Natural Hazards focuses on hazards as the interface between humanity and its needs for space and resources, as well as on the ongoing geologic processes of Earth and features many new Canadian examples and discussions while retaining the best U.S. and international illustrations. The third Canadian edition strikes an ideal balance between the scientific and the human aspects of natural hazards, combining basic scientific principles within a solid social framework.

Safety and Reliability – Safe Societies in a Changing World collects the papers presented at the 28th European Safety and Reliability Conference, ESREL 2018 in Trondheim, Norway, June 17-21, 2018. The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management- mathematical methods in reliability and safety- risk assessment - risk management- system reliability- uncertainty analysis- digitalization and big data- prognostics and system health management- occupational safety- accident and incident modeling- maintenance modeling and applications- simulation for safety and reliability analysis- dynamic risk and barrier management- organizational factors and safety culture- human factors and human reliability- resilience engineering- structural reliability- natural hazards- security- economic analysis in risk management Safety and Reliability – Safe Societies in a Changing World will be invaluable to academics and professionals working in a wide range of industrial and governmental sectors: offshore oil and gas, nuclear engineering, aeronautics and aerospace, marine transport and engineering, railways, road transport, automotive engineering, civil engineering, critical infrastructures, electrical and electronic engineering, energy production and distribution, environmental engineering, information technology and telecommunications, insurance and finance, manufacturing, marine transport, mechanical engineering, security and protection, and policy making.

Although organic farming and agroecology are normally not associated with the use of new technologies, it's rapid growth, new technologies are being adopted to mitigate environmental impacts of intensive production implemented with external material and energy inputs. GPS, satellite images, GIS, drones, help conventional farming in precision supply of water, pesticides, fertilizers. Prescription maps define the right place and moment for interventions of machinery fleets. Yield goal remains the key objective, integrating a more efficient use or resources toward an economic-environmental sustainability. Technological smart farming allows extractive agriculture entering the sustainability era. Societies that practice agroecology through the development of human-environmental co-evolutionary systems represent a solid model of sustainability. These systems are characterized by high-quality agroecosystems and landscapes, social inclusion, and viable economies. This book explores the challenges posed by the new geographic information technologies in agroecology and organic farming. It discusses the differences among technology-laden conventional farming systems and the role of technologies in strengthening the potential of agroecology. The first part reviews the new tools offered by geographic information technologies to farmers and people. The second part provides case studies of most promising application of technologies in organic farming and agroecology: the diffusion of hyperspectral imagery, the role of positioning systems, the integration of drones with satellite imagery. The third part of the book, explores the role of agroecology using a multiscale approach from the farm to the landscape level. This section explores the potential of Geodesign in promoting alliances between farmers and people, and strengthening food networks, whether through proximity urban farming or asserting land rights in remote areas in the spirit of agroecological transition. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.

The sterile insect technique (SIT) is an environment-friendly method of pest control that integrates well into area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) programmes. This book takes a generic, thematic, comprehensive, and global approach in describing the principles and practice of the SIT. The strengths and weaknesses, and successes and failures, of the SIT are evaluated openly and fairly from a scientific perspective. The SIT is applicable to some major pests of plant-, animal-, and human-health importance, and criteria are provided to guide in the selection of pests appropriate for the SIT. In the second edition, all aspects of the SIT have been updated and the content considerably expanded. A great variety of subjects is covered, from the history of the SIT to improved prospects for its future application. The major chapters discuss the principles and technical components of applying sterile insects. The four main strategic options in using the SIT — suppression, containment, prevention, and eradication — with examples of each option are described in detail. Other chapters deal with supportive technologies, economic, environmental, and management considerations, and the socio-economic impact of AW-IPM programmes that integrate the SIT. In addition, this second edition includes six new chapters covering the latest developments in the technology: managing pathogens in insect mass-rearing, using symbionts and modern molecular technologies in support of the SIT, applying post-factory nutritional, hormonal, and semiochemical treatments, applying the SIT to eradicate outbreaks of invasive pests, and using the SIT against mosquito vectors of disease. This book will be useful reading for students in animal-, human-, and plant-health courses. The in-depth reviews of all aspects of the SIT and its integration into AW-IPM programmes, complete with extensive lists of scientific references, will be of great value to researchers, teachers, animal-, human-, and plant-health practitioners, and policy makers.

