Download or read book Land Change Science written by Garik Gutman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-03-24 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a synthesis of the NASA funded work under the Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program. Hundreds of scientists have worked for the past eight years to understand one of the most important forces that is changing our planet-human impacts on land cover, that is land use. Its contributions span the natural and the social sciences, and apply state-of-the-art techniques for understanding the earth: satellite remote sensing, geographic information systems, modeling, and advanced computing. It brings together detailed case studies, regional analyses, and globally scaled mapping efforts. This is the most organized effort made to understand the dominant force that has been responsible for changing the Earth’s biosphere. Audience: This publication will be of interest to students, scientists, and policy makers. This volume includes a CD-ROM containing full color images of a selection of illustrations which are printed in black-and-white in the book.

Download or read book Tropical Fire Ecology written by Mark Cochrane and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-04-11 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tropics are home to most of the world’s biodiversity and are currently the frontier for human settlement. Tropical ecosystems are being converted to agricultural and other land uses at unprecedented rates. Land conversion and maintenance almost always rely on fire and, because of this, fire is now more prevalent in the tropics than anywhere else on Earth. Despite pervasive fire, human settlement and threatened biodiversity, there is little comprehensive information available on fire and its effects in tropical ecosystems. Tropical deforestation, especially in rainforests, has been widely documented for many years. Forests are cut down and allowed to dry before being burned to remove biomass and release nutrients to grow crops. However, fires do not always stop at the borders of cleared forests. Tremendously damaging fires are increasingly spreading into forests that were never evolutionarily prepared for wild fires. The largest fires on the planet in recent decades have occurred in tropical forests and burned millions of hectares in several countries. The numerous ecosystems of the tropics have differing levels of fire resistance, resilience or dependence. At present, there is little appreciation of the seriousness of the wild fire situation in tropical rainforests but there is even less understanding of the role that fire plays in the ecology of many fire adapted tropical ecosystems, such as savannas, grasslands and other forest types.

Download or read book Climate Land Use and Fire Can Models Inform Management written by Dominique Bachelet and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2021-01-13 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Biomass Burning and Its Inter Relationships with the Climate System written by John L. Innes and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JOHN L. INNES University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada The interactions between biomass burning and climate have been brought into focus by a number of recent events. Firstly, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and, more recently, the Kyoto Protocol, have drawn the attention of policy makers and others to the importance of biomass burning in relation to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Secondly, the use of prescribed fires has become a major management tool in some countries; with for example the area with fuel treatments (which include prescribed burns and mechanical treatments) having increased on US National Forest System lands from 123,000 ha in 1985 to 677,000 ha in 1998. Thirdly, large numbers of forest fires in Indonesia, Brazil, Australia and elsewhere in 1997 and 1998 received unprecedented media attention. Consequently, it is appropriate that one of the Wengen Workshops on Global Change Research be devoted to the relationships between biomass burning and climate. This volume includes many of the papers presented at the workshop, but is also intended to act as a contribution to the state of knowledge on the int- relationships between biomass burning and climate change. Previous volumes on biomass burning (e. g. Goldammer 1990,Levine 1991a, Crutzen and Goldammer 1993, Levine 1996a, 1996b, Van Wilgen et al. 1997) have stressed various aspects of the biomass–climate issue, and provide a history of the development of our understanding of the many complex relationships that are involved.

Download or read book Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As climate has warmed over recent years, a new pattern of more frequent and more intense weather events has unfolded across the globe. Climate models simulate such changes in extreme events, and some of the reasons for the changes are well understood. Warming increases the likelihood of extremely hot days and nights, favors increased atmospheric moisture that may result in more frequent heavy rainfall and snowfall, and leads to evaporation that can exacerbate droughts. Even with evidence of these broad trends, scientists cautioned in the past that individual weather events couldn't be attributed to climate change. Now, with advances in understanding the climate science behind extreme events and the science of extreme event attribution, such blanket statements may not be accurate. The relatively young science of extreme event attribution seeks to tease out the influence of human-cause climate change from other factors, such as natural sources of variability like El Niño, as contributors to individual extreme events. Event attribution can answer questions about how much climate change influenced the probability or intensity of a specific type of weather event. As event attribution capabilities improve, they could help inform choices about assessing and managing risk, and in guiding climate adaptation strategies. This report examines the current state of science of extreme weather attribution, and identifies ways to move the science forward to improve attribution capabilities.

