Long unknown in the West, The Biosphere established the field of biogeochemistry and is one of the classic founding documents of what later became known as Gaia theory. It is the first sustained expression of the idea that life is a geological force that can change Earth's landforms, its climate, and even the contents of its atmosphere. A complete, unabridged translation has never before been available in English. This edition - complete with extensive annotations, an introductory essay placing the work in its historical context and explaining its relevance to readers today, and a foreword cosigned by a stellar group of international experts - will be the definitive edition of this classic work. "What Darwin did for life through time, Vernadsky did for life through space on a geological scale".

Techniques for Desert Reclamation Edited by Andrew S. Goudie School of Geography, University of Oxford Major world environmental issues, such as the degradation of deserts and their margins, are covered in this book. Unlike many volumes which merely analyse the causes and consequences of desertification, this book concentrates on the methods that are available to contend with some of the main symptoms of desert degradation. These symptoms include soil erosion by wind, soil erosion by water, salinization, loss of tree and shrub cover, the loss of animal resources, and the depletion of water resources. If the utility, stability and diversity of arid environments is to be maintained, then the techniques described in this book will need to be employed. The book is global in perspective and is written by academics and consultants with long-continued and diverse experience of desert environments. It attempts to present techniques for desert reclamation in a concise, comprehensive and accessible way, and assumes no technical expertise in the reader.

The Routledge Handbook of the Digital Environmental Humanities explores the digital methods and tools scholars use to observe, interpret, and manage nature in several different academic fields. Employing historical, philosophical, linguistic, literary, and cultural lenses, this handbook explores how the digital environmental humanities (DEH), as an emerging field, recognises its convergence with the environmental humanities. As such, it is empirically, critically, and ethically engaged in exploring digitally mediated, visualised, and parsed framings of past, present, and future environments, landscapes, and cultures. Currently, humanities, geographical, cartographical, informatic, and computing disciplines are finding a common space in the DEH and are bringing the use of digital applications, coding, and software into league with literary and cultural studies and the visual, film, and performing arts. In doing so, the DEH facilitates transdisciplinary encounters between fields as diverse as human cognition, gaming, bioinformatics and linguistics, social media, literature and history, music, painting, philology, philosophy, and the earth and environmental sciences. This handbook will be essential reading for those interested in the use of digital tools in the study of the environment from a wide range of disciplines and for those working in the environmental humanities more generally.

Involving Indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge into natural resource management produces more equitable and successful outcomes. Unfortunately, argue Anne Ross and co-authors, even many "progressive" methods fail to produce truly equal partnerships. This book offers a comprehensive and global overview of the theoretical, methodological, and practical dimensions of co-management. The authors critically evaluate the range of management options that claim to have integrated Indigenous peoples and knowledge, and then outline an innovative, alternative model of co-management, the Indigenous Stewardship Model. They provide detailed case studies and concrete details for application in a variety of contexts. Broad in coverage and uniting robust theoretical insights with applied detail, this book is ideal for scholars and students as well as for professionals in resource management and policy.

In the coming decades the world will need to more than double its food and feed production, almost all of the increase being needed in developing countries. This has socioeconomic and biophysical implications. Traditional component and commodity research addresses overly narrow issues at too small a scale. Rural development needs an eco-regional approach that integrates biophysical and socioeconomic work on cropping systems, livestock, the environment, and natural resources. This book contains the papers, response papers and discussion report of a five-day seminar on eco-regional approaches. It assesses the state of the art of systems approaches applied to eco-regional problems, presenting and discussing a number of case studies. Future research needs are discussed, as well as ways to improve collaboration between research institutes. The seminar on which the book is based was organised on behalf of the Directorate General for International Cooperation of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the Research Institute for Agrobiology and Soil Fertility (AB-DLO), the Wageningen Agricultural University (WAU), and the International Potato Centre (CIP). It was held at the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR), and was attended by participants from all CGIAR centres, among others.

Williams examines the efforts of public agencies to better incorporate citizen participation in the administrative process. He focuses on the effort of the Department of Energy to use citizen advisory boards composed of stakeholders--persons who stand to gain or lose from policy implementation--in its economic transition, waste management, and environmental restoration programs.

The Department's efforts to deal with hazardous and toxic wastes stemming from uranium fuel for the U.S. nuclear weapons program are examined in detail. The case study shows that the stakeholder model was effective: the advisory board was expeditiously organized, reached consensus on critical issues, and accomplished its primary mission. The board's performance was such that the Clinton administration considered it a major example of how federal agencies could be reinvented to produce a government that works better and costs less. Of particular interest to policy makers and researchers involved with US environmental issues and public policy.

