The ambition of most countries across the world is to develop a low-carbon economy, evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of countries have signed the Paris COP21 agreement. This book contends that this global societal transition to a low-carbon economy must be just. As such, it will be an invaluable and accessible reference for scholars from all research disciplines who aim in their research to see a fairer, more equitable and inclusive world where sustainability is at the fore and climate targets are achieved.This is the first in-depth and original analysis to explore the central importance of law in achieving a just transition to a low-carbon economy. In addition, it advances the JUST framework, a unique framework for assessing the just transition. This important research and theoretical tool provides a practical perspective as it ensures the geographical space and timelines of development are factored into analysis. The research also provides analysis on the just transition movement around the world and the influence of international institutions. Through several case studies on Just Transition Commissions and Critical Mineral Development, the book details and demonstrates key elements of justice, including distributive, procedural, restorative, recognition, and cosmopolitan justice. It is clear from the analysis that while these are vast areas for analysis, if applied in practice, they all centrally contribute to ensuring society will advance in achieving a just transition to a low-carbon economy.

At three times the size of France, Central African forests are the largest tropical fores mass after the Amazon and cover a large portion of the Congo Basin, the second largest river in the world. Unlike the forests of Western Africa and Asia, these are still well preserved as in many massive yet little unaffected clumps natura prosesses continue unperturbed while elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees live in peace.

Mountains have captured the interests and passions of people for thousands of years. Today, millions of people live within mountain regions, and mountain regions are often areas of accelerated environmental change. This edited volume highlights new understanding of mountain environments and mountain peoples around the world. The understanding of mountain environments and peoples has been a focus of individual researchers for centuries; more recently the interest in mountain regions among researchers has been growing rapidly. The articles contained within are from a wide spectrum of researchers from different parts of the world who address physical, political, theoretical, social, empirical, environmental, methodological, and economic issues focused on the geography of mountains and their inhabitants. The articles in this special issue are organized into three themed sections with very loose boundaries between themes: (1) physical dynamics of mountain environments, (2) coupled human-physical dynamics, and (3) sociocultural dynamics in mountain regions. This book was first published as a special issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

"Coastal Geomorphology, Second Edition" is a comprehensive and systematic introduction to this subject and demonstrates the dynamic nature of coastal landforms, providing a background for analytical planning and management strategies in coastal areas that are subject to continuing changes.

This introductory textbook has been completely revised and updated, and is accompanied by a website which provides additional illustrations, global examples, case-studies and more detailed and advanced information on topics referenced in the book, together with explanations of terminology, annotated references and research material.

Forests provide a large range of beneficial services, including tangible ones such as timber and recreation, and intangible services such as climate regulation, biodiversity, and watershed protection. On the other hand, forests can also be considered roadblocks to progress that occupy space more productively used for agriculture, making consideration of their regulating services crucial for balancing land use and forest loss. Monitoring forest cover and loss is critical for obtaining the data necessary to help define what is needed to maintain the varying forest service requirements in different parts of the world. There is an increasing need for timely and accurate forest change information, and consequently a greater interest in monitoring those changes. Global Forest Monitoring from Earth Observation covers the very recent developments undertaken for monitoring forest areas from global to national levels using Earth observation satellite data. It describes operational tools and systems for monitoring forest ecosystems, discussing why and how researchers currently use remotely sensed data to study forest cover and loss over large areas. The book introduces the role of forests in providing ecosystem services and the need for monitoring their change over time, followed by an overview of the use of earth observation data to support forest monitoring. It discusses general methodological differences, including wall-to-wall mapping and sampling approaches, as well as data availability. This book provides excellent coverage of the research and applications of forest monitoring, indicator mapping at coarse spatial resolution, sample-based assessments, and wall-to-wall mapping at medium spatial resolution using optical remote sensing datasets, such as MODIS and Landsat. It examines the use of radar imagery in forest monitoring and presents a number of operational systems, from Brazil's PRODES and DETER products to Australia's NCAS system. Written by leading global experts in the field, this book offers a launch point for future advances in satellite-based monitoring of global forest resources. It gives readers a deeper understanding of global forest monitoring methods and shows how state-of-the-art technologies may soon provide key data for creating more balanced policies.

