In arid and semi-arid areas, the main contributions to land surface processes are precipitation, surface evaporation and surface energy balancing. In the close-to-surface layer and root-zone layer, vapor flux is the dominant flux controlling these processes - process which, in turn, influence the local climate pattern and the local ecosystem. The work reported in this thesis attempts to understand how the soil airflow affects the vapor transport during evaporation processes, by using a two-phase heat and mass transfer model. The necessity of including the airflow mechanism in land surface process studies is discussed and highlighted.

This book is dedicated to the occurrence and behaviour of PHEs in the different compartments of the environment, with special reference to soil. Current studies of PHEs in ecosystems have indicated that many industrial areas near urban agglomerates, abandoned or active mines, major road systems and ultimately also agricultural land act as sources and at the same time sinks, of PHEs and large amounts of metals are recycled or dispersed in the environment, posing severe concerns to human health.

Thanks to the collaboration of numerous colleagues, the book outlines the state of art in PHEs research in several countries and is enforced with case studies andenriched with new data, not published elsewhere. The book will provide to Stakeholders (both Scientists Professionals and Public Administrators) and also to non-specialists a lot of data on the concentrations of metals in soils and the environment and the critical levels so far established, in the perspective to improve the environmental quality and the human safety."

The book will include chapters which will span from the role of geochemistry in the environment in general to the specific investigations on site characterization (dealing with sampling strategy, analytical procedures and problems). Specific articles will deal with health problems related to environment pollution, waste disposal, data base management, and illustration of specific case histories for characterization and remediation of brownfield sites.
* Comprehensive analysis providing background information on geochemistry in general through to specific investigations
* Provides practical insight through case study material
* Informs and updates students and practitioners on hot topics, latest trends and developments

During the past years, Saudi Arabia has been affected by particularly severe torrential rains and floods. This book presents an in-depth and all-encompassing study on the floods that occurred in the Jeddah area in 2009 and 2011, including water-flow mechanisms, state-of-the-art techniques for flood assessment, flood control and appropriate management approaches. It highlights a number of methods and concepts that can be applied in similar areas in Saudi Arabia in order to reduce and mitigate the impact of torrential rains and floods.

The establishment of relationships between sediment composition and climatic - vironment in the sediment basin and subsequent evolution of climate relates to the classical problems of fundamental sedimentology. The widely known publications by the Russian academicians N. M. Strakhov, A. B. Ronov, and A. P. Lisitsin are dedicated to different aspects of this problem. In particular, the monograph p- lished by A. P. Lisitsin "Sea-ice and iceberg sedimentation in the Ocean: recent and past" (Lisitsin, 2002) closely corresponds to the issues examined in this book. This monograph discusses in detail the environments and means of accumulations of recent marine and oceanic sediments in the ice zone of sedimentation of the Ocean, however, much less attention is given to the history of ice sedimentation, especially to high-resolution paleoceanography. In the present work the authors accepted the following basic principles: 1. StudynotonlyoftheArctic, butalsooftheSubarctic, especiallyofthoseregions, where there were conducted the original studies by the authors. 2. Study of climatic history in uence ( rst of all, - the glaciation evolution of NorthernHemisphere)on sedimentationforthe last 130ka (MIS5e - MIS1)not only in the marine periglacial environment (term of G. G. Matishov), but also in the deep water areas and on the adjacent continental blocks. 3. Imperative description of recent sedimentation environment for subsequent - plication of the comparative-lithologicalmethod. 4. Detailed consideration of accessible stratigraphic and geo-chronometricdata for partition and correlation of various sedimentary facies. Some of the above-mentionedprinciples require further explanation.

Underground thermal energy storage (UTES) provide us with a flexible tool to combat global warming through conserving energy while utilizing natural renewable energy resources. Primarily, they act as a buffer to balance fluctuations in supply and demand of low temperature thermal energy. "Underground Thermal Energy Storage "provides an comprehensive introduction to the extensively-used energy storage method.

"Underground Thermal Energy Storage" gives a general overview of UTES from basic concepts and classifications to operation regimes. As well as discussing general procedures for design and construction, thermo-hydro geological modeling of UTES systems is explained. Finally, current real life data and statistics are include to summarize major global developments in UTES over the past decades.

The concise style and thorough coverage makes "Underground Thermal Energy Storage" a solid introduction for students, engineers and geologists alike.

"

This book presents the forensic geoscience in general and, in particular, in Italy and their application to peculiar crimes. Italy is internationally relevant due to the presence of different kinds of "geo-crimes" (in the first place, environmental mafia), and is emblematic to understanding the best way to fight these crimes. This book will not only offer a new view point to comprehending these "geo-crimes", but also fresh and updated results of the different methods applied to fight against these crimes. This book is unique in that it is not a collection of articles but an individual work with the same theme beginning with a state-of-the-art of these disciplines to their international value passing through several case studies.

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.

Landslides in cold regions have different mechanisms from those in other areas, and comparatively few research efforts have been made in this field. Recently, because of climate change, some new trends concerning landslide occurrence and motion have appeared, severely impacting economic development and communities. This book collects key case studies from the cold regions all over the world, providing an overview of the general situation.

This book presents the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Integrated Petroleum Engineering and Geosciences 2016 (ICIPEG 2016), held under the banner of World Engineering, Science & Technology Congress (ESTCON 2016) at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre from August 15 to 17, 2016. It presents peer-reviewed research articles on exploration, while also exploring a new area: shale research. In this time of low oil prices, it highlights findings to maintain the exchange of knowledge between researchers, serving as a vital bridge-builder between engineers, geoscientists, academics, and industry.

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.

