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Eduard Suess's invention of the word 'biosphere' sparked a trend of coining sphere-words, which has since evolved into something of a craze. Some of these words, such as atmosphere and hydrosphere, are simply name tags for their respective Earth spheres. Others, such as geosphere, are also used mainly as names but they carry more than one meaning. However, many sphere-words, including pedosphere, biosphere, ecosphere, anthroposphere, sociosphere, and technosphere, are far more than just names, bearing as they do, weighty conceptual connotations that fuel considerable debate. At a time when Earth and life scientists are attempting to understand the workings of the planet as a whole by modelling the interaction of its component spheres, and when they are collaborating with sociologists, anthropologists, and members of other human sciences to tackle current environmental challenges, it seems an opportune moment to probe the origin and meaning of words for the Earth spheres they investigate. To be sure, Earth System modelling is helping understand changes resulting from the interaction of all the Earth's spheres, including the anthroposphere, over various time and space scales, while multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research is helping to address such global problems as sustainable development, climate change, water supply, and biodiversity loss. An awareness of the origin, development, and disputed meanings of many sphere-words that these approaches employ should prove salutary for their multifarious practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Geomatics & Information Science of Wuhan University is the property of Geomatics & Information Science of Wuhan University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Inland surface water is often the most accessible freshwater source. As opposed to groundwater, surface water is replenished in a comparatively quick cycle, which makes this vital resource—if not overexploited—sustainable. From a global perspective, freshwater is plentiful. Still, depending on the region, surface water availability is severely limited. Additionally, climate change and human interventions act as large-scale drivers and cause dramatic changes in established surface water dynamics. Actions have to be taken to secure sustainable water availability and usage. This requires informed decision making based on reliable environmental data. Monitoring inland surface water dynamics is therefore more important than ever. Remote sensing is able to delineate surface water in a number of ways by using optical as well as active and passive microwave sensors. In this review, we look at the proceedings within this discipline by reviewing 233 scientific works. We provide an extensive overview of used sensors, the spatial and temporal resolution of studies, their thematic foci, and their spatial distribution. We observe that a wide array of available sensors and datasets, along with increasing computing capacities, have shaped the field over the last years. Multiple global analysis-ready products are available for investigating surface water area dynamics, but so far none offer high spatial and temporal resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Monografies de la Societat ďHistòria Natural de les Balears is the property of Societat d'Historia Natural de les Balears and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Spherical encounters of the Anthropocene refers to the impact of humanity's global ecological footprint that is addressed through the metaphor of the spheres. The new human-generated Anthropo-Noo-spheres and their interaction with the Spheres of Earth are tackled through ecocritical investigation showcasing the diverse representational modalities and intermedial expressions found in the Planetarium and artistic spherical environments. The technological requirements for high quality geoscientific visualizations have taken about a decade longer to mature than the astronomical features of digital planetariums, but Earth System Science is finally adopted by the Planetarium and artists. From Telescope to Kaleidoscope refers to the transition between the emergence of the modern scientific, telescopic viewpoint, and the increasing rationalization and bureaucratization of society enabled by the technological and economic advances of the age, that created a sense of alienation of the individual, from the natural environment and the social other, to an environmental re-enchantment, a regaining of our sense of wonder and awe brought back by the kaleidoscopic visions artists apply to these spherical mediums. As this article seeks to demonstrate, the scientific and imaginative visions fused into interconnected, parallel universes can challenge our mundane notions opening up new causal connections, creating exciting discoveries, all under the notion of Anthropocene. However, these spherical environments showcasing kaleidoscopic visions are not an aestheticization of the Anthroposphere, but a testimony that artists as antennas capture and showcase the contemporary human sentiment, topics and observations by conveying experiential projects which involve strategies to forge communities, to re-build lost paradises, to re-connect us with the sky and earth, to foster regeneration and new sustainable systems and to ask future questions. Through the stylistic element of the Cosmic Zoom, we are travelling from the unknown of the outer space to the inner reaches of our human heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the interpretation of the idea of V. Vernadsky’s noosphere in contemporary European and Ukrainian socio–philosophical thought in the context of contemporary existential challenges. The development and deepening of the noosphere paradigm, the core of which is the noosphere concept of V. Vernadsky in modern global humanism, the influence of Ukrainian ideological experience on solving global humanitarian problems, is substantiated. It is alleged that familiarizing with this ideological experience can help Ukraine to choose scenarios for building a harmonious future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles is the property of Asociacion de Geografos Espanoles and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles is the property of Asociacion de Geografos Espanoles and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista EIA is the property of Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Two phenomena characterize the development of the material world of the last 100 yr: The per capita growth in material consumption, and the introduction of a myriad of new materials. Together with the growth in population, this resulted in large, growing and complex material flows and stocks, particularly in urban areas. The objective of future materials management is to ensure long-term supply of resources on one hand, and safe disposal of emissions and wastes on the other hand. This paper focuses on the consequences that arise from the high material turnover for waste management. Ultimately, all materials that are taken from the earth crust are either incorporated into the anthroposphere or released to the environment. Waste management acts as a key "filter" between anthroposphere and environment, controlling substance flows across the border. Waste management must either recover materials for safe reuse, or transform substances into inert materials that can be landfilled or dispersed safely in the environment. For future waste management it is crucial to define sinks and final sinks; to establish a knowledge base about sources, pathways, and final sinks of key substances; to investigate into possible sink limitations of anthropogenic activities; to systematically allocate substances to appropriate sinks; to promote waste management as key for directing hazardous substances to appropriate final sinks, and to regulate the use of specific substances if environmentally safe final sink capacities are not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Degrowth is identified as a prospective turning point in human development as significant as the domestication of fire or the process of agrarianisation. The Transition movement is identified as the most important attempt to develop a prefigurative, local politics of degrowth. Explicating the links between capitalist modernisation, metabolic throughput and psychological individuation, Transition embraces `limits