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Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > The hydrosphere
This book explains clearly how and where groundwater occurs, how it
is used and how it is at risk.
Flood catastrophes which happened world-wide have shown that it
is not sufficient to characterize the hazard caused by the natural
phenomenon "flood" with the well-known 3M-approach (measuring,
mapping and modelling). Due to the recent shift in paradigms from a
safety oriented approach to risk based planning it became necessary
to consider the harmful impacts of hazards. The planning tasks
changed from attempts to minimise hazards towards interventions to
reduce exposure or susceptibility and nowadays to enhance the
capacities to increase resilience. Scientific interest shifts more
and more towards interdisciplinary approaches, which are needed to
avoid disaster. This book deals with many aspects of flood risk
management in a comprehensive way. As risks depend on hazard and
vulnerabilities, not only geophysical tools for flood forecasting
and planning are presented, but also socio-economic problems of
flood management are discussed. Starting with precipitation and
meteorological tools to its forecasting, hydrological models are
described in their applications for operational flood forecasts,
considering model uncertainties and their interactions with
hydraulic and groundwater models. With regard to flood risk
planning, regionalization aspects and the options to utilize
historic floods are discussed. New hydrological tools for flood
risk assessments for dams and reservoirs are presented. Problems
and options to quantify socio-economic risks and how to consider
them in multi-criteria assessments of flood risk planning are
discussed. This book contributes to the contemporary efforts to
reduce flood risk at the European scale. Using many real-world
examples, it is useful for scientists and practitioners at
different levels and with different interests.
Arising out of the Third International Symposium held in New
Jersey, this book represents the state-of-the-art in ocean
management. An international group of contributors cover such
topics as: regional seas and embayments; new concepts in the
governance of ocean space assessment standards and issues; ocean
resources and sustainable development; ocean space development; and
related technologies. From the Baltic to the Caribbean, from the
Adriatic to the Atlantic, the problems of ocean management are
fully discussed, and proposals made to meet the challenges of the
next decade. This book should be of interest and use to anyone
working in coastal and ocean management.
Dead-Reckoning aided with Doppler velocity measurement has been the
most common method for underwater navigation for small vehicles.
Unfortunately DR requires frequent position recalibrations and
underwater vehicle navigation systems are limited to periodic
position update when they surface. Finally standard Global
Positioning System (GPS) receivers are unable to provide the rate
or precision required when used on a small vessel. To overcome
this, a low cost high rate motion measurement system for an
Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) with underwater and oceanographic
purposes is proposed. The proposed onboard system for the USV
consists of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) with accelerometers
and rate gyros, a GPS receiver, a flux-gate compass, a roll and
tilt sensor and an ADCP. Interfacing all the sensors proved rather
challenging because of their different characteristics. The
proposed data fusion technique integrates the sensors and develops
an embeddable software package, using real time data fusion
methods, for a USV to aid in navigation and control as well as
controlling an onboard Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP).
While ADCPs non-intrusively measure water flow, the vessel motion
needs to be removed to analyze the data and the system developed
provides the motion measurements and processing to accomplish this
task.
This book provides a comprehensive approach to all aspects of
water-related subjects affected by climate change that expand
readers' attitudes toward future of the management strategies and
improve management plans. It summarizes climate change scenarios,
models, downscaling methods, and how to select the appropriate
method. It also introduces practical steps in assessing climate
change impacts on water issues through introducing hydrological
models and climate change data applications in hydrologic analysis.
The book caters to specialist readers who are interested in
analyzing climate change effects on water resources, and related
issues can gain a profound understanding of the practical concepts
and step-by-step analysis, which is enriched with real case studies
all around the world. Moreover, readers will be familiar with
potential mitigation and adaptation measures in sustainable water
engineering, considering the results of hydrologic modeling.
This book provides comprehensive description of polymeric membranes
in water treatment and remediation. It describes both the
sustainability challenges and new opportunities to use membranes
for water decontamination. It also discusses the
environmental-related issues, challenges and advantages of using
membrane-based systems and provides comprehensive description of
various polymeric membranes, nanomaterials, biomolecules and their
integrated systems for wastewater treatment. Various topics covered
in this book are direct pressure-driven and osmotic-driven membrane
processes, hybrid membrane processes (such as membrane bioreactors
and integrating membrane separation with other processes), and
resource recovery-oriented membrane-based processes. The book will
be useful for students, researchers and professionals working in
the area of materials science and environmental chemistry.