This unique book provides a concise account of Indian Paleogene and presents a unified view of the Paleogene sequences of India. The Paleogene, comprising the early part of the Cenozoic Era, was the most dynamic period in the Earth's history with profound changes in the biosphere and geosphere. The period spans ~42 million years, beginning from post- K/T mass extinction event at ~65 Ma and ending at ~23 Ma, when the first Antarctic ice sheet appeared in the Southern Hemisphere. The early Paleogene (Paleocene-Eocene) has been considered a globally warm period, superimposed on which were several transient hyperthermal events of extreme warmth. Of these, the Palaeocene Eocene Thermal Maxima (PETM) boundary interval is the most prominent extreme warming episode, lasting 200 Ka. PETM is characterized by 2-60/00 global negative carbon isotope excursion. The event coincided with the Benthic Extinction Event (BEE) in deep sea and Larger Foraminifera Turnover (LFT) in shallow seas. Rapid ~60-80 warming of high latitudinal regions led to major faunal and floral turnovers in continental, shallow-marine and deep-marine areas. The emergence and dispersal of mammals with modern characteristics, including Artiodactyls, Perissodactyls and Primates (APP), and the evolution and expansion of tropical vegetation are some of the significant features of the Paleogene warm world. In the Indian subcontinent, the beginning and end of the Paleogene was marked by various events that shaped the various physiographic features of the Indian subcontinent. The subcontinent lay within the equatorial zone during the earliest part of the Paleogene. Carbonaceous shale, coal and lignite deposits of early Eocene age (~55.5-52 Ma) on the western and north-eastern margins of the Indian subcontinent are rich in fossils and provide information on climate as well as the evolution and paleobiogeography of tropical biota. Indian Paleogene deposits in the India-Asia collision zone also provide information pertaining to the paleogeography and timing of collision. Indian Paleogene rocks are exposed in the Himalayan and Arakan mountains; Assam and the shelf basins of Kutch-Saurashtra, Western Rajasthan; Tiruchirappalli-Pondicherry and Andaman and, though aerially limited, these rocks bear geological evidence of immense importance.

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.

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.

Artificial Intelligence in Earth Science: Best Practices and Fundamental Challenges provides a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to AI workflows for solving problems in Earth Science. The book focuses on the most challenging problems in applying AI in Earth system sciences, such as training data preparation, model selection, hyperparameter tuning, model structure optimization, spatiotemporal generalization, transforming model results into products, and explaining trained models. In addition, it provides full-stack workflow tutorials to help walk readers through the whole process, regardless of previous AI experience. The book tackles the complexity of Earth system problems in AI engineering, fully guiding geoscientists who are planning to implement AI in their daily work.

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."

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 volume is for environmental researchers and government policy makers who are required to monitor environmental quality for their environmental investigators and remediation plans. It uses concepts and applications to aid in the exchange of scientific information across all the environmental science disciplines ranging from geochemistry to hydrogeology and ecology to biotechnology. Focusing on issues such as metals, organics and nutrient contamination of water and soils, and interactions between soil-water-plants-chemicals, the book synthesizes the latest findings in this rapidly-developing, multi-disciplinary field. Cutting-edge environmental analytical methods are also presented, making this a must-have for professionals tasked with monitoring environmental quality. These concepts and applications help in decision making and problem solving in a single resource.
*Integrative approach promotes the exchange of scientific information among difference disciplines
*New concepts and case studies make the text unique among existing resources
*Tremendous practical value in the fields of environmental quality and remediation with an emphasis on human health and ecological risk assessment

Polynyas are relatively ice-free regions when compared to the areas around them, and have been suggested as being foci for energy transfer between the atmosphere and ocean, ice "factories," and critical areas with respect to polar ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles. This volume presents an integrated, multidisciplinary review of polynyas in both the Arctic and Antarctic. It emphasizes the meteorology, ice dynamics, oceanography, biological components, chemistry, and modeling of these systems, particularly with respect to their roles in polar processes and distributions. The various interactions within polynyas, particularly between the physical forcing and biological responses, is emphasized, as are the potential changes in polynyas that might occur under a climate regime that is rapidly changing. The authors of the reviews are leaders among their respective countries in polynya research, and all are internationally recognized.
* Addresses the findings from actively researched polynyas and reports on the new understandings of polar systems that have evolved from these studies
* Includes topics from meteorology to physics to biology and chemistry, and seeks to integrate them into a synthetic assessment
* Provides material from both the Arctic and Antarctic, which is highly unusual in books of this type

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 collection of works spans the breadth of the field of geology, with many titles coming from the Binghamton Symposia in Geomorphology series. Written by some of the world's leading experts in their fields, this set is a key reference resource.

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.

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.

This book presents the concepts and tools of ice mechanics, together with examples of their application in the fields of glaciology, climate research and civil engineering in cold regions. It starts with an account of the most important physical properties of sea and polar ice treated as an anisotropic polycrystalline material, and reviews relevant field observations and experimental measurements. The book focuses on theoretical descriptions of the material behaviour of ice in different stress, deformation and deformation-rate regimes on spatial scales ranging from single ice crystals, those typical in civil engineering applications, up to scales of thousands of kilometres, characteristic of large, grounded polar ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland. In addition, it offers a range of numerical formulations based on either discrete (finite-element, finite-difference and smoothed particle hydrodynamics) methods or asymptotic expansion methods, which have been used by geophysicists, theoretical glaciologists and civil engineers to simulate the behaviour of ice in a number of problems of importance to glaciology and civil engineering, and discusses the results of these simulations. The book is intended for scientists, engineers and graduate students interested in mathematical and numerical modelling of a wide variety of geophysical and civil engineering problems involving natural ice.