This book presents an up-to-date analysis of ocean-atmosphere interaction. Well known experts examine diverse subjects such as ocean surface waves, air-sea exchange processes, ocean surface mixed layer, water-mass formation, as well as general circulation of the oceans, El Nino and Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and the deep-ocean circulation. Other areas described are basic dynamics, data analysis techniques, numerical modelling, and remote sensing.

This book is primarily aimed at graduate and senior undergraduate courses in the area of ocean-atmosphere research.

Terrain analysis has been an active study field for years and attracted research studies from geographers, surveyors, engineers and computer scientists. With the rapid growth of Geographical Information System (GIS) technology, particularly the establishment of high resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEM) at national level, the challenge is now focused on delivering justifiable socio-economical and environmental benefits. The contributions in this book represent the state of the art of terrain analysis methods and techniques in areas of digital representation, morphological and hydrological models, uncertainty and applications of terrain analysis.

This book presents a state-of-the-art overview of ongoing GIScience research that has been presented at the 10th Conference of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE), held in Aalborg, Denmark. Included are 27 fully peer-reviewed papers not only covering basic GIScience research themes, but also ongoing research on technological advancements, as well as applied research on environmental modeling and management.

Aimed at all types of public health practitioners and theorists, this book is a compilation of methodological and application developments in spatial epidemiological approaches for environmental and public health studies in the Asia Pacific region. It aims to plug a gap in the literature that has seen a shortage of materials documenting the development of health GIS in this crucial part of the world.

This book fills a gap in knowledge of breaking waves and their influence on the generation of marine fluxes from ocean surfaces. Based on published data as well as on the author's experience, the text explores in detail the relationship chain of breaking waves, whitecaps coverage, rate of wave energy dissipation, amount of aerosol fluxes rising from a given sea basin, and possible seasonal variations.

Eugene Sharkov, of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, has here put together the most comprehensive description of the physical findings of an investigation into the spatio-temporal characteristics of the gravity of breaking waves. He's also described the foam activity in the open sea using methods and instruments of optical and microwave remote sensing. Numerous practical applications and illustrations are provided from air-borne, ship-borne and laboratory up-to-date experiments.

This book examines one of the most important and complex of the world's tropical rainforest regions: the greater Panama Canal Watershed. The Rio Chagres is the primary water source for operating the Canal, and supplies potable water for municipal use and electricity generation, but science has left this important national resource largely unstudied. The text promotes understanding of the physical and ecological components of an isolated and largely pristine tropical rainforest.

Juval Portugali The notion of complex artificial environments (CAE) refers to theories of c- plexity and self-organization, as well as to artifacts in general, and to artificial - vironments, such as cities, in particular. The link between the two, however, is not trivial. For one thing, the theories of complexity and self-organization originated in the "hard" science and by reference to natural phenomena in physics and bi- ogy. The study of artifacts, per contra, has traditionally been the business of the "soft" disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The notion of "complex artificial environments" thus implies the supposition that the theories of compl- ity and self-organization, together with the mathematical formalisms and meth- ologies developed for their study, apply beyond the domain of nature. Such a s- st position raises a whole set of questions relating to the nature of 21 century cities and urbanism, to philosophical issues regarding the natural versus the artificial, to the methodological legitimacy of interdisciplinary transfer of theories and me- odologies and to the implications that entail the use of sophisticated, state-of-t- art artifacts such as virtual reality (VR) cities and environments. The three-day workshop on the study of complex artificial environments that took place on the island of San Servolo, Venice, during April 1-3, 2004, was a gathering of scholars engaged in the study of the various aspects of CAE.

This book describes recent progress in object-based image interpretation. It presents new results in its application to verification of nuclear non-proliferation. A comprehensive workflow and newly developed algorithms for object-based high resolution image (pre-) processing, feature extraction, change detection, classification and interpretation are developed, applied and evaluated. The analysis chain is demonstrated with satellite imagery acquired over Iranian nuclear facilities.

This volume presents peer-reviewed papers from the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Atmospheric Boundary Layers held in April 2006. The papers are divided into thematic sessions: nature and theory of turbulent boundary layers; boundary-layer flows: modeling and applications to environmental security; nature, theory and modeling of boundary-layer flows; air flows within and above urban and other complex canopies: air-sea-ice interaction.

