Environmental Science

Jan Haft zeigt uns den Wald, wie wir ihn noch nicht gesehen haben - Ein neuer Blick des Autors von 'Die Wiese' auf das Ökosystem Wald - Mit zahlreichen farbigen Abbildungen des AutorsLeuchtende Pilzmücken, dunkle Bienen, Spechte mit überraschenden Entdeckerfähigkeiten und Schmetterlinge, die Wölfen hinterherfliegen: Unsere Wälder sind voll prallem Leben, mehr als wir auf den ersten Blick wahrnehmen - und doch sind sie zugleich meist eintöniger, als sie es sein müssten. Dabei ist die Artenvielfalt oft besonders gering in Wäldern, die nicht genutzt und sich selbst überlassen werden.Anschaulich beschreibt der Biologe und Naturfilmer Jan Haft, der mehrere Filme über den Wald gedreht hat, das faszinierende Netzwerk des Lebens im Wald und legt dar, welche der bei uns vorkommenden Waldarten dieses Netzwerk am stabilsten halten: Mittelwälder etwa oder die beinahe vergessenen Weidewälder, die eines gemeinsam haben - sie sind licht und artenreich.Mit vielen eindrucksvollen Fotografien und Tipps für WaldbesucheAusstattung: mit farbigen Abbildungen

This book discusses state-of-the-art techniques for ecosystem service valuation of forests, rivers, wetlands, lakes and coastal ecosystems, for their sustainable development and management. An ecosystem service valuation can be used to address environmental degradation of natural resources. Numerous natural and man-made factors like climate change, pollution, encroachment, and over-exploitation, have put ecosystems under threat worldwide. These ecosystems provide a lot of services to human beings but many of these services are not taken into account in the market prices for products and services, and their ecological functions are not economically valued. The valuation of these ecosystems' services will help to shed light on their sustainable management. This book offers a fresh and innovative resource that captures the latest advancements, addresses emerging challenges, and propels the field forward, making it a must-have for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. This book is also useful for stakeholders to achieve United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals 6 (Sustainability of water resources) and 13 (Climate action).The most relevant target audiences are hydrologists, hydrogeologists, environmental scientists, ecologists, biologists, and academicians. This book can be useful to post-graduate students, researchers, academicians, policy makers, NGOs in these fields. It also appeals to professionals in the fields of urban planning, agriculture, forestry, water resources management and environmental policy.

Die weltweite Wirtschaftskrise fordert nicht nur Politik und Gesellschaft, sondern auch die Unternehmen bei der Entwicklung von Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien. In diesem Kontext muss neben der Risikodiskussion auch eine Chancendebatte geführt werden. Die Herausforderung besteht darin, durch die Analyse der vorhandenen Stoff-, Informations-, Finanz- und Energieflüsse auf ineffiziente Strukturen aufmerksam zu werden und sie im Zuge des Krisenmanagements zu bewältigen. Gelingt dies, kann auch der Umweltschutz im Rahmen des Nachhaltigkeitsmanagements gestärkt aus der Krise hervorgehen. Dieser Zielstellung, umweltorientiertes Wissen unterschiedlicher Wissenschaftsgebiete in einen interdisziplinären Kontext zu stellen, haben sich die Autoren dieses Buches gewidmet. Umweltsystemwissenschaften, Umweltpolitik, Umweltrecht, Umweltmanagement und Erneuerbare Energietechnik sind dabei die Schwerpunkte.

The edited book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of scientific developments in agricultural sustainability under changing climate conditions. It focuses on the linkages among soil, water, and crops and their management options to maintain soil health and ensure a sustainable crop production environment. The book addresses the scenarios and challenges of agricultural sustainability in the face of climatic change.With increasing pressure on our limited land and water resources to produce higher crop yields for a growing global population, the efficient use of soil, water, and fertilizers is crucial for achieving most of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The book presents climate change mitigation and adaptation options to help achieve these SDGs. It highlights the impact of climate variability on agricultural production and the functions of ecosystems, emphasizing the importance of developing climate-resilient agriculture to sustain food production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The book explores the soil-water-plant nexus and its response to changing climate, characterizing seasonal and inter-annual climatic variability in crop growth and yield. Different chapters evaluate the effects of climate change on soil health degradation, depletion of soil nutrients and carbon contents, and crop responses to climate variability.This book is of interest to academicians, researchers, scientists, capacity builders, and policymakers. Extension personnel will benefit from its insights, and it serves as valuable supporting material for graduate students of agriculture, forestry, ecology, soil science, and environmental sciences in understanding and designing their own research.

