![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > The hydrosphere > Hydrology (freshwater)
This is an invitation to readers to ponder universal questions about human relations with rivers and water for the precarious times of the Anthropocene. The book asks how humans can learn through sensory embodied encounters with local waterways that shape the architecture of cities and make global connections with environments everywhere. The book considers human becomings with urban waterways to address some of the major conceptual challenges of the Anthropocene, through stories of trauma and healing, environmental activism, and encounters with the living beings that inhabit waterways. Its unique contribution is to bring together Australian Aboriginal knowledges with contemporary western, new materialist, posthuman and Deleuzean philosophies, foregrounding how visual, creative and artistic forms can assist us in thinking beyond the constraints of western thought to enable other modes of being and knowing the world for an unpredictable future. Riverlands of the Anthropocene will be of particular interest to those studying the Anthropocene through the lenses of environmental humanities, environmental education, philosophy, ecofeminism and cultural studies.
Whether processes in the natural world are dependent or independent of the scale at which they operate is one of the major issues in hydrologic science. In this volume, leading hydrologists present their views on the role of scale effects in hydrologic phenomena occurring in a range of field settings, from the land surface to deep fractured rock. Self-contained and thought-provoking chapters cover both theoretical and applied hydrology. They provide critical insights into important topics such as general circulation models, floods, river networks, vadose zone processes, groundwater transport, and fluid flow through fractured media. This book is intended as an accessible introduction for graduate students and researchers to some of the most significant questions and challenges that will face hydrologic science in the twenty-first century.
In Wetlands and Western Cultures: Denigration to Conservation, Rod Giblett examines the portrayal of wetlands in Western culture and argues for their conservation. Giblett's analysis of the wetland motif in literature and the arts, including in Beowulf and the writings of Tolkien and Thoreau, demonstrates two approaches to wetlands-their denigration as dead or their commendation as living waters with a potent cultural history.
This volume is of great importance to humans and other living organisms. The study of water quality draws information from a variety of disciplines including chemistry, biology, mathematics, physics, engineering, and resource management. University training in water quality is often limited to specialized courses in engineering, ecology, and fisheries curricula. This book also offers a basic understanding of water quality to professionals who are not formally trained in the subject. The revised third edition updates and expands the discussion, and incorporates additional figures and illustrative problems. Improvements include a new chapter on basic chemistry, a more comprehensive chapter on hydrology, and an updated chapter on regulations and standards. Because it employs only first-year college-level chemistry and very basic physics, the book is well-suited as the foundation for a general introductory course in water quality. It is equally useful as a guide for self-study and an in-depth resource for general readers.
Rising at 11,750 feet in the Sangre de Cristo range and snaking 926 miles through New Mexico and Texas to the Rio Grande, the Pecos River is one of the most storied waterways in the American West. It is also one of the most troubled. In 1942, the National Resources Planning Board observed that the Pecos River basin ""probably presents a greater aggregation of problems associated with land and water use than any other irrigated basin in the Western U.S."" In the twenty-first century, the river's problems have only multiplied. Bitter Waters, the first book-length study of the entire Pecos, traces the river's environmental history from the arrival of the first Europeans in the sixteenth century to today. Running clear at its source and turning salty in its middle reach, the Pecos River has served as both a magnet of veneration and an object of scorn. Patrick Dearen, who has written about the Pecos since the 1980s, draws on more than 150 interviews and a wealth of primary sources to trace the river's natural evolution and man's interaction with it. Irrigation projects, dams, invasive saltcedar, forest proliferation, fires, floods, flow decline, usage conflicts, water quality deterioration - Dearen offers a thorough and clearly written account of what each factor has meant to the river and its prospects. As fine-grained in detail as it is sweeping in breadth, the picture Bitter Waters presents is sobering but not without hope, as it also extends to potential solutions to the Pecos River's problems and the current efforts to undo decades of damage. Combining the research skills of an accomplished historian, the investigative techniques of a veteran journalist, and the engaging style of an award-winning novelist, this powerful and accessible work of environmental history may well mark a turning point in the Pecos's fortunes.
