This book highlights both the diversity of perspectives and approaches to Arctic research and the inherent interdisciplinary nature of studying and understanding this incomparable region. The chapters are divided into four liberally-defined sections to provide space for dynamic interpretation and dialogue in search of sustainable solutions to the issues facing the Arctic. From governance to technology, scientific research to social systems, human health to economic development, the authors discuss fundamental questions while looking toward the Arctic's future. Whether the reader is well-versed in the history and complexity of Arctic policy or looking for an insightful introduction to the vast world of Arctic research, everyone will find answers that lead to new questions and even more discoveries in these pages, laying the foundation for tomorrow's discussion on the future of the Arctic. The Arctic's unique geographic and political characteristics pose questions for the international community, indigenous peoples, and economic interests not easily answered through traditional concepts. To that end, the Arctic Summer College has been engaging leading professionals, students, scholars, and policy makers from across the globe to exchange ideas and support further investigation into the Arctic. A joint venture between Ecologic Institute US and Ecologic Institute Berlin (Germany), the College participates at the annual Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland, and continues to be at the forefront of international collaboration in this critical area of economic, political, environmental, and humanitarian development.

This book investigates the new urban geographies of "smart" metropolitan regionalism across the Greater Seattle area and examines the relationship between smart growth planning strategies and spaces of work, home, and mobility. The book specifically explores Seattle within the wider space-economy and multi-scaled policy regime of the Puget Sound region as a whole, 'jumping up' from questions of city politics to concerns with what the book interprets as the "intercurrence" of city-regional "ordering." These theoretical terms capture the state-progressive effort to promote smarter forms of regional development but also the societal/institutional tensions and outright contradictions that such urban development invariably entails, particularly around problems of social equity. Key organizing themes in the text include: the historical path-dependencies of uneven economic and social development, particularly between Tacoma-Pierce County and Seattle-King County; current patterns of high-wage, medium-wage, and low-wage jobs; the emerging spatial and social structure of recent residential changes, especially with respect to class and race composition; and, finally, transit trends and new urban spaces associated with policy efforts to mitigate highway congestion and car-dependency. Greater Seattle, then, is mapped as a key US urban region inscribed spatially by the uneven search for a more sustainable order. Historically-sensitive, theoretically-informed and empirically topical, this book is of interest to scholars and students at all levels in regional planning, urban geography, political science, sustainability studies, urban sociology and public policy.

From the heights of the Fells and Snowdonia to the flat fenlands of East Anglia, from the bleakness of Dartmoor to the abundance of the Weald -- England and Wales show a variety of landscape unparalleled in the world. In this book Andrew Goudie describes how and why such a complexity of landforms evolved, covering the regiona s history from the earliest times to the present. Fully illustrated with line drawings, maps an dphotographs, and written by one of the foremost scholars of his generation, this is a book that will both inform and entertain.

This volume presents the history of marine fog research and applications, and discusses the physical processes leading to fog's formation, evolution, and dissipation. A special emphasis is on the challenges and advancements of fog observation and modeling as well as on efforts toward operational fog forecasting and linkages and feedbacks between marine fog and the environment.

This book asks how we are to understand the relationship between capitalism and the environment, capitalism and food, and capitalism and social resistance. These questions come together to form a study of food regimes and the means by which capitalism organises both the environment and people to provision its distinctive system of ever-expanding consumption with food. Political Ecology, Food Regimes, and Food Sovereignty explores whether there are environmental limits to capitalism and its economic growth by addressing the ongoing and inter-linked crises of food, fossil fuels, and finance. It also considers its political limits, as the globally burgeoning 'precariat', peasants and indigenous people resist the further commodification of their livelihoods. This book draws from the field of Political Ecology to approach new ways of analysing capitalism, the environment and resistance, and also to propose new solutions to the current agro-ecological-economic crisis. It will be of particular interest to students and academics of Environmental Sociology, Human Geography, and Environmental Geography.

This book provides an introduction to the complex system functions, variability and human interference in ecosystem between the continent and the ocean. It focuses on circulation, transport and mixing of estuarine and coastal water masses, which is ultimately related to an understanding of the hydrographic and hydrodynamic characteristics (salinity, temperature, density and circulation), mixing processes (advection and diffusion), transport timescales such as the residence time and the exposure time. In the area of physical oceanography, experiments using these water bodies as a natural laboratory and interpreting their circulation and mixing processes using theoretical and semi-theoretical knowledge are of fundamental importance. Small-scale physical models may also be used together with analytical and numerical models. The book highlights the fact that research and theory are interactive, and the results provide the fundamentals for the development of the estuarine research.

