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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Physical geography
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.
Authored by world-class scientists and scholars, The Handbook of Natural Resources, Second Edition, is an excellent reference for understanding the consequences of changing natural resources to the degradation of ecological integrity and the sustainability of life. Based on the content of the bestselling and CHOICE-awarded Encyclopedia of Natural Resources, this new edition demonstrates the major challenges that the society is facing for the sustainability of all well-being on the planet Earth. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying natural resources are presented in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the main systems of land, water, and air. It reviews state-of-the-art knowledge, highlights advances made in different areas, and provides guidance for the appropriate use of remote sensing and geospatial data with field-based measurements in the study of natural resources. Volume 3, Wetlands and Habitats, provides fundamental information on wetlands and their integral functions as a productive ecosystem. The topics it covers include wetlands biodiversity, wetlands classification and monitoring, floods, river ecosystems, pollution, and more. New to this edition are discussions on wetland vegetation, assessment of current wetland health status, restoration, sea-level rises and coastal storm, vulnerability to human impacts, and lakes and wetlands remote sensing. This volume demonstrates the key processes, methods, and models used through many case studies from around the world. Written in an easy-to-reference manner, The Handbook of Natural Resources, Second Edition, as individual volumes or as a complete set, is an essential reading for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the science and management of natural resources. Public and private libraries, educational and research institutions, scientists, scholars, and resource managers will benefit enormously from this set. Individual volumes and chapters can also be used in a wide variety of both graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental science and natural science at different levels and disciplines, such as biology, geography, earth system science, and ecology.
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 book examines a wide range of innovative approaches for coastal wetlands restoration and explains how we should use both academic research and practitioners' findings to influence learning, practice, policy and social change. For conservationists, tidal flats and coastal wetlands are regarded as among the most important areas to conserve for the health of the entire oceanic environment. As the number of restoration projects all over the world increases, this book provides a unique assessment of coastal wetland restorations by examining existing community perceptions and by drawing on the knowledge and expertise of both academics and practitioners. Based on a four-year sociological study across three different cultural settings - England, Japan and Malaysia - the book investigates how citizens perceive the existing environment; how they discuss the risks and benefits of restoration projects; how perceptions change over time; and how governmental and non-governmental organisations work with the various community perceptions on the ground. By comparing and contrasting the results from these three countries, the book offers guidance for future conservation and restoration activities, with a specific view to working with local citizens to avoid conflict and obtain long-term investment. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of coastal restoration, wetland conservation and citizen science, as well as environmental sociology and environmental management more broadly. It will also be of use to practitioners and policymakers involved in environmental restoration projects.
1. Provides a holistic understanding of Polar Geoscience and its trajectory of change. 2. Presents four decades of scientific research by Indian scientists in Polar regions and the data obtained to address global climate issues. 3. Includes case studies on geological, glaciological, and geophysical investigations done in polar regions. 4. Highlights glaciological studies that explain changes with time in polar regions. 5. Discusses the use of natural archives to explain the cryosphere region's climate scenario.
In his memoir, Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain personified the river as "Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing!" Twain's time as a steamboat pilot showed him the true character of The Great River, with its unpredictable moods and hidden secrets. Still a vital route for U.S. shipping, the Mississippi River has given life to riverside communities, manufacturing industries, fishing, tourism, and other livelihoods. But the Mighty Mississippi has also claimed countless lives as tribute to its muddy waters. Climate and environmental conditions made the Mississippi the perfect incubator for diseases like malaria. Natural disasters like tornadoes, floods, and even an earthquake have changed and reshaped the river's banks over thousands of years. Shipwrecks and steamboat explosions were once common in the difficult-to-navigate waters. But when there was money to be made, there were some willing to risk it all-from the brave steamboat captains who went down with their ships, to the illegal moonshiners and pirates who pillaged the river's bounty. In this book, author and Mississippi River historian Dean Klinkenberg explores the many disastrous events to have occurred on and along the river in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-from steamboat explosions, to Yellow Fever epidemics, floods, and Prohibition piracy. Enjoy this journey into the darkest deeds of the Mississippi River.