Rivers have traditionally been revered by the people of the Indian subcontinent, though in recent decades, the region's rivers have deteriorated dramatically due to economic progress and gross mismanagement. Dams and ill-advised embankments strangle the Ganges and its sacred tributaries. Rivers have become sewage channels for a burgeoning population. Dirty, Sacred Rivers explores South Asia's looming water crisis, tracing a journey through the vast watershed of the Ganges, one of the great rivers of South Asia and to many people the holiest. To tell the story of this river basin, Cheryl Colopy treks to high mountain glaciers with hydrologists; bumps around the rough embankments of India's poorest state in a jeep with social workers; and takes a boat excursion through the Sundarbans, the mangrove forests at the end of the Ganges watershed. She lingers in key places and hot spots in the debate over water: * Delhi-a megacity on the banks of one the Ganges' most revered tributaries, the Yamuna-and a paradigm of water mismanagement * Bihar, where the Buddha gained enlightenment. It's now India's poorest, most crime-ridden state, thanks largely to the blunders of engineers who tried to tame powerful Himalayan rivers with embankments but instead created annual floods * Kathmandu-the home of one of the most elegant and ancient traditional water systems on the subcontinent, now the site of a water development boondoggle * The Nepal Himalaya, whose sweeping glaciers are starting to melt, threatening villagers in the high mountains A first-person narrative holds together disparate places and issues. The reader meets a cast of characters, ranging from the most humble members of South Asian society to engineers and former ministers. Some of these men and women are heroes, bucking current trends, trying to find rational ways to manage rivers and water. They are reviving ingenious methods of water management that thrived for centuries in South Asia and may point the way to water sustainability and healthy rivers.
This book is the first to explore in detail the systematics and taxonomy of the digenean fauna of fish in Indian marine waters. It includes morphological descriptions of 648 species in 190 genera and 30 families. The figures from the original publications are enhanced and made more attractive. Each description is accompanied by information on hosts and distribution. Digenetic trematodes, usually known as Digeneans, are the most diverse group of metazoan parasites of marine fishes. They are parasitic flatworms (Phylum Platyhelminthes) with a complex life-cycle and as adults inhabit mainly the alimentary system and associated organs, but also occur in the blood, under the scales, in the body cavity and in the gall and urinary bladders. Keys to families, genera and species are provided, except for a few large and controversial genera, where morphological characters are insufficient for identification. Although there is extensive literature on Digeneans, it is scattered and largely in obscure local journals. Bringing together most of the primary literature on the subject, this book provides a primer for further study and a starting point for the use of modern molecular methods for the fauna of this region. Unique in its scope, it is a valuable resource for students, professional parasitologists and ecologists as well as fishery and wildlife biologists.
Mathematical models are the effective tool to solve different tasks predicting pollutant movement. The finite difference method is the oldest, but still remains widely used in hydrogeological practice. However, this method is not very useful to construct the new transport models because it cannot approximate the shape of remediation elements exactly. Therefore the book is concerned with the FEM (Finite Element Method) and BEM (Boundary Element Method), and also with the comparison of advantages of these methods in groundwater hydrology. The combination of the BEM and the random-walk particle tracking method, which seems to be a very useful tool to model the spread of pollution in groundwater, are also presented. The computer programmes have been developed on the basis of the theoretical backgrounds of these methods. They use the Visual C++ programming language for Windows 95/NT platform and will be included in the book.
It presents a new approach to set fish quota based on holistic ecosystem modeling (the CoastWeb-model) and also a plan to optimize a sustainable management of the Baltic Sea including a cost-benefit analysis. This plan accounts for the production of prey and predatory fish under different environmental conditions, professional fishing, recreational fishing and fish cage farm production plus an analysis of associated economic values. Several scenarios and remedial strategies for Baltic Sea management are discussed and an "optimal" strategy motivated and presented, which challenges the HELCOM strategy that was accepted by the Baltic States in November 2007. The strategy advocated in this book would create more than 7000 new jobs, the total value of the fish production would be about 1600 million euro per year plus 1000 million euro per year related to the willingness-to-pay to combat the present conditions in the Baltic Sea. Our strategy would cost about 370 million euro whereas the HELCOM strategy would cost about 3100 million euro per year. The "optimal" strategy is based on a defined goal - that the water clarity in the Gulf of Finland should return to what it was 100 years ago.
