This book initiates multipolar climate/clime studies of the world's altitudinal and latitudinal highlands with terrestrial, experiential, and affective approaches. Framed in the environmental humanities, it is an interdisciplinary, comparative study of the mutually-embodied relations of climate, nature, culture, and place in the Himalaya, Andes, and Arctic. Innovation-driven, the book offers multipolar clime case studies through the contributors' historical findings, ethnographic documentations, and diverse conceptualizations and applications of clime, an overlooked but returning notion of place embodied with climate history, pattern, and changes. The multipolar clime case studies in the book are geared toward deeper, lively explorations and demonstrations of the translatability, interchangeability, and complementarity between the notions of clime and climate. "Multipolar" or "multipolarity" in this book connotes not only the two polar regions and the tectonically shaped highlands of the earth but also diversely debated perspectives of climate studies in the broadest sense. Contributors across the twelve chapters come from diverse fields of social and natural sciences and humanities, and geographically specialize respectively in the Himalayan, Andean, and Arctic regions. The first comparative study of climate change in altitudinal and latitudinal highlands, this will be an important read for students, academics and researchers in environmental humanities, anthropology, climate science, indigenous studies and ecology.

Originally published in 1961, this book was the first comprehensive work on South African geography that also presented a balanced account of all facets of the economic life. It was written to provide background information on South Africa - the nature of the country, its resources and deficiencies, its historic settlement by peoples of different races and of the progress made and the difficulties encountered in the major areas of economic activity: agriculture, mining, manufacturing and trade. In discussing these factors the book acknowledged that in South Africa the complexities of the relationships between peoples of different racial origins and widely differently economic and cultural standards are met in one country.

Describing the natural state of eight important lakes in Asia and the human impact on these lake ecosystems, this book offers a valuable reference guide. Over the past several decades the Aral Sea, Dead Sea, Lake Balkhash and other major lakes in Asia have undergone significant changes with regard to their size, water level, chemical composition, and flora and fauna. Most of these changes resulted from the loss of water from tributaries (now used for irrigation farming) or increasing consumption in local industries and households. However, significant human impacts may have begun as early as 2000 years ago. In addition to the three lakes mentioned above, Lake Sevan (Armenia), the Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan), Lake Issyk-Kul (Kyrgyzstan), and Lake Lop Nur (China) are discussed as the most prominent examples of changing lake ecosystems. In contrast, an example of an almost pristine lake ecosystem is included with the report on Lake Uvs Nuur (Mongolia). For each lake, the book summarizes its origin and early geological history, and reconstructs its natural state and variability on the basis of proxy records from drilled or exposed lake sediments that have accumulated since the last ice age. The frequently observed reductions in lake level and size during most recent decades led often to significant environmental impacts in the respective lake catchments including vegetation deterioration, soil erosion and badland formation, soil salinization or the formation of sinkholes.

Beyond the Mountains explores the ways in which Appalachia often served as a laboratory for the exploration and practice of American conceptions of nature. The region operated alternately as frontier, wilderness, rural hinterland, region of subsistence agriculture, bastion of yeoman farmers, and place to experiment with modernization. In these various takes on the southern mountains, scattered across time and space, both mountain residents and outsiders consistently believed that the region's environment made Appalachia distinctive, for better or worse. With chapters dedicated to microhistories focused on particular commodities, Drew A. Swanson builds upon recent Appalachian studies scholarship, emphasizing the diversity of a region so long considered a homogenous backwater. While Appalachia has a recognizable and real coherence rooted in folkways, agriculture, and politics (among other things), it is also a region of varied environments, people, and histories. These discrete stories are, however, linked through the power of conceptualizing nature and work together to reveal the ways in which ideas and uses of nature often created a sense of identity in Appalachia. Delving into the environmental history of the region reveals that Appalachian environments, rather than separating the mountains from the broader world, often served to connect the region to outside places.

High above the pleasure palaces of the French Riviera is the Alpine Extension of the Maginot Line. These little-known bunkers were built in the 1930s to protect against Mussolini. But things didn't quite turn out at the French expected . . . Now, they are marooned and crumbling in some of the most beautiful, remote parts of the Alps. They are disappearing into the landscapes they once commanded, stray facts from a future passed, still waiting for an onslaught that never came. Bunker Research is for adventurers, architects, historians, mountain lovers and urban explorers. Follow this disquieting journey, told in stunning photos and prose, up peaks, along ridges and down valleys, searching for the hidden history of modernism in the mountains. The second edition follows the long-sold-out limited first printing, which won 'Best Self-Published Book' at the British Book Design & Production Awards 2016. If features 10 pages of new photos.

