressors, and provide guidance on applying this understand to sound management and conservation. With particular relevance to researchers dealing with semi-arid wetlands in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, as well as to resource managers, the book discusses the complexity of the interacting abiotic and biotic environment across different spatial and temporal scales and across various levels of biological hierarchy is highlighted, and reveals how management based on poor knowledge causes more damage than repair. The book will be of interest to researchers interested in freshwater ecology, hydrobotany, hydrology, geology, biogeochemistry, landscape ecology and environmental management.

This book is intended to complement the author's 1996 book "The geology of fluvial deposits,"not to replace it.

The book summarizes methods of mapping and interpretation of fluvial depositional systems, with a detailed treatment of the tectonic, climatic and eustatic controls on fluvial depositional processes. It focuses on the preserved, ancient depositional record and emphasizes large-scale (basin-scale) depositional processes. Tectonic and climatic controls of fluvial sedimentation and the effects of base-level change on sequence architecture are discussed. Profusely illustrated and with an extensive reference to the recent literature, this book will be welcomed by the student and professional geologist alike."

Revealing the incredible diversity of fossilised plants and animals preserved for millions of years, this book profiles 300 examples of the most common and fascinating fossils, using an entry by entry approach. By including examples from all of the major variety of fossilised life, from preserved trees and grasses to molluscs, trilobites, fish and dinosaurs, Fossils offers a truly comprehensive overview of fossils from every continent and gives a sense of the huge amount of natural history available to us in the fossil record. Each fossil is illustrated with a clear and informative colour photograph, accompanied by informed and accessible text. The fossilised plants and animals are grouped by order, then within each order by family (and, where necessary, within each family by subfamilies). For easy reference, each entry includes a table of information on scientific name, order and family, habitat, distribution, geological period and dimensions.

This monograph provides state-of-the-art theoretical and computational findings from investigations on physical and chemical dissolution front instability problems in porous media, based on the author s own work. Although numerical results are provided to complement theoretical ones, the focus of this monograph is on the theoretical aspects of the topic and those presented in this book are applicable to a wide range of scientific and engineering problems involving the instability of nonlinear dynamic systems. To appeal to a wider readership, common mathematical notations are used to derive the theoretical solutions. The book can be used either as a useful textbook for postgraduate students or as a valuable reference book for computational scientists, mathematicians, engineers and geoscientists."

This book presents a detailed analysis and synthesis of the processes affecting sediments fluxes from watershed to worldwide coastal systems. The volume provides a comprehensive overview and constitutes a systematic description of the response of coastal systems to global and local changes, like climate change, sea level, land use and land cover change. The case studies cover a sequence of coastal environments such as lagoons, bays, estuaries, deltas and beaches. Sediment Fluxes in Coastal Areas is designed for researchers, professionals and for course-use in hydrology, oceanography, geography, geology, geomorphology and environmental science.

This well-illustrated book aims to enhance observations and understanding of structural features and proximity-indicator minerals, critical in exploration. The book provides a unique blending of different content on observational and critical aspects of data acquisition, geological, structural, tectonic set-up, mineral deposit types, geophysical framework, and proximity indicator minerals. Combining these topics led to a comprehensive understanding to facilitate mineral targeting and exploration in green- and brown-field terrains. Besides field photographs, the write-up is lavishly supplemented with relevant geological and geophysical maps, tables, and case stories in field geology, making it useful for a much larger section of the geoscientific community professional geologists and geophysicists, students, teachers, and also decision-makers in geo-surveys and exploration.

Contains details on the geological units of Nigeria and the associated mineral resources. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 discusses the geology of the crystalline rocks and their regional distribution while the sedimentary basins constitute the subject of Part 2. Part 3 takes the mineral resources of Nigeria one on one, their geological environment, mode of occurrence, localities and where possible the reserves estimation. Thereafter, an account of the previous and current mining policies (including that of petroleum) of the Nigerian government is given and goes ahead to list some specific investment opportunities in the solid minerals sector.

This 32-chapter volume represents the core of several oral and poster presentations made at the conference. In addition to Introduction and Conclusion sections, the book is thematically divided into 7 sections, namely, 1) Land Use and Farming Systems, 2) Effects of Climate Change on Crop Yield, 3) Soil Nutrient and Water Management for Carbon Sequestration, 4) Rehabilitation of Degraded Lands through Forestry and Agroforestry, 5) Management of Animal Production for Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 6) Smallholder Adaptation to Climate Change, and 7) Economic, Social and Policy Issues. It addresses these themes in the context of sustainable intensification (SI). It implies increasing agronomic production from the existing land while improving/restoring its quality and decreasing the C or environmental footprint. Simply put, SI means producing more from less.

The book starts with an introduction on silicon isotopes and related analytical methods, and explains the mechanisms of silicon isotope fractionation. Silicon isotope distributions in lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere are shown based on results from field studies, and silicon isotope relevance for applications are presented.