Advances in Food and Nutrition Research, Volume 84 provides updated knowledge on nutrients in foods and how to avoid their deficiency, especially the essential nutrients that should be present in the diet to reduce disease risk and optimize health. The book provides the latest advances on the identification and characterization of emerging bioactive compounds with putative health benefits. Readers will find up-to-date information on food science, including raw materials, production, processing, distribution and consumption, with an emphasis on nutritional benefits and health effects. Specific sections in this new release include discussions on ethylcellulose oleogels, novel biosensors for the rapid detection of toxicants in foods, polyphenols and their interactions with other dietary compounds- implications for human health, protein hydrolysates and hypolipidemia, the effects of B-alanine supplementation on carnosine elevation and physiological performance, the effect of ultrasound technology on food and nutritional quality, modern procedures for removal of hazardous compounds from foods, the bioactive potential of Andean and Amazonian fruits, seeds and tubers, and more.

This book calls for more holistic place-based action to address the social and environmental crisis, deploying the Deep Place approach as one contribution to the toolbox of actions that will underpin the UN Decade of Action towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The authors suggest that 'place' is a critical window on how to conceive a resolution to the multiple and overlapping crises. As well as diagnosing the problem (the world as it is), this book also offers a normative advocacy (the world as it could/should be and proposed pathways to get there). A series of 'Deep Place' case studies from the UK, Australia, and Vanuatu help to illustrate this approach. Ultimately, the book argues for the need for a real and green 'new deal' and identifies what this should be like. It suggests that a new economic order, whilst eventually inevitable, requires radical change. This will not be easy but will be essential given the current impasse, caused, not least by the conjunction of carbon-based, neoliberal capitalism in crisis and the multifactorial global ecological crisis. Ultimately, it concludes that there is a need to develop a new model of 'regenerative collectivism' to overcome these crises. This book will be of interest to academics, policy practitioners, and social and climate justice advocates/activists.

Seeds of Resistance is a wake-up call. With vivid and memorable stories, Mark Schapiro tells us how seeds are at the frontlines of our epic battle for healthy food." -Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard Sun. Soil. Water. Seed. These are the primordial ingredients for the most essential activity of all on earth: growing food. All of these elements are being changed dramatically under the pressures of corporate consolidation of the food chain, which has been accelerating just as climate change is profoundly altering the conditions for growing food. In the midst of this global crisis, the fate of our food has slipped into a handful of the world's largest companies. Seeds of Resistance will bring home what this corporate stranglehold is doing to our daily diet, from the explosion of genetically modified foods to the rapid disappearance of plant varieties to the elimination of independent farmers who have long been the bedrock of our food supply. Seeds of Resistance will touch many nerves for readers, including concerns about climate change, chronic drought in essential farm states like California, the proliferation of GMOs, government interference (or purposeful ignorance), and the alarming domination of the seed market and our very life cycle by global giants like Monsanto. But not all is bleak when it comes to the future of our food supply. Seeds of Resistance will also present hopeful stories about farmers, consumer groups, and government agencies around the world that are resisting the tightening corporate squeeze on our food chain. "The latest science suggests that plants, including those of our major food crops, are engaged in a continuous interplay of responses with the environment in which they're planted. That environment is changing; climatic disruptions are accelerating. The number of seed companies is declining, and the spectrum of seeds shrinking. The group of people involved in fighting for their seeds, and a more just and healthy food system, is expanding. Old assumptions of how we grow food are falling. New paradigms are emerging. It's a time of profound vitality and volatility in the seed realm, with high stakes for all of us who care about our health, the planet's health, and the food we eat. As powerful forces circle round the ground-zero ingredient of our food, one thing is becoming clear: a seed is never just a seed. Seeds are the canaries on our climate disrupted planet. They're emitting strong signals. Let's read them."

Multiple criteria decision making is a major and rapidly growing field of research. Methods resulting from this field of research are used in this book to develop a Multiobjective Decision Support Systems (MODSS) for environmental management. The primary focus of the book is therefore on the issues and practicalities that arise when these methods are applied to support decisions on environmental problems. Most methods included in this book are derived from the literature on multicriteria decision making, decision anlysis and operations research. Concepts developed in management science are used to describe environmental decision processes and to define the functions of decision support. The author's work on MODSS has resulted in the development of a decision support package, called DEFINITE (DEcisions on a FINITE set of alternatives). A demonstration version of this programme is included with the book. This Demo Disk can be run on a MS-DOS compatible personal computer (version 2.0 or higher) having a 3,5 inch, 720 Kb disk drive and 640 Kb available RAM.