The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has captured the worldwide attention of biologists, conservationists, and ecologists, and has been the setting for extensive investigation over the past 30 years. Currently, about 40,000 ecotourists per year visit the Cloud Forest, as perhaps the archetypal high-altitude rain forest. This book pulls together and synthesizes the information about this ecosystem and the biota contained therein.

This book provides a comprehensive environmental history of how Australia's rainforests developed, the influence of Aborigines and pioneers, farmers and loggers, and of efforts to protect rainforests, to help us better understand current issues and debates surrounding their conservation and use. While interest in rainforests and the movement for their conservation are often mistakenly portrayed as features of the last few decades, the debate over human usage of rainforests stretches well back into the nineteenth century. In the modern world, rainforests are generally considered the most attractive of the ecosystems, being seen as lush, vibrant, immense, mysterious, spiritual and romantic. Rainforests hold a special place; both providing a direct link to Gondwanaland and the dinosaurs and today being the home of endangered species and highly rich in biodiversity. They are also a critical part of Australia's heritage. Indeed, large areas of Australian rainforests are now covered by World Heritage Listing. However, they also represent a dissonant heritage. What exactly constitutes rainforest, how it should be managed and used, and how much should be protected are all issues which remain hotly contested. Debates around rainforests are particularly dominated by the contradiction of competing views and uses - seeing rainforests either as untapped resources for agriculture and forestry versus valuing and preserving them as attractive and sublime natural wonders. Australia fits into this global story as a prime example but is also of interest for its aspects that are exceptional, including the intensity of clearing at certain periods and for its place in the early development of national parks. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Environmental History, Australian History and Comparative History.

This volume explores major wetland ecosystem services, such as climate cooling and water quality improvement, and discusses the recent wetland conservation and restoration activities in China and neighboring countries. The role of wetlands in either cooling or warming the climate is analyzed as the net balance between carbon sequestration and emissions of methane and nitrous oxide. Wetlands start off having a net warming effect on the climate but in time switch to net cooling. Further, they remove 40% of the N and P from run-off and groundwater flow in agricultural areas, but wetlands need to amount to 10% of the total catchment area to make a difference. Reflecting on the recent large investment in wetland ecological studies in China and neighboring countries, the book addresses invasive species in coastal wetlands as well as the protection and wise use of tidal flats around the Yellow Sea. It also presents promising regional case studies on wetland restoration. The book is intended for academics, students and practitioners in the field of wetland ecology, management and restoration, as well as consultants and professionals working in conservation, wise use and environmental policy.

This book explores how a handful of liberal foundations contributed to establish and orientate the international climate regime. Looking back at the origins of international climate philanthropy and its evolution over the past three decades, the author examines the role of philanthropic foundations in the international climate debate. The research presented in this book shows that foundations, through their grant-making and convening activities, are at the heart of the climate debate. In fact, many credit them with having, through their activities prior to and at the COP, significantly contributed to laying the basis for the Paris Agreement in December 2015.

The inaction of nation states and international bodies has posed significant risks to the environment. By contrast, cities are sites of action and innovation. In Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance, contributors researching in the areas of law, urban planning, geography, and philosophy identify approaches for tackling many of the most challenging environmental problems facing cities today. Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance facilitates two strands of dialogue about climate change. First, it integrates legal perspectives into policy debates about urban sustainability and governance, from which law has typically stood apart. Second, it brings case studies from Quebec into a rare conversation with examples drawn from elsewhere in Canada. The collection proposes humane and inclusive processes for arriving at effective policy outcomes. Some chapters examine governance mechanisms that reconcile clashes of incommensurable values and resolve conflicts about collective interests. Other chapters provide platforms for social movements that have faced obstacles to communicating to a broad public. The collection's proposals respond to drastic changes in urban environments. Some changes are imminent. Others are upon us already. All threaten the present and future well-being of urban communities.

This open access book focuses on the meanings, agendas, as well as the local and global implications of bioeconomy and bioenergy policies in and across South America, Asia and Europe. It explores how a transition away from a fossil and towards a bio-based economic order alters, reinforces and challenges socio-ecological inequalities. The volume presents a historically informed and empirically rich discussion of bioeconomy developments with a particular focus on bio-based energy. A series of conceptual discussions and case studies with a multidisciplinary background in the social sciences illuminate how the deployment of biomass sources from the agricultural and forestry sectors affect societal changes concerning knowledge production, land and labour relations, political participation and international trade. How can a global perspective on socio-ecological inequalities contribute to a complex and critical understanding of bioeconomy? Who participates in the negotiation of specific bioeconomy policies and who does not? Who determines the agenda? To what extent does the bioeconomy affect existing socio-ecological inequalities in rural areas? What are the implications of the bioeconomy for existing relations of extraction and inequalities across regions? The volume is an invitation to reflect upon these questions and more, at a time when the need for an ecological and socially just transition away from a carbon intensive economy is becoming increasingly pressing.