This book examines social processes that have contributed to growing pesticide use, with a particular focus on the role governments play in urban aerial pesticide spraying operations. Beyond being applied to sparsely populated farmland, pesticides have been increasingly used in densely populated urban environments, and when faced with invasive species, governments have resorted to large-scale aerial pesticide spraying operations in urban areas. This book focuses on New Zealand's 2002-2004 pesticide campaign to eradicate the Painted Apple Moth, which is the largest operation of its kind in world history, whether we consider its duration (29 months), its scope (at its peak the spraying zone was 10,632 hectares/26,272 acres), the number of sprayings that were administered (the pesticide was administered on 60 different days), or the number of people exposed to the spraying (190,000+). This book provides an in-depth understanding of the social processes that contributed to the incursion, why the government sought to eradicate the moth through aerial pesticide spraying, the ideological strategies they used to build and maintain public support, and why those strategies were effective. Urban Aerial Pesticide Spraying Campaigns will be of great interest to students and researchers of pesticides, environmental sociology, environmental history, environmental studies, political ecology, geography, medical sociology, and science and technology studies.
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.
Coastal habitats provide the link between the land and the sea. They are dynamic, combine to form ecosystems of great complexity and provide significant areas for wildlife. Their landscapes are treasured by visitors, painters and musicians. They also provide locations for significant economic activity and are intimately bound up with fisheries, providing food and shelter for some species of commercially exploited fish stocks. The habitats themselves provide a buffer to tides and wave action, which may be particularly important in areas where relative sea level is rising and during storm periods. Managing these assets in the face of continuing pressure from human populations on a sustainable basis is a major task. CD-ROM included
This comprehensive book unravels the complexities of the grassland systems of Mongolia and northern China to identify the ways in which policies and incentives can be strengthened to improve grassland condition and herder livelihoods. Through an interdisciplinary lens, combining environmental economics and grassland science, contributors unpack the preferences, attitudes and behavioural responses of Asian grassland actors to new and alternative policies. Offering a comparative analysis of policies and incentives in China and Mongolia, chapters focus on understanding ex ante behavioural responses, arguing convincingly for a mix of incentives and associated policy measures that can both improve grassland conditions and align with the preferences of herders and officials. Featuring a unique interdisciplinary focus and comparative approach, this book is crucial reading for grassland and rangeland scientists in China, Mongolia and beyond as well as grassland officials seeking new policies and a better understanding of their impact. Academics and researchers of the environment and ecology in China, Mongolia and Asia more broadly will also find this book a fascinating insight into environmental livelihoods and contemporary grassland experiences. Contributors include: J. Addison, K. Behrendt, J. Bennett, C. Brown, D. Bukhbat, L. Dorjburegdaa, U. Gombosuren, Q. Guanghua, H. Guodong, X. Hou, G. Jargalsaihan, D. Kemp, P. Li, E.-O. Lkhagvadorj, S. Waldron, B. Zhang, J. Zhang, Y. Zhang, M. Zhao Mengli, W. Zhongwu
The Bestselling Classic Updated for Surfers, Sailors, Oceanographers, Climate Activists, and Those Who Love the Sea First published in 1963 and updated in 1979, this classic was an essential handbook for anyone who studies, surfs, protects, or is fascinated by the ocean. The original author, Willard Bascom, was a master of the subject and included a wealth of information, based on theory and statistics, but also anecdotal observation and personal experience. It brought to the general public understanding of the awesome and complex power of the waves. This revision from Kim McCoy adds recent facts and anecdotes to update the book's relevance in the time of climate change. One of the most significant effects of global warming will be sea-level rise. What will this mean to waves and beaches, and what effects are we already seeing? New text and photos cover events such as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina flooding of 2005, and the 2011 earthquake and resulting devastation in Fukishima. As well as students, surfers, and the general public, this updated edition of a beloved classic is an essential handbook for climate scientists and ocean activists, providing clear explanations and detailed resources for the constant battle to preserve the shore.
