Download or read book Vegetation Degradation in Central Asia under the Impact of Human Activities written by N. Kharin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about desertification. The author describes vegetation degradation as a part of the integral process of desert ecosystem degradation in Central Asia under the impact of human activities. A connection is made between political and social factors and degradation of desert environments in historical perspective. Fragile desert ecosystems suffer first of all from the loss of vegetation. Wildlife is reduced, productivity of desert rangelands fall and the people also suffer from a shortage of food. The after-effect of this process is catastrophic, not only for the desert itself but also for the people living in the desert. Several measures are also discussed in the book for conservation of desert vegetation and rehabilitation of desert lands.

Download or read book The Aral Sea written by Philip Micklin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is structured into six core parts. The first part sets the scene and explains how the use of Aral basin water resources, primarily used for irrigation, have destroyed the Aral Sea. The team explains how spheres and events interact and the related problems. Part 2 examines the social consequences of the ecological catastrophe and the affect of the Aral Sea desiccation on cultural and economic conditions of near Aral region. Part 3 explores the scientific causes of the destruction using detailed analyses and data plus some of their own research spanning aquatic biology, terrestrial biology, hydrology, water management and biodiversity. They also share some of the latest archaeological discoveries and paleobotanical analysis to delineate past levels and characteristics of the Aral Sea. There is particular focus on modern remote sensing and GIS techniques and how they can monitor the Aral Sea and the environment. Part 4 discusses regional and international initiatives to mitigate human and ecological problems of the Aral Sea and the wider political and economic consequences. With thorough insight of the total environment cost, the final chapters of the book will provide lessons for the future. There are insightful case studies throughout. Multidisciplinary by nature, all titles in our new reference book series will explore significant changes within the Earth’s ecosystems and to some extent, and will tackle ways to think about our changing environment.

Download or read book Climates of the Soviet Union written by Paul E. Lydolph and published by Elsevier Science Limited. This book was released on 1977 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Region-by-region account of synoptic climatology.

Download or read book Landscape Dynamics of Drylands across Greater Central Asia People Societies and Ecosystems written by Garik Gutman and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a compilation of studies on interactions of changes in land cover, land use and climate with people, societies and ecosystems in drylands of Greater Central Asia. It explores the effects of collapse of socialist governance and management systems on land use in various parts of Central Asia, including former Soviet Union republics, Mongolia and northern drylands of China. Often, regional land-atmosphere feedbacks may have large global importance. Remote sensing is a primary tool in studying vast dryland territories where in situ observations are sporadic. State-of-the-art methods of satellite remote sensing combined with GIS and models are used to tackle science questions and provide an outlook of current changes at land surface and potential scenarios for the future. In 10 chapters, contributing authors cover topics such as water resources, effects of institutional changes on urban centers and agriculture, landscape dynamics, and the primary drivers of environmental changes in dryland environment. Satellite observations that have accumulated during the last five decades provide a rich time series of the dynamic land surface, enabling systematic analysis of changes in land cover and land use from space. The book is a truly international effort by a team of scientists from the U.S., Europe and Central Asia. It is directed at the broad science community including graduate students, academics and other professionals at all levels within natural and social sciences. In particular, it will appeal to geographers, environmental and social scientists, economists, agricultural scientists, and remote sensing specialists.

Download or read book Sustainable Land Management in Greater Central Asia written by Victor R. Squires and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greater Central Asia encompasses a vast area that includes deserts, natural grasslands, steppes, shrublands and alpine regions. Many of these land types are degraded and productivity is falling at a time when human populations and livestock inventories are on the rise. Ecosystem stability and biodiversity are under threat and there is an urgent need to develop more sustainable land management regimes. This book uses an integrated regional approach to provide a comprehensive exploration of sustainable land development in Central Asia. An interdisciplinary team of experts analyses the economic, ecological, sociological, technological and political factors surrounding sustainable land and water management in the region, sharing potential problems and solutions. As international concern about desertification grows, the book concludes by asking how the region is likely to develop in the future. This book will be of value to scholars, students, policy makers and NGOs with an interest in sustainable development in Central Asia.