Homeland security and context In the Geographical Dimensions of Terrorism (GDOT) (Cutter et al. 2003), the first book after 9/11 to address homeland security and geography, we developed several thematic research agendas and explored intersections between geographic research and the importance of context, both geographical and political, in relationship to the concepts of terrorism and security. It is good to see that a great deal of new thought and research continues to flow from that initial research agenda, as illustrated by many of the papers of this new book, entitled Geospatial Technologies and Homeland Security: Research Frontiers and Future Challenges. Context is relevant not only to understanding homeland security issues broadly, but also to the conduct of research on geospatial technologies. It is impossible to understand the implications of a homeland security strategy, let alone hope to make predictions, conduct meaningful modeling and research, or assess the value and dangers of geospatial technologies, without consideration of overarching political, social, economic, and geographic contexts within which these questions are posed.

The Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE) was established in early 1998 to promote academic teaching and research on GIS at the European level. Since then, the annual AGILE c- ference has gradually become the leading GIScience conference in Europe and provides a multidisciplinary forum for scientific knowledge prod- tion and dissemination. GIScience addresses the understanding and automatic processing of geospatial information in its full breadth. While geo-objects can be represented either as vector data or in raster formats these representations have also guided the research in different disciplines, with GIS researchers concentrating on vector data while research in photogrammetry and c- puter vision focused on (geospatial) raster data. Although there have - ways been small but fine sessions addressing photogrammetry and image analysis at past AGILE conferences, these topics typically played only a minor role. Thus to broaden the domain of topics the AGILE 2009 con- rence it is jointly organized with a Workshop of the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), dedicated to High Re- lution Satellite Imagery, organized by Prof. Christian Heipke of the Le- niz Universitat Hannover. This collocation provides opportunities to explore commonalities - tween research communities and to ease exchange between participants to develop or deepen mutual understanding. We hope that this approach enables researchers from the different communities to identify common - terests and research methods and thus provides a basis for possible future cooperations."

In June/July 2008 the Institute for Geoinformation and Cartography at the Vienna University of Technology organized a scientific colloquium in this city, where 15 well-known scientists presented their ideas on research for the upcoming decade. This book contains papers prepared by the participants as well as by other researchers. The eighteen papers in this book reflect the opinion of a core group of Geoinformation scientists about future research topics. Dealing with these topics poses multiple research questions for the coming years

This book provides extensive insight on remote sensing of coastal waters from aircraft and space-based platforms. The primary focus of the book is optical remote sensing using passive instruments, to measure and analyze the coastal aquatic environment. The authors have gathered information from a variety of sources, to help non-specialists grasp new techniques and technology, to quickly produce useful data

It is only since recent years that the importance of the effects of outdoor lighting on the night-time environment and on the physical and mental health of humans is recognized on a wider scale. The related issue of light pollution is a particularly complex one, with potential conflicts of interest between the utilities, environmentalists, astronomers, the lighting industry and various government departments. Energy politics are always a sensitive issue, and light pollution is no exception to this rule.

The effects of light pollution on flora, fauna -including humans and their widely varying night-time activities- are often subtle and need extensive field studies to be quantified in a sensible manner.

The present conference, initiated by Commission 50 of the International Astronomical Union, is an attempt to bring together the astronomical community, the lighting industry, end-users, the utilities, and public authorities for a discussion and an exchange of ideas and information that will create goodwill among these groups and will thus contribute to making the global efforts to reduce pollution more efficient and effective.

Radio frequency pollution was also discussed in the context of radio astronomy and its efforts to create radio-quiet zones in collaboration with the government authorities that allocate frequency bands to the various users -mainly the telecommunications industry- and to protect the major planned and present radio observatories of the world.
The 3-day conference was attended by more than 130 representatives from 12 countries of all the above-mentioned groups, and a wide range of topics was discussed.

Some of the highlights were:
The presentation of the 1st world atlas of artificial night sky brightness (Cinzano et al.); the article by the International Darksky Association on their world-wide efforts to curb light pollution (Alvarez del Castillo et al.); the laws controlling light pollution implemented in Spain (Diaz et al.) and Chile (Sanhueza et al.), an overview of the work on radio frequency protection of sites (Cohen et al.) and the excellent introduction to the topic from the Chilean point of view (Daud).

Related topics in the book are light pollution education, aircraft contrails, space advertising (with an added document provided by the relevant UN commission), and an experiment on involving the population of an entire country in measuring sky brightness, by using the internet and the media.