A global blue economy is an economic arena that depends on the benefits and values realized from the coastal and marine environments. This book explains the "sustainable blue economy" as a marine-based economy that provides social and economic benefits for current and future generations. It restores, protects, and maintains the diversity, productivity, and resilience of marine ecosystems, and is based on clean technologies, renewable energy, and circular material flows.
The geo-hydro-morphometry of the river Ganges has a history of
long and wide variations as the river is continuously fed by the
high Himalayas hill ranges, the highest in the world. The river is
categorized as an international one, passing through several
independent countries. Audience The book will be of interest to researchers and scientists, professionals and policymakers in water resources management and environmental science, conservation policy and development research.
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.
Killing Bugs for Business and Beauty examines the beginning of Canada’s aerial war against forest insects and how a tiny handful of officials came to lead the world with a made-in-Canada solution to the problem. Shedding light on a largely forgotten chapter in Canadian environmental history, Mark Kuhlberg explores the theme of nature and its agency. The book highlights the shared impulses that often drove both the harvesters and the preservers of trees, and the acute dangers inherent in allowing emotional appeals instead of logic to drive environmental policy-making. It addresses both inter-governmental and intra-governmental relations, as well as pressure politics and lobbying. Including fascinating tales from Cape Breton Island, Muskoka, and Stanley Park, Killing Bugs for Business and Beauty clearly demonstrates how class, region, and commercial interest intersected to determine the location and timing of aerial bombings. At the core of this book about killing bugs is a story, infused with innovation and heroism, of the various conflicts that complicate how we worship wilderness.
This edited collection of works by leading climate scientists and philosophers introduces readers to issues in the foundations, evaluation, confirmation, and application of climate models. It engages with important topics directly affecting public policy, including the role of doubt, the use of satellite data, and the robustness of models. Climate Modelling provides an early and significant contribution to the burgeoning Philosophy of Climate Science field that will help to shape our understanding of these topics in both philosophy and the wider scientific context. It offers insight into the reasons we should believe what climate models say about the world but addresses the issues that inform how reliable and well-confirmed these models are. This book will be of interest to students of climate science, philosophy of science, and of particular relevance to policy makers who depend on the models that forecast future states of the climate and ocean in order to make public policy decisions.
Beyond the Megacity connects and reconnects the global debate on the contemporary urban condition to the Latin American tradition of seeing, considering, and theorizing urbanization from the margins. It develops the approach of "peripheral urbanization" as a way to integrate the theoretical agendas belonging to global suburbanisms, neo-Marxist accounts of planetary urbanization, and postcolonial urban studies, and to move urban theory closer to the complexity and diversity of urbanization in the Global South. From an interdisciplinary perspective, Beyond the Megacity investigates the natures, causes, implications, and politics of current urbanization processes in Latin America. The book draws on case studies from various countries across the region, covering theoretical and disciplinary approaches from the fields of geography, anthropology, sociology, urban studies, agrarian studies, and urban and regional planning, and is written by academics, journalists, practitioners, and scholar-activists. Beyond the Megacity unites these unique perspectives by shifting attention to the places, processes, practices, and bodies of knowledge that have often been neglected in the past.