In 2017 four rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and Colombia were given the status of legal persons, and there was a recent attempt to extend these rights to the Colorado River in the USA. Understanding the implications of creating legal rights for rivers is an urgent challenge for both water resource management and environmental law. Giving rivers legal rights means the law can see rivers as legal persons, thus creating new legal rights which can then be enforced. When rivers are legally people, does that encourage collaboration and partnership between humans and rivers, or establish rivers as another competitor for scarce resources? To assess what it means to give rivers legal rights and legal personality, this book examines the form and function of environmental water managers (EWMs). These organisations have legal personality, and have been active in water resource management for over two decades. EWMs operate by acquiring water rights from irrigators in rivers where there is insufficient water to maintain ecological health. EWMs can compete with farmers for access to water, but they can also strengthen collaboration between traditionally divergent users of the aquatic environment, such as environmentalists, recreational fishers, hunters, farmers, and hydropower. This book explores how EWMs use the opportunities created by giving nature legal rights, such as the ability to participate in markets, enter contracts, hold property, and enforce those rights in court. However, examination of the EWMs unearths a crucial and unexpected paradox: giving legal rights to nature may increase its legal power, but in doing so it can weaken community support for protecting the environment in the first place. The book develops a new conceptual framework to identify the multiple constructions of the environment in law, and how these constructions can interact to generate these unexpected outcomes. It explores EWMs in the USA and Australia as examples, and assesses the implications of creating legal rights for rivers for water governance. Lessons from the EWMs, as well as early lessons from the new 'river persons,' show how to use the law to improve river protection and how to begin to mitigate the problems of the paradox.
This book presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art research on water treatment methods for the removal of cyanobacteria, taste and odour compounds, and cyanotoxins. The topics covered include practically all technologies that are currently used or are in a state of research and development e.g. membrane filtration, adsorption, biological treatment, chemical disinfection-oxidation, advanced oxidation processes, reviewing their effects on cyanotoxins with regards to degradation, detoxification, mineralization and relative mechanisms. The book highlights strong and weak points regarding the applicability of these techniques on a large scale, discusses issues regarding the quality of treated water, and identifies research gaps and future research needs on the topic. Topics covered include: * Introduction to cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins * Cyanotoxins and human health * Physical treatment for the removal of cyanobacteria/cyanotoxins * Biological treatment for the destruction of cyanobacteria/cyanotoxins * Conventional disinfection and/or oxidation processes * Advanced oxidation processes * Removal and/or destruction of taste and odour compounds. * Integrated drinking water processes. * Transformation products of cyanobacterial metabolites during water treatment. The book concludes with a section of case studies and real life examples, followed by a review of the research gaps and future perspectives. This book has been developed within the frame of the COST-funded CYANOCOST Action http://cyanocost.com/index.php and is edited by experienced scientists in the field. Chapters are authoritative and written by an internationally recognized team of experts in specific research topics related to water treatment for purification from cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins.
This book, first published in 1984, has both a geomorphic and a hydrologic message. It examines and analyses the role of groundwater in landscapes in a series of articles by authors of diverse backgrounds and experience.
First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Vadose Zone Hydrology describes the elements of the physical processes most often encountered by hydrogeologists and ground-water engineers in their vadose zone projects. It illustrates the application of soil physics to practical problems relevant to the characterization and monitoring of the vadose zone. It includes an introduction to physical processes, including basic flow theory, and provides examples of important field-scale processes that must be recognizable by hydrogeologists. Considerable attention is given to the concepts of recharge, including how it is most accurately evaluated in the vadose zone. Field and laboratory methods for characterizing hydraulic properties in the vadose zone are also covered, and case studies illustrating these methods are provided. New and emerging technologies for monitoring the vadose zone, particularly for the purpose of detecting contaminants, are highlighted. In the last section of the book, additional case studies are presented, demonstrating applications related to seepage detection, landfill monitoring, and soil gas investigations. This book is written from the perspective of hydrogeologists and is designed to be directly applicable and to maintain continuity and consistency between chapters. It will be an invaluable primer for environmental or geotechnical consultants, regulators, or students who have no prior formal academic training in unsaturated flow concepts. Because the text contains some of the latest advances in this field, it will be an excellent reference for geologists and engineers currently working on problems of vadose zone hydrology.