The text is aimed at professionals from a wide range of disciplines related to lighting and its effects on the night-time environment in the broadest sense of the word. Lay persons interested in this emerging multi-disciplinary field can also find much of interest in this book.

This book focuses on the modeling and management of spatial data in distributed systems. The authors have structured the contributions from internationally renowned researchers into four parts. The book offers researchers an excellent overview of the state-of-the-art in modeling and management of spatial data in distributed environments, while it may also be the basis of specialized courses on Web-based geographical information systems.

The GeoInfo series of scientific conferences is an annual forum for exploring research, development and innovative applications in geographic information science and related areas. This book provides a privileged view of what is currently happening in the field of geoinformatics as well as a preview of what could be the hottest developments and research topics in the near future.

The Introduction to Bayesian Statistics (2nd Edition) presents Bayes theorem, the estimation of unknown parameters, the determination of confidence regions and the derivation of tests of hypotheses for the unknown parameters, in a manner that is simple, intuitive and easy to comprehend. The methods are applied to linear models, in models for a robust estimation, for prediction and filtering and in models for estimating variance components and covariance components. Regularization of inverse problems and pattern recognition are also covered while Bayesian networks serve for reaching decisions in systems with uncertainties. If analytical solutions cannot be derived, numerical algorithms are presented such as the Monte Carlo integration and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods.

This volume contains the extended papers selected for presentation at the ninth edition of the International Symposium on Web & Wireless Geographical Information Systems 2 (WGIS 2009) hosted by the National Centre for Geocomputation in NUI Maynooth 2 (Ireland). WGIS 2009 was the ninth in a series of successful events beginning with Kyoto 2001, and alternating locations between East Asia and Europe. We invited s- missions that provided an up-to-date review of advances in theoretical, technical, and 2 practical issues of W GIS and Intelligent GeoMedia. Reports on ongoing implemen- tions and real-world applications research were particularly welcome at this symposium. 2 Now in its ninth year, the scope of W GIS has expanded to include continuing - vances in wireless and Internet technologies that generate ever increasing interest in the diffusion, usage, and processing of geo-referenced data of all types - geomedia. Spatially aware wireless and Internet devices offer new ways of accessing and anal- ing geo-spatial information in both real-world and virtual spaces. Consequently, new challenges and opportunities are provided that expand the traditional GIS research scope into the realm of intelligent media - including geomedia with context-aware behaviors for self-adaptive use and delivery. Our common aim is research-based innovation that increases the ease of creating, delivering, and using geomedia across different platforms and application domains that continue to have dramatic effect on today's society.

First established in 1993 with a conference in Elba, Italy, COSIT (the International C- ference on Spatial Information Theory) is widely acknowledged as one of the most - portant conferences for the field of spatial information theory. This conference series brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines for intensive scientific - changes centered on spatial information theory. COSIT submissions typically address research questions drawn from cognitive, perceptual, and environmental psychology, geography, spatial information science, computer science, artificial intelligence, cog- tive science, engineering, cognitive anthropology, linguistics, ontology, architecture, planning, and environmental design. Some of the topical areas include, for example, the cognitive structure of spatial knowledge; events and processes in geographic space; incomplete or imprecise spatial knowledge; languages of spatial relations; navigation by organisms and robots; ontology of space; communication of spatial information; and the social and cultural organization of space to name a few. This volume contains the papers presented at the 9th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2009, held in Aber Wrac'h, France, September 21-25, 2009. For COSIT 2009, 70 full paper submissions were received. These papers were carefully reviewed by an international Program Committee based on relevance to the conference, intellectual quality, scientific significance, novelty, relation to previously published literature, and clarity of presentation. After reviewing was completed, 30 papers were selected for presentation at the conference and appear in this volume. This number of papers reflects the high quality of submissions to COSIT this year.