This book presents a collection of essays that address various facets of the hydrogeology of Israel. Despite its small geographic size, Israel exhibits a variety of climates and is located between two regional fluctuating base levels. The respective chapters discuss the variety of hydrogeological configurations and hydrological processes produced by these geographical circumstances. In some cases, the interpretation of these aspects is deliberately left open to debate, because the authors were asked to provide, in addition to their own views, also alternative and even conflicting ones. Hydrogeological configurations similar to those in Israel can be found in other countries around the world. Therefore, researchers, scholars and professionals in this interdisciplinary field can benefit from and directly apply the considerable experience and expertise that has been gathered in Israel over the past few decades.

This study focuses on impacts of the environmental and socio-economic transformation on the indigenous people's livelihoods in Vietnam's Central Highlands recent decades since the country's reunification in 1975. The first empirical section sheds light on multiple external conditions (policy reforms, population trends, and market forces) exposed onto local people. The role of human and social capital is examined again in a specific livelihood of community-based tourism to testify the resilience level of local people when coping with constraints. The study concludes with an outlook on implications of development processed which still places agriculture at the primary position livelihood, and pays attention to human capital and social capital of indigenous groups in these highlands.

Reef Life is the story of how Callum Roberts, Britain's pre-eminent marine conservation scientist, fell in love with coral reefs and embarked on a thirty-year career. He began as a young university student who had never been abroad, spending a summer helping to map the unknown reefs of Saudi Arabia. And from that moment, when Callum first cleared his mask, he's never looked back, moving on to survey Sharm El Sheikh, and from there diving and researching all over the world, including Australia's imperilled Great Barrier Reef and the more resilient reefs of the Caribbean. His stories are astonishing, lyrical and laced with a wonderful wry humour - and they allow us privileged access to, and understanding of, the science of our oceans and reefs. Reading this book will also commit readers to support Callum's goal to get marine reserve status for ten percent of the world's ocean.

Laws of the Sea assembles scholars from law, geography, anthropology, and environmental humanities to consider the possibilities of a critical ocean approach in legal studies. Unlike the United Nations' monumental Convention on the Law of the Sea, which imagines one comprehensive constitutional framework for governing the ocean, Laws of the Sea approaches oceanic law in plural and dynamic ways. Critically engaging contemporary concerns about the fate of the ocean, the collection's twelve chapters range from hydrothermal vents through the continental shelf and marine genetic resources to coastal communities in France, Sweden, Florida, and Indonesia. Documenting the longstanding binary of land and sea, the chapters pose a fundamental challenge to European law's "terracentrism" and its pervasive influence on juridical modes of knowing and making the world. Together, the chapters ask: is contemporary Eurocentric law-and international law in particular-capable of moving away from its capitalist and colonial legacies, established through myriad oceanic abstractions and classifications, toward more amphibious legalities? Laws of the Sea will appeal to legal scholars, geographers, anthropologists, cultural and political theorists, as well as scholars in the environmental humanities, political ecology, ocean studies, and animal studies.

This book tells the story of Terania Creek - the world's first direct action blockade in defence of a forest, occurring in Australia in 1979. Contrary to claims that the Australian counterculture was a mere imitation of overseas models, the Australian movement, coalescing with a home-grown environment movement, came of age at Terania Creek. After five years of 'polite' campaigning failed to stop the logging of ancient Gondwanan rainforest, an organic and spontaneous blockade erupted that would see the forging of a number of ingenious blockading techniques and strategies. The activist repertoire developed at Terania Creek has since echoed across the country, and across the Earth. This book draws on extensive oral history interviews as well as photographs taken of the protest in 1979; such rich source material brings the story to life. Terania Creek and the Forging of Modern Environmental Activism will therefore appeal to both a scholarly audience as well as activists, practitioners, and counterculturalists.

This collection features six peer-reviewed reviews on the economics of key agricultural practices. The first chapter assesses the economic impact of horticultural crops and integrated pest management programmes. The chapter highlights the importance of considering agricultural system design and the utilisation of novel control tactics. The second chapter considers the economic consequences of novel integrated weed management (IWM) strategies, as well as the different approaches used to assess the economics of IWM strategies. The third chapter reviews developments in methods to assess the economic value of agricultural biodiversity. The chapter also outlines the limitations of these methods and proposes a possible, novel way forward. The fourth chapter provides an overview of the economic barriers faced by smallholder farmers, including land, labour, capital and inputs, and their impact on farm profitability. The fifth chapter reviews the economics of soil health, focussing on the adoption of soil health management practices by farmers and the effectiveness of incentives. The final chapter examines the use of economic research as a tool to determine the profitability and adoption potential for a number of precision agriculture technologies.

