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Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > The hydrosphere
This book describes concepts and tools needed for water resources
management, including methods for modeling, simulation,
optimization, big data analysis, data mining, remote sensing,
geographical information system, game theory, conflict resolution,
System dynamics, agent-based models, multiobjective, multicriteria,
and multiattribute decision making and risk and uncertainty
analysis, for better and sustainable management of water resources
and consumption, thus mitigating the present and future global
water shortage crisis. It presents the applications of these tools
through case studies which demonstrate its benefits of proper
management of water resources systems. This book acts as a
reference for students, professors, industrial practitioners, and
stakeholders in the field of water resources and hydrology.
This book presents contributions devoted to the hydrogeochemical
characterization of aquatic environments of Patagonia, including
those of Ushuaia city, known as "The southernmost city in the
world". Patagonia (between 39 Degrees and 55 Degrees S) is located
in southern South America. Eight main river systems pour their
waters into the SW Atlantic Ocean. Rivers, with their headwaters
mainly located in the Andes, supply dissolved and particulate
matter to the coastal zone, as well as nutrients, which benefit
biological communities. Besides, freshwater in this region with
little anthropogenic impact supports human life and a high wildlife
biodiversity. Unfortunately, the recent increase in human
activities, such as the use of fertilizers, wastewater discharges,
extensive deforestation and dam construction, is affecting the
quality and quantity of water resources. The book is of interest
for researchers, professors and government agencies that decide on
water resources management policies.
This book analyses and quantifies how and where energy and water
are consumed by the ceramic sanitary-ware industry and provides
solutions as to how to reduce this. The whole production process is
mapped, including modelling methods. The book begins by providing
an introduction to ceramic sanitary-ware production and types of
factories casting technology. It then moves on to discuss the
process and energy modelling for the production line, analysis of
energy and water consumptions and proposals for improvements. The
last chapter presents the practical implementation of the selected
modelling configuration. This book is of particular interest to
water and energy management professionals within the ceramic
industry, but the methods are of interest to those in other
production industries as well.
 |
Sea Fever
(Hardcover)
Dale Franzen; Illustrated by Don Franzen
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R586
Discovery Miles 5 860
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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This book offers essential information on geospatial technologies
for water resource management and highlights the latest GIS and
geostatistics techniques as they relate to groundwater. Groundwater
is inarguably India's single most important natural resource. It is
the foundation of millions of Indian farmers' livelihood security
and the primary source of drinking water for a vast majority of
Indians in rural and urban areas. The prospects of continued high
rates of growth in the Indian economy will, to a great extent,
depend on how judiciously we can manage groundwater in the years to
come. Over the past three decades, India has emerged as by far the
single largest consumer of groundwater in the world. Though
groundwater has made the country self-sufficient in terms of food,
we face a crisis of dwindling water tables and declining water
quality. Deep drilling by tube wells, which was once part of the
solution to water shortages, is now in danger of becoming part of
the problem. Consequently, we urgently need to focus our efforts on
the sustainable and equitable management of groundwater. Addressing
that need, this book presents novel advances in and applications of
RS–GIS and geostatistical techniques to the research community in
a precise and straightforward manner.
This book presents the phylogeny, taxonomy and biogeography of
freshwater red algae. Its content is divided into five chapters.
The first chapter provides a brief history of freshwater red algal
research, habits and collecting methods, general biogeographic
trends and an overview of the taxonomic/phylogenetic placement of
freshwater taxa. The other four chapters are taxonomic treatments
of non-marine red algae based on taxonomic levels, i.e. classes
within the phylum Rhodophyta, orders within each class, families
within each order, and genera within each family. Descriptions,
phylogenetic data (including numerous trees), geographic range
(maps for most species) and dichotomous keys for identification are
presented. Comprehensive data are provided for more than 220
species.
The lands and waters of the Mid-Atlantic Region (MAR) have changed
significantly since before the 16th century when the Susquehannock
lived in the area. Much has changed since Captain John Smith
penetrated the estuaries and rivers during the early 17th century;
since the surveying of the Mason-Dixon Line to settle border
disputes among Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware during the
middle of the 18th century; and since J. Thomas Scharf described
the physiographic setting of Baltimore County in the late 19th
century. As early as 1881, Scharf provides us with an assessment of
the condition of the aquatic ecosystems of the region, albeit in
narrative form, and already changes are taking place - the
conversion of forests to fields, the founding of towns and cities,
and the depletion of natural resources. We have always conducted
our work with the premise that "man" is part of, and not apart
from, this ecosystem and landscape. This premise, and the
historical changes in our landscape, provide the foundation for our
overarching research question: how do human activities impact the
functioning of aquatic ecosystems and the ecosystem services that
they provide, and how can we optimize this relationship?