Download or read book Climate Change and Food Security in South Asia written by Rattan Lal and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-10-17 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses an important topic of food security in South Asia with specific reference to climate change. Of the 1 billion food insecure people in the world, more than 30% are in South Asia. The problem of food insecurity may be exacerbated by the projected climate change especially because of the water scarcity caused by rapid melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and increase in variability in monsoonal rains and frequency of extreme events. Furthermore, large populations of Bangladesh and other coastal regions may be displaced by sea level rise. Thus, this volume addresses recommended land use and soil/water/crop/vegetation management practices which would enable land managers to adapt to climate disruption by enhancing soil/ecosystem/social resilience. In addition to biophysical factors, this book also addresses the issues related to human dimensions including social, ethnical and political considerations.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Environmental Change written by John A Matthews and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 1490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accessibly written by a team of international authors, the Encyclopedia of Environmental Change provides a gateway to the complex facts, concepts, techniques, methodology and philosophy of environmental change. This three-volume set illustrates and examines topics within this dynamic and rapidly changing interdisciplinary field. The encyclopedia includes all of the following aspects of environmental change: Diverse evidence of environmental change, including climate change and changes on land and in the oceans Underlying natural and anthropogenic causes and mechanisms Wide-ranging local, regional and global impacts from the polar regions to the tropics Responses of geo-ecosystems and human-environmental systems in the face of past, present and future environmental change Approaches, methodologies and techniques used for reconstructing, dating, monitoring, modelling, projecting and predicting change Social, economic and political dimensions of environmental issues, environmental conservation and management and environmental policy Over 4,000 entries explore the following key themes and more: Conservation Demographic change Environmental management Environmental policy Environmental security Food security Glaciation Green Revolution Human impact on environment Industrialization Landuse change Military impacts on environment Mining and mining impacts Nuclear energy Pollution Renewable resources Solar energy Sustainability Tourism Trade Water resources Water security Wildlife conservation The comprehensive coverage of terminology includes layers of entries ranging from one-line definitions to short essays, making this an invaluable companion for any student of physical geography, environmental geography or environmental sciences.

Download or read book Dryland East Asia Land Dynamics amid Social and Climate Change written by Jiquan Chen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drylands in East Asia (DEA) are home to more than one billion people with an environment vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic changes. One of the critical needs in the region is to fully understand how dryland ecosystems respond to the changing climate and human activities in order to develop strategies to cope with continued climate change. This book provides state-of-the-art knowledge and information on drylands ecosystem dynamics, changing climate, society, and land use in the region. In addition to the synthesis of the existing research and knowledge of DEA, the book provides a role model for regional ecological assessment. With a wide spectrum of contributions from experts around the globe, the book should be of interest to researchers and students both internationally and in East Asia. Lessons learned from this synthesis effort in DEA should be useful for developing climate adaptation strategies for other similar regions around the globe.

Download or read book The End of Desertification written by Roy H. Behnke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question in the title of this book draws attention to the shortcomings of a concept that has become a political tool of global importance even as the scientific basis for its use grows weaker. The concept of desertification, it can be argued, has ceased to be analytically useful and distorts our understanding of social-environmental systems and their resiliency, particularly in poor countries with variable rainfall and persistent poverty. For better policy and governance, we need to reconsider the scientific justification for international attempts to combat desertification. Our exploration of these issues begins in the Sahel of West Africa, where a series of severe droughts at the end of the 20th century led to the global institutionalization of the idea of desertification. It now seems incontrovertible that these droughts were not caused primarily by local land use mismanagement, effectively terminating a long-standing policy and scientific debate. There is now an opportunity to treat this episode as an object lesson in the relationship between science, the formation of public opinion and international policy-making. Looking beyond the Sahel, the chapters in this book provide case studies from around the world that examine the use and relevance of the desertification concept. Despite an increasingly sophisticated understanding of dryland environments and societies, the uses now being made of the desertification concept in parts of Asia exhibit many of the shortcomings of earlier work done in Africa. It took scientists more than three decades to transform a perceived desertification crisis in the Sahel into a non-event. This book is an effort to critically examine that experience and accelerate the learning process in other parts of the world.

Download or read book Vegetation Dynamics Changing Ecosystems and Human Responsibility written by and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-07-26 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vegetation Dynamics, Changing Ecosystems and Human Responsibility provides an overview of vegetation dynamics, which is the science of natural, near-natural, and human-influenced changes in vegetation over time and space. We can find chapters about almost every viewpoint of this very diverse segment of our science and in connection with almost every main type of terrestrial ecosystem.

Download or read book Socio Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road written by Liang Emlyn Yang and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-27 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book discusses socio-environmental interactions in the middle to late Holocene, covering specific areas along the ancient Silk Road regions. Over twenty chapters provide insight into this topic from various disciplinary angles and perspectives, ranging from archaeology, paleoclimatology, antiquity, historical geography, agriculture, carving art and literacy. The Silk Road is a modern concept for an ancient network of trade routes that for centuries facilitated and intensified processes of cultural interaction and goods exchange between West China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Coherent patterns and synchronous events in history suggest possible links between social upheaval, resource utilization and climate or environment forces along the Silk Road and in a broader area. Post-graduates in studying will benefit from this work, as well as it will stimulate young researchers to further explore the role played by the environment in long-term socio-cultural changes.

Download or read book Sustainability or Collapse written by Robert Costanza and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars from a range of disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. Human history, as written traditionally, leaves out the important ecological and climate context of historical events. But the capability to integrate the history of human beings with the natural history of the Earth now exists, and we are finding that human-environmental systems are intimately linked in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. In Sustainability or Collapse?, researchers from a range of scholarly disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. The contributors focus on the human-environment interactions that have shaped historical forces since ancient times and discuss such key methodological issues as data quality. Topics highlighted include the political ecology of the Mayans; the effect of climate on the Roman Empire; the "revolutionary weather" of El Niño from 1788 to 1795; twentieth-century social, economic, and political forces in environmental change; scenarios for the future; and the accuracy of such past forecasts as The Limits to Growth.