Policy-makers are increasingly concerned about the impact of climate variability and change on the health of vulnerable populations. Variations and trends in climatic factors and extreme weather events impact many health outcomes, including malaria, heat stress and undernutrition. Climate Information for Public Health Action is based on the premise that climate knowledge and information can help protect the public from climate-sensitive health risks. With a focus on infectious disease, hydro-meteorological disasters and nutrition, the book explores why, when and how data on the historical, current and future (from days to decades) climate can be incorporated into health decision-making. Created as a collaborative effort between climate and health experts, this book targets a broad technical public health community, alongside development practitioners and policy-makers engaged in climate change adaptation. It may also guide climate experts in the development of climate services tailored to health needs. Written in an accessible, informative style, while maintaining the highest technical and scientific standards, it will also be a valuable resource for students and academics studying and working in the emerging field of environment and health. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315115603, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.'

This book is thesecond volume of a three volume series recording the'Radon Special Semester 2011 on Multiscale Simulation & Analysis in Energy and the Environment'that took placein Linz, Austria, October 3-7, 2011. This volume addresses the common ground in the mathematical and computational procedures required for large-scale inverse problems and data assimilation in forefront applications. The solution of inverse problems is fundamental to a wide variety of applications such as weather forecasting, medical tomography, and oil exploration. Regularisation techniques are needed to ensure solutions of sufficient quality to be useful, and soundly theoretically based. This book addresses the common techniques required for all the applications, and is thus truly interdisciplinary. Thiscollection of surveyarticlesfocusses onthe large inverse problems commonly arising in simulation and forecasting in the earth sciences. For example, operational weather forecasting models have between 107 and 108 degrees of freedom. Even so, these degrees of freedom represent grossly space-time averaged properties of the atmosphere. Accurate forecasts require accurate initial conditions. With recent developments in satellite data, there are between 106 and 107 observations each day. However, while these also represent space-time averaged properties, the averaging implicit in the measurements is quite different from that used in the models. In atmosphere and ocean applications, there is a physically-based model available which can be used to regularise the problem. We assume that there is a set of observations with known error characteristics available over a period of time. The basic deterministic technique is to fit a model trajectory to the observations over a period of time to within the observation error. Since the model is not perfect the model trajectory has to be corrected, which defines the data assimilation problem. The stochastic view can be expressed by using an ensemble of model trajectories, and calculating corrections to both the mean value and the spread which allow the observations to be fitted by each ensemble member. In other areas of earth science, only the structure of the model formulation itself is known and the aim is to use the past observation history to determine the unknown model parameters. The book records the achievements of Workshop2'Large-Scale Inverse Problems and Applications in the Earth Sciences'. Itinvolves experts in the theory of inverse problems together with experts working on both theoretical and practical aspects of the techniques by which large inverse problems arise in the earth sciences.

Beginning systematically with the fundamentals, the fully-updated third edition of this popular graduate textbook provides an understanding of all the essential elements of marine optics. It explains the key role of light as a major factor in determining the operation and biological composition of aquatic ecosystems, and its scope ranges from the physics of light transmission within water, through the biochemistry and physiology of aquatic photosynthesis, to the ecological relationships that depend on the underwater light climate. This book also provides a valuable introduction to the remote sensing of the ocean from space, which is now recognized to be of great environmental significance due to its direct relevance to global warming. An important resource for graduate courses on marine optics, aquatic photosynthesis, or ocean remote sensing; and for aquatic scientists, both oceanographers and limnologists.