Mountain regions encompass nearly 24 percent of the total land surface of the earth and are home to approximately 12 percent of the world's population. Their ecosystems play a critical role in sustaining human life both in the highlands and the lowlands. During recent years, resource use in high mountain areas has changed mainly in response to the globalization of the economy and increased world population. As a result, mountain regions are undergoing rapid environmental change, exploitation, and depletion of natural resources leading to ecological imbalances and economic unsustainability. Moreover, the changing climatic conditions have stressed mountain ecosystems through higher mean annual temperatures and the melting of glaciers and snow. Altered precipitation patterns have also had an impact. This book addresses these critical issues and looks at ways to stop the downward spiral of resource degradation, rural poverty, and food and livelihood insecurity in mountain regions. The book also discusses new and comprehensive approaches to mountain development that are needed to identify sustainable resource development practices, how to strengthen local institutions and knowledge systems, and how to increase the resilience between mountain environments and their inhabitants.

Due to its height, density, and thickness of crown canopy; fluffy forest floor; large root system; and horizontal distribution; forest is the most distinguished type of vegetation on the earth. In the U.S., forests occupy about 30 percent of the total territory. Yet this 30 percent of land area produces about 60 percent of total surface runoff, the major water resource area of the country. Any human activity in forested areas will inevitably disturb forest floors and destroy forest canopies, consequently affecting the quantity, quality, and timing of water resources. Thoroughly updated and expanded, Forest Hydrology: An Introduction to Water and Forests, Third Edition discusses the concepts, principles, and processes of forest and forest activity impacts on the occurrence, distribution, and circulation of water and the aquatic environment. Brings water resources and forest-water relations into a single, comprehensive textbook Focuses on the concepts, processes, and general principles in forest hydrology Covers functions, properties, and science of water; water distribution; forests and precipitation, vaporization, stream flow, and stream sediment Discusses watershed management planning and practical applications of forest hydrology in resource management In a single textbook, Forest Hydrology: An Introduction to Water and Forests, Third Edition comprehensively covers water and water resources issues, forest characteristics relevant to the environment, forest impacts in the hydrological cycle, watershed research, watershed management planning, and hydrologic measurements. With the addition of new chapters, new issues, and appendices, this new edition is a valuable resource for upper-level undergraduates in forest hydrology courses as well as professionals involved in water resources management and decision-making in forested watersheds.

Many dryland regions contain archaeological remains which suggest that there must have been intensive phases of settlement in what now seem to be dry and degraded environments. This book discusses successes and failures of past land use and settlement in drylands, and contributes to wider debates about desertification and the sustainability of dryland settlement.

Urban Drainage and Storage Practices focuses on the latest developments in urban stormwater design methods using drainage and storage approaches for both water quality and quantity control. It covers both the conventional approaches to flood mitigation and low-impact methods for stormwater quality enhancement. Theory, practice, and modeling methods are presented to illustrate how to build a holistic stormwater drainage and storage system using urban open space and parks through multiple land use. Each chapter provides background theory, numerical experiments, illustrations, and Excel spreadsheets that outline design and calculation procedures. All urban watersheds are modeled as a series of cascading planes to drain stormwater from upstream roofs and parking lots onto downstream grass areas and vegetal beds. The drainage system is designed as a three-layer cascading system with various low-impact units for micro events, conveyance elements for minor events, and storage facilities for macro events. This book: presents the theory and practice of designing and building a stormwater system explains green approaches to designing and managing urban stormwater systems. This text is ideal for senior and graduate students studying urban hydrology, hydraulic engineering, and water resource management. It will also be useful for engineers requiring a technical book with hands-on practical examples.