Download or read book On Arid Ground written by Jennifer Keating and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-14 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Arid Ground focuses on the relationships between empire and environment in Central Asia, using environmental history to examine the practice of Russian imperialism in Turkestan at the end of empire, from the 1860s until 1916. It reveals for the first time a comprehensive assessment of the environmental imprint of Russian colonisation, and shows how local ecologies fitted into broader repertoires of imperial rule, accommodation, and resistance. Ranging widely above and below the surface in Turkestan, from the deserts of Transcaspia to the highlands and lowlands of rural Fergana and Semirech'e, Jennifer Keating explores infrastructure development, migrant settlement, land reclamation and dispossession, the commodification of nature, and environmental violence to reveal the ways in which ecological change was central to the building and breaking of empire. Attentive to connections, synchronicities and scale, On Arid Ground makes the case for looking beyond cotton and water in Central Asian context, for the powerful material role played by animals and plants, sand, silt, and salt in human histories, and for the less visible relationships between far-flung people and things within and beyond Turkestan's borders. Laying bare the political roots and repercussions of environmental change, the volume brings fresh perspectives both to the history of Central Asia and to that of the wider Russian empire across Eurasia.

Download or read book On Russian Soil written by Mieka Erley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blending close readings of literature, films, and other artworks with analysis of texts of political philosophy, science, and social theory, Mieka Erley offers an interdisciplinary perspective on attitudes to soil in Russia and the Soviet Union from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. As Erley shows in On Russian Soil, the earth has inspired utopian dreams, reactionary ideologies, social theories, and durable myths about the relationship between nation and nature. In this period of modernization, soil was understood as the collective body of the nation, sitting at the crux of all economic and social problems. The "soil question" was debated by nationalists and radical materialists, Slavophiles and Westernizers, poets and scientists. On Russian Soil highlights a selection of key myths at the intersection of cultural and material history that show how soil served as a natural, national, and symbolic resource from Fedor Dostoevsky's native soil movement to Nikita Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign at the Soviet periphery in the 1960s. Providing an original contribution to ecocriticism and environmental humanities, Erley expands our understanding of how cultural processes write nature and how nature inspires culture. On Russian Soil brings Slavic studies into new conversations in the environmental humanities, generating fresh interpretations of literary and cultural movements and innovative readings of major writers.

Download or read book Combating Desertification in Asia Africa and the Middle East written by G. Ali Heshmati and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the ‘how’ of desertification control as opposed to an analysis of the ‘why’ and fills a gap in the desertification-related literature in that it shows what to do in situations ranging from fixing mobile sands to arresting accelerated soil erosion in sloping lands. There are numerous illustrations to show the successful techniques. This compilation demonstrates that desertification and land degradation can be controlled and reversed with existing techniques in such widely varying environments as the Sahel of Africa to Sri Lanka and the Philippines in SE Asia, from mountains in Lesotho to low lands on desert margins in Mongolia. Proven approaches include technical interventions, changes in governance and to the legislative framework and policy reform. The book fills a gap in the desertification-related literature in that it shows what to do in situations ranging from fixing mobile sands to arresting accelerated soil erosion in sloping lands.

Download or read book The Causes and Progression of Desertification written by Helmut Geist and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an examination into the causes and prospects of desertification through a systematic review of 132 sub national case studies. It uses a meta-analytical model to determine whether proximate causes and underlying driving forces fall into any patterns, to identify mediating factors, feedbacks, cross-scalar dynamics and typical pathways. It shows a limited set of recurrent core variables in varying combinations to drive desertification. Most prominent root causes are climatic factors, institutions, national policies, population growth and remote economic influences that lead to local cropland expansion, overgrazing and infrastructure extension, associated with desertification as a potential but not necessary outcome. Some factors are geographically robust; most of them are region and time specific.

Download or read book Remote Sensing Based Study on Vegetation Dynamics in Dry Lands of Kazakhstan written by Pavel Propastin and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The natural environment of drylands is highly vulnerable and fra¬gile, variations of climate conditions here are the highest among all terrestrial ecosystems and that is why they are expected to be strongly influenced by the current climate change. Remote sensing and GIS play an important role in a better understanding about the nature of climate impacts on the drylands as a whole system and on the vegetation cover as the most important component of this ecosystem at all scales from global to regional and local. This book is one of the first to examine the dynamics of drylands in Kazakhstan using time series of remote sensing derived data and climate records over the last 20 years. The author investigated the problem from different views and combined analyses at multiple time and spatial scales. The entire spectrum of the interrelationship between climate and vegetation cover - spatial and temporal, on the regional, subregional and local scale, interannual and within the growing season -, has been analysed, described and discussed. A new monitoring approach was presented which enables discrimination between climatic and anthropogenic forces in the complex of dryland dynamics. The text improves the understanding of the nature and mechanisms of the ecosystem dynamics in the internal Eurasia and provides the basis for predicting changes in vegetation productivity that accompany changes in climate and human activities. Taken as a whole, the results of this study present indispensable information for ecological and socio-economic research and may be used by scientists, landscape managers, and decision makers interested in this region.