No previous author has attempted a book such as this: a complete history of novels written in the English language, from the genre's seventeenth-century origins to the present day. In the spirit of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, acclaimed critic and scholar John Sutherland selects 294 writers whose works illustrate the best of every kind of fiction—from gothic, penny dreadful, and pornography to fantasy, romance, and high literature. Each author was chosen, Professor Sutherland explains, because his or her books are well worth reading and are likely to remain so for at least another century. Sutherland presents these authors in chronological order, in each case deftly combining a lively and informative biographical sketch with an opinionated assessment of the writer's work. Taken together, these novelists provide both a history of the novel and a guide to its rich variety. Always entertaining, and sometimes shocking, Sutherland considers writers as diverse as Daniel Defoe, Henry James, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Jacqueline Susann. Written for all lovers of fiction, Lives of the Novelists succeeds both as introduction and re-introduction, as Sutherland presents favorite and familiar novelists in new ways and transforms the less favored and less familiar through his relentlessly fascinating readings.

For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the role of the Sun in the Earth's climate system. Recent discoveries, outlined in this book, have gradually unveiled a complex picture, in which our variable Sun affects the climate variability via a number of subtle pathways, the implications of which are only now becoming clear. This handbook provides the scientifically curious, from undergraduate students to policy makers with a complete and accessible panorama of our present understanding of the Sun-climate connection. 61 experts from different communities have contributed to it, which reflects the highly multidisciplinary nature of this topic. The handbook is organised as a mosaic of short chapters, each of which addresses a specific aspect, and can be read independently. The reader will learn about the assumptions, the data, the models, and the unknowns behind each mechanism by which solar variability may impact climate variability. None of these mechanisms can adequately explain global warming observed since the 1950s. However, several of them do impact climate variability, in particular on a regional level.This handbook aims at addressing these issues in a factual way, and thereby challenge the reader to sharpen his/her critical thinking in a debate that is frequently distorted by unfounded claims.

Natural hazards and anthropic activities threaten the human environment. The gathering of field data is needed so as to quantify the impact of such activities. To gather the necessary data researchers nowadays use a great variety of new instruments based on electronics. Yet, the working principles of this new instrumentation might not be well understood by some potential users. All operators of these new tools must gain proper insight so as to be able to judge whether the instrument is selected appropriately and functions adequately. This book attempts to demonstrate some characteristics that are not easy to understand by the uninitiated in the use of electronic instruments. The material presented in this book was prepared with the purpose of reflecting the technological changes that have occurred in environmental modern instrumentation in the last few decades. The book is intended for students of hydrology, hydraulics, oceanography, meteorology and environmental sciences. Basic concepts of electronics, special physics principles and signal processing are introduced in the first chapters in order to enable the reader to follow the topics developed in the book, without any prior knowledge of these matters. The instruments are explained in detail and several examples are introduced to show their measuring limitations. Enough mathematical fundamentals are given to allow the reader to reach a good quantitative knowledge.

The frequency and intensity of dust storms in Iran has increased significantly in recent years. This study identifies the sources of dust using hybrid algorithms – probability density-index of entropy (PD-IOE), probability density-radial basic function neural network (PD-RBFNN), probability density-self-organizing map (PDSOM), and probability density-fuzzy ARTMAP (PD-FAM). Hybrid models employed several effective environmental factors: land cover, slope, soil, land use, wind speed, geology, temperature, and precipitation. A random selection of 70% of the data points were used for training the spatial models and the remainder (30%) were used to test the effectiveness of the models to determine the best algorithm. The results reveal that the PD-FAM algorithm produced the most accurate predictions of dust sources. Geology, slope, and soil were the factors that were most effective predictors of dust generation in eastern Iran. Comprehensive management is needed to manage dust production in Iran and these findings may ease identification of locations most likely to produce dust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 40 years, applied climatologists have been producing increasingly sophisticated and insightful research which has led to the current level of recognition that climate and particularly climatic changes have important environmental, economic, and recreational impacts. Furthermore, as societal needs for optimizing the use of resources increase, applied climatology will continue to grow in importance. Selected Readings in Applied Climatology is a collection of academic-style vignettes of research over the past 40 years that represents the evolution of this important subfield, and, therefore, provides a framework for appreciating the impacts of climate on society. After an introductory editorial chapter placing the development of applied climatology in its historical context, the book is divided into topical sections on applied climatological research in atmospheric circulation variability; the biosphere; water and energy resources; agriculture; and human health, comfort and behavior. The final section includes a collection of essays on communicating climatic information to the public. Selected Readings in Applied Climatology will be beneficial to those whose field of interest affects, and is affected by, climate, such as meteorologists, ecologists, water resource planners, energy demand forecasters, commodities brokers, agriculturalists, sociologists, and media consultants.