Four years have elapsed since the preparation of the original
Russian version of this book. This is a long time when dealing with
such actively expanding fields of oceanography as research into
small-scale structures and the investigation of hydro physical
processes. Over this period new quick-response devices have been
developed and successfully used for measurements taken in various
ocean areas. Improvements in high-frequency meters used to measure
hydrophysical parameters has enabled workers to obtain more
accurate absolute values of the fluctuations measured by such
devices. In view of this scientific progress, some of the ideas
presented in this book now require additional explanation. Great
care should be used in dealing with the absolute fluctuation values
of hydro physical fields, since the methods used for the
determination of the accuracy of the high-frequency measuring
devices have been imperfect in the past. Never theless, it would
appear that the results of the investigations summarized in this
book have not lost their importance, and that the established laws
governing small-scale pro cesses in the ocean are of a sufficiently
universal nature and, as such, have not been shattered with the
qualitative and quantitative advances in devices used for
measurements taken in oceans. The authors feel that their work is
of interest to English-speaking readers. The appearance of the
English translation of the book is, to a very large extent, due to
the tremendous amount of editing work brilliantly done by Prof. H.
Tennekes."
Groundwater Ecology and Evolution, Second Edition is designed to
meet a multitude of audience needs. The state of the art in the
discipline is provided by the articulation of six sections. The
first three sections successively carry the reader into the basic
attributes of groundwater ecosystems (section 1), the drivers and
patterns of biodiversity (section 2), and the roles of organisms in
groundwater ecosystems (section 3). The next two sections are
devoted to evolutionary processes driving the acquisition of
subterranean biological traits (section 4) and the way these traits
are differently expressed among groundwater organisms (section 5).
Finally, section 6 shows how knowledge acquired among multiple
research fields (sections 1 to 5) is used to manage groundwater
biodiversity and ecosystem services in the face of future
groundwater resource use scenarios. Emphasis on the coherence and
prospects of the whole book is given in the introduction and
conclusion.
Humic Substances color all waters more or less brown. Their concentrations exceed all carbon of living organisms by at least one order of magnitude. Opposite to former paradigms, they participate in almost any metabolic pathway. They protect against UV-irradation, enable indirect photolysis and, thus, purify hazardous chemicals, they provide inorganic and organic nutrients, may form cryptic genes with DNA and dampen metabolic fluctuations. More recently they can increase adverse effects of hazardous chemicals and they can directly interfere with organisms. The book tries to relate effects to structural features.
This text is the first international and comprehensive discussion
of the impacts of climatic fluctuations and climate change on water
resources management. The book presents an overview of the impacts
of climatic change/fluctuations on a wide variety of water
resources sectors including river runoff, water quality, water
temperature, water use and demand, reservoir management and water
resource planning and management. The book is unique in that it
then presents a series of case studies to both demonstrate the
application of climate change impact assessment methodologies and
to provide insights to catchment, river basin, and national scale
impacts of climate change/fluctuations on the water resources of
Africa, Europe, and North America. Audience: Researchers, scholars
and students of hydrology and water management who are concerned
with the issues of climate change as well as the climate change
impact assessment community.
In view of the rapidly expanding urban, industrial and agri
cultural water requirements in many areas and the normally
associated critical unreliability of surface water supplies in arid
and semi-arid zones, groundwater exploration and use is of
fundamental importance for logical economic development. Two
interrelated facets should be evident in all such groundwater
projects : (a) definition of groundwater recharge mechanisms and
characteristics for identified geological formations, in order to
determine whether exploitation in the long-term involves 'mining'
of an es sentially 'fossil' resource or withdrawal from a dynamic
supply. A solution to this aspect is essential for development of a
re source management policy: (b) determination of recharge
variability in time and space to thus enable determination of total
aquifer input and to quantify such practical aspects as 'minimum
risk' waste disposal locations and artificial recharge potential
via (e.g.) devegetation or engi neering works. However, current
international developments relating to natural recharge indicate
the following 'problems' ; no single comprehensive estimation
technique can yet be iden tified from the spectrum of methods
available; all are reported to give suspect results.
The last few years have witnessed an enormous interest in
application of GIS in hydrology and water resources. This is partly
evidenced by organization of sev eral national and international
symposia or conferences under the sponsorship of various
professional organizations. This increased interest is, in a large
measure, in response to growing public sensitivity to environmental
quality and management. The GIS technology has the ability to
capture, store, manipulate, analyze, and visualize the diverse sets
of geo-referenced data. On the other hand, hydrology is inherently
spatial and distributed hydrologic models have large data
requirements. The integration of hydrology and GIS is therefore
quite natural. The integration involves three major components: (1)
spatial data construction, (2) integration of spatial model layers,
and (3) GIS and model interface. GIS can assist in design,
calibration, modification and comparison of models. This
integration is spreading worldwide and is expected to accelerate in
the foreseeable future. Substantial op portunities exist in
integration of GIS and hydrology. We believe there are enough
challenges in use of GIS for conceptualizing and modeling complex
hydrologic processes and for globalization of hydrology. The
motivation for this book grew out of the desire to provide under
one cover a range of applications of GIS tech nology in hydrology.