The world is getting warmer. Among scientists concerned with global climate change this is the broad consensus. How fast and by how much, are questions which cannot be answered quantitatively, but the probability of rising temperatures must be faced in a prudent manner - there is enough certainty of change so that we must anticipate and prepare before irreparable damage is done to our world. Even if it isn't going to be as bad as some people think, the actions we propose will benefit the earth and give us a kind of insurance. The root of the change is population growth, and its attendant demand for energy. While the developed world expects to hold future emissions relatively steady, the developing countries, where population growth is most rampant, will expand the use of energy as they aspire to a better quality of life. H greater energy use is inevitable it behooves us to produce that energy in the least objectionable manner, and to produce it where the cost is lowest in dollars, GNP, and environmental change.

A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence "[Flyn] captures the dread, sadness, and wonder of beholding the results of humanity's destructive impulse, and she arrives at a new appreciation of life, 'all the stranger and more valuable for its resilence.'" --The New Yorker Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula's narrow DMZ. Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an "island" of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists. Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn't let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.

Sustainable Water Resource Development and Management is a comprehensive volume on this important topic. It broadly covers the sources, availability, demand, and supply of water and its uses in irrigation and crop production in agriculture. It then delves into many specific aspects of water resource development and management, including Irrigation creation and utilization Water storage efficiency, conveyance efficiency, distribution efficiency, and application efficiency The role of water in plant systems and soil-water-plant relationships Estimating the water need for irrigation along with management strategies Water quality in agriculture as well as the impact of water quality on human health Water pricing Wetland management and water productivity Water pollution in agriculture and water contamination in urban and rural areas Examples and case studies are included to illustrate and reinforce the text, such as reviews of river linking projects, adopted water management technologies for agricultural farms, important irrigation projects (both minor and major), and more.Written by two eminent researchers and scientists in agricultural water management, this informative volume is designed for students of agriculture, researchers, policymakers, and teachers engaged in the field of water management.

This is a very exciting book. Water security is a current and very important topic, but at the same time, the term is used in many different ways. Rather than suppressing this diversity, it is embraced here and used as a strength to illuminate the various possible meanings of the term - and their implications, which are assessed in a critical way by a group of excellent authors. This book will play a central role in the debate on water governance for years to come.' - Dave Huitema, Netherlands Open University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands'Water security has risen to the top of the international agenda for policymakers and enterprise. This comprehensive and insightful volume advances our understanding of water security by drawing on leading researchers from a range of disciplines - but with a common focus: identifying pathways to adaptive governance in a context of complexity and rapid environmental change. It provides an indispensable resource for researchers and practitioners.' - Dustin Garrick, McMaster University, US Water security has received increasing attention in the scientific and public policy communities in recent years. The Handbook on Water Security is a much-needed resource that helps the reader navigate between the differing interpretations of water security. It explains the various dimensions of the topic by approaching it both conceptually and thematically, as well as in relation to experiences in different regions of the world. The international contributors explore the various perspectives on water security to show that it has multiple meanings that cannot easily be reconciled. Topics discussed include: challenges from human security to consumerism, how trade policies can help to achieve water security in a transboundary setting, the potential of risk-based governance arrangements and the ecology of water security. Scholars and postgraduate students in the social sciences working on water-related issues will find this book to be of substantial interest. It will strongly appeal to policymakers and practitioners looking at the strengths and limitations of water security. Contributors: L. Addams, J. Allouche, L.Auguste, K. Bakker, M.H.N. Bakker, M. Ballesteros, A. Bhaduri, J. Bogardi, H.G. Brauch, S.E. Bunn, I. Burgher, N. Cenacchi, K.I. Conti, C. Cook, A.C. de la Cruz, J.W. Dellapenna, L. De Stefano, P. Droogers, S. Elsawah, I. Fischhendler, A. Garrido, S. Gruber, J. Gupta, N. Hernandez-Mora, P. Huntjens, A.J. Jakeman, K. Knuppe, N. Kukuri , F.P. Lansigan, K. Lexen, J. Liu, E. Lopez-Gunn, F. Ludwig, J.H. Matthews, L. Mehta, R. Meissner, F. Meza, D. Nathan, A. Nicol, P. Obani, U. Oswald Spring, C. Pahl-Wostl, M.J. Patrick, C. Ringler, D. Rodriguez, C.A. Scott, S. Srivastava, B. Stewart-Koster, T.B. Sulser, R. Treguer, M. van den Heuvel, H. van Schaik, B.A. Willaarts, J. Xia, H. Yang, T. Zhu

These 27 articles on the economics of exhaustible resources date from 1931 to 1991.

