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Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > The hydrosphere > Oceanography (seas)
One of the greatest scientific and technological achievements of the 21st century will be to cast a light on the eternal darkness of the deep ocean and this book identifies the key determinants of life or death in its extreme environment. Dr. Erik Seedhouse examines how individuals survive free dives to 200m, how humans adapt to breathing exotic gas mixes at depths exceeding 700m, and how technological innovation will enable humans to enter unendurable realms. The book describes the problems unique to the hostile environment of the deep ocean, such as decompression sickness, discusses how the human body responds to increased pressure, and what happens when adaptive mechanisms fail. Ocean Outpost describes how the technology will evolve, how crews will be selected and trained and what a typical underwater mission will entail. The book also chronicles the frontiers of diving medicine that will eventually take humans into the midst of a world we could once only guess at.
Up to about 30 years' ago diving activity was centred primarily on the naval services, who provided a lead in the development of equipment, techniques and procedures. Apart from one or two spectacular salvage undertakings, the main commercial activity up until that time was fairly low-key work in docks and harbours. The concept of saturation diving emerged from subsea habitats of which Captain Cousteau was one of the pioneers. This led the way to commercial development in support of exploration and the production of offshore oil and gas, and I believe that my friend Henri Delauze was one of the first to mount the subsea habitat on deck and provide a sealed bell to convey divers from the habitat to the seabed without change of pressure. A remarkable feature of offshore oil and gas technology in the North Sea has been the willingness of all concerned to exchange information regarding R&D. This has had a major effect on the advance in technology over the last few years. As far as diving is concerned, it is to some extent 'Hobson's Choice'. Legal patents are difficult to achieve in this field, and the casual nature of diver employment to date has meant that ideas and techniques circulate almost as freely as the divers themselves. In addition, the advertis ing of the new technologies which one has to offer almost auto matically means disclosure of what otherwise might be secret."
The support of subsea oil and gas production operations involves the use of many underwater work systems. Divers can be used for support tasks in water depths to 300 m, but at more extreme depths operations become restrictively expensive and the efficiency of task performance is reduced. Remote controlled unmanned vehicles can replace the diver to a limited extent, performing inspection and maintenance tasks and supporting drilling opera tions. Operations in deepwaters performed by remote controlled vehicles and one man submersible vehicles, such as JIM and WASP, are more cost effective than the use of divers. The areas of operation of the more complex multi-manned submersibles and bells are today generally restricted to their use for diver lock-out operations, manned intervention to subsea enclosures and the deployment of other underwater work systems. Oil and gas exploration activity is being undertaken in progres sively deeper waters. In the North Sea, Shell have discovered a large gas accumulation off the Norwegian coast in 323 m water depth and B. P. have made oil finds West of the Shetlands in 500 m and West of Eire in 450 m. Exploration drilling is today being carried out in many areas of the world in water depths greater than 1000 m, i. e. Western Mediterranean, Offshore Argentina, Offshore Western Australia and in the Niger Basin, West Africa. The existing discoveries of Shell and B. P."
The promontory of Gargano in the southern Adriatic Sea represents one of the most interesting Italian coastal zones subjected to tsunami hazard. Figure la gives the geographical map of Italy; with a box embracing the region of Gargano; details of that region are in turn sketched in Figure lb. Because of the incompleteness of the earthquake and tsunami catalogues, no reports on tsunamis in this area are available prior to 1600 AD. The Gargano events have been recently revised in order to establish their reliability and to attain the phenomenological reconstruction of the tsunamis (Guidoboni and Tinti, 1987 and 1988; Tinti et. al. , 1995). This work fits the general purpose of assessing tsunami hazard along the Italian coasts and represents a continuation of a previous study, where the first quantitative description of the 1627 tsunami from a numerical modeling viewpoint was performed (Tinti and Piatanesi, 1996). The earthquake took place on 30 July 1627 about mid-day and was followed by four large aftershocks. It claimed more than 5,000 victims and destroyed completely numerous villages in the northern Gargano area, with the most severe damage located between S. Severo and Lesina. The earthquake excited a tsunami with the most impressive effects in proximity of the Lesina Lake where the most reliable contemporary chronicles report about an initial sea water withdrawal of about 2 miles and a subsequent penetration inland.
The Advanced Study Institute Ice Physics in the Natural and Endangered Environ ment was held at Acquafredda di Maratea, Italy, from September 7 to 19, 1997. The ASI was designed to study the broad range of ice science and technology, and it brought together an appropriately interdisciplinary group of lecturers and students to study the many facets of the subject. The talks and poster presentations explored how basic molecular physics of ice have important environmental consequences, and, con versely, how natural phenomena present new questions for fundamental study. The of lectures discusses these linkages, in order that overall unity of following sunimary the subject and this volume can be perceived. Not all of the lecturers and participants were able to contribute a written piece, but their active involvement was crucial to the success of the Institute and thereby influenced the content of the volume. We began the Institute by retracing the history of the search for a microscopic un derstanding of melting. Our motivation was straightforward. Nearly every phenome non involving ice in the environment is influenced by the change of phase from solid to liquid or vice-versa. Hence, a sufficiently deep physical picture of the melting tran sition enriches our appreciation of a vast array of geophysical and technical problems.