Download or read book Firestorm written by Edward Struzik and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Frightening...Firestorm comes alive when Struzik discusses the work of offbeat scientists." —New York Times Book Review "Comprehensive and compelling." —Booklist "A powerful message." —Kirkus "Should be required reading." —Library Journal For two months in the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire “the Beast.” It acted like a mythical animal, alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it’s not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live in a world in which fires like the Beast are commonplace. A glance at international headlines shows a remarkable increase in higher temperatures, stronger winds, and drier lands– a trifecta for igniting wildfires like we’ve rarely seen before. This change is particularly noticeable in the northern forests of the United States and Canada. These forests require fire to maintain healthy ecosystems, but as the human population grows, and as changes in climate, animal and insect species, and disease cause further destabilization, wildfires have turned into a potentially uncontrollable threat to human lives and livelihoods. Our understanding of the role fire plays in healthy forests has come a long way in the past century. Despite this, we are not prepared to deal with an escalation of fire during periods of intense drought and shorter winters, earlier springs, potentially more lightning strikes and hotter summers. There is too much fuel on the ground, too many people and assets to protect, and no plan in place to deal with these challenges. In Firestorm, journalist Edward Struzik visits scorched earth from Alaska to Maine, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers making the case for a radically different approach to managing wildfire in the 21st century. Wildfires can no longer be treated as avoidable events because the risk and dangers are becoming too great and costly. Struzik weaves a heart-pumping narrative of science, economics, politics, and human determination and points to the ways that we, and the wilder inhabitants of the forests around our cities and towns, might yet flourish in an age of growing megafires.

Download or read book The impact of disasters and crises on agriculture and food security 2021 written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously changing landscape. And agriculture continues to absorb a disproportionate share of the damage and loss wrought by disasters. Their growing frequency and intensity, along with the systemic nature of risk, are upending people’s lives, devastating livelihoods, and jeopardizing our entire food system. This report makes a powerful case for investing in resilience and disaster risk reduction – especially data gathering and analysis for evidence informed action – to ensure agriculture’s crucial role in achieving the future we want.

Download or read book The Ecological Importance of Mixed Severity Fires written by Dominick A. DellaSala and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2015-06-08 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ecological Importance of High-Severity Fires, presents information on the current paradigm shift in the way people think about wildfire and ecosystems. While much of the current forest management in fire-adapted ecosystems, especially forests, is focused on fire prevention and suppression, little has been reported on the ecological role of fire, and nothing has been presented on the importance of high-severity fire with regards to the maintenance of native biodiversity and fire-dependent ecosystems and species. This text fills that void, providing a comprehensive reference for documenting and synthesizing fire's ecological role. - Offers the first reference written on mixed- and high-severity fires and their relevance for biodiversity - Contains a broad synthesis of the ecology of mixed- and high-severity fires covering such topics as vegetation, birds, mammals, insects, aquatics, and management actions - Explores the conservation vs. public controversy issues around megafires in a rapidly warming world

Download or read book Fire and Climatic Change in Temperate Ecosystems of the Western Americas written by Thomas T. Veblen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-05-10 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both fire and climatic variability have monumental impacts on the dynamics of temperate ecosystems. These impacts can sometimes be extreme or devastating as seen in recent El Nino/La Nina cycles and in uncontrolled fire occurrences. This volume brings together research conducted in western North and South America, areas of a great deal of collaborative work on the influence of people and climate change on fire regimes. In order to give perspective to patterns of change over time, it emphasizes the integration of paleoecological studies with studies of modern ecosystems. Data from a range of spatial scales, from individual plants to communities and ecosystems to landscape and regional levels, are included. Contributions come from fire ecology, paleoecology, biogeography, paleoclimatology, landscape and ecosystem ecology, ecological modeling, forest management, plant community ecology and plant morphology. The book gives a synthetic overview of methods, data and simulation models for evaluating fire regime processes in forests, shrublands and woodlands and assembles case studies of fire, climate and land use histories. The unique approach of this book gives researchers the benefits of a north-south comparison as well as the integration of paleoecological histories, current ecosystem dynamics and modeling of future changes.

Download or read book Assessment of the Risk of Amazon Dieback written by Walter Vergara and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010-11-11 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Amazon basin is a key component of the global carbon cycle. Not only is the old-growth rainforests in the basin huge carbon storage with about 120 billion metric tons of carbon in their biomass, but they also process annually twice the rate of global anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions through respiration and photosynthesis. In addition, the basin is the largest global repository of biodiversity and produces about 20 percent of the world s flow of fresh water into the oceans. Despite the large CO2 efflux from recent deforestation, the Amazon rainforest is still considered to be a net carbon sink or reservoir because vegetation growth on average exceeds mortality. However, current climate trends and human-induced deforestation may be transforming forest structure and behavior. Amazon forest dieback would be a massive event, affecting all life-forms that rely on this diverse ecosystem, including humans, and producing ramifications for the entire planet. Clearly, with changes at a global scale at stake, there is a need to better understand the risk, and dynamics of Amazon dieback. Therefore, the purpose of the book is to assist in understanding the risk, process and dynamics of potential Amazon dieback and its implications.