It is hoped that the book will stimulate others to write more
comprehensive texts on this subject of growing importance."
Water Resources and Coastal Management presents a comprehensive and
unique collection of articles which provide an interdisciplinary
perspective on the science and management of global coastal
resources. This important volume comprises five main sections. Part
I reviews basic scientific concepts and underpinning knowledge of
the processes at work in this dynamic environment. Part II
considers how the natural variability of coastal zone environments
has been unsustainably exacerbated by development and exploitation
of such resources. Parts III and IV focus upon the various aspects
of the management response options that could or have been deployed
both in developed and developing countries. Finally, Part V
examines the management issues that surround regional seas and
their, often international, resource regions.
Outlines the concept and principles of water harvesting for
groundwater management for an international audience, and looks at
the positives and negatives surrounding water harvesting
technologies This book is the first to fully outline the concept
and principles of water harvesting for groundwater management for a
global audience. It offers guidance to academics, students and
researchers on effective water harvesting approaches for
groundwater recharge, and educates them on the risks associated
with managed aquifer recharge, as well as the causes of success or
failure of particular management strategies, and demand management
strategies and tools. The book is helpful to water managers,
administrators, and professionals, to make decisions to allocate
resources; developing innovative cost-effective measures and
approaches to achieve demand-supply balance. The book provides
readers with an overview of the historical evolution of water
harvesting for groundwater recharge. It looks at the benefits and
gaps in knowledge, their implementation and funding strategies, and
public participation. It also assesses the strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of water harvesting technologies.
Water Harvesting for Groundwater Management: Issues, Perspectives,
Scope and Challenges offers chapters covering: issues on water
harvesting and water security; mega-trends that impact water
security; groundwater occurrence, availability, and
recharge-ability; phases of water harvesting systems; SWOT analysis
of water harvesting systems; case studies and short examples of
implementing water harvesting; scope of water harvesting for GWM
strategies; guidelines to make water harvesting helpful and
meaningful for GWM; and more. Summarizes the theories and
applications of water harvesting for groundwater management for a
world audience Offers guidance on effective water harvesting
approaches for groundwater recharge, managed aquifer recharge, and
successful water management strategies Evaluates the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of water harvesting
technologies Part of the Challenges in Water Management series
Water Harvesting for Groundwater Management: Issues, Perspectives,
Scope and Challenges is an excellent resource for water management
professionals working with water harvesting technologies, and will
be of great interest to water managers, administrators,
professionals, academics and researchers working in water
management.
Since the pioneering work of Shannon in the late 1940's on the
development of the theory of entropy and the landmark contributions
of Jaynes a decade later leading to the development of the
principle of maximum entropy (POME), the concept of entropy has
been increasingly applied in a wide spectrum of areas, including
chemistry, electronics and communications engineering, data
acquisition and storage and retreival, data monitoring network
design, ecology, economics, environmental engineering, earth
sciences, fluid mechanics, genetics, geology, geomorphology,
geophysics, geotechnical engineering, hydraulics, hydrology, image
processing, management sciences, operations research, pattern
recognition and identification, photogrammetry, psychology, physics
and quantum mechanics, reliability analysis, reservoir engineering,
statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, topology, transportation
engineering, turbulence modeling, and so on. New areas finding
application of entropy have since continued to unfold. The entropy
concept is indeed versatile and its applicability widespread. In
the area of hydrology and water resources, a range of applications
of entropy have been reported during the past three decades or so.
This book focuses on parameter estimation using entropy for a
number of distributions frequently used in hydrology. In the
entropy-based parameter estimation the distribution parameters are
expressed in terms of the given information, called constraints.
Thus, the method lends itself to a physical interpretation of the
parameters. Because the information to be specified usually
constitutes sufficient statistics for the distribution under
consideration, the entropy method provides a quantitative way to
express the information contained in the distribution.
The last two decades have seen unprecedented developments in marine
science and technology. Large scale, international long-term
scientific programmes have emerged for monitoring the state of the
ocean environment and the rapid development of the offshore oil
industry has provided the technological means for a range of other
maritime developments. The purpose of this book is to review key
developments in this field. Three major themes are developed
throughout the book: the key importance of technical developments
in ocean management; the application of these developments to
specific sea uses ranging from fish farming to the deep sea
disposal of industrial waste; and the long term general issues
raised - and to some extent solved - by science and technology.
This book should be of interest to students and professionals
involved in maritime studies, oceanography, offshore engineering
and environmental science.
This book contains articles by oceanographic researchers from the
(former) USSR and presents new data on various aspects of the Black
Sea. The topics include Black Sea thermohaline, hydrochemical and
optical structures, the dynamics of the Main Black Sea current and
deep layers, wave phenomena in shelf areas and modelling of complex
marine systems. Aslo included are some experimentally derived
results which allow a deeper insight into the problem of O2 and H2S
coexistence in the Black Sea. The commonplace notions about the
structure of the oxic/anoxic interface are critically evaluated.