The NATO Advanced Study Institute on Adaptive Methods in Underwater Acoustics was held on 30 July - 10 August 1984 in LLineburg, Germany. The Institute was primarily concerned with signal processing for underwater appl ica tions. The majority of the presentations, when taken together, yield a definite picture of the present status of understanding of adaptive and high resolution processing, setting out the progress achieved over the past four years together with the major problem areas remaining. Major effort was made to obtain a commensurate contribution of tutorial and advanced research papers. It is my hope that the material in this volume may be equally well suited for students getting an introduction to some of the basic problems in underwater signal processing and for the professionals who may obtain an up-to-date overview of the present state of the art. This might be especially useful in view of the controversy and lack of adequate interrelationships which have marked this rapidly expanding field in the past. Practical reinforcement of this picture is provided by the material concerning digital and optical processing technology, giving some guidance to achievable adaptive and high resolution techniques with current processing devices. The formal programme was extended and detailed by a series of six evening work shops on specific topics, during which informal discussions took place among the participants. Summaries of these workshops are also included in these Proceedings."
Discoveries of new types of marine mineral occurrences during the last decade, and specifically the massive sulfide deposits at spreading ridges on the ocean floor, have significantly advanced geologic concepts about the origin of ore deposits in a very short period of time. These discoveries also renewed interest in all marine mineral occurrences including the well-known manganese nodules, and led to more wide-ranging and thorough examination of cobalt-rich manganese crusts, expanded mapping of phosphorites of continental shelves, and the initiation of several new surveys for placer minerals in shallow waters. The result of these activities is already noticeable in an increasingly broader variety of minerals being found on and below the ocean floor. This upsurge of scientific interest and research in marine minerals provided the impetus to organize an Advanced Research Workshop under auspices of the NATO Science Council and its Special Program Panel on Marine Sciences. The workshop was held in the United Kingdom at Gregynog Hall of the University of Wales, June 10-16, 1985, under the theme "Marine Minerals--Resource Assessment Strategies. " The timing of this workshop was propitious in many ways. First, marine surveys and expeditions to chart the mineral resources of the world's oceans had increased in number in recent years, involving a growing number of nations interested in obtaining firsthand information.
The scientific expedition of H.M.S. Challenger in the 1870s marks the starting point of physical oceanography. This ship traveled the seas of the globe pursuing a dual objective: to conduct an in-depth study of animal life and to observe the physical properties of ocean waters. Volume 2 analyzes and uses for the first time the physical measurements collected by the scientists of the Challenger to show that their surveys establish the link between ocean circulation and the distribution of the ocean's temperature. From Deep Sea to Laboratory is available in three volumes for curious readers drawn to travel, history and science. Students, researchers and teachers of physics, fluid mechanics and oceanography will find material to deepen their knowledge.
The study of sea waves has always been in the focus of mankind's atten tion. This is attributed not only to a desire to understand the behaviour in seas and oceans, but also, it has some practical necessity. Developing up-to date wind wave numerical methods requires detailed mathematical modelling, starting with wave generation, development, propagation and transformation on the surface in different water areas under quasi-stationary conditions, up to a synthesis of climatic features observed under different wave generation conditions in oceans, sea or coastal areas. The present monograph considers wind waves in terms of the most general formulation of the problem as a probable hydrodynamic process with wide spatial variability. It ranges between the global scale of the oceans, whose typical size is comparable with the Earth's radius, to the regional and local scales of the seas, including water areas limited in space with significant current or depth gradients in coastal zones, where waves cease their existence having propagated tens of thousand miles."
During the Conference on Air-Sea Interaction in January 1986, it was suggested to me by David Larner of Reidel Press that it may be timely for an updated compendium of air-sea interaction theory to be organized, developed, and published. Many new results were emerging at the time, i.e., results from the MARSEN, MAS EX, MILDEX, and TOWARD field projects (among others) were in the process of being reported and/or published. Further, a series of new experiments such as FASINEX and HEXOS were soon to be conducted in which new strides in our knowledge of air-sea fluxes would be made. During the year following the discussions with David Larner, it became apparent that many of the advances in air-sea interaction theory during the 1970s and 1980s were associated with sponsor investments in satellite oceanography and, in particular, remote sensing research. Since ocean surface remote sensing, e.g., scatterometry and SAR, requires intimate knowledge of ocean surface dynamics, advances in remote sensing capabilities required coordinated research in air-sea fluxes, wave state, scattering theory, sensor design, and data exploitation using environmental models. Based on this interplay of disciplines, it was decided that this book be devoted to air sea interaction and remote sensing as multi-disciplinary activities."
