Search

The book provides a cross sectoral assessment of the most relevant environmental challenges in the Mediterranean region, including land and water degradation, water and food security, and solution opportunities for these. It also discusses main change drivers, such as changes in climate, land use, population, demographics and technology. Additionally, the book explores improved management, participatory planning, and nature-based strategies and measures for meeting the key environmental challenges, e.g. restoring degraded areas and improving land management in different land uses (e.g. forest, coastal and urban areas). Finally, the book addresses needs and opportunities to improve governance and partnerships for assuring sustainable development in the Mediterranean region.

Urban expansion and the preservation of fringe landscapes are clearly interconnected issues. This book discusses the relationship between landscape and peri-urban agriculture and the possible implications of sustainable land management for fringe land quality, proposing a framework to evaluate the latent nexus between agro-forest systems and human settlements in Southern Europe. Eco-sustainable planning integrated with multi-faceted policy actions (social, economic, cultural and political dimensions) is a relevant approach to reinforce sustainability of fringe landscapes. Permanent assessment of these factors allows for the implementation of different development scenarios. The present work definitely contributes to systemic and multi-scale approaches informing environmental policies, with the aim of achieving an integrated management of peri-urban agricultural landscapes.

The Bosco della Mesola represents one of the few remnants of coastal woodlands in Italy. A nature reserve was established in this area in 1977. No detailed checklists of the vascular flora of the nature reserve have been compiled since then. So, there was an urgent need to fill this gap. This book contains a critical updated checklist of the vascular flora in the Bosco della Mesola Nature Reserve. It also allows quantitative comparisons with a previous checklist dating back to the 1960s in order to detect temporal changes in the vascular flora over 60 years. We believe that this book represents a milestone for scientists and all people involved in nature conservation and management in this area and in similar territories in other countries. The readerships can also include high-school students and non-professional botany amateurs.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are hazardous highly toxic pollutants that cause a number of environmental and human health problems. They are released during a wide range of industrial, transportation and commercial activities and their emissions have reached high levels. This book provides a review of the occurrence, behavior and ecological implications of VOCs. Chapter One evaluates the biogeneration of volatile organic compounds produced by microalgae. Chapter Two investigates VOC pollution from industrial complexes and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Chapter Three illustrates the current knowledge of intra- and inter- organismal Microbial Volatile Organic Compounds (mVOCs)-based interactions, volatile perception, signal transduction and phenotypical responses in the receiver organisms. Chapter Four summarizes the current state of knowledge regarding the impact of emissions from gasoline powered vehicles on historical ambient VOC concentration trends, and on the current ambient urban atmosphere of the South Coast Air Basin. Chapter Five discusses the oxidation of VOCs over cyptomelane catalysts. Chapter Six studies VOCs from truffles and false truffles from Basilicata in Southern Italy. Chapter Seven discusses the removal of VOCs in the air by total catalytic oxidation promoted by catalysts.

As the climate and environment continue to fluctuate, researchers are urgently looking for new ways to preserve our limited resources and prevent further environmental degradation. The answer can be found through computer science, a field that is evolving at precisely the time it is needed most. Soft Computing Applications for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency brings together the latest technological research in computational intelligence and fuzzy logic as a way to care for our environment. This reference work highlights current advances and future trends in environmental sustainability using the principles of soft computing, making it an essential resource for students, researchers, engineers, and practitioners in the fields of project engineering and energy science.

In spite of all the efforts made in fire prevention and suppression, every year about 45 000 forest fires occur in Europe, burning ca. 0.5 million hectares of forests and other rural lands. The management of these burned forests has been given much less attention than fire prevention or fire suppression issues, but the post-fire management of burned areas raises strong concerns (economic and social impacts, soil erosion and water quality, biodiversity loss, forest restoration). Although there are a few publications which address post-fire management, the focus of these has been either on general approaches to restoration or specific topics such as preventing post-fire soil erosion. This book is about the post-fire management of fire-prone forest types in southern Europe. It provides the first comprehensive overview of the topic, ranging from stand-level to landscape-level management, and from emergency actions to long-term restoration approaches.