Innovation is a major driver of social, economic and environmental change and is researched extensively by academics from disciplines as diverse as, business, engineering, economics, sociology and psychology. On the whole, each discipline pursues its own pathway to understanding without an interdisciplinary framework that links diverse research outputs. This partite structure creates a remove from the practical realities of entrepreneurship, and the innovators who operate and perceive inno...

From noted journalist and professor David Dent comes this poignant and fascinating survey of contemporary African-American life. In Search of Black America is compilation of eclectic personalities and rare insights. Dent spent five years researching and travelling across the continent interviewing America's black middle-class. Filled with stories of real people and real places, this book examines the many ways in which blacks have carved out their own niche and emerged from the shadow of a...

Hoddesdon really came into its own between the sixteenth and mid nineteenth centuries as a coaching town providing a welcome stopping place for travellers from London setting out on the Old North Road. Broxbourne, just to the south, was a smaller and more rural settlement focused around the church and manor house until the coming of the railway in 1840 began the process of gradual suburbanisation that has continued ever since. The contrasting illustrations provide an accessible and interes...

Innovation is a major driver of social, economic and environmental change and is researched extensively by academics from disciplines as diverse as, business, engineering, economics, sociology and psychology. On the whole, each discipline pursues its own pathway to understanding without an interdisciplinary framework that links diverse research outputs. This partite structure creates a remove from the practical realities of entrepreneurship, and the innovators who operate and perceive inno...

This book provides an international perspective on rural planning, focused on developing countries. It examines conventional development planning and innovative local planning approaches, drawing together lessons from recent experience of rural planning and land use. The authors examine past and current practice and ways that land use planning and management of natural resources can underpin sustainable local livelihoods. They draw on case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America to pre...

Soil as World Heritage celebrates a half century of field experiments on the Balti Steppe, in Moldova - where Dokuchaev first described the Typical Chernozem in 1877, protected from the elements by a unique system of shelter belts designed by the great man, and now provisionally listed as the first World Heritage Site for soil. The book presents contributions to the 2012 international symposium attended by researchers, practitioners and policy makers from the European Commission a...

The Historical Dictionary of Inter-American Organizations covers the changing world of inter-American and international organizations that have played an important role in bilateral and multilateral efforts to solve a wide range of problems that have confronted the nations of the Western Hemisphere. The Latin American region is clearly more integrated regionally and internationally than in previous decades and is better prepared to confront a broad range of problems—trade, development, ill...

The food system is our last coal-fired power station, our last diesel engine. This book is a trans-disciplinary approach to what needs to be done to make our food system sustainable and to regenerate soil and water resources, habitat, economy and society. The book brings back classical principles of agronomy and integrates economic, agro-ecological and social perspectives, drawing on a wealth of expertise on the political economy of the food system, Conservation Agriculture, and long-term ...

This book discusses gritty issues that society faces every day: food and water security, environmental services provided by farmers, almost accidentally, and taken for granted by everyone else, the capability of the land to provide our needs today and for the foreseeable future and pollution of soil, air and water. The chapters are grouped in four main themes: soil development - properties and qualities; assessment of resources and risks; soil fertility, degradation and improvement and soi...

This book deals with the sustainability of agriculture on the Black Earth by drawing on data from long-term field experiments. It emphasises the opportunities for greater food and water security at local and regional levels.The Black Earth, Chernozem in Russian, is the best arable soil in the world and the breadbasket of Europe and North America. It was the focus of scientific study at the very beginnings of soil science in the late 19th century—as a world in itself, created by the...

Dokuchaev carried out most of his research in Ukraine. His student and friend, Volodymyr Vernadsky, went on to create trans-disciplinary environmental sciences and the concept of Earth as a living organism, famously taken up by James Lovelock. That spring of ideas still flows and the researches captured in this volume are relevant to present-day problems, and not only in Ukraine.Soils have always been under stress but, in the Anthropocene, mankind is in the driving seat. As a seque...

This book follows Tony Allan’s journey through the maze of water management and global awareness of the risks of mismanagement, tracing the trajectory of the hydraulic mission from a time of infinite possibilities—fiat panis and piped water—to risk aversion, loss of confidence and political will, and post-water societies.Part I, spanning fifteen chapters, explores Tony Allan’s formative years at SOAS, his groundbreaking work in remote sensing, and his Middle Eastern studies. It exa...