Coastal Management: Global Challenges and Innovations focuses on the resulting problems faced by coastal areas in developing countries with a goal of helping create updated management and tactical approaches for researchers, field practitioners, planners and policymakers. This book gathers, compiles and interprets recent developments, starting from paleo-coastal climatic conditions, to current climatic conditions that influence coastal resources. Chapters included cover almost all aspects of coastal area management, including sustainability, coastal communities, hazards, ocean currents and environmental monitoring.

The discipline of landscape ecology has matured rapidly over the past few decades, generating a wealth of knowledge that can be used to enhance forest policy development and management. However, much of this knowledge has yet to be applied in practice.

Forest Landscape Ecology: Transferring Knowledge to Practice is the first book to introduce landscape ecologists to the discipline of knowledge transfer. The book considers knowledge transfer in general, critically examines aspects of transfer that are unique to forest landscape ecology, and reviews several case studies of successful applications for policy developers and forest managers in North America. Readers are encouraged to recognize the value of sharing their knowledge, and to understand their role in active knowledge transfer. The intent is to connect, as seamlessly and effectively as possible, ecological principles to policy and practice.

This book is written for researchers, academics and students in landscape ecology and related fields, as well as policymakers and land and resource managers who are interested in landscape-level approaches.

About the Editors:

Ajith H. Perera is a research scientist and leads the Forest Landscape Ecology Program at the Ontario Forest Research Institute. Lisa J. Buse is a forest biologist who coordinates technology transfer for the Ontario Forest Research Institute. Thomas R. Crow is national program leader for ecological research and environmental sciences with the USDA Forest Service.

There is a growing recognition of the contact we need with nature to be happy, healthy and to lead meaningful lives. We need that nature daily, if not hourly, and so it must be nearby to where we live and work. This is central to the concept of 'biophilic cities' which is emerging as a global movement and guiding framework for city design and planning. Blue Biophilic Cities is about the promise of this movement and a kind of biophilic urbanism that is possible for cities perched on the edge of harbours and seas. In blue biophilic cities, much of the nearby nature is to be found in the marine realm. This book explores the efforts underway in a number of cities to foster new marine connections through a variety of innovative programs and initiatives. It also discusses a number of design ideas, from dynamic shoreline edges and floodable parks to living breakwaters, in order to emphasise the possibility of designing for resilience while also supporting marine biodiversity and strengthening biophilic connections to the marine world.

This book reveals the science and beauty of Mammoth Cave, the world's longest cave, which has played an important role in the natural sciences. It offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary treatment of the cave, combining insights from leading experts in fields ranging from archeology and cultural history to life science and geosciences. The first animals specialized for cave life in North America, including beetles, spiders, crayfish, and fish, were discovered in Mammoth Cave in the 1840s. It has also been used and explored by humans, including Native Americans, who mined its sulfate minerals and later African-American slaves, who made a map of the cave. More recent stories include 'wars' between commercial cave owners, epic exploration trips by modern cave explorers, and of course tourism. The first section of the book is an extensive description including maps and photos of the cave, its basic structural pattern, and how it relates to the surface landscape. The second section covers the human history of utilization and exploration of the cave, including mining, tourism, and medical experiments. Cave science is the topic of the third section, including geology, hydrology, mineralogy, climatology, paleontology, ecology, biodiversity, and microbiology. The fourth section looks to the future, with an overview of environmental issues facing Mammoth Cave managers. The book is intended for anyone interested in caves in general and Mammoth Cave in particular, experts in one discipline seeking information about other areas, and researchers and students interested in the many avenues of pursuit possible in Mammoth Cave.

This book brings together thirteen selected papers presented in the Third International Seminar on Science and Geopolitics of Arctic-Antarctic-Himalaya, held in India in September 2015. The papers and have been grouped according to the Seminar's three main themes: a) Geopolitics of the Polar Regions, b) Global Climate Change and Polar Regions, and c) Climate Change and Himalayan Region.

This edited volume explores the circumstances under which vulnerable communities can better adapt to climate and environmental change, and focuses in particular on the centrality of migration as a resilience and adaptation strategy for communities at risk. The book features important case studies where migration is being used as a risk management strategy in the Pacific, Sub-Sahara Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Its comparative analysis reveals common patterns in enhancing local resilience through migration across diverse regional, socio-economic, cultural, and political contexts. This book is a contribution to the global discussion about the future of migration policy, especially as climate and environmental change is expected to grow as one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

The present book highlights studies that show how smart cities promote urban economic development. The book surveys the state of the art of Smart City Economic Development through a literature survey. The book uses 13 in depth city research case studies in 10 countries such as the North America, Europe, Africa and Asia to explain how a smart economy changes the urban spatial system and vice versa. This book focuses on exploratory city studies in different countries, which investigate how urban spatial systems adapt to the specific needs of smart urban economy. The theory of smart city economic development is not yet entirely understood and applied in metropolitan regional plans. Smart urban economies are largely the result of the influence of ICT applications on all aspects of urban economy, which in turn changes the land-use system. It points out that the dynamics of smart city GDP creation takes 'different paths,' which need further empirical study, hypothesis testing and mathematical modelling. Although there are hypotheses on how smart cities generate wealth and social benefits for nations, there are no significant empirical studies available on how they generate urban economic development through urban spatial adaptation. This book with 13 cities research studies is one attempt to fill in the gap in knowledge base.

