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Elsevier

Books in Earth and planetary sciences

Elsevier's Earth and Planetary Sciences collection brings together pioneering research on the complexities of our planet and beyond. Covering topics from Earth's structural dynamics and ecosystems to planetary exploration, these titles support advancements in geoscience, environmental science, and space studies, offering essential insights for researchers, professionals, and students.

  • Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities

    Emerging Approaches and Tools for A Climate-Sensitive Urban Development
    • 1st Edition
    • Adriana Galderisi + 1 more
    • English
    Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities: Emerging Approaches and Tools for Climate-Sensitive Urban Development starts with a presentation of three widespread Urban Metaphors, which are gaining increasing attention from urban planners and decision-makers: Smart City, Resilient City and Transition Towns, being all of them focused on the need for enhancing cities’ capacities to cope with the multiple and heterogeneous challenges threatening contemporary cities and their future development and, above all, with climate issues. Then, the Authors provide an overview of current large-scale and urban strategies to counterbalance climate change so far undertaken in different geographical contexts (Europe, United States, China, Africa and Australia), shedding light on the different approaches, on the different weights assigned to mitigation and adaptation issues as well as on the main barriers hindering their effectiveness and translation into measurable outcomes. Opportunities and criticalities arising from the rich, ‘sprawled’ and ‘blurred’ landscape of current strategies and initiatives in the face of climate change pave the way to a discussion on the lessons learnt from current initiatives and provide new hints for developing integrated climate strategies, capable to guide planners and decision makers towards a climate sensitive urban development Smart, Resilient and Transition Cities: Emerging Approaches and Tools for Climate-Sensitive Urban Development merges a scientific approach with a pragmatic one. Through a case study approach, the Authors explore strengths and weaknesses of institutional and informal practices to foreshadow innovative paths for an adaptive process of urban governance in the face of climate change. The book guides the reader along new governance paths, characterized by continuous learning and close cooperation and communication among different actors and stakeholders and, in so doing, helps them to overcome current ‘siloed’ approaches to climate issues.

  • Urban Geomorphology

    Landforms and Processes in Cities
    • 1st Edition
    • Mary J Thornbush + 1 more
    • English
    Urban Geomorphology: Landforms and Processes in Cities addresses the human impacts on landscapes through occupation (urbanization) and development as a contribution to anthropogenic geomorphology or "anthropogeomorpholo... This includes a focus on land clearance, conservation issues, pollution, decay and erosion, urban climate, and anthropogenic climate change. These topics, as well as others, are considered to shed more light on the human transformation of natural landscapes and the environmental impacts and geomorphological hazards that environmental change can encompass. Its multidisciplinary approach is appropriate for audiences from a range of disciplines and professions, from geologists, conservationists, and land-use planners to architects and developers. Urban Geomorphology not only transcends disciplines, but also covers varied spatial-temporal frameworks and presents a diverse set of approaches and solutions to human impacts and geomorphological hazards within urban landscapes.

  • Mineral Exploration

    Principles and Applications
    • 2nd Edition
    • Swapan Kumar Haldar
    • English
    Mineral Exploration: Principles and Applications, Second Edition, presents an interdisciplinary approach on the full scope of mineral exploration. Everything from grass root discovery, objective base sequential exploration, mining, beneficiation, extraction, economic evaluation, policies and acts, rules and regulations, sustainability, and environmental impacts is covered. Each topic is presented using theoretical approaches that are followed by specific applications that can be used in the field. This new edition features updated references, changes to rules and regulations, and new sections on oil and gas exploration and classification, air-core drilling, and smelting and refining techniques.This book is a key resource for both academics and professionals, offering both practical and applied knowledge in mineral exploration.

  • Primitive Meteorites and Asteroids

    Physical, Chemical, and Spectroscopic Observations Paving the Way to Exploration
    • 1st Edition
    • Neyda M. Abreu
    • English
    Primitive Meteorites and Asteroids: Physical, Chemical, and Spectroscopic Observations Paving the Way to Exploration covers the physical, chemical and spectroscopic aspects of asteroids, providing important data and research on carbonaceous chondrites and primitive meteorites. This information is crucial to the success of missions to parent bodies, thus contributing to an understanding of the early solar system. The book offers an interdisciplinary perspective relevant to many fields of planetary science, as well as cosmochemistry, planetary astronomy, astrobiology, geology and space engineering. Including contributions from planetary and missions scientists worldwide, the book collects the fundamental knowledge and cutting-edge research on carbonaceous chondrites and their parent bodies into one accessible resource, thus contributing to the future of space exploration.

  • From Habitability to Life on Mars

    • 1st Edition
    • Nathalie A. Cabrol + 1 more
    • English
    From Habitability to Life on Mars explores the current state of knowledge and questions on the past habitability of Mars and the role that rapid environmental changes may have played in the ability of prebiotic chemistry to transition to life. It investigates the role that such changes may have played in the preservation of biosignatures in the geological record and what this means for exploration strategies. Throughout the book, the authors show how the investigation of terrestrial analogs to early Martian habitats under various climates and environmental extremes provide critical clues to understand where, what and how to search for biosignatures on Mars. The authors present an introduction to the newest developments and state-of-the-art remote and in situ detection strategies and technologies that are being currently developed to support the upcoming ExoMars and Mars 2020 missions. They show how the current orbital and ground exploration is guiding the selection for future landing sites. Finally, the book concludes by discussing the critical question of the implications and ethics of finding life on Mars.