Stretching along 156 miles of Florida's East Coast, the Indian River Lagoon contains the St. Lucie estuary, the Mosquito Lagoon, Banana River Lagoon, and the Indian River. Nineteen canals and five man-made inlets have dramatically reshaped the region in the past two centuries, challenging the most biologically diverse estuarine system in the United States. Indian River Lagoon traces the winding story of the waterway, showing how humans have altered the area to fit their needs and also how the lagoon has influenced the cultures along its shores. Now stuck in transition between a place of labor and a place of recreation, the lagoon has become a chief focus of public concern. This book provides a much-needed bigger picture as debates continue over how best to restore this natural resource.
This collection addresses the complexities of water management and the impact of environmental developments such as dams, reservoirs and irrigation schemes on public health. The main focus of the book is on vector-borne diseases such as malaria, arboviruses (dengue and encephalitides) and snail- borne schistosomiasis. These are examined from a wide range of intersectoral perspectives which encompass disciplines with often conflicting interests, for instance agriculture, aquaculture, urban development, social development, water management and recreation. The book explains developmental processes, such as the construction of man-made lakes, and addresses broad practical and policy-making issues. Most importantly, the book offers many innovative solutions to assist readers who work in the water industry, whether through administration or science and engineering disciplines. Contributions from an international team of experts provide numerous case studies from around the world (Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, USA), which illustrate both poor and successful water management. The contributors provide historical and current coverage of the environmental and health issues prevalent in the field, but also gaze prospectively on the future development of constructed wetlands, aquaculture, urban development and funding agency policies, with the view to managing water resources more effectively and safely. This authoritative and comprehensive book is written in an accessible, non-technical manner and will be of interest to those involved in various aspects of water management and delivery, whether biologically skilled or not.
This book develops the basic ideas of transport models in hydrogeology, including diffusion-dispersion processes, advection, and adsorption or reaction. While balancing the mathematical and physical concepts, it is written in a scientific pedagogical style that is accessible to graduate students and researchers in applied mathematics, the geosciences, civil engineering, and other environmental sciences. The book is organized into six chapters that focus on the diffusion equation, the transport of contaminants and other solutes through porous media, the existence of traveling wave fronts in such systems, filtration theory, the kinematics and dynamics of ground water transport, and the flow and reactions in permeable rocks. Analytic methods for both elementary linear and nonlinear partial differential equations are discussed in detail. Appendices develop numerical methods for partial differential equations, including the method of lines and finite difference methods, and numerical methods for inverting Laplace transforms. Exercises are interspersed throughout the book and over one hundred and twenty references are cited. The book serves as an excellent text or supplementary reading in courses in applied mathematics, contaminant hydrology, ground water modeling, or hydrogeology.
This volume contains original research papers presented during the Second International Symposium on the Limnology, Climatology, Palaeoclimatology, and Biodiversity of the African Great Lakes, organized by the International Decade for the East African Lakes (IDEAL). The book provides a comprehensive coverage of the large lakes of the African Rift System, touching on climate, limnology, palaeoclimatology, sedimentation processes, biodiversity, and management issues of these lakes. The papers contained in this book have significantly advanced our understanding of natural and anthropogenic processes operating in the African Great Lakes, their temporal and spatial variability, their rates of change, and the linkages between environmental and ecological systems. For example, Lake Victoria has undergone dramatic shifts in the lake ecosystem caused by the introduction of the Nile Perch in the 1950s and of the water hyacinth during the past five years. The lake also dried up completely prior to 12,400 yr BP. Thus, the hundreds of species of fish in modern Lake Victoria may have evolved within the last 12,400 years; this is the fastest rate of vertebrate species evolution ever recorded. This volume provides a comprehensive and comparative view of large African lake systems such as Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi. It serves as a basis for understanding the lakes' system history and sensitivity to processes of change, thus providing an essential tool for decisions related to the sustainable management of such precious resources. This book has been written to be of interest to a wide audience, including limnologists, palaeoclimatologists, evolutionary biology students andresearchers, as well as people generally interested in the aquatic environment.
The remote mountain loch of Lochnagar is one of the most studied freshwater bodies in Europe. It is an area of outstanding, although harsh, natural beauty, a favourite destination for hill-walkers, and a rare UK habitat for many alpine species. This book brings together knowledge gained over two decades of multi-disciplinary scientific study, with the results of lake sediment research covering millennia, to show how the loch has developed both naturally and as a result of human impact. Particular emphasis is placed on how this fragile ecosystem, and others like it, may be affected by future climate change.