The book provides an overview of the Slow Onset Disasters (SLOD) in the urban built environment discussing potential strategies to assess and mitigate multiple climate change related risks. Climate change evidence has been reported in the last decades, suggesting that the anthropogenic activities are accelerating these changes towards a warmer and more polluted environment. In this context, SLODs have been linked to climate change related disasters and have been stated to have a higher impact risk within dense built environment (BE). Therefore, the book presents a description of the most relevant SLODs, their significance, and confluence, the way in which scientists and entities are monitoring their progression at different scales, a structured risk assessment strategy and the deconstruction of the BE characteristics that make it more prone to SLODs risk. In addition, it highlights the necessity of adapting the traditional risk assessment methods, to account for different vulnerabilitytypes, including the morphology and materiality of the BE, and the BE users' characteristics. In fact, individual features influence users' responses and tolerance to environmental stressors, because of age, health, gender, habits, and behaviour, thus impacting the users' vulnerability. Exposure can then amplify these issues, since it defines the number of users that can be effectively affected by the SLOD. Starting from this perspective, the book first traces literature-based correlations between individual features, use behaviour, and individual response to the SLOD-altered open spaces. Then, a novel methodology, to quantify the variations of users' vulnerability and exposure, is offered, to support designers in quickly defining input scenarios for risk assessment and mitigation. Lastly, it demonstrates, through a case study, the SLOD risk assessment framework proposed and the evaluation of the efficacy of risk mitigation strategies.

This book is the first comprehensive compilation of research on state¿of¿the-art genomics on the most advanced model tree species including genome assemblies, insights into genomic structural features and methylation patterns, whole¿genome resources used for population genomics and adaptation to climate, enabled breeding vs. classical genetics and traditional breeding, comparative genomics, and elucidations on functional genomics. The latest developments in the genomics of wood formation are particularly highlighted. Altogether, the book contains over 300 pages in over 15 chapters authored by globally reputed experts in the relevant fields of this tree crop's genomics research. This book is useful for students, teachers, and scientists in academia and governmental or private tree improvement agencies or companies interested in genetics, pathology, entomology, physiology, molecular genetics and breeding, in vitro culture and genetic engineering, land restoration, and agroforestry solutions.

The book is unique in highlighting the issue of wastewater as one of the important environmental issues. The uniqueness also lies in exploring the concepts of converting waste into resources in the form of bioenergy, biofertilizers through various biological methods. Given the international scenario, the chapters of this book are designed to include both anaerobic and aerobic methods of resource recovery from the industrial wastewater. The book is a step toward design with nature and the concept of green chemistry.Waste menace is one of the most voiced and unsolved problems in the entire world. The whole world is facing the threat of water pollution, soil pollution/ land pollution, odour pollution from the growing waste. Though we find many missions and programs at international, national, and regional level to solve the waste associated issues, this is mostly in context with the solid fraction of the waste. Very little is being done to manage the liquid part of the waste orwhat we call the wastewater.The conversion of wastewater has the potential to be converted to energy in the form bioenergy, bio-fertilizers, electricity, nutrient recovery, etc. The use of sludge as biofertilizers solves the problem of sludge management on the one hand and production of organic crops on the other. The biological treatment methods like sludge treatment gives the farmers the source of biofertilizers and organic manure for the plants. In the present scenario, energy crisis is also one of the issues that we are facing particularly in context with the thermal power plants which are environmentally highly polluting. Through various techniques like microbial fuel cells or biohydrogen, we get a source of cleaner energy. So, through this book, we try to produce the content and information to give the audience an understanding of the waste water as one of the environmental and health issues and mitigation strategies. The book gives a sufficient understanding of how wastecan be turned into a resource.

This book mainly investigates the adsorption of anionic diclofenac sodium on natural clay minerals, the adsorption of anionic chloramphenicol on natural clay minerals and the behavior of surface and interface modification or adsorption on clay minerals. It has significant guidance for learning the transfer and fate of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the soil. It develops an efficient, low-cost adsorbent material and provides theoretical basis and valuable reference for the effective prevention of groundwater contamination of PPCPs in the field of environmental engineering.

This book highlights the basic properties of round bamboo and bamboo strips of various species worldwide. Processing and properties enhancing treatment of bamboo strips and round bamboo are discussed. It presents the structural applications of round and engineered bamboo and provides an insight on the potential applications as construction and building materials. Bamboo as multipurpose plant in various fields such as chemical feedstocks, energy sources, furniture, fabric, pulp and paper, and their recent developments are also discussed in detail. The book also includes the economic, social, and environmental assessment of bamboo products.