Download or read book Interactions Between Biosphere Atmosphere and Human Land Use in the Amazon Basin written by Laszlo Nagy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-09 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a panorama of recent scientific achievements produced through the framework of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere programme (LBA) and other research programmes in the Brazilian Amazon. The content is highly interdisciplinary, with an overarching aim to contribute to the understanding of the dynamic biophysical and societal/socio-economic structure and functioning of Amazonia as a regional entity and its regional and global climatic teleconnections. The target readership includes advanced undergraduate and post-graduate students and researchers seeking to untangle the gamut of interactions that the Amazon’s complex biophysical and social system represent.

Download or read book Advances in Earth Observation of Global Change written by Emilio Chuvieco and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-08-04 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Change studies are increasingly being considered a vital source of information to understand the Earth Environment, in particular in the framework of human-induced climate change and land use transformation. Satellite Earth Observing systems provide a unique tool to monitor those changes. While the range of applications and innovative techniques is constantly increasing, this book provides a summary of key case studies where satellite data offer critical information to understand the causes and effects of those environmental changes, minimizing their negative impacts. This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the field of remote sensing, geographical information, meteorology and environmental sciences. Also scientists and graduate up to post-graduate level students in environmental science will find valuable information in this book.

Download or read book Fire in the Tropical Biota written by Johann G. Goldammer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1977, the Volkswagen Foundation sponsored the first of a series of International Symposia on Fire Ecology at Freiburg University, Federal Republic of Germany. The scope of the congresses was to create a platform for researchers at a time when the science of fire ecology was not yet recognized and established outside of North America and Australia. Whereas comprehensive information on the fire ecology of the northern boreal, the temperate, and the mediter ranean biotas is meanwhile available, it was recognized that conside rable gaps in information exist on the role of fire in tropical und sub tropical ecosystems. Thus it seemed timely to meet the growing scientific interest and public demand for reliable and updated infor mation and to synthesize the available knowledge of tropical fire ecology and the impact of tropical biomass burning on global eco system processes. The Third Symposium on Fire Ecology, again sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation and held at Freiburg University in May 1989, was convened to prepare this first pantropical and multidisci plinary monograph on fire ecology!. The book, in which 46 scientists cooperated, analyzes those fire-related ecosystem processes which have not yet been described in a synoptic way. Following the editor's concept, duplication at previous efforts in describing tropical vegeta tion patterns and dynamics was avoided. Extensive bibliographical sources are given in the reference lists of the chapters.

Download or read book The Regional Impacts of Climate Change written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working Group II. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Download or read book Regional Climate Variability and its Impacts in the Mediterranean Area written by A. Mellouki and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-10 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the findings and suggestions from a NATO workshop that examined regional climate variability and its impacts in the Mediterranean area, which was held in Marrakech, Morocco, November 2006. This NATO workshop was set up to discuss the issues facing the region in general and the influence of chemical emissions and transformation in particular.

Download or read book Earth Observation of Wildland Fires in Mediterranean Ecosystems written by Emilio Chuvieco and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-09-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wildland fires are becoming one of the most critical environmental factors affecting a wide range of ecosystems worldwide. In Mediterranean ecosystems (including also South-Africa, California, parts of Chile and Australia), wildland fires are recurrent phenomena every summer, following the seasonal drought. As a result of changes in traditional land use practices, and the impact of recent climate warming, fires have more negative impacts in the last years, threatening lives, socio-economic and ecological values. The book describes the ecological context of fires in the Mediterranean ecosystems, and provides methods to observe fire danger conditions and fire impacts using Earth Observation and Geographic Information System technologies.

Download or read book Vegetation Fires and Global Change written by C. Justice and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The White Paper "Vegetation Fires and Global Change" is a global state-of-the-art analysis of the role of vegetation fires in the Earth System and is published as a collective endeavor of the world\2019s most renowned scientists and research groups working in fire science, ecology, atmospheric chemistry, remote sensing and climate change modeling. The aim of the White Paper is to support the endeavour of the United Nations and its affiliated processes and networks, notably the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 "Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters" and the Global Wildland Fire Network, to address global vegetation fires for the benefit of the global environment and humanity. The White Paper provides insight into the complexity of global vegetation fire issues and rationale for coordinated, international action in crossboundary fire management at global scale."--Back cover.