Launching the landmark Performing Landscapes series, Performing Mountains brings together for the first time Mountain Studies and Performance Studies in order to examine an international selection of dramatic responses to mountain landscapes. Moving between different registers of writing, the book offers a critical assessment of how the cultural turn in landscape studies interacts with the practices of environmental theatre and performance. Conceived in three main parts, it begins by unpicking the layers of disciplinary complexity in both fields, before surveying the rich history and practice of rituals, playtexts and site specific works inspired by mountains. The last section moves to a unique analysis of mountains themselves using key concepts from performance: training, scenography, acting and spectatorship. Threaded throughout is a very personal tale of mountain research, offering a handrail or alternative guide through the book.

How will global environmental change affect the landscape and our interaction with it? Apart from climate change, there are other important catalysts of landscape change, including relief, hydroclimate and runoff, sea level variations and human activity. This volume summarizes the state-of-the-art concerning the geomorphic implications of global environmental change, analyzing such effects on lakes, rivers, coasts, reefs, rainforests, savannas, deserts, glacial features, and mountains. Providing a benchmark statement from the world s leading geomorphologists on the current state of, and potential changes to, the environment, this book is invaluable for advanced courses on geomorphology and environmental science, and as a reference for research scientists. Interdisciplinary in scope, with a primary audience of Earth and environmental scientists, geographers, geomorphologists and ecologists, it also has a wider reach to those concerned with the social, economic and political issues raised by global environmental change, and is useful to policy makers and environmental managers.

From the natural geometry of the Giant's Causeway to the sarsen slabs used to build Stonehenge, we are surrounded by evidence for the extraordinary geological forces that shaped the British Isles. Running coast to coast through Devon is 'Sticklepath', Britain's 'San Andreas', a geological fault with the two sides displaced horizontally by several kilometres, all within the recent geological past. The Sticklepath Fault is just one manifestation of the rich tectonic history of the British region since the asteroid collision that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. Raised out of the Chalk Sea, the original Albion was a thickly forested island a thousand kilometres long, surrounded by chalk cliffs, punctuated with great volcanoes, and the site of two trial 'spreading ridge' plate-boundaries. As the volcanoes shifted west, and Greenland separated from Europe, the wind-blown volcanic ash laid the strata on which London was founded. The vertical Needles, known to every Isle of Wight sailor, are part of the northern foothills of the Pyrenees. When the collision subsided, rifting created a garland of Celtic lakes from Brittany to the Outer Hebrides. In This Volcanic Isle Robert Muir-Wood explores the rich geological history of the British Isles, and its resulting legacy. Along the way he introduces the personalities who shared a fascination for Britain's tectonic history, including Charles Darwin the geologist, Tennyson the science-poet, and Benoit Mandelbrot, the pure mathematician who labelled the west coast of Britain a fractal icon. Here is the previously untold story of how earthquakes and eruptions, plumes and plate boundaries, built the British Isles.

Globally rainforests are under threat on numerous fronts, including clearing for agriculture, harvesting for timber and urban expansion. Yet they have a crucial role in biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and providing other ecosystem services. As the term is used in this book, rainforests include both temperate and tropical, although the emphasis is on tropical rainforests. Rainforests are also attractive tourist spaces and where they have been used as a tourism resource have generated significant income for local communities. However not all use of rainforests as a tourism resource has been sustainable. This book argues that sustainability must be the foundation on which tourism use of this complex but ultimately fragile ecosystem must be built upon. It provides a multi-disciplinary perspective, incorporating rainforest science, management and tourism issues. The book is organized into four sections commencing with Rainforest Ecology and Management followed by People and Rainforests, Opportunities for Rainforest Tourism Development and finally Threats to Rainforests. Each major rainforest region is covered, including the Amazon, Central America, Africa, Australia and south-east Asia, in the context of a specific issue. For example rainforests in Papua New Guinea are examined in the context of community-based ecotourism development, while the rainforests in Borneo are discussed in an examination of wildlife issues. Other issues covered in this manner include governance, empowerment issues for rainforest peoples and climate change.

Provides a comprehensive overview of the subject of marine governance and environmental change, which will serve as a key reference textbook. Reflects the immense global concern over issues such as sea level rise, marine biodiversity including coral reefs, fisheries, maritime trade and shipping. Draws on and will apeal to a wide range of dsiciplines including marine biology, climate science, geography, law, politics and international relations.

