تحسين النتائح
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الصفحة 1
الصفحة 1
Marine, Freshwater, and Wetlands Biodiversity
Marine, coastal and wetland habitats are threatened, not only through exploitation, but also by the prospect of climate change – as ocean currents change course, sea levels rise, and rainfall patterns change. Even the once-common cod is now under threat from the combined effects of over-fishing and a dramatic change-induced decrease in the plankton that cod larvae feed on. Meanwhile, coral reefs remain especially vulnerable to rapid sea-level changes exacerbated by the effects of tourism and disease. This book gathers together a wide range of papers reporting on key research into the biodiversity conservation of these critical and increasingly threatened habitats. Collectively these papers provide a snap-shot of the types of problems they are experiencing, and offer a wealth of topical examples which render this volume especially valuable to teachers of courses in marine, freshwater and wetlands ecology, biological conservation and ecological restoration.
Marine Anthropogenic Litter
This book describes how man-made litter, primarily plastic, has spread into the remotest parts of the oceans and covers all aspects of this pollution problem from the impacts on wildlife and human health to socio-economic and political issues. Marine litter is a prime threat to marine wildlife, habitats and food webs worldwide. The book illustrates how advanced technologies from deep-sea research, microbiology and mathematic modelling as well as classic beach litter counts by volunteers contributed to the broad awareness of marine litter as a problem of global significance. The authors summarise more than five decades of marine litter research, which receives growing attention after the recent discovery of great oceanic garbage patches and the ubiquity of microscopic plastic particles in marine organisms and habitats.
Biogeography, Time, and Place : Distributions, Barriers, and Islands
Biogeography considers the distribution of biological units over a wide range of scales. The units range from genotypes, populations and species to families and higher taxa. Processes can be local, such as the isolation on islands due to sea-level fluctuations, or large-scale tectonic processes that separates continents and creates oceans. In all processes time is an important factor and by combining data on recent patterns with paleontological data the understanding of the distribution of extant taxa can be improved. This volume focuses on speciation due to isolation in island-like settings, and the evolution of large-scale diversity as the result of origination, maintenance and extinction.
A Sea Change: The Exclusive Economic Zone and Governance Institutions for Living Marine Resources
A Sea Change in a Changing Sea The oceans, seas and coastal areas encompass over 70% of the earth’s surface. They are a critical driver of the earth’s hydrologic cycle and climate system, important for c- merce, transport, and tourism, a source of economically important living marine resources, minerals such as hydrocarbons, as well as new pharmaceutical compounds. The marine environment provides essential habitats for thousands of marine living 1 2 resources, which in turn contribute significantly to global food security, employment, 3 and trade. Overall, the sea’s contribution to human welfare, in terms of market and non-market resources and environmental services, has been estimated at US$21 trillion/year (Costanza, 2000). However, despite the importance of the ocean realm to humans, there is a growing sense that human impacts are destabilizing this system. Some experts believe that current fishing levels are approaching or exceeding the total 4 productivity of the ocean ecosystem (National Research Council, 1999).
Knowledge Cartography : Software Tools and Mapping Techniques
The authors see mapping software as a set of visual tools for reading and writing in a networked age. In an information ocean, the primary challenge is to find meaningful patterns around which we can weave plausible narratives. Maps of concepts, discussions and arguments make the connections between ideas tangible and disputable.With 17 chapters from the leading researchers and practitioners, the reader will find the current state–of-the-art in the field. Part 1 focuses on educational applications in schools and universities, before Part 2 turns to applications in professional communities.
Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370
This book demonstrates how nonlinear/non-Gaussian Bayesian time series estimation methods were used to produce a probability distribution of potential MH370 flight paths. It provides details of how the probabilistic models of aircraft flight dynamics, satellite communication system measurements, environmental effects and radar data were constructed and calibrated. The probability distribution was used to define the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean. The book describes particle-filter based numerical calculation of the aircraft flight-path probability distribution and validates the method using data from several of the involved aircraft’s previous flights. Finally it is shown how the Reunion Island flaperon debris find affects the search probability distribution.