Fertilizers have been used extensively around the globe since the Green Revolution, due to the high subsidies. However, extensive fertilizer use exacerbates soil degradation and causes yield stagnation, and as a result threatens food security and soil sustainability, especially in developing countries. This means that sustainable soil and environmental management are vital to provide food and nutritional security for present and future generations. This has led to the International Union of Soil Science (IUSS) declaring 2015-2024 the International Decade of Soils. This book focuses on the impact of sustainable management of soil and environment on improving the functioning of soil-ecosystems and agronomic productivity, and also discusses food security, nutrient cycling, recent advances in INM technologies, eco-friendly cultivation, agricultural practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as conservation agriculture and its effects, and strategies for soil sustainability. Offering a comprehensive overview of management in the context of the sustainability of soil and the agroecosystems that it supports, it demonstrates the options available and provides insights into restoring soil health and matching soil nutrient supply with crop demand to ensure nutritional security in an eco-friendly environment.

Gold-guarding griffins, Cyclopes, killer lakes, man-eating birds, and "fire devils" from the sky-such wonders have long been dismissed as fictional. Now, thanks to the richly interdisciplinary field of geomythology, researchers are taking a second look. It turns out that these and similar tales, which originated in pre-literate societies, contain surprisingly accurate, pre-scientific intuitions about startling or catastrophic earth-based phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the unearthing of bizarre animal bones. Geomythology: How Common Stories Reflect Earth Events provides an accessible, engaging overview of this hybrid discipline. The introductory chapter surveys geomythology's remarkable history and its core concepts, while the second and third chapters analyze the geomythical resonances of universal earth tales about dragons and giants. Chapter 4 narrows the focus to regional stories and discusses the ways these and other myths have influenced legends about griffins, Cyclopes, and other iconic creatures. The final chapter considers future avenues of research in geomythology, including geohazard management, geomythology databases, geomythical "cold cases," and ways the discipline might eventually set, rather than merely support, research agendas in science. Thus, the book constitutes a valuable asset for scientists and lay readers alike, particularly in a time of growing interest in monsters, massive climate change, and natural disasters.

Soils into which crop plants root and from which they obtain essential minerals and water contain huge arrays of microbes. Many have highly beneficial effects on crop growth and productivity, others are pathogens causing diseases and losses to yield and quality, a few microbes offer protection from these pathogenic forms and others have little or no effect. These intimate and often complex inter-relationships are being explored with increasing success providing exciting opportunities for increasing crop yields and quality in sustainable harmony with the populations of beneficial soil microbes and to the detriment of pathogens. This book explores current knowledge for each of these aspects of soil microbiology and indicates where future progress is most likely to aid in increasing crop productivity by means which are environmentally benign and beneficial.

Phytoplasma III is the last of three books in the series covering all the aspects of phytoplasma-associated diseases. Phytoplasmas are a major limiting factor in the quality and productivity of many ornamental, horticultural and economically important agriculture crops worldwide, and losses due to phytoplasma diseases have disastrous consequences for farming communities. As there is no effective cure for these diseases, management strategies focus-on exclusion, minimizing their spread by insect vectors and propagation materials, and developing host plant resistance. This book provides an update on genomics, effectors and pathogenicity factors toward a better understanding of phytoplasma-host metabolic interactions. It offers a comprehensive overview of biological, serological and molecular characterization of the phytoplasmas, including recently developed approaches in diagnostics, such as transcriptomics studies, which have paved the way for analyzing the gene expression pattern in phytoplasmas on infection and revealed the up-regulation of genes associated with hormonal response, transcription factors, and signaling genes. Although phytoplasmas remain the most poorly characterized pathogens, recent studies have identified virulence factors that induce typical disease symptoms and have characterized the unique reductive evolution of the genome. Reviewing the advances in cultivation in axenic media together with the perspectives for future research to reduce the global incidence of these pathogens and the associated agricultural losses, the book is a valuable resource for plant pathologists, researchers in agriculture and PhD students.

This book presents a systematic attempt to generalize several fundamental physical laws related to subsurface fluid flow that are important for a number of contemporary applications in the areas of hydrogeology, reservoir engineering and rock mechanics. It also covers the history of discovering these physical laws, their respective scope of validity, and their generalizations or extensions. The physical laws discussed include Darcy's law, Darcy-Buckingham law and Hooke's law. Darcy's law is the fundamental law for subsurface fluid flow. For low-permeability media, it is not always adequate because of the strong fluid-solid interaction. Though the Darcy-Buckingham law is often used for modeling subsurface multiphase flow, it is only valid under the local equilibrium condition. This condition does not hold in many cases, especially when fingering flow occurs. It is well known that subsurface fluid flow is coupled with mechanical deformation of subsurface media; in some applications, this coupling can play a dominant role. The continuum-scale elastic deformation of natural rock, however, does not always follow the traditional form of Hooke's law. The book also presents applications of the proposed generalizations of the physical laws to several important engineering projects.