This book introduces the latest thinking on the use of Big Data in the context of urban systems, including research and insights on human behavior, urban dynamics, resource use, sustainability and spatial disparities, where it promises improved planning, management and governance in the urban sectors (e.g., transportation, energy, smart cities, crime, housing, urban and regional economies, public health, public engagement, urban governance and political systems), as well as Big Data's utility in decision-making, and development of indicators to monitor economic and social activity, and for urban sustainability, transparency, livability, social inclusion, place-making, accessibility and resilience.

This book deals with institutional reforms in response to a mounting environmental crisis in Vietnam. The author introduces the reader to the most important environmental problems that Vietnam is currently facing and shows how the emphasis on economic growth has come at the expense of the natural environment. Following an assessment of the still deteriorating environmental situation, the book develops a theoretical framework of institutional change within the political system seeking to overcome the traditionally static understanding of institutions. The empirical analysis devotes attention to the main aspects on Vietnam's environmental governance including the government, society, businesses and international organizations. The book is based on four years of empirical research including interviews with government officials and representatives of international and national non-governmental organizations, observations of meetings, official documents, and numerous Vietnamese newspaper reports. This book is directed both at academics, students, as well as development practitioners and activists. It seeks to engage those working in the fields of environmental politics, governance, and institutional change in one-party states.

This book describes the importance of integration and clustering in creating sustainable economic growth. Modern economic conditions demonstrate the need for governmental stimulation of cluster initiatives in entrepreneurship, and make it necessary to study the experience of developed countries in the sphere of stimulation of cluster initiatives in entrepreneurship, and to offer recommendations for improving the system of state stimulation of these initiatives. The authors conclude that at present, innovational economy is an economic system that functions on the basis of business networks, as this model offers innovational cooperation between specialists from various scientific and technical spheres, between organizations of various sizes (large, medium, and small), and between groups of various types of companies. Cluster strategy in modern global practice is one of the most important tools of public policy for increasing the competitiveness of national economies. This means that the most competitive spheres develop on the basis of the cluster principle, and support for cluster building increases a country's economic competitiveness.

This book presents the most recent innovations, trends, concerns and practical challenges, and solutions in the field of water resources for arid areas. It gathers outstanding contributions presented at the International Water Conference on Water Resources in Arid Areas (IWC 2016), which was held in Muscat, Oman in March 2016. The individual papers discuss challenges and solutions to alleviate water resource scarcity in arid areas, including water resources management, the introduction of modern irrigation systems, natural groundwater recharge, construction of dams for artificial recharge, use of treated wastewater, and desalination technologies. As such, the book provides a platform for the exchange of recent advances in water resources science and research, which are essential to improving the critical water situation

This book is a state-of-the-art review of the physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of anthropogenic soils, their genesis morphology and classification, geocultural setting, and strategies for reclamation, revitalization, use and management.

This book highlights the aeolian processes in the desert zone of Kazakhstan and Central Asian Deserts, and analyzes the current status of dust and sand storms in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. It also highlights the analyses, dynamics and long-term observations of storms on the basis of numerous cartographic materials and satellite images. Dust/sand storms are a common and important phenomenon in the arid and semi-arid regions of Kazakhstan and Central Asia as well,especially in its southern parts, where areas are covered by a great variety of deserts and offer a significant source of mineral and salt aerosols. The deserts of Kazakhstan mostly cover lowlands and extend from the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the piedmonts of the Tien-Shan Mountain. In Kazakhstan and Central Asia desertification processes due to wind erosion in the form of dust/sand storms were observed in semi-desert and desert landscapes.