This book, as a part of a series of CERES publications, provides a
multi-regional and cross-sectoral analysis of food and water
security, especially in the era of climate risks, biodiversity
loss, pressure on scarce resources, especially land and water,
increasing global population, and changing dietary preferences. It
includes both conceptual research and empirically-based studies,
which provides context-specific analyses and recommendations based
on a variety of case studies from Africa, Middle East, and Asia
regarding the fostering of long-term resilience of food and water
security. The core approach of the volume consists of: assessing
the structural drivers affecting the vulnerability of food and
water security, under the persistence of current trends;
identifying the best solutions and practices to enhance the climate
resilience for food and water security; and fostering climate
adaptation and biodiversity protection for food and water security.
Examining the science of stream restoration, Rebecca Lave argues
that the neoliberal emphasis on the privatization and
commercialization of knowledge has fundamentally changed the way
that science is funded, organized, and viewed in the United States.
Stream restoration science and practice is in a startling state.
The most widely respected expert in the field, Dave Rosgen, is a
private consultant with relatively little formal scientific
training. Since the mid-1990s, many academic and federal agency -
based scientists have denounced Rosgen as a charlatan and a hack.
Despite this, Rosgen's Natural Channel Design approach,
classification system, and short-course series are not only
accepted but are viewed as more legitimate than academically
produced knowledge and training. Rosgen's methods are now promoted
by federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency,
the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and
the Natural Resources Conservation Service, as well as by resource
agencies in dozens of states. Drawing on the work of Pierre
Bourdieu, Lave demonstrates that the primary cause of Rosgen's
success is neither the method nor the man but is instead the
assignment of a new legitimacy to scientific claims developed
outside the academy, concurrent with academic scientists'
decreasing ability to defend their turf. What is at stake in the
Rosgen wars, argues Lave, is not just the ecological health of our
rivers and streams but the very future of environmental science.
The book is dedicated to the study and mathematical definition of
the biogeochemical patterns of organic and inorganic matter
interaction with the marine environment's radioactive and chemical
components. This book describes the radioisotope and mineral
exchange theory between organic and inorganic matters in the marine
environment on a time scale of metabolic processes and trophic
interactions. The approach is parametrically compatible with modern
techniques describing the matter and energy balance in aquatic
ecosystems. The criteria for assessing the ecological capacity,
biogeocenoses assimilation capacity, and water masses radio
capacity, which form the basis of the theory of radioisotope and
mineral homeostasis of marine ecosystems, are substantiated. This
book presents methods to implement sustainable development of the
Black Sea's critical and recreational zones according to the marine
pollution factors. This book does that by regulating the balance
between the consumption of water quality resources and their
reproduction as a result of natural biogeochemical processes are
proposed. The book is of interest to scientists working in marine
geology, marine ecology, biogeophysics, and biogeochemistry. This
book is also necessary for professionals working in institutions
and administrations coordinating maritime activities, environmental
projects, and developing aquaculture technologies.
In The Big Muddy, the first long-term environmental history of the
Mississippi, Christopher Morris offers a brilliant tour across five
centuries as he illuminates the interaction between people and the
landscape, from early hunter-gatherer bands to present-day
industrial and post-industrial society.
Morris shows that when Hernando de Soto arrived at the lower
Mississippi Valley, he found an incredibly vast wetland, forty
thousand square miles of some of the richest, wettest land in North
America, deposited there by the big muddy river that ran through
it. But since then much has changed, for the river and for the
surrounding valley. Indeed, by the 1890s, the valley was rapidly
drying. Morris shows how centuries of increasingly intensified
human meddling--including deforestation, swamp drainage, and levee
construction--led to drought, disease, and severe flooding. He
outlines the damage done by the introduction of foreign species,
such as the Argentine nutria, which escaped into the wild and are
now busy eating up Louisiana's wetlands. And he critiques the most
monumental change in the lower Mississippi Valley--the
reconstruction of the river itself, largely under the direction of
the Army Corps of Engineers. Valley residents have been paying the
price for these human interventions, most visibly with the disaster
that followed Hurricane Katrina. Morris also describes how valley
residents have been struggling to reinvigorate the valley
environment in recent years--such as with the burgeoning catfish
and crawfish industries--so that they may once again live off its
natural abundance.