Artificial intelligence and national security
Analyses the implications of the technical, legal, ethical and privacy challenges as well as challenges for human rights and civil liberties regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and National Security. It also offers solutions that can be adopted to mitigate or eradicate these challenges wherever possible. As a general-purpose, dual-use technology, AI can be deployed for both good and evil. The use of AI is increasingly becoming of paramount importance to the governments mission to keep their nations safe. However, the design, development and use of AI for national security poses a wide range of legal, ethical, moral and privacy challenges. This book explores national security uses for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Western Democracies and its malicious use. This book also investigates the legal, political, ethical, moral, privacy and human rights implications of the national security uses of AI in the aforementioned democracies. It illustrates how AI for national security purposes could threaten most individual fundamental rights, and how the use of AI in digital policing could undermine user human rights and privacy.
Advances in radar systems for target detection and tracking
Radar systems can provide the all-weather and all-time detection and tracking of targets of interest, and they have been extensively applied by the remote sensing community, in applications such as geological exploration, disaster forecasting, traffic monitoring, urban planning, environmental sciences, hydrology, littoral zones, oceans, etc. This reprint contains the several advance research studies on radar systems for target detection and tracking. It includes multipath ghost suppression, maneuvering target tracking, target detection, and other topics.
Marine Surface Films : Chemical Characteristics, Influence on Air-Sea Interactions and Remote Sensing
Since the late 1960s, various groups have investigated the influence of marine surface films on mechanisms dominating energy and mass transfer across the ocean/atmosphere interface. However, a compendium summarizing the state-of-the-art research in this field is still missing. The book fills this gap and transfers the accumulated knowledge to the scientific community. After a brief historical chapter basic chemical insights are presented, followed by theoretical and experimental approaches carried out in laboratory facilities. Air-sea interaction experiments are then described and finally, remote sensing applications with sea slicks and crude oil spills are presented.
Marine Organic Matter : Biomarkers, Isotopes and DNA
The oceans contain a great biodiversity of marine organisms. They include a rich variety of unusual genes and biochemistries and hence a diverse array of organic compounds ranging from colourful carotenoids and chlorophylls to lipids with structures ranging from the simple to the complex. This volume brings together ten chapters on the occurrence and identification of the lipid biomarkers and of pigments in marine waters. It describes how they can be used in conjunction with stable isotopes and molecular biology to ascertain the sources and fate of organic matter (both natural and pollutant) in the sea and underlying sediments. The authors are each experts in their field and the chapters provide both an overview of the state-of-the-art and knowledge gaps together with abundant detail to satisfy the needs of specialists and non-specialists alike.
Marine Geochemistry
Since 1980 a considerable amount of scientific research dealing with geochemical processes in marine sediments has been carried out. This textbook summarizes the state of the art in this field of research. The topics comprise the examination of sedimentological and physical properties of the sedimentary solid phase, of pore water and pore water constituents, organic matter as the driving force of most microbiological processes, biotic and abiotic redox reactions, carbonates and stable isotopes as proxies for paleoclimate reconstruction, metal enrichments in ferromanganese nodules and crusts as well as in hot vents and cold seeps on the seafloor. A new chapter describes properties, occurrence and formation of gas hydrates in marine sediments. The textbook ends with a chapter on model conceptions and computer models to quantify processes of early diagenesis.
Marine carbon biogeochemistry : A primer for earth system scientists
This book discusses biogeochemical processes relevant to carbon and aims to provide with insight into the functioning of marine ecosystems. A carbon centric approach has been adopted, but other elements are included where relevant or needed. The book focuses on concepts and quantitative understanding of primary production, organic matter mineralization and sediment biogeochemistry. The impact of biogeochemical processes on inorganic carbon dynamics and organic matter transformation are also discussed.
Marine Biotechnology I
Oceans, which occupy up to two thirds of the surface of our planet, were not really approached from scientific point of view until the second half of the 19th century and even the 20th with regard to microbial and unicellular life. Today, the importance of marine biodiversity has been fully recognized. It is, indeed, one of the aspects which, over the two past decades, have made a major contribution to our knowledge and vision of the living planetThis volume of Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology illustrates several topics in line with the following broad objectives: thinking ofmarine biotechnology as the controlled production and use of marine organisms and molecules for useful purposes, firstly by exploring aspects of marine biodiversity and exploitation of biomass, then considering the identification, production and processing of marine products.