The tropics and subtropics are home to about 75% of the global human population. Cultural, economic, and political circumstances vary enormously across this vast geography of some 170 countries and territories. The regions not only harbor the world's poorest countries but their human populations are growing disproportionally faster than in temperate zones. Some countries are developing rapidly - Brazil, China, India, and Mexico being obvious examples, while others still remain in the poverty trap. This region contains an astonishing proportion of global biodiversity; some 90% of plant and animal species by some measures. Its contribution to human well-being is astounding. It was the birthplace for our species; and it hosts a myriad of plant and animal species which products feed us, keep us healthy, and supply us with a variety of material goods. The tropics and subtropics are also a natural laboratory where some of humanity's most important scientific discoveries have been made. Such biodiversity has enormous implications for research priorities, capacity building, and policy to address the challenges of conserving this region. Tropical Conservation: Perspectives on Local and Global Priorities drew the majority of its contributors from this growing pool of scientists and practitioners working in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It introduces important conservation concepts and illustrates their application as the authors directly capture real world experiences in their home countries in preventing biodiversity loss and sustaining ecological health. Today, no part of the world can be viewed in isolation, and we further codify and integrate a range of approaches for addressing global threats to nature and environmental sustainability, including climate change and emerging diseases. Five sections structure the major themes.

* Water is a growing area of interest and a central topic of environmental history * Martin Melosi is an internationally recognized scholar of environmental history * Covers regions of Canada, US and Mexico * Broad topical scope within Water history * Uses case studies to provide real world examples * Will appeal to historians, geographers and anthropologists

This book establishes a framework for defining transboundary water cooperation and a methodology for evaluating its effectiveness, which will contribute to more effective and therefore successful cooperation processes. With the increasing focus on transboundary cooperation as a part of the Sustainable Development Goal Framework, there is global recognition of transboundary water cooperation as a tool for improved governance and management of transboundary surface and groundwaters. However, there is not an agreed upon definition of transboundary water cooperation in the literature or in practice. This book develops the Four Frames of Transboundary Water Cooperation, which is a neutral modular framework for developing context-specific explanatory definitions of transboundary water cooperation in basins and aquifers. The Four Frames of Cooperation are legal, institutional, relational, and outcome. However, we need to move beyond defining cooperation to understand better measures of the quality and effectiveness of cooperative processes. The Weighted Model of Effective Cooperation presents a first step in qualitatively evaluating the effectiveness of transboundary water cooperation. This model defines effective transboundary water cooperation and operationalizes a method to evaluate the effectiveness of cooperative processes over internationally shared waters. Effective cooperation emphasizes the relational and outcome frames of cooperation while working towards equitability and sustainability. Together, the Four Frames of Cooperation and the Weighted Model of Effective Cooperation will improve the understanding of cooperation and encourage a detailed evaluation of the quality, success, and effectiveness of cooperative processes. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of water resource management, water governance, and environmental politics. It will also appeal to policymakers and professionals working in the fields of water conflict, water diplomacy, and international cooperation.

Since its founding in 2011, the Research Center on the Commons and Sustainable Society has been at the forefront of Commons Research in South Korea. This book brings together the discoveries and insights the Center has produced in its first decade, as a contribution to international commons research and to the understanding of the commons in South Korea particularly. Divided into five main parts, the book charts the course of commons research in South Korea. Part I surveys the historical background to commons thinking through the course of its foundation as a dictator-led developmental state through to its current democratic and neoliberal status quo. Following on from this, Part II looks at how diverse commons perspectives have taken root during this period. Part III then analyses the various specific fields through which commons research in Korea has grown. After this, Part IV presents the fruits of this commons research-the alternative policies and social actions that have been proposed for Korean society. Lastly, Part V addresses the remaining challenges which ongoing commons research in Korea is seeking to address. An insightful resource for scholars of both Korean political economy and commons studies more broadly.

Professor Jha and Professor Gaiha address important issues of food security in their wide-ranging selection of the most influential published contributions in this area of study. Their comprehensive, original introduction discusses each article and places it within the context of twelve distinct themes, from which emerges a cogent view of the developing scholarly literature in this area and of the challenges that still remain. These volumes will provide ready access to major landmark contributions in food security and thus be of interest to all academics, policymakers, international organizations and students working in this area.

Are alternative energies and Green New Deals enough to deliver environmental justice? Peter Gelderloos argues that international governmental responses to the climate emergency are structurally incapable of solving the crisis. But there is hope. Across the world, grassroots networks of local communities are working to realise their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction, often pitted against the new megaprojects promoted by greenwashed alternative energy infrastructures and the neocolonialist, technocratic policies that are the forerunners of the Green New Deal. Gelderloos interviews food sovereignty activists in Venezuela, Indigenous communities reforesting their lands in Brazil and anarchists fighting biofuel plantations in Indonesia, looking at the battles that have cancelled airports, stopped pipelines, and helped the most marginalised to fight borders and environmental racism, to transform their cities, to win a dignified survival.