Diatoms are the most species rich group of algae, and they
contribute about 20% of annual global carbon fixation. They play
major roles in ocean food webs and global biogeochemical cycles.
They are also a target of the biotechnology industry because of
their nano-patterned silica cell wall and high lipid content.
Diatoms have received increasing attention as more genomes became
available and because of the development of genome editing tools
such as the CRISPR/Cas9 technology, which has made diatoms as
genetically tractable as well-established biological model species.
This book provides an overview on diatom molecular biology. It
brings together international leading experts in the field to
discuss the latest data and developments from genes to ecosystems.
As the understanding of diatoms is currently experiencing a step
change, it is critical to allow for synergistic approaches on
diverse aspects of diatom biology and evolution. The books offers
fundamental insights into the molecular life of diatoms; at the
same time new scientific concepts are developed based on the
application of the latest molecular tools and genomic information
to explore the fascinating lifestyle of diatoms.
This book addresses the various factors affecting fluvial systems,
the processes governing them, system responses arising from
human-nature interventions, and geospatial and geo-ecological
modeling to understand system behaviour better and restore degraded
ecosystems around the globe. Thanks to their hydrological and
agro-ecological advantages, humans have settled along riverbanks
since the dawn of civilization. Thus, the ancient "ecumene"
(settlements) were located near major rivers worldwide. This legacy
of river-based civilizations continues to this day in many forms.
However, in the course of the 'Anthropocene' era, countless fluvial
systems have been altered by human interventions in the form of
large-scale dams and barrages, changes in land use and land cover,
road-stream crossings, mining of sand and gravel, mushrooming of
brickfield, expansion of modern agriculture, industrial growth, and
urbanization. Thus, the present-day development pattern threatens
fluvial systems, especially riverine morphology and ecosystems. In
brief, human-induced morphological changes, water pollution,
eutrophication, and related damages to aquatic organisms are the
major threats to fluvial systems. Thus, maintaining the
'environmental flow' of the world's major rivers to preserve the
proper functioning of riverine ecosystems and promote sustainable
development is a global challenge.
This open access book is based on the research outputs of China
Council for International Cooperation on Environment and
Development (CCICED) in 2021. It covers major topics of Chinese and
international attention regarding green development, such as
climate, biodiversity, ocean, BRI, urbanization, sustainable
production and consumption, technology, finance, value chain, and
related topics. It also reviews the progress of China‘s
environmental and development policies and the impacts from CCICED.
This is a highly informative and carefully presented book,
providing insight for policy makers in environmental issues.
Dams are constructed for economic development, and their
construction involves large investments of money, and natural and
human resources. Of the various types of dams constructed around
the globe, earth dams are the most common type and constitute the
vast majority of dams. When adam fails, it culminates in the sudden
release of artificially stored water which, in turn, becomes a
potential menace to virtually everything downstream. The dam
failure may result in loss of life and property. In recent years,
instances of dam failure in the world have been too many, and the
resulting loss too high. As a result, dam safety pro grams have
been developed in most countries of the world since the beginning
of the nineteenth eighties. . Earth dams are more susceptible to
failure than other types. The cause of failure is often either
overtopping or piping. The modeling of dam breaching due to either
or both of these causes is of fundamental importance to development
of dam-safety programs. This book is, therefore, an attempt to
present some aspects of earth-dam breach modeling technology. It is
hoped that others will be stimulated to write more comprehensive
texts on this subject of growing interest and importance. The book
is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter is introductory
and discusses some aspects of dams and dam failures in the world."
This book is written by the world's leading climatologists and
environmental scientists. It addresses many of the issues raised in
the debate on global change, providing a new point of view on
climate which is being integrated into the space and time
organization of societies. The volume contains three main parts: 1.
Climatic Changes and Fluctuations; 2. Climates on a Regional Scale,
including problems from tropical through temperate zones to polar
regions; and 3. Man-Climate Relationships on a Local Scale. Global
change is caused mainly by climatic variation and change and
activities of human societies. This book aims to describe these
facts from the various space scales - global, regional and local -
and also different time scales - post-glacial, historical and
recent periods. Since climate affects all kinds of human activities
such as agriculture, forestry, architecture, civil engineering,
transportation, tourism, health, etc., this book may contribute to
the work of researchers, planners and policy makers in a wide
variety of fields. For example, as indicated by the IPCC 1995
Report, adjustment of human societies is considered to be one of
the most important features in the 21st Century. For consideration
of these past, present and future problems, this book will provide,
in a systematic way, numerous sources of up-to-date knowledge.
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