Managing European Coasts : Past, Present and Future
Many coastal areas and human activities are subject to increasing risks from natural and man-induced hazards such as flooding resulting from major changes in hydrology of river systems that has reached a global scale. Changes in the hydrological cycle coupled with changes in land and water management alter fluxes of materials transmitted from river catchments to the coastal zone, which have a major effect on coastal ecosystems. The increasing complexity of underlying processes and forcing functions that drive changes on coastal systems are witnessed at a multiplicity of temporal and spatial scales.
Management of Transboundary Rivers and Lakes
As it circulates in the atmosphere, in the rivers, lakes, soil, rock, and in the oceans, it is the major conveyer of va- ous chemical substances and of energy, and it can also be called as the blood of the ecosystems of this planet. But at the same time water is interwoven in the va- ous functions of the nature and the human society in countless ways which makes water one of the most complicated challenges of the mankind today.Human beings are exploiting and enjoying, but at the same time polluting and deteriorating, the waters in various ways and water is equally important to the - man socio-economic system as it is to the nature. It may sound a bit anecdotal to say that water obeys no borders, but that is true; the hydrologic cycle with its r- ers, river basins, lakes, aquifers, rainfalls, oceans, etc., cross administrational b- ders without any passport control. River and lake basins are in most cases very different from the administrational borders that the human beings have set up.
Macro-Engineering : A Challenge for the Future
Macro-engineering involves the large-scale modification and manipulation of natural systems for the benefit of mankind. The primary goals of some Earth-based macroprojects described in this book are power production, land reclamation, food production, climate change, environment, water, transport and coastal protection. Other Earth or space projects considered here have a more futuristic ring, but our present-day technical skill makes their realization possible. Earth-based macroprojects usually combine different aspects and aims. They have a major impact on the ecology of a region and the inhabitants' means of living (like tourism, fishing, shipping). Its effects may be felt worldwide, like the rise in global sea level after the damming and evaporation of large ocean gulfs for power production, or the change in climate following the regional reduction of solar insolation.
Links between geological processes, microbial activities & evolution of life : Microbes and geology
Microbial activities influence water-rock interaction processes and chemical transport between the major geochemical reservoirs and the formation/transformation of minerals and rocks, whereas geological processes and geochemical controls influence the microbial ecology in extreme environments. How biological activity influences geological processes and what role these processes played in the geological evolution of the Earth are fundamental questions.
Light Scattering by Optically Soft Particles: Theory and Applications
Deals with a particular class of approximation methods in the context of light scattering by small particles. This class of approximations has been termed as eikonal or soft particle approximations. The eikonal approximation was studied extensively in the potential scattering and then adopted in optical scattering problems. In this context, the eikonal and other soft particle approximations pertain to scatterers whose relative refractive index compared to surrounding medium is close to unity. The study of these approximations is very important because soft particles occur abundantly in nature. For example, the particles that occur in ocean optics, biomedical optics, atmospheric optics and in many industrial applications can be classified as soft particles. This book was written in recognition of the long-standing and current interest in the field of scattering approximations for soft particles. It should prove to be a useful addition for researchers in the field of light scattering.
Light Absorption in Sea Water
Takes a fresh, holistic approach to the problems of light absorption and absorbers in seawaters, discussing the fundamentals of light absorption at various depths in seawaters of different trophicity by absorbers of diverse origin. The authors have drawn their information from a substantial body of contemporary research results published in the subject literature (over 700 references) as well as their own work during the last 30 years. No other book presently available examines the issues of light absorption and absorbers in seawaters in such a manner. The physical and chemical properties, as well as the optical constants, of organic and inorganic suspended particulate matter (SPM), are discussed in the context of their relationship to the light absorption properties of SPM. Special emphasis is placed on the role of the phytoplankton and the pigments it contains which are particularly strong and important absorbers of visible light in the sea.
Isotopes in Palaeoenvironmental Research
This thorough reference shows how stable isotopes can be applied to understanding the palaeoenvironment, with chapters on the interpretation of isotopes in water, tree rings, bones and teeth, lake sediments, speleothems and marine sediments.