Morris concludes that the problem with Katrina is the problem with
the Amazon Rainforest, drought and famine in Africa, and fires and
mudslides in California--it is the end result of the ill-considered
bending of natural environments to human purposes.
"Magnificent . . . A joyful, hopeful book. Safina gives us ample
reasons to be enthralled by this astonishing ancient animal--and
ample reasons to care.""--Los Angeles Times" As Carl Safina's
compelling natural history adventure makes clear, the fate of the
leatherback turtle is in our hands. The distressing decline of
these ancient sea turtles in Pacific waters and their surprising
recovery in the Atlantic illuminate the results--both positive and
negative--of our interventions and the lessons that can be applied,
globally, to restore the oceans and their creatures.
We accompany award-winning natural history expert Safina and his
colleagues as they track leatherbacks across the world's oceans and
onto remote beaches of every continent, including a thrilling
journey from Monterey, California, to nesting grounds in Papua, New
Guinea. Throughout, in his peerless prose, Safina captures the
delicate interaction between these gentle giants and the humans who
are playing a significant role in their survival.
The increasingly widespread production of toxins by marine and
freshwater microalgae raises serious concerns regarding seafood and
drinking water safety. This book compiles studies on the influence
of climate change on the spreading of toxin-producing species in
aquatic systems. The chemistry and biology of toxin production is
revised and an outlook on control and prevention of the toxins'
impact on human and animal health is given.
This book reviews the latest information on the assessment of
surface and groundwater resources in Algeria. The authors cover a
large diversity of topics, including the status and assessment of
water resources, impacts of pesticides, soil droughts, analysis of
flood characteristics, hydrogeological investigations and modeling
applications, and evapotranspiration. Special attention is given to
the impacts of climate changes on water resources. The assessment
methods present in this book can be used or adapted to study other
regions of North Africa, Middle East and/or in the Mediterranean
with similar climate conditions as Algeria. This book and the
companion volume Water Resources in Algeria - Part II: Water
Quality, Treatment, Protection and Development will appeal to
engineers, researchers, graduate students and policymakers
interested in the field of groundwater and surface water
assessment.
This book provides an innovative, realistic and reliable solution
to the common problem of Indian water and energy sector due to the
onset of the Impact of Climate Change and Large-Scale Urbanization.
Twelve Case Studies and One Review Paper that were included in this
book depict the way soft computation techniques, simulation and
decision-making framework can optimize the best solution from
multiple solutions to the problems of water and energy management
which corresponds to a novel symbiotic and synchronous nexus
between water and the energy sector. All the studies included in
this book are collected from all parts of India. The selected
studies utilized the latest technologies like Multi-Criteria
Decision Frame Work, Neural Networks and Nature-Based Optimization
techniques to achieve diverse objectives from the prediction of
climatic parameters to yield from ungauged watershed to performance
optimization of Water Treatment Plant, Hydropower as well as
futuristic alternative energy systems like Wave to Power Plants.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of recent research on
estuaries of the east coast of India, and how changing
biogeochemical dynamics as a result of climate change and human
activity have impacted estuaries and other open water ecosystems.
Though estuaries only cover a very small portion of the earth's
hydrosphere, they are some of the most biogeochemically active
regions among the global water bodies. As such, this book focuses
on estuaries of the east coast of India going all the way to the
Bay of Bengal, which is the world's largest freshwater input from
perennial rivers and rain-fed estuaries, and is therefore a unique
area of study. Through its unique coverage of the Bay of Bengal in
particular, the book presents a new perspective not present in the
literature on estuary biogeochemistry and ecosystem dynamics.
Moreover, the book addresses SDG 13 (Climate Action) and 14 (Life
below Water), with a focus on ecosystem services of the natural
aquatic system.The book will be useful to researchers, policy
makers, coastal managers and marine sustainability scientists and
organizations.
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