The natural scarcity of water in arid and semiarid regions, aggravated by man-made factors, makes it difficult to achieve a reliable water resources supply. Communities in these areas pay the price for thousands of years of water manipulation. Presenting important insight into the complexities of arid region hydrology, Engineering Hydrology of Arid and Semi-Arid Regions explores the key components for formulating and implementing integrated management approaches in catchment (wadi) systems. The book introduces the engineering hydrology of arid and semi-arid regions, covering meteorological processes and hydrology. The author discusses precipitation and precipitation losses, catchment characteristics, and runoff estimation methods. He also examines streamflow measurements and hydrographs, flood routing, and groundwater hydrology, including the basic equations of groundwater flow and analytic solutions describing flow aquifers, pumping tests, and salt water intrusion. Building on this foundation, the book then delineates sediment yield in watersheds and streams and the design of hydraulic structures for protection and management of water resources systems. It includes case studies, conversion tables, and modeling software. During the last two decades, research efforts and networking have enhanced the state of knowledge about arid and semi-arid areas, especially watershed and catchment systems. Pulling this information together into a comprehensive resource, this book provides a better understanding of wadi hydrology, capacity-building processes, water education and training, and institutional development. This understanding can then be used to select the appropriate tools to support water management and optimize the sustainable use of water resources. "When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water" - Benjamin Franklin

Located in a narrow grassland corridor between the semi-desert and a mountain range in Northwest China, the research area Urumqi Region is despite its semi-arid climate in a relatively favourable hydrological situation. The nearby mountains provide water for settlements and agriculture, making human development possible in the first place. Due to the development of agriculture, population and economy during the last sixty years and the increasing water consumption, a demand- and population-driven water scarcity exists today and is expected to aggravate. At the same time, the effects of climate change and land use transformations on the hydrological system and the water availability are uncertain. This study evaluates the recent and future situation by combining a hydrological water balance model for the simulation of the water supply based on scenarios of climate and land use change with a socio-economic model for projecting the future water demand including predicted growth of population and economy.

The studies in this volume provide an ethnography of a plantation frontier in central Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Drawing on the expertise of both natural scientists and social scientists, the key focus is the process of commodification of nature that has turned the local landscape into anthropogenic tropical forests. Analysing the transformation of the space of mixed landscapes and multiethnic communities-driven by trade in forest products, logging and the cultivation of oil palm-the contributors explore the changing nature of the environment, multispecies interactions, and the metabolism between capitalism and nature. The project involved the collaboration of researchers specialising in anthropology, geography, Southeast Asian history, global history, area studies, political ecology, environmental economics, plant ecology, animal ecology, forest ecology, hydrology, ichthyology, geomorphology and life-cycle assessment. Collectively, the transdisciplinary research addresses a number of vital questions. How are material cycles and food webs altered as a result of large-scale land-use change? How have new commodity chains emerged while older ones have disappeared? What changes are associated with such shifts? What are the relationships among these three elements-commodity chains, material cycles and food webs? Attempts to answer these questions led the team to go beyond the dichotomy of society and nature as well as human and non-human. Rather, the research highlights complex relational entanglements of the two worlds, abruptly and forcibly connected by human-induced changes in an emergent and compelling resource frontier in maritime Southeast Asia. Chapters 'Commodification of Nature on the Plantation Frontier' and 'Into a New Epoch: The Plantationocene' are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Environmental Physics is a comprehensive introduction to the physical concepts underlying environmental science. The importance and relevance of physics is emphasised by its application to real environmental problems with a wide range of case studies. Applications included cover energy use and production, global climate, the physics of living things, radioactivity, environmental remote sensing, noise pollution and the physics of the Earth. The book makes the subject accessible to those with little physics background, keeping mathematical treatment straightforward. The text is lively and informative, and is supplemented by numerous illustrations, photos, tables of useful data, and a glossary of key terms.

Like the highest mountain peaks, deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to the most seasoned explorers. Craig Childs, who has spent years in the deserts of the American West—as an adventurer, a river guide, and a field instructor in natural history—has developed a keen appreciation for these forbidding landscapes: their beauty, their wonder, and especially their paradoxes. His extraordinary treks through arid lands in search of water are an astonishing revelation of the natural world at its most extreme.

