Product Description
Soil organic matter (SOM) represents a major pool of carbon within the biosphere, roughly twice than in atmospheric CO2. SOM models embody our best understanding of soil carbon dynamics and are needed to predict how global environmental change will influence soil carbon stocks. These models are also required for evaluating the likely effectiveness of different mitigation options. The first important step towards systematically evaluating the suitability of SOM models for these purposes is to test their simulations against real data. Since changes in SOM occur slowly, long-term datasets are required. This volume brings together leading SOM model developers and experimentalists to test SOM models using long-term datasets from diverse ecosystems, land uses and climatic zones within the temperate region. ... Read more

Product Description
Northern and Southern views on establishing international regimes for coping with environmental problems. ... Read more

Product Description
Reviewed here is the current state of knowledge concerning the relationship between global change and biodiversity of temperate ecosystems. The aim is to improve the ability to conserve biodiversity under conditions of global change.The book focuses on:- The threats posed by global change to biodiversity in temperate ecosystems; - Levels and spatial patterns of diversity in temperate ecosystems; - The impact of global change on genetic diversity; - The effects of disturbance (natural and anthropogenic) on temperate ecosystems; - Existing research priorities and programmes. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume explores ice phenomena, ranging from microphysics to its largest size scales and manifestations. It begins with the fundamental molecular basis for the environmentally ubiquitous and yet still scientifically challenging melting and freezing transitions, builds the microscopic foundations for nucleation and growth, and develops the implications of these phenomena as they impact a hierarchy of environmental problems, such as the influence of snow and ice cover on the global climate, the role of stratospheric ice in ozone destruction, the economic effects of frost heave on roads and engineered structures, and the consequences of freezing in environmental damage. These phenomena are studied in different disciplines, including astronomy, atmospheric sciences, chemistry, engineering, geology, geophysics, oceanography, physics, and applied mathematics. ... Read more

Product Description
Vietnam and the neighboring countries of Southeast Asia face diverse challenges created by the rapid evolution of their social, economic and environmental systems and resources. Taking a multidisciplinary perspective, this book provides a comprehensive assessment of the Vietnamese situation, identifying the factors shaping social vulnerability and resilience to environmental change and considering prospects for sustainable development. ... Read more

Product Description

This book highlights one of the most important aspects of global change - the interaction of land use and the climate system. In separate chapters the book treats modelling of land-use patterns, the effects on climate, the effect of land use on the global carbon cycle, hydrological aspects of land use, aspects of climate change on food availability in West Africa, and the spatial requirements of bioenergy plantations. The current collection of chapters provides a unique, integrated treatment of land use in the context of global change.

Audience: This book should provide a stimulus for researchers and policy-makers alike to treat land use and land-use change in a multi-disciplinary manner.

Product Description
This book provides a critical analysis of the political, moral and legal response to climate change in the midst of significant socio-economic policy shifts. Policies adopted by different nations are examined to assess their political significance globally. ... Read more

Product Description
General circulation models (GCMs) predict certain changes in the amounts and distribution of precipitation, but the conversion of these predictions of impacts on water resources presents novel problems in hydrologic modeling, particularly with regard to the scale of the processes involved. Therefore improved, distributed GCMs are required. New remote sensing technologies provide the necessary spatially distributed data. However, there are many attendant problems with the translation of remotely sensed signals into hydrologically relevant information. This book elucidates how to improve the representation of land surface hydrologic processes in GCMs and in regional and global scale climate studies. It is divided into five sections: Models and Data; Precipitation; Soil Moisture; Evapotranspiration; Runoff. ... Read more

Product Description
This book presents a state-of-the-art analysis of the microbiology of the trace gases that affect climate and environmental quality. The microbiological sources and sinks of methane, nitrogen oxides, sulfur gases, halocarbons and other trace gases are reviewed and current work described. Techniques for the detection and analysis of gases and the bacteria that produce and metabolize them are presented. The book is a compilation of chapters prepared by leading authorities in their fields, covering the whole range of trace gas microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics. The impact and role of human activities on gas sources and sinks are also identified. ... Read more