This book highlights the latest findings and techniques related to nutrition and feed efficiency in animal agriculture. It addresses the key challenges facing the nutrition industry to achieve high animal productivity with minimal environmental impact. The concept of smart nutrition involves the use of smart technologies in the feeding and management of livestock.The first chapters focus on advances in biological fields such as molecular agriculture and genotype selection, as well as technologies that enhance or enable the collection of relevant information. The next section highlights applications of smart nutrition in a variety of livestock systems, ranging from intensive indoor housing of broilers and pigs to extensive outdoor housing of cattle and sheep, and marine fish farms. Finally, because of the worldwide attention to this issue, the authors address the environmental consequences.This work, which takes a serious look at how nutrition can be usedto improve sustainability in animal agriculture, is a key literature for readers in animal and veterinary sciences, the food industry, sustainability research, and agricultural engineering.

This book provides new techniques for recovering exhaust heat from gas turbines, natural gas combined cycle power plants, biomass boilers, and waste heat recovery from compost and wastewater treatment plants The book provides modeling for the study and comparison of combined cycle power plants with a heat recovery boiler of three pressure levels with reheating, inserting a technological improvement of solar hybridization and partial regeneration in the gas turbine. It assesses the environmental impacts and economic sustainability associated with these improvements. In addition, it proposes emissions minimization, with exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), and emissions treatment with a CO2 capture plant (CCP) and combined cycle power plant. Finally, it provides new insights into heat recovery from compost and exhaust gases recovery from wastewater treatment plants.

The continuous increase of wind power penetration levels in Egypt makes wind a critical component of power generation in the grid. Studying wind power quality issues and the interaction between wind turbines and the grid is necessary and imperative. The authors present research on power quality and grid code issues, harmonics and wind power, voltage stability improvement using STATCOM, control techniques for active power filters, and the economics of electrical wind energy. The simulation for all of the studies presented is carried out in a MATLAB/Simulink environment using the Simulink power system toolbox. The book also presents case studies on an electrical network-connected wind energy conversion system and gives an overview of the feasibility of having wind power plants in several regions in Egypt, along the Gulf of Suez, on both sides of the Nile, the Mediterranean Sea, and South Upper Egypt.

Wir leben in einer Zeit nie da gewesener Herausforderungen. Zum ersten Mal seit Beginn der Zivilisation ist sogar das Überleben der Menschen auf dem Planeten Erde gefährdet. Der sich beschleunigende Klimawandel macht das Erreichen des 1,5-Grad-Ziels mit jedem Tag unwahrscheinlicher. Kipppunkte des Klimawandels werden von der Wissenschaft warnend beschrieben und trotzdem überschritten. Doch auch bei Artenschwund, weltweitem Wassermangel oder der Gefahr noch schlimmerer Pandemien gilt: Die Fakten liegen längst auf dem Tisch. Warum schafft es die Politik nicht, die wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse rechtzeitig in Handeln umzusetzen?Die Politik muss aufnahmefähiger für die Forschung sein, ja Schritt mit ihr halten - sonst werden wir, wie Karl Lauterbach zeigt, die Kontrolle über unsere Zukunft verlieren und scheitern. Kaum jemand könnte besser darlegen als Karl Lauterbach, Politiker und Wissenschaftler zugleich, warum eine Revolution des Zusammenspiels von Politik und Wissenschaft nötig ist; von welch unterschiedlichen Denk- und Herangehensweisen diese beiden Systeme bestimmt werden; und ob eine Verzahnung überhaupt möglich ist. Ein hochdringlicher Weckruf und ein starkes Plädoyer für eine Politik, die sich der Realität stellt.

The Bambara groundnut (BGN) or Vigna subterranea is an extremely hardy grain legume. As it produces reasonable yields even under conditions of drought and low soil fertility, it is also a climate-smart crop. Previously underutilized, BGN is the subject of growing interest among researchers and consumers for its balanced nutritional profile. Indigenous consumers of BGN report medicinal benefits from the plant; however, such knowledge is at risk of being lost with the urbanization and changing lifestyles of younger generations.To date, there is no comprehensive resource on the Bambara groundnut, despite market demand for plant proteins around the globe. Authored by scientists who have researched and developed patents using BGN, Bambara Groundnut: Utilization and Future Prospects aims to fill this gap. The text provides in-depth coverage on breeding, food and feed utilization, medicinal benefits and future research prospects. Drawing on both indigenous knowledge and cutting-edge research, Bambara Groundnut is the first book to fully explore the potential of this remarkable crop.