A NATO Advanced Study Institute, "Late Quaternary Sea-level Correlation and Applications", was held together with the Final Meeting of IGCP Project 200 in Halifax, Canada, 19-30 July 1987. This Volume is a collection of the NATO Keynote Papers presented at this meeting. The authors of these papers are from seven of the NATO countries - two each from France, the U. K. , Canada, and the U. S . A. , and one each from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. With these authors, we are able to assemble work from virtually all of the world's oceans with several different approaches. The Volume is dedicated to Walter S. Newman, one of the best known and best liked sea-level workers of our time who died shortly before this Conference. This Volume contains one of his last contributions and all contributors to this Volume are honoured to be in the company of Walter's last work. There are several papers from North Atlantic countries dealing with Holocene sea level in a variety of ways. Shennan summarizes data from the U. K. and makes a preliminary effort to place the data in the context of a model. Zazo & Goy present new data from the coast of Spain and place it in a stratigraphical context. Van de P1assche re assesses previous data and adds new data to the very sea-level sensitive Dutch coast. Leatherman uses sea-level information in the Chesapeake Region to assess coastal management problems.
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Vilamoura, Portugal, April 24-30, 1985
Wave breaking represents one of the most interesting and challenging problems for fluid mechanics and physical oceanography. Over the last fifteen years our understanding has undergone a dramatic leap forward, and wave breaking has emerged as a process whose physics is clarified and quantified. Ocean wave breaking plays the primary role in the air-sea exchange of momentum, mass and heat, and it is of significant importance for ocean remote sensing, coastal and ocean engineering, navigation and other practical applications. This book outlines the state of the art in our understanding of wave breaking and presents the main outstanding problems. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in this topic, including researchers, modellers, forecasters, engineers and graduate students in physical oceanography, meteorology and ocean engineering.
This book is a direct result of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held in Banyuls-sur-mer, France, June 1985. The Institute had the same title as this book. It was held at Laboratoire Arago. Eighty lecturers and students from almost all NATO countries attended. The purpose was to review the state of the art of physical oceanographic numerical modelling including the parameterization of physical processes. This book represents a cross-section of the lectures presented at the ASI. It covers elementary mathematical aspects through large scale practical aspects of ocean circulation calculations. It does not encompass every facet of the science of oceanographic modelling. We have, however, captured most of the essence of mesoscale and large-scale ocean modelling for blue water and shallow seas. There have been considerable advances in modelling coastal circulation which are not included. The methods section does not include important material on phase and group velocity errors, selection of grid structures, advanced methods to conservation in highly nonlinear systems, inverse methods and other important ideas for modern ocean modelling. Hopefully, this book will provide a foundation of knowledge to support the growth of this emergent field of science. The NATO Advanced Study Institute was supported by many organi zations. The seed money, of course, was received from the NATO Science Commi ttee. Many national organizations provided travel money for partiCipants. In France, CNES, IFREMER, and CNRS provided funds to support the French participants. In the U. S."
Scientists investigating the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere now believe that the drag coefficient, and the coefficients of heat transfer and moisture transfer at the sea surface, all increase with an intensification of the wind, reaching high values during a storm. This belief is based on the results of gradient and eddy correlation measurements in the air layer over the water, as weIl as on data concerning the effect of storms on the structure of the upper layer of the ocean and on the planetary atmospheric boundary layer. However, until recently it was impossible to explain just how the above coefficients depend on the wind velocity and to extrapolate this dependence into the region of hurricane velocities. Only by studying nonturbulent mechanisms of transfer, which play an important role dose to the surface of a stormy sea, and mechanisms of spray mediated transfer in particular, was it possible to proceed to a solution of this problem. This book presents the results of laboratory and field studies of the spray field in the air layer above the surface of a stormy sea. Since there is a dose correlation between the generation of spray and the breaking of wind waves, considerable attention is given to the analysis of data on the sea state during a storm. Su'ch data are of interest when solving a number of diverse theoretical and applied problems."
