The Baltic Sea area is an old cultural landscape with a well developed international framework for monitoring, assessing and managing its marine ecosystems. It provides a good case study for other regions where such management is being set up. The chapters in this book are based on lectures given at a summer school on the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm in the summer of 2009. They cover a range of topics, spanning from detailed descriptions of political agreements that protect the marine env...

An interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere's stores of living matter, from prehistoric hunting to modern energy production.The biosphere—the Earth's thin layer of life—dates from nearly four billion years ago, when the first simple organisms appeared. Many species have exerted enormous influence on the biosphere's character and productivity, but none has transformed the Earth in so many ways and on such a scale as Homo sapien...

Biological invasions are one of the strongest drivers of global environmental change, and invasive species are now often in the public discourse. At the same time, economists have begun to take a real interest in determining how invasive species interact with economic systems, and how invaders should be controlled to optimize societal wealth. Although the work from ecologists and economists have both greatly expanded our understanding of the drivers and impacts of invasions, little integra...

The climate of the Earth is always changing. As the debate over the implications of changes in the Earth's climate has grown, the term climate change has come to refer primarily to changes we've seen over recent years and those which are predicted to be coming, mainly as a result of human behavior. This book serves as a broad, accessible guide to the science behind this often political and heated debate by providing scientific detail and evidence in language that is clear to both the non-s...

Decisively cutting through the hyperbole on both sides of the debate, distinguished NASA climatologist Claire L. Parkinson brings much-needed balance and perspective to the highly contentious issue of climate change. Offering a deeply knowledgeable overview of global conditions past and present, the author lays out a compelling argument that our understandings and models are inadequate for confident predictions of the intended and unintended consequences of various projects now under consi...

Howard T. Odum possessed one of the most innovative minds of the twentieth century. He pioneered the fields of ecological engineering, ecological economics, and environmental accounting, working throughout his life to better understand the interrelationships of energy, environment, and society and their importance to the well-being of humanity and the planet.This volume is a major modernization of Odum's classic work on the significance of power and its role in society, bringing hi...

Model development is of vital importance for understanding and management of ecological processes. Identifying the complex relationships between ecological patterns and processes is a crucial task. Ecological modelling—both qualitatively and quantitatively—plays a vital role in analysing ecological phenomena and for ecological theory. This textbook provides a unique overview of modelling approaches. Representing the state-of-the-art in modern ecology, it shows how to construct and work wit...

The environmental impacts of acid rain: on human health, on buildings and materials, on forests, freshwaters, crops and biodiversity and on global warming have been well-documented. Less is known about the extent and economic costs of these impacts. This book describes the first major implementation of an integrated scientific and economic assessment of the consequences of acid rain. It provides an extensive data review and examines how this unique approach to assessment modelling can be c...

Policy and management decisions are often made on financial grounds. However, the economic value of the benefits that people derive from ecosystems, that is, ecosystem services, may not be fully recognised and hence ecosystem considerations may not be incorporated adequately into decision-making processes. This is particularly true for regulating services, the benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, the valuation of which requires an interdisciplinary approach. In ess...

-- Ecology

Climate change and variability has become the primary environmental concern of the 21st Century. The potential impacts and mitigation of climate change need to be analyzed within the context of sustainable development. Primer on Climate Change and Sustainable Development presents a condensed and accessible review of the latest state-of-the-art assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The book begins with a foreword from the chair of the IPCC. Our current knowledge of t...

Climate change has been the subject of thousands of books and magazines, scientific journals, and newspaper articles daily. It’s a subject that can be very political and emotional, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction. The vast majority of research, studies, projections and recommendations tend to focus on the human influence on climate change and global warming as the result of CO2 emissions, often to the exclusion of other threats that include population growth and the stres...