  • The Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province in Northwest China

    Tectonics, Petrology, Geochemistry, and Geophysics
    • 1st Edition
    • Shufeng Yang + 1 more
    • English
    The Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province in Northwest China: Tectonics, Petrology, Geochemistry, and Geophysics is the first book to introduce the Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province. Based on more than twenty years of study, this book systematically presents time-spatial, geochemical and geodynamic features, along with the metallogenesis and magma evolution of the Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province. Furthermore, it provides a new geodynamic model for Large Igneous Provinces. It is intended for researchers and graduate students in tectonics, igneous petrology, geochemistry, geophysics, earth evolution and planetary geology in addition to mining industry professionals.

  • Climate Change

    Alternate Governance Policy for South Asia
    • 1st Edition
    • Ranadhir Mukhopadhyay + 2 more
    • English
    Climate Change: Alternate Governance Policy for South Asia provides an assessment of climate change issues through the socioeconomic lens of one of the world’s poorest, most populous regions. Although climate change is a global issue, localized solutions have become increasingly necessary to address political, economic and cultural factors in underdeveloped regions. Identifying successes, gaps and shortcomings in existing policies and regional laws relating to climate change, this book evaluates the sustainability of current practices, examining mitigation strategies and suggesting a comprehensive, innovative model of sustainable policies and governance strategy specific to the region. While the book approaches climate change, policy and mitigation from a regionally-focused standpoint, it has an underlying philosophy of Think Global, Act Local, making it universally applicable to anyone interested in climate change and its effects.

  • Machine Learning Techniques for Space Weather

    • 1st Edition
    • Enrico Camporeale + 2 more
    • English
    Machine Learning Techniques for Space Weather provides a thorough and accessible presentation of machine learning techniques that can be employed by space weather professionals. Additionally, it presents an overview of real-world applications in space science to the machine learning community, offering a bridge between the fields. As this volume demonstrates, real advances in space weather can be gained using nontraditional approaches that take into account nonlinear and complex dynamics, including information theory, nonlinear auto-regression models, neural networks and clustering algorithms. Offering practical techniques for translating the huge amount of information hidden in data into useful knowledge that allows for better prediction, this book is a unique and important resource for space physicists, space weather professionals and computer scientists in related fields.

  • Complexity of Seismic Time Series

    Measurement and Application
    • 1st Edition
    • Tamaz Chelidze + 2 more
    • English
    Complexity of Seismic Time Series: Measurement and Application applies the tools of nonlinear dynamics to seismic analysis, allowing for the revelation of new details in micro-seismicity, new perspectives in seismic noise, and new tools for prediction of seismic events. The book summarizes both advances and applications in the field, thus meeting the needs of both fundamental and practical seismology. Merging the needs of the classical field and the very modern terms of complexity science, this book covers theory and its application to advanced nonlinear time series tools to investigate Earth’s vibrations, making it a valuable tool for seismologists, hazard managers and engineers.

  • Statistical Postprocessing of Ensemble Forecasts

    • 1st Edition
    • Stéphane Vannitsem + 2 more
    • English
    Statistical Postprocessing of Ensemble Forecasts brings together chapters contributed by international subject-matter experts describing the current state of the art in the statistical postprocessing of ensemble forecasts. The book illustrates the use of these methods in several important applications including weather, hydrological and climate forecasts, and renewable energy forecasting. After an introductory section on ensemble forecasts and prediction systems, the second section of the book is devoted to exposition of the methods available for statistical postprocessing of ensemble forecasts: univariate and multivariate ensemble postprocessing are first reviewed by Wilks (Chapters 3), then Schefzik and Möller (Chapter 4), and the more specialized perspective necessary for postprocessing forecasts for extremes is presented by Friederichs, Wahl, and Buschow (Chapter 5). The second section concludes with a discussion of forecast verification methods devised specifically for evaluation of ensemble forecasts (Chapter 6 by Thorarinsdottir and Schuhen). The third section of this book is devoted to applications of ensemble postprocessing. Practical aspects of ensemble postprocessing are first detailed in Chapter 7 (Hamill), including an extended and illustrative case study. Chapters 8 (Hemri), 9 (Pinson and Messner), and 10 (Van Schaeybroeck and Vannitsem) discuss ensemble postprocessing specifically for hydrological applications, postprocessing in support of renewable energy applications, and postprocessing of long-range forecasts from months to decades. Finally, Chapter 11 (Messner) provides a guide to the ensemble-postprocess... software available in the R programming language, which should greatly help readers implement many of the ideas presented in this book. Edited by three experts with strong and complementary expertise in statistical postprocessing of ensemble forecasts, this book assesses the new and rapidly developing field of ensemble forecast postprocessing as an extension of the use of statistical corrections to traditional deterministic forecasts. Statistical Postprocessing of Ensemble Forecasts is an essential resource for researchers, operational practitioners, and students in weather, seasonal, and climate forecasting, as well as users of such forecasts in fields involving renewable energy, conventional energy, hydrology, environmental engineering, and agriculture.

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