Recent wildfire outbreaks around the world have prompted concern that climate change is increasing fire incidence, threatening human livelihood and biodiversity, and perpetuating climate change. Here, we review current understanding of the impacts of climate change on fire weather (weather conditions conducive to the ignition and spread of wildfires) and the consequences for regional fire activity as mediated by a range of other bioclimatic factors (including vegetation biogeography, productivity and lightning) and human factors (including ignition, suppression, and land use). Through supplemental analyses, we present a stocktake of regional trends in fire weather and burned area (BA) during recent decades, and we examine how fire activity relates to its bioclimatic and human drivers. Fire weather controls the annual timing of fires in most world regions and also drives inter‐annual variability in BA in the Mediterranean, the Pacific US and high latitude forests. Increases in the frequency and extremity of fire weather have been globally pervasive due to climate change during 1979–2019, meaning that landscapes are primed to burn more frequently. Correspondingly, increases in BA of ∼50% or higher have been seen in some extratropical forest ecoregions including in the Pacific US and high‐latitude forests during 2001–2019, though interannual variability remains large in these regions. Nonetheless, other bioclimatic and human factors can override the relationship between BA and fire weather. For example, BA in savannahs relates more strongly to patterns of fuel production or to the fragmentation of naturally fire‐prone landscapes by agriculture. Similarly, BA trends in tropical forests relate more strongly to deforestation rates and forest degradation than to changing fire weather. Overall, BA has reduced by 27% globally in the past two decades, due in large part to a decline in BA in African savannahs. According to climate models, the prevalence and extremity of fire weather has already emerged beyond its pre‐industrial variability in the Mediterranean due to climate change, and emergence will become increasingly widespread at additional levels of warming. Moreover, several of the major wildfires experienced in recent years, including the Australian bushfires of 2019/2020, have occurred amidst fire weather conditions that were considerably more likely due to climate change. Current fire models incompletely reproduce the observed spatial patterns of BA based on their existing representations of the relationships between fire and its bioclimatic and human controls, and historical trends in BA also vary considerably across models. Advances in the observation of fire and understanding of its controlling factors are supporting the addition or optimization of a range of processes in models. Overall, climate change is exerting a pervasive upwards pressure on fire globally by increasing the frequency and intensity of fire weather, and this upwards pressure will escalate with each increment of global warming. Improvements to fire models and a better understanding of the interactions between climate, climate extremes, humans and fire are required to predict future fire activity and to mitigate against its consequences. Plain Language Summary: In this review, with supplemental data analyses, we focus on the global and regional impacts of climate change on the frequency and intensity of fire weather (conditions conducive to fire ignition and spread) and the consequences for fire activity. We find that significant increases in fire weather have occurred in most world regions during recent decades due to climate change. Corresponding increases in the area burned by fires have been seen in some regions, most notably in mesic forests, however, in many regions fire is controlled by a range of other bioclimatic and human factors whose influences mediate or override those of fire weather. Weather conditions affecting vegetation growth and the build‐up of fuels, the presence of human ignitions in regions that are not naturally fire‐prone, and the fragmentation of fire‐prone landscapes by agriculture are key examples of factors that can locally or regionally outweigh fire weather as controls on fire activity. Climate models project that fire weather will become increasingly frequent and intense under future warming, and at an increasing rate with each additional increment of warming. The outcomes for fire activity in future will depend on other regionally important factors that control fire ignition and spread. Existing fire models represent the controls on fire incompletely and so they reproduce observed patterns of fire with only limited success. Models also disagree on historical trends, leading to low confidence in their simulations of future fire activity. Various efforts to improve the representation of fire in models are underway and should yield greater capacity to predict the future of fire activity. Key Points: The frequency and severity of fire weather has increased in recent decades and is projected to escalate with each added increment of warmingFire weather is one of the major controls on fire activity, and is the dominant control on variability in burned area (BA) in many mesic forest ecoregionsVarious human and bioclimatic factors also control fire, modulating the relationship between BA and fire weather in many regions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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