This book takes a critical look at solar geoengineering as an acceptable means for addressing climate change. Baskin explores the assumptions and imaginaries which animate 'engineering the climate' and discusses why this climate solution is so controversial. The book explains geoengineering's past, its revival in the mid-2000s, and its future prospects including its shadow presence in the Paris climate accord. The main focus however is on dissecting solar geoengineering today - its rationales, underpinning knowledge, relationship to power, and the stance towards nature which accompanies it. Baskin explores three competing imaginaries associated with geoengineering: an Imperial imaginary, an oppositional Un-Natural imaginary, and a conspiratorial Chemtrail imaginary. He seeks to explain why solar geoengineering has struggled to gain approval and why resistance to it persists, despite the support of several powerful actors. He provocatively suggests that reconceptualising our present as the Anthropocene might unwittingly facilitate the normalisation of geoengineering by providing a sustaining socio-technical imaginary. This book is essential reading for those interested in climate policy, political ecology, and science & technology studies.

An entertaining and enthralling collection of myths, tales and traditions surrounding our trees, woodlands and forests from around the world.From the dark, gnarled woodlands of the north, to the humid jungles of the southern lands, trees have captured humanity's imagination for millennia. Filled with primal gods and goddesses, dryads and the fairy tales of old, the forests still beckon to us, offering sanctuary, mystery and more than a little mischievous trickery. From insatiable cannibalistic children hewn from logs, to lumberjack lore, and the spine-chilling legend of Bloody Mary, there is much to be found between the branches. Come into the trees; witches, seductive spirits and big, bad wolves await you.With this book, Folklore Thursday aim to encourage a sense of belonging across all cultures by showing how much we all have in common.

This highly respected and best-selling textbook provides an accessible, engaging and comprehensive introduction to the major topics within physical geography. It focuses on understanding the inter-linkages between processes, places and environments and is comprehensively illustrated to demonstrate how the physical environment works. Now in its fourth edition, the book has been thoroughly updated throughout to contain the latest research. Between them, the contributors have researched in detail every environment on the planet, providing an unrivalled source of rich information from around the world for both undergraduate and postgraduate study in the field of physical geography. An Introduction to Physical Geography and the Environment is accompanied by a rich and extensive range of electronic support resources including updated weblinks relevant for each chapter, an extended and annotated further reading list for each chapter, multiple choice questions, fieldwork exercises and interactive models.

Coastal Dynamics and Landforms is a thorough review of coastal forms and processes in tropical, temperate, and arctic environments. It is aimed at senior undergraduates, graduate students, and instructors and working professionals in the coastal field.

This book provides a comprehensive study of the notion of responsibility in environmental governance. It starts with the observation that, although the rhetoric of responsibility is indeed all-pervasive in environmental and sustainability-related fields, decisive political action is still lacking. Governance architectures increasingly strive to hold different stakeholders responsible by installing accountability and transparency mechanisms to manage environmental problems, yet the structural background conditions affecting these issues continue to generate unevenly distributed, socially unjust, and ecologically devastating consequences. Responsibility in Environmental Governance develops the concept of responsibility as an analytical approach to map and understand these dynamics and to situate diverse meanings of responsibility within larger socio-political contexts. It applies this approach to the study of food waste governance, uncovering a narrow governance focus on accountability, optimization, and consumer behavior change strategies, opening up spaces for organizing more democratic solutions to a truly global problem.

* This book deals with modern scientific methods and techniques to analyse fluvial process. * It highlights the concept of river channel stability and instability using channel morphology and demonstrates field techniques to assess channel morphology. * It will be useful for students, teachers and researchers of geography, earth sciences and environmental geology across UK and US. It will also be useful for geographers, civil engineers, hydrologists, geomorphologists, planners and other concerned authorities who are working on fluvial processes and riverbank erosion problems worldwide.

This book expounds the hydraulics of fine sediment which is almost ubiquitously found in coastal and estuarine waters, and in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Although the basic subject may be categorized as applied marine physics in shallow waters, several physicochemical and biological effects on particulate transport have been addressed.In this second edition most of the chapters have been substantially updated, rewritten, and expanded. Overall, a significant change has also been made throughout by replacing sediment concentration, a unit dependent quantity at the heart of numerous descriptions, measurements, and calculations, with the nondimensional sediment volume fraction. It marks a divergence in the manner in which fine sediment transport data and calculations are conventionally presented.The book is mainly written for civil engineering seniors and graduate students, to offer a comprehensive foundation in hydraulics of fine sediment. The book is also a useful reference for researchers interested in the effects of physical chemistry and biology on fine sediment transport in water and to an extent on coastal and estuarine morphodynamics, sediment transport, port and harbor engineering, and applied shallow watwer marine physics. The book is also recommended reading for those interested in understanding particle transport in water.