The inorganic and organic water constituents, often called color-producing agents (CPAs), responsible for water color are generally referred to as water quality parameters. Utilization of water color for assessment of water quality parameters can be achieved by using the established techniques in aquatic optics attained over many decades. Aquatic optics can be subdivided according to whether the natural water body is salty (marine), inland or fresh (limnological), or coastal (often brackish). The authors describe the transformation of water color under varying natural and anthropogenically-driven conditions and, for the first time in a quantitative manner, a closed circle of issues related to remote sensing of water quality in optically complex waters generally inherent to inland and marine coastal waters. Primarily, the text synthesizes the solutions of problems in remote sensing, incorporating mathematics, hydrobiology/hydochemistry, atmospheric optics and ecology.
Hot, parched summers, water restrictions, sprinkler bans: how can we maintain our beloved gardens in such adverse conditions? Drought has become a serious issue, but with a little planning, gardeners can ease the problem and still achieve a fabulous display of color, form, and fragrance. These tips for the water-saving garden offer a variety of great ways to choose and use plants that thrive in an arid environment. Filled with magnificent illustrations, it details design ideas, soil-enhancing possibilities, and hints on watering wisely. Find out how to have an efficient container or kitchen garden, and which trees, shrubs, and border plants work especially well when it's dry. A large A-to-Z of low-water plants offers all the possibilities any gardener could want.
Numerical and statistical methods have rapidly become part of a palaeolimnologist s tool-kit. They are used to explore and summarise complex data, reconstruct past environmental variables from fossil assemblages, and test competing hypotheses about the causes of observed changes in lake biota through history. This book brings together a wide array of numerical and statistical techniques currently available for use in palaeolimnology and other branches of palaeoecology. Visit http: //extras.springer.com the Springer's Extras website to view data-sets, figures, software, and R scripts used or mentioned in this book."
2 In China, there are more than 2,759 lakes with surface area greater than 1km , and 2 the total lake area is 91,019km . One-third of these lakes are freshwater lakes, and the majority are situated in the middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang River or in eastern China's coastal areas. These lakes function as drinking water supplies, ood control systems, aquaculture and tourism resources, navigation channels, etc. Recently, many shallow lakes in China have been subject to rapid eutrophication and suffer from algal blooms. This issue has resulted in a shortage of drinking water and in degradation of their ecosystems. The control of eutrophication of shallow lakes is one of the main issues with which the local people and Chinese governments are concerned today. Lake Taihu is the third largest freshwater lake in China, with an area of about 2 2338km and a mean depth of 1. 9m, a typical shallow lake located in the delta of Changjiang River, the most industrialized and urbanized area in China. Its main function is supplying drinking water for the surrounding cities, such as Wuxi, Suzhou, and Shanghai, but tourism, aquaculture, sheries, and navigation are imp- tant as well. However, with economic development and increased population in the lake basin, Lake Taihu has suffered increasingly from serious eutrophication. The environmental issue of Lake Taihu is now a very common one, as most lakes from eastern China are confronted with it.
This book offers a comprehensive review of the current environmental conditions and chemical changes in Polish surface waters. Poland is situated in an area that was covered by glaciations in the distant past. The subsequent periods of glacial advance and retreat produced a continuous rejuvenation of the landscape, and the discharge of surplus water from this area was constantly transformed by morphological, climatic and hydrological changes. Written by expert contributors, the book's respective chapters address the impact of current climatic conditions on the functioning of surface water reservoirs in Poland, while also exploring the country's hydrographic and hydrological network and the trophic state of its rivers and lakes, their eutrophication and threats. Particular attention is paid to sources of pollution, above all, the chemical pollution of water and sediments. Together with the companion book Polish River Basins and Lakes - Part II: Biological Status and Water Management, it provides students, environmental chemists, biologists, geologists, hydrologists and surface waters managers with authoritative information on Poland's current environmental status. |
You may like...
Reason, Morality, and Law - The…
John Keown DCL, Robert P George
Hardcover
R3,800
Discovery Miles 38 000
|