This book is based on the author's 49 years of experience as a practicing coastal engineer and 34 years as professor of coastal engineering and management at Queen's University. The book is therefore thoroughly practical in nature, but it also reflects newly relevant issues, such as consequences of failure, impacts of rising sea levels, aging infrastructure, real estate development, and contemporary decision making, design and education.This textbook is useful for undergraduate students, postgraduate students and practicing engineers. It covers waves, structures, sediment movement, coastal management, and contemporary coastal design and decision making. It presents both basic principles and engineering solutions. It discusses the traditional methods of analysis and synthesis (design), but also contemporary design methodologies, such as working with environmental impacts.The second edition expanded greatly on the topics of failure and resilience that surfaced as a result of recent disasters from hurricane surges and tsunamis. It updated the discussion of design and decision making for the 21st century, with many new examples.This third edition develops some of these topics further, but its largest new changes is the chapter on climate change. This chapter presents the basics of climate change and then goes on to stress the practical implications of the impacts of climate change, focusing on what is of importance to coastal and fluvial specialists.

Adaptations of the Metropolitan Landscape in Delta Regions is about environmental quality and the long term livability of urban areas. In decades to come, climate change will affect cities everywhere, but nowhere have the effects of climate change already been felt as strongly as in low-lying coastal cities, cities located in large river deltas and near tidal estuaries. This book reflects on the contribution that spatial planning and urban design can make to a complex discussion about how city form and landscapes will need to adapt within metropolitan areas. The book's focus is on the urban form of three delta regions: the Pearl River Delta in Southern China; the Rhine, Maas, and Scheldt Delta in the Netherlands; and the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. The three regions differ greatly, but despite their different political systems, history, culture and locations in three different climate zones, all three regions will be forced to respond to similar issues that will trigger transformations and adaptations to their urban form. Richly illustrated in color with detailed diagrams, models, photographs and sketches, the book is written for students, scholars and practitioners of environmental planning, and designers who need to respond to the future form of cities in light of climate change. For the professions shaping the physical world of cities and regions, the challenge is not only one of designing physical geometries but of social consequences.

This study, conducted in Kenya, gives the first insight into the performance of a constructed treatment wetland receiving pulp and paper mill wastewater in the tropics.

The wetland effectively removed organic matter, suspended solids, phenols and nutrients. BOD and phenols reduction rates are reported for the first time. Design parameters and guidelines for the set-up and maintenance of a full-scale wetland are recommended. The study concludes that integrating a full-scale wetland, as a tertiary stage with the existing treatment ponds would significantly improve the quality of water in River Nzoia downstream of the effluent discharge.

This is a valuable resource book for scientists, managers and students in the field of wetland ecology, water and environmental management.

At dusk on 24 September 1975, Doug Scott and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to reach the summit of Everest as lead climbers on Chris Bonington's epic expedition to the mountain's immense south-west face.As darkness fell, Scott and Haston scraped a small cave in the snow 100 metres below the summit and survived the highest bivouac ever - without bottled oxygen, sleeping bags and, as it turned out, frostbite. For Doug Scott, it was the fulfilment of a fortune-teller's prophecy given to his mother: that her eldest son would be in danger in a high place with the whole world watching.Scott and Haston returned home national heroes with their image splashed across the front pages. Scott went on to become one of Britain's greatest ever mountaineers, pioneering new climbs in the remotest corners of the globe. His career spans the golden age of British climbing from the 1960s boom in outdoor adventure to the new wave of lightweight alpinism throughout the 1970s and 1980s.In Up and About, the first volume of his autobiography, Scott tells his story from his birth in Nottingham during the darkest days of war to the summit of the world.Surviving the unplanned bivouac without oxygen near the summit of Everest widened the range of what and how he would climb in the future. In fact, Scott established more climbs on the high mountains of the world after his ascent of Everest than before. Those climbs will be covered in the second volume of his life and times.