Books in the SpringerBriefs in Earth Sciences series

This book reconciles competing and sometimes contradictory forms of land use, while also promoting sustainable land use options. It highlights land use planning, spatial planning, territorial (or regional) planning, and ecosystem-based or environmental land use planning as tools that strengthen land governance.

The text deals with the sources of beach sediment as well as the causes and typical responses to beach erosion, before discussion of beach renourishment.Some of the first documented renourishment projects were undertaken in the early 1900's on the east coast of the United States.

With increased climate variability, aggravated natural hazards in the form of extreme events are affecting the lives and livelihoods of many people.

Modern researchers in plate tectonics may be concerned with the analysis of distributed deformation across diffuse plate boundaries and triple junction zones. These methods are then applied to the tectonic evolution of western Caribbean region which provides new ways to test and challenge the established Pacific model of Caribbean tectonics.

The book has adopted an historical approach throughout, tracing the development of the ideas of the Earth-moon system, of the birth of the space age, of paleomagnetism and finally of lunar magnetism and its evidence for an early lunar dynamo.

As a result, cities and their inhabitants are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of catastrophic natural events such as extreme weather events (recently more frequent and intense as a result of the ongoing climate changes), earthquakes, tsunamis or man-induced events such as terrorist attacks or accidents.

In addition to thermodynamics, sea ice kinematics (drift, deformation) appears as an essential factor in the evolution of the ice cover through a reduction of the average ice age (and consequently of the cover's thickness), or ice export out of the Arctic.

Discrete Fracture Network Modeling of Hydraulic Stimulation describes the development and testing of a model that couples fluid-flow, deformation, friction weakening, and permeability evolution in large, complex two-dimensional discrete fracture networks.

It contains well-known theory and is primarily meant to form a basis for the next chapter where the equations will be reformulated in terms of systems-and-control notation. The second chapter develops representations in state-space notation of the porous-media flow equations.

Fossil species appear to persist morphologically unchanged for long intervals of geologic time, punctuated by short bursts of rapid change as explained by the Ecological Evolutionary Units (EEUs).

She identified Devonian brachiopods to the genus level based on their morphology, and diagnosed paleoecological entities on host brachiopods and further measured episkeletobiont traces on hosts to understand the effects of environment and evolution on extinct species.

This book describes the iterative steps that were successfully undertaken to develop adaptation measures to climate change in two Vietnamese provinces. The methodology used to develop the scientific basis and the societal agreement of the need to adapt to climate change is applicable also to other regions in Vietnam, Asia and worldwide.The uncertainties of climate change models make it difficult to justify investments to finance protection from uncertain impacts. Setting out with the projected climate change impacts in Vietnam, which is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, the book describes a methodological approach to assess and evaluate local vulnerabilities of natural resources to climate change and socio-economic impacts, engaging local stakeholders in the development of locally acceptable and economically feasible adaptation measures. The methodological approach to understand the vulnerabilities and to develop climate change adaptation measures was scenario workshops that supported the communication between scientists and stakeholders.The development of climate change adaptation strategies is nearly state-of-the-art in many countries, but often there is still a large step towards implementing climate change adaptation measures on the local level. The challenge in the development of adaptation measures lies in their acceptability by local stakeholders and decision makers. Climate change adaptation measures also usually demand investments. To understand potential future risks the communication methodology was to first get a good understanding of the natural resources (mainly surface and groundwater) and their potential vulnerabilities (current and future). This was followed by developing a common understanding of current risk patterns, as well as underlying vulnerabilities and hazards. Socio-economic developments have an equally strong, and in the short term mostly even stronger, impact on the living environment and natural resources as long-term climate change impacts. The scenario workshops developed a holistic approach on current and potential future risk patterns, with a special focus on surface and groundwater quantities and qualities, natural hazards and sea level rise. Land-use planning was identified as playing a decisive role in minimizing current and future risks. Finally, first adaptation measures for two Vietnamese provinces were developed and shall be implemented over the next years. The methodology that led to these adaptation measures shall be applied in other Vietnamese provinces.

This book will illuminate how various characteristics of datable carbonate blocks torn up from coral reefs and deposited on reef platforms yield importance evidence about the storms and tsunamis that emplaced them over decadal and centennial timescales.

This book takes an in-depth look at the theory and methods inherent in the tracing of riverine sediments. The application of tracers within riverine environments has evolved such that they focus on sediments from two general sources: upland areas and specific, localized, anthropogenic point sources.

The literature on the sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy of the Moghra Formation has been sparse to date, despite some excellent work over the years by academic and petroleum workers.

Unique among all creatures, further to the increase in its cranial volume from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens, the use of tools and cultural and scientific creativity, the genus Homo is distinguished by the mastery of fire, which since about two million years ago has become its blueprint.

This book introduces the overall concepts of research methods in Remote Sensing. The topics considered in this book cover a part of the research methodologies explored in Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) programs.

This study turns to the East Sahel of Sudan by analyzing over 100 years of historical rainfall data from three of the few long term standard WMO rain gauge stations in substantially different rainfall settings.