Environment & Ecology

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.

Pi ist wohl die berühmteste aller irrationalen Zahlen. Sie faszi-niert seit Jahrtausenden viele Menschen auch abseits der Mathematik-Community. So auch den Arzt Edward J. Goodwin, der im Jahr 1897 den Vorsitzenden des Repräsentantenhauses von Indiana überzeugen konnte, einen Gesetzesentwurf mit einer 'neuen mathematischen Wahrheit' einzureichen. Darin wurde unter anderem der Wert von Pi auf genau 3,2 festgelegt. Unglaublicherweise stimmten alle Abgeordneten für den Entwurf, der sodann an den Senat von Indiana ging. Zum Glück nahm an diesem Tag zufälligerweise ein Mathematiker an der Sitzung teil und konnte die Abstimmung auf unbestimmte Zeit vertagen - und damit verhindern, dass in Indiana Pi per Gesetz gleich 3,2 ist. Keine Angst: In den Artikeln dieses Spektrum Kompakts wird von Pi als3,14159... (mit niemals endenden Nachkommastellen) ausgegangen.

This book provides readers with peer-reviewed research papers presented at the 6th International Conference on Clean Energy and Electrical Systems held in Kyoto, Japan, from April 5 to 7, 2024. This proceedings mainly covers theoretical, technical, and practical methods and practices on clean energy and electrical systems. And it includes nuclear energy and "renewable energy." With the continuous growth of energy demand and the increasing awareness of environmental protection in countries around the world, it is urgent and imperative to establish a clean energy innovation research and development, promotion, and application system. The book also covers electricity, fuel, thermal, transportation, and water infrastructures and their development and deployment in different regions around the world. The book includes future development trends with analysis of lifecycle and economical models for successful implementation projects.

In this book, the author provides a deep study into multiscale and multiphysics modeling of nuclear facilities, underscoring the critical role of uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis to ensure the confidence in the numerical results and to identify the system characteristics. Through an in-depth study of the liquid metal cooling system from the TALL-3D loop to the SMDFR core, the research highlights the natural circulation instability, strong coupling effects, perturbation tolerance, and system stability. The culmination of the research is the formulation of an optimized uncertainty-based control scheme, demonstrating its versatility beyond the nuclear domain to other energy sectors. This groundbreaking work not only advances the comprehension and utilization of coupling schemes and uncertainty methodologies in nuclear system modeling but also adeptly bridges the theoretical constructs with tangible application, positioning itself as an indispensable resource for design, safety analysis, and advanced numerical modeling in the broader energy sector.

This book provides an overview of advances in experimental, numerical modelling, and theoretical aspects of environmental hydraulics. By highlighting the latest findings on processes in natural aquatic systems, solutions for civil engineering and water resources management, with a special focus on interdisciplinary cooperation between Earth scientists, ecologists, biologists and hydraulic engineers that have helped to mitigate the impacts of anthropopressure on river habitats, it provides both researchers and practitioners with first-hand information about the latest trends in hydraulic research. The book combines peer-reviewed versions of invited lectures and regular presentations at the 40th International School of Hydraulics, held May 23-26, 2023, in K¿ty Rybackie, Poland. With contributions from world-leading experts and young researchers, many areas of environmental hydraulics are addressed here, including recent findings in numerical modelling and laboratory and field studies related to sediment and pollutant transport processes in rivers, fluvial morphodynamics, flow in vegetated channels, hydraulic structures in rivers and estuaries, and freshwater fish protection.

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.