The early 21st century marks a new era in space exploration. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States, The European Space Agency (ESA), as well as space agencies of Japan, China, India, and other countries have sent their probes to the Moon, Mars, and other planets in the solar system. Planetary Remote Sensing and Mapping introduces original research and new developments in the areas of planetary remote sensing, photogrammetry, mapping, GIS, and planetary science resulting from the recent space exploration missions. Topics covered include: Reference systems of planetary bodies Planetary exploration missions and sensors Geometric information extraction from planetary remote sensing data Feature information extraction from planetary remote sensing data Planetary remote sensing data fusion Planetary data management and presentation Planetary Remote Sensing and Mapping will serve scientists and professionals working in the planetary remote sensing and mapping areas, as well as planetary probe designers, engineers, and planetary geologists and geophysicists. It also provides useful reading material for university teachers and students in the broader areas of remote sensing, photogrammetry, cartography, GIS, and geodesy.

The book provides a comprehensive insight into watersheds and modeling of the hydrological processes in the watersheds. It covers the concepts of watershed hydrology and watershed management in depth. The basic types, of soil erosion and its measurement and estimation of runoff and soil loss from the small and large watersheds are discussed. Recent advances in the watershed management like the application of remote sensing and GIS and hydrological models are a part of the book. The book serve as a guide for professional and competitive examinations for undergraduate students of Agriculture and Agricultural Engineering and graduate students of Soil Science, Soil and Water Engineering, Agricultural Physics, Hydrology and Watershed Management.

In the wake of the so-called information technology revolution, many stakeholders from the public and private sectors (including citizens) have indeed grown accustomed to the promise and usability of spatial data infrastructures (SDI) for data access, use, and sharing. Analyzing the obstacles as well as the processes and mechanisms of integration and implementation, Spatial Data Infrastructures in Context: North and South investigates the technological and the non-technological aspects of the widespread adoption of spatial data infrastructures. Supporting theoretical issues with empirical studies, the editors pay particular attention to the non-technological aspects of organizational, financial, and legal issues including owner rights, liability, copyrights, and compatibility with precedent and supercedent laws. The authors also highlight the importance of understanding the local environment and circumstances in the process of tailoring the approaches to the conditions that characterize societies of different cultural, institutional, and economic settings. Designed to improve the accessibility, interoperability, and affordability of spatial data, the book focuses on the increasing challenges associated with integrating individuals and organizations into a network to support (1) public authorities and administrations at various levels, (2) thematic user communities, (3) enterprises, and (4) citizen-oriented society as a whole. It addresses the implementation and development of spatial data infrastructures for a wide range of themes, applicable technical standards and protocols, and specific organizational issues unique to data policy. Highlighting the potential for profound changes to the access, use, and exchange of spatial data for citizens, organizations, and geographically related applications, and therefore to the role and interaction of the stakeholders from the public and private sectors, this timely contribution provides new insights into improving our understanding of the increasing relevance, applicability, and value of spatial data infrastructures.

From environmental management to land planning and geo-marketing, the number of application domains that may greatly benefit from using data enriched with spatio-temporal features is expanding very rapidly. This book shows that a conceptual design approach for spatio-temporal databases is both feasible and easy to apprehend. While providing a firm basis through extensive discussion of traditional data modeling concepts, the major focus of the book is on modeling spatial and temporal information.

Recognized and advocated as a powerful tool, the role of remote sensing in identifying, mapping, and monitoring soil salinity and salinization will continue to expand. Remote Sensing of Soil Salinization: Impact on Land Management delineates how to combine science and geospatial technologies for smart environmental management. Choose the Right Techniques for the Job An overview of soil salinity assessment using remote sensing technologies, the book describes a variety of sensors, ranging from ground-based to airborne and satellite-borne, and their use in a diversity of geographical regions and environmental settings from coastal to inland saline areas. It provides guidance on how to identify and choose the right remote sensing tools and data sets required based on the purpose of the study and the environmental setting. Organized into three sections, the book covers: Section I: Soil Salinity and Remote Sensing: The Object and the Tool - Focuses on the relationships between the landscape-object salinity and the remote sensing tools Section II: Trends in Mapping Soil Salinity and Monitoring Salinization Using Remote and Proximal Sensing - Provides a variety of case studies dealing with soil salinity mapping and monitoring the process of salinization Section III: Diversity of Approaches to Modeling Soil Salinity and Salinization - Demonstrates the diversity of approaches used in modeling soil salinity and salinization in space and time Combines Fundamentals, the Latest Technology, and Practical Examples The book includes analyses of basic issues of remote detection, such as the spectral behavior of salt types and vegetation influence, and evaluations of currently available remote sensing platforms delineating their advantages and disadvantages. The accompanying CD-ROM provides color images that enhance the mat