The agricultural world has changed significantly during the last years. The excessive use of heavy machinery, waste disposal, the use of agrochemicals and new soil cultivation means led to severe problems, which agricultural engineers have to cope with in order to prevent soil from permanent irreversible damage.

This Soil Biology volume will update readers on several cutting-edge aspects of sustainable soil engineering including topics such as: soil compaction, soil density increases, soil disturbance and soil fragmentation; soil tillage machineries and optimization of tillage tools; soil traffic and traction, effects of heavy agricultural machines, the use of robotics in agriculture and controlled traffic farming; mechanical weed control, the characterization of soil variability and the recycling of compost and biosolids in agricultural soils.

The newspaper advertisement for volunteers to accompany Ernest Shackleton on his planned traverse of Antarctica in 1914 was frank in its offering. "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success." Still, hundreds applied. There were few chances left to be the first to reach the last challenge on Earth. As the 20th Century came of age, explorers had uncovered most of the world's mysteries, sailing to the far corners of the globe, ascending many of its most forbidding peaks, crossing its greatest deserts and penetrating its thickest jungles. Frozen, alien, inhospitable, dangerous, and close to impossible to reach, there were only two tiny dots on the globe that human beings had not yet set foot on--the North and South Poles. The Greatest Polar Exploration Stories Ever Told is a visceral, exciting and stunning collection of twelve stories recounting the bravery, resoluteness, and strength of the men who willingly traversed frozen hells to be the first to reach the North or South Pole. It is a collection that will both inspire and inform--and answer questions about the limits of human endurance. Many men would die during their challenging, frozen journeys, and their deaths were not pleasant. Yet they continued to try again. Here are stories, wrought by the challenging landscape and weather, that made these explorers household names and heroes: Peary, Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton, Franklin, Cherry-Garrard, Scott, Kane, Cook--and others lost to history whose bravery was nonetheless as admirable. Each of these men knew success would bring glory for their countries and financial security and fame and eminent places in history for themselves. Each knew also the odds of success were slim and the chance of dying great. Nations held their collective breaths for news of each expedition and those years later were termed the Heroic Age of Exploration--there were simply no other endeavors that captured the world's attention the various races to the poles. The Greatest Polar Exploration Stories Ever Told recaptures the spirit, drama, and tragedy of a time in history that will never come again.

This book is the collection of papers from the latest International Uranium Mining and Hydrogeology Conference (UMH VII) held in September 2014, in Freiberg, Germany. It is divided to five sessions: Uranium Mining, Uranium and Phosphates, Clean-up technologies for water and soil. Uranium and daughter nuclides and basic research and modeling. Each session covers a wide range of related topic and provides readers with up to date research and solutions on those matters.

Geostatistics is a common tool in reservoir characterization. Written from the basics of statistics, this book covers only those topics that are needed for the two goals of the text: to exhibit the diagnostic potential of statistics and to introduce the important features of statistical modelling. This revised edition contains expanded discussions of some materials, in particular conditional probabilities, Bayes Theorem, correlation, and Kriging. The coverage of estimation, variability, and modelling applications have been updated. Seventy examples illustrate concepts and show the role of geology for providing important information for data analysis and model building. Four reservoir case studies conclude the presentation, illustrating the application and importance of the earlier material. This book aims to help petroleum professionals develop more accurate models, leading to lower sampling costs. It is an ideal book for petroleum engineers, geoscientists, hydrologists, and faculty and students in these and related fields.

Hakan Wallander is a professor in Soil Biology and the reader is guided through the fascinating world below ground. The book has a free form and the author mixes scientific facts with personal stories from active research experiences and everyday life.The main focus is to make the reader aware of the vast biodiversity that exists in the soil, and to describe the important processes provided by the soil organisms. Reflections are made on how dependent we are on living soils, and how vulnerable the soil is if managed in a wrong way. The importance of soils as carbon sinks and reflections about the possible influence of soils for taste and quality of food and wine is also covered. The book is illustrated with photographs and every picture has a legend that stands on its own. In this way the reader will have an easy way into the book, and the main aim is to gain new readers to a subject that is immensely important, but not very attractive to laypersons."

Granitic rocks are a major component of the continental crust and the many and complex problems of their origin that have challenged geologists over some 200 years still are presenting challenges today. Current ideas of granite formation involve lower crustal melting, segregation, ascent (as dykes or diapirs) and emplacement in the upper crust.In this book we suggest an alternative model for the origin of granite in terms of in-situ meltingintracrustal convection that physically determines the process from partial melting of mid-upper crustal rocks to formation of a convecting magma layer. We illustrate the model using the geological, geochemical and geophysical studies from Australia, North and South America, Europe and China, and conclude that heat convection within a crustal partial melting layer is essential for formation of granite magma and that without convection, partial melting of rocks produces migmatites rather than granites.