The book is written in the backdrop of the environmental impacts of and future requirements from the natural environment for rapid economic growth that has characterized recent economic history of China and India, especially over the past few decades. The environmental impacts of such rapid economic changes have been, more frequently than otherwise, degrading in character. Environmental impacts of economic activities create degraded natural ecosystems by over utilization of nature's provisioning ecosystem services (from Himalaya to the Ocean), as well, by the use of the natural environment as sink for dumping of unmarketable products or unused inputs of economic activities. Such processes affect wide range of ecosystem processes on which the natural environment including human population depend on. Critical perspectives cast by various chapters in this book draw attention to the various ways in which space and power interact to produce diverse geographies of sustainability in a globalizing world. They also address the questions such as who decides what kind of a spatial arrangement of political power is needed for sustaining the environment. Who stands to gain (or lose) what, when, where, and why from certain geographical areas being demarcated as ecologically unique, fragile and vulnerable environments? Whose needs and values are being catered to by a given ecosystem service? What is the scope for critical inquiry into the ways in which the environment is imagined, represented and resisted in both geopolitical struggles and everyday life? The book provides insights to both academics from diverse disciplines and policy makers, civil society actors interested in mutual exchange of knowledge between China and India.

This edited book is devoted to environmental risk management in gas industry impacted polar ecosystems of Russia, one of the hottest topics of modern environmental science. The contributions from experts cover topics that shed new light on the impacts of oil and natural gas production on arctic ecosystems in the country as well as biogeochemical engineering technologies to manage pollution in these areas. Readers will also discover new insights on potential ecological indicators for assessing geo-environmental risks of these impacted ecosystems, and climate modeling in polar areas. The book has interdisciplinary appeal, and specialists and practitioners in environmental sciences, ecology, biogeochemistry and those within the energy sector who are interested in understanding ecosystems affected by anthropogenic impacts in severe climatic conditions will find it particularly engaging. Through this book, readers will learn more about biogeochemical cycling through food chains and specific reactions of biota to environmental pollution in extreme environments through the lens of experts.

Coastal Wetlands, Second Edition: An Integrated and Ecosystem Approach provides an understanding of the functioning of coastal ecosystems and the ecological services that they provide. As coastal wetlands are under a great deal of pressure from the dual forces of rising sea levels and the intervention of human populations, both along the estuary and in the river catchment, this book covers important issues, such as the destruction or degradation of wetlands from land reclamation and infrastructures, impacts from the discharge of pollutants, changes in river flows and sediment supplies, land clearing, and dam operations.

This collection of essays and design case studies explores a range of ideas and best practices for adapting to dynamic waterfront conditions while incorporating nature conservation in urbanized coastal areas. The editors have curated a selection of works contributed by leading practitioners in the fields of coastal science, community resilience, habitat restoration, sustainable landscape architecture and floodplain management. By highlighting ocean-friendly innovations and strategies being applied in coastal cities today, this book illustrates ways to cohabit with many other species who share the waterfront with us, feed in salt marshes, bury their eggs on sandy beaches, fly south over cities along the Atlantic Flyway, or attach themselves to an oyster reef. This book responds to the need for inventive, practical, and straightforward ways to weather a changing climate while being responsible shoreline stewards.

This book draws upon the expertise of academic researchers, urban planners and architects to explore the challenge of building the sustainable cities of the future. It addresses this challenge by considering current cities and those of the near future, and creates a picture of the sustainable city from the bottom up. Individual chapters cover topics such as transport, energy supply, sustainable urbanism and promoting social equality in large infrastructure projects. Real-world examples are presented to illustrate how systems thinking is used to integrate different components of a city so as to ensure that the whole is more sustainable than its parts. Written in an accessible style, this book is intended for general readers as much as it is for students and researchers interested in sustainable cities and related topics. It is also ideal for urban planners seeking best-practice guidelines for sustainable urban development.

This edited volume summarizes information about the situational context, threats, problems, challenges and solutions for sustainable pastoralism at a global scale. The book has four goals. The first goal is to summarize the information about the history, distribution and patterns of pastoralism and to identify the importance of pastoralism from social, economic and environmental perspectives. The results of an empirical investigation of the environmental and socio-economic implications of pastoralism in representative pastoral regions in the world are also incorporated. The second goal is to argue that breaking coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism leads to degradation of pastoral ecosystems and to create an analysis framework to assess the vulnerability of worldwide pastoralism. Our analysis framework provides approaches to help comprehensively understand the transitions and the impacts of human-natural systems in the pastoral regions in the world. The third goal is to identify the successful models in promoting coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism, and to learn lessons of breaking coupled human-cultural pastoralism systems through examining the representative cases in regions including Central Asia, Southern and Eastern Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, the European Alps and South America. The fourth goal is to identify the strategies to build the resilience of the coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism worldwide. We hope that our book can facilitate the further examination of sustainable development of coupled human-natural systems of pastoralism by providing the summaries of existing data and information related to the pastoralism development, and by offering a framework for better understanding and analysis of their social, economic and environmental implications.