This is the first book to cover the Holocene geology and geomorphology of the 9,200 kilometers of the Brazilian coast. It is written for third and fourth year undergraduates, post-graduate students, scientists and man- ers. It characterizes the Brazilian coast in terms of the Holocene geology, geomorphology, oceanographic and climatic conditions, and the location, morphology and evolution of the barrier types. Separate chapters outline the types of barriers and coastal dynamics in each state, beginning in the south and proceeding to the north. Some emphasis is placed on the stretches of coast where the detailed morphology and stratigraphy of b- riers has been previously determined. To date, the Brazilian coastal barriers have been largely ignored by the international community, partly perhaps because much of the past research has tended to concentrate on barrier islands, of which there are very few in Brazil. In contrast, the Brazilian coastal barriers display a much wider range of types than is generally assumed. The biggest and most spectacular transgressive dunefield barriers in the world exist in Brazil, and dominate the southern and northeastern coasts. Many have never been described - fore. This volume provides a wealth of information on Holocene barrier types, evolution and dynamics. It provides managers, ecologists, biologists and botanists with much needed information on the geology, geomorph- ogy and dynamics of the genesis, types, functioning and ecosystems of the Holocene barriers extending along the entire Brazilian coast.
The systematic description of the knowledge accumulated on the physical oceanography, marine chemistry and pollution, and marine biology of the Caspian Sea forms the basis of this book. It presents the principal characteristic features of the environmental conditions of the sea and their changes in the second half of the 20th century. At present, the principal problems of the Caspian Sea are related to the interannual sea level changes and their forecast and to the estimation of the intensity of the chemical pollution of the sea and its impact upon the biota. Special attention is paid to socio-economic, legal, and political issues in the Caspian Sea region. This publication is based on numerous observational data collected by the authors of the chapters during sea expeditions, on the archive data of several Russian oceanographic institutions, as well as on the broad scientific literature mainly published in Russian editions. This book is addressed to the specialists concerned with research in various fields of physical oceanography, marine chemistry, pollution studies, and biology; solving a wide scope of problems from the regional climate to the mesoscale processes; and using a variety of methods from remote sensing of the seas to numerical and laboratory modeling.
Based on an international symposium held in Tokyo, the volume combines papers in the fields of gravity, geoid and marine geodesy. Special emphasis is placed on the use of gravity in modeling tectonic processes and the problems of geophysical inversion. In addition, absolute and relative gravity measurement in static and airborne mode, satellite altimetry, geopotential modeling, and global geodynamics are dealt with. The field of marine geodesy includes contributions on sea level change, seafloor deformation and mapping, sea surface positioning, electronic charting, and datum transformations.
Underwater acoustic digital signal processing and communications is an area of applied research that has witnessed major advances over the past decade. Rapid developments in this area were made possible by the use of powerful digital signal processors (DSPs) whose speed, computational power and portability allowed efficient implementation of complex signal processing algorithms and experimental demonstration of their performance in a variety of underwater environments. The early results served as a motivation for the development of new and improved signal processing methods for underwater applications, which today range from classical of autonomous underwater vehicles and sonar signal processing, to remote control underwater wireless communications. This book presents the diverse areas of underwater acoustic signal processing and communication systems through a collection of contributions from prominent researchers in these areas. Their results, both new and those published over the past few years, have been assembled to provide what we hope is a comprehensive overview of the recent developments in the field. The book is intended for a general audience of researchers, engineers and students working in the areas of underwater acoustic signal processing. It requires the reader to have a basic understanding of the digital signal processing concepts. Each topic is treated from a theoretical perspective, followed by practical implementation details. We hope that the book can serve both as a study text and an academic reference.
Based on a wealth of primary data collected by expeditions as well as archive data from Russia, this fascinating book features a systematic description of the knowledge accumulated on the physical oceanography, marine chemistry and pollution, marine biology and geology, meteorology and hydrology of the Black Sea. It presents the principal characteristic features of the environmental conditions of the sea and their changes in the second half of the 20th century.
This book presents an up-to-date analysis of ocean-atmosphere interaction. Well known experts examine diverse subjects such as ocean surface waves, air-sea exchange processes, ocean surface mixed layer, water-mass formation, as well as general circulation of the oceans, El Nino and Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and the deep-ocean circulation. Other areas described are basic dynamics, data analysis techniques, numerical modelling, and remote sensing. This book is primarily aimed at graduate and senior undergraduate courses in the area of ocean-atmosphere research.
This completely revised and enlarged second edition provides an up-to-date overview of all major topics in sedimentary geology. It is unique in its quantitative approach to denudation-accumulation systems and basin fillings, including dynamic aspects. The relationship between tectonism and basin evolution as well as the concepts of sequence cycle and event stratigraphy in various depositional environments are extensively discussed. Numerous, often composite figures, a well-structured text, brief summaries in boxes, and several examples from all continents make the book an invaluable source of information for students, researchers and professors in academia as well as for professionals in the oil industry.
Eugene Sharkov, of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, has here put together the most comprehensive description of the physical findings of an investigation into the spatio-temporal characteristics of the gravity of breaking waves. He's also described the foam activity in the open sea using methods and instruments of optical and microwave remote sensing. Numerous practical applications and illustrations are provided from air-borne, ship-borne and laboratory up-to-date experiments. |
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