Product Description
This book presents a coherent survey of modelling in climatology and the environment and the mathematical treatment of those problems. It is divided into 4 parts containing a total of 16 chapters. Parts I, II and III are devoted to general models and Part IV to models related to some local problems. Most of the mathematical models considered here involve systems of nonlinear partial differential equations. The mathematical treatment covers a large range of subjects: existence and uniqueness of well-posed problems, long time behaviour, stability, bifurcation, diagrams of equilibria, conditions for the occurrence of interfaces or free boundaries, numerical algorithms and their implementation, controllability of the problems etc. ... Read more

Product Description
The book presents a series of comprehensive reviews on therelationship between changes in atmospheric circulations andchanges in sea surfacetemperatures (SST), soil moisture,sea ice and snow. The influence of eachof these boundaryconditions is reviewed separately and based on theanalysisof observations and sensitivity experiments with globalclimatemodels. Tropical SST anomalies have a profoundeffect on tropical circulation and rainfall; in some casesthey also influence the extra-tropical atmosphericcirculation.The most important conclusion ofthe book is that formonthly and seasonal predictions it is extremely importantthat the observed initial state of the atmosphere and theboundary conditions of SST - soil wetness, sea ice, snowdepth andsnow cover - be mutually consistent with eachother. ... Read more

Product Description
The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that the land-based geomorphological evidence of environmental change from late Pleistocene, Holocene, historical and contemporary time periods remain central to a full understanding of global environmental change both at the global and regional scale. Geomorphology, Human Activity and Global Environmental Change begins with a look at how global Pleistocene climate change affected placation and tectonic instability. The middle section then looks at environments unaffected by human activity in an attempt to explore scenarios that may result from climate change alone in the future. The final two sections look at human activity and global environmental change by monitoring floodplain stratigraphy, cartographic evidence, sediment transport, watershed studies and coastal surveys, and offer practical advice on land management issues. Case studies from Europe, North America and Asia are used.

This book is intended for environmental consultants, civil engineers, postgraduates and researchers in geomorphology, geology, civil engineering, environmental science and geography and as supplementary reading for upper level undergraduates of geomorphology in departments of geography, geology and environmental science. ... Read more

Product Description
Do changes in stratospheric ozone relate to changes in UV-B irradiance and do both relate to life on Earth? This volume presents the latest data available in the basic scientific disciplines associated with these questions. The key topics are the interactive factors between the various research elements and the measurements needed to both validate ozone depletion and monitor UV flux changes in the biosphere. ... Read more

Product Description
The book provides an overview of exciting recent developments and advances in our understanding of the role of clouds in climate and atmospheric chemistry.
Topics covered include: Modeling of clouds in GCMs; observations of the microphysical properties of clouds; the water vapor cycle; troposphere/stratosphere exchange; the role of clouds in tropospheric ozone; the regulation of current and paleoclimate by clouds; radiative/convection interactions; anthropogenic sulfate aerosols and the modification of cloud properties. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of approaches for evaluating and monitoring the health of large-scale ecosystems. The examples drawn from a range of large-scale systems - desert to marine - provide the reader with a clear understanding of the meaning and practical implications of the ecosystem health paradigm for integrated natural resource management. Further, tools and approaches for evaluating large-scale systems from the use of biomarkers to remote sensing are described in detail.The book is an invaluable source for environmental managers, scientists, students and institutions working in the fields of ecosystem evaluation and management. ... Read more

Product Description
Water is the most effective agent in the climate system to modelate energy transfer by radiative processes, through its exchanges of latent heat and within cascades of chemcal processes. It it the source of all life on earth, and once convective clouds are formed, it enables large vertical transports of mometum, heat and various atmospheric constituants. Water triggers very complex processes at the earth's continental surfaces and within the oceans. At least water in its gaseous phase is the most important greenhouse-gas. Numerical modelling and measurements of the state of the climate system needs a very thourough understanding of all these processes and their various interactions and forcings. Therefore the management of the World Climate Research Programme established the new programme GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment) in 1988, specifically defined to determine the energy and water transport in the fast components of the climate system with the modelling and measurement means presently available and to provide new capabilities for the future. This book describes all aspects of the GEWEX. ... Read more

Product Description
As the realization grew that major changes of key environmental drivers were taking place, such as increased global temperature and atmospheric CO2, Earth system science was challenged to better understand the function of the Earth system as a whole, with the biosphere both as a major driver and recipient of those environmental changes.