This book develops a fundamental understanding of geophysical fluid dynamics based on a mathematical description of the flows of inhomogeneous fluids. It covers these topics: 1. development of the equations of motion for an inhomogeneous fluid 2. review of thermodynamics 3. thermodynamic and kinetic energy equations 4. equations of state for the atmosphere and the ocean, salt, and moisture effects 5. concepts of potential temperature and potential density 6. Boussinesq and quasi-geostrophic approximations 7. conservation equations for vorticity, mechanical and thermal energy instability theories, internal waves, mixing, convection, double-diffusion, stratified turbulence, fronts, intrusions, gravity currents Graduate students will be able to learn and apply the basic theory of geophysical fluid dynamics of inhomogeneous fluids on a rotating earth, including: 1. derivation of the governing equations for a stratified fluid starting from basic principles of physics 2. review of thermodynamics, equations of state, isothermal, adiabatic, isentropic changes 3. scaling of the equations, Boussinesq approximation, applied to the ocean and the atmosphere 4. examples of stratified flows at geophysical scales, steady and unsteady motions, inertia-gravity internal waves, quasi-geostrophic theory 5. vorticity and energy conservation in stratified fluids 6.boundary layer convection in stratified containers and basins
This book breaks down primary concepts of coastal vulnerability by
providing a thorough discussion of the concept. It addresses
coastal vulnerability around the world with specific examples from
the Ebro Delta (Spain), the crumbling cliffs of Corton
Village/Suffolk (UK), and tsunami-worn Phuket (Thailand/Indian
Ocean) as well as others. Ultimately, a framework is established
for discussion about global locations and sustaining resilience of
coastal areas.
Over the last century, the scale of Canada's domestic disaster response system has grown significantly due to the country's increased capacity for emergency management and the rise in natural hazards. However, there has been no systematic assessment of how effectively this multilevel system, which includes all levels of government and the military, has been integrated, and how efficient this system actually is at responding to high-level disasters. Using in-depth archival analysis and interviews with senior military and civilian officials on the inside, Boots on the Ground provides a detailed examination of Canada's disaster response system. Including policy recommendations focused on the expansion of emergency management networks, the maintenance of Canada's decentralized emergency management system, and disaster response resources for First Nations communities, Boots on the Ground aims to highlight opportunities to improve Canada's urgent disaster response. Boots on the Ground offers helpful lessons for students, policy makers, emergency management practitioners, and military officers, ensuring that readers gain concrete insights into the strategic and efficient implementation of disaster response initiatives.
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.
World wetlands are endangered by human activities and development in all parts of the world. This book approaches the study of wetlands management and development policy by using integrated ecosystem modelling that draws on insights from hydrology, ecology and economics. The authors devote particular attention to the spatial dimension, the development of a set of complementary indicators, and the aggregation and evaluation of information.
This book is an anthology of key essays that foregrounds coasts, islands, and shorelines as central to the scholarship on the oceanic environment and climate across South Asia. The volume is a collaborative effort amongst historians, anthropologists, and environmentalists to further understand the lifeworlds of the South Asian littoral that are neither fully aquatic or terrestrial, and inescapably both. Terra Aqua invokes a 'third surface' located in the interstice of land and water-deltas, estuaries, tidelands, beaches, swamps, sandbanks, and mudflats-and engages in a radical reconceptualization of coastal and shoreline terrains. The book explores uniquely endangered habitats and emergent templates of survival against rising seas and climatic disturbances with particular focus on the Bengal and Malabar coastlines. A critical, transdisciplinary contribution to the study of climate change in South Asia, Terra Aqua examines salinity and submergence, coastal erosion, subterranean degradation, and the depletion of littoral lifeways impacting marine communities and biospheres. It will be of particular interest to scholars of environment studies, ecology and climate change in the Global South, hydrology, geography, ocean and island studies, environmental justice, colonialism, and imperial and maritime history.
Many historians and political scientists argue that ties between Canada and Latin America have been weak and intermittent because of lack of mutual interest and common objectives. Has this record of diverging paths changed as Canada has attempted to expand its economic and diplomatic ties with the region? Has Canada become an imperialist power? Canada's Past and Future in Latin America investigates the historical origins of and more recent developments in Canadian foreign policy in the region. It offers a detailed evaluation of the Harper and Trudeau governments' approaches to Latin America, touching on political diplomacy, bilateral development cooperation, and civil society initiatives. Leading scholars of Canada-Latin America relations offer insights from unique perspectives on a range of issues, such as the impact of Canadian mining investment, security relations, democracy promotion, and the changing nature of Latin American migration to Canada. Drawing on archival research, field interviews, and primary sources, Canada's Past and Future in Latin America advances our understanding of Canadian engagement with the region and evaluates options for building stronger ties in the future. |
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