Volume 2 of the Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change deals with the fundamental science that underpins the understanding of quantities and processes that control the basic biogeochemical cycles, and the associated changes in ecosystem physiology and structure under current and predicted human-driven global environmental change.

These changes also include the dramatic loss of species, and the world's reorganization of biota towards higher homogenization.

Main themes covered includes:

• spatial scales of the biosphere including species, populations, communities, ecosystems, biomes, and the Earth system as a whole

• a description of the most important efforts of a number of international programs, fundamental in the development of thinking in this new field of science

Product Description
Global Warming and Energy Demand presents a range of current views on the use of economic measures to control greenhouse gas emissions, and discusses the responsiveness of the energy market to changes in prices, taxes and incomes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Title is too restrictive!
I came to this book by happenstance:An extensive analysis I was doing on Price/Demand Elasticity for Electricity was going nowhere.Not being a trained statistician, econometrician or economist myself, I lacked the technical tools to understand where the problem lied.Further, I couldn't find the research supporting my assumptions as to what was going wrong.For example, the pitfalls of time-series data analysis and how cross-sectional or even panel data helped with some of these shortcomings (in no particular order: high sensitivity of the estimates with respect to variations of the sample period; very limited forecasting power (and over-fitting); multicollinearity; asymmetric elasticity...).

This little book is written in layman's terms, and supports assumptions with references to other studies.It turns out that researchers had had the same problems a couple of decades ago, when trying to measure the effect of oil shocks on energy consumption.Effects are long ranging because you don't simply change your car when gas goes up, just like you don't move home or buy a new A/C unit if electricity prices spike.

"Global Warming and Energy Demand" discusses statistical methodologies in enough details to be useful, yet keeps the math to a minimum and systematically points to additional studies for the interested reader.This allowed me to support my assumptions/recommendations with theories, quotes and references.

For the more ambitious reader, there are additional recommendations of other books.In particular, I suggest the "Analysis of Panel data" by Cheng Hsiao (2nd edition) which does a great job at highlighting the different techniques used with Panel data modeling and tracking an extensive body of research on the subject.If you want to dig deeper in cross-sectional analysis and their comparative advantages and drawbacks, look at Frees' "Longitudinal and Panel Data".Both these books are a little heavier on the math, but the second in particular has a chapter on Matrix Algebra for the less quant-savvy reader.Also, both are very affordable, especially compared to the typical academic work (and I was able to purchase both off Amazon for less than Barker's Global Warming and Energy Demand).If you want an easier read and can just afford one book though, I'd go with Hsiao's.


Ok, back to Barker's book.I do recommend it, and not only for the professional looking to understand the effect of global warming on energy demand.This book has a lot more to offer, don't be stopped by a restrictive title.Also, and while an updated edition would be nice for the energy-demand specific stuff, don't let the date (1994) turn you off:All the work on elasticity is very much a-temporal.Until we fully understand the effect of recent Natural Gas and Oil prices hike (might be in 10 years for all I know), the best historical example we can turn to is the oil shocks in the 70s.The book does an amazing job at that.
... Read more

Product Description
Volume Five of the Encyclopedia is devoted to the social, political, economic, and spiritual - and thereby human dimensions of global environmental change.

It highlights the profound shifts in human thinking and awareness that are required to "wrap our minds" around the advent of globalization, and our increasing ability to affect natural systems, sometimes to our own benefit.

Because of the complex weave of interaction between humanity and the environment, this volume contains many essays and articles that are more in the realm of probes than fixed descriptions of their topics. Powerful words and powerful ideas, metaphors, myths, beliefs, images and arte-facts - these are all "vehicles" for the creation and shaping of meaning among human beings.

Topics covered include the great political and economic theories, the most influential views of nature from Plato to Rachel Carson, and the historic and literary seedbeds for the rise of environmental thought and practice in our time. Of particular importance are the introductory essays from leading figures in the field, and special efforts have been made throughout to give space to alternative voices and ideas.

Dialogue and diversity are essential to human development, and a reader will be stimulated by this volume towards his or her own thoughtful response to the increasing responsibility for the future of the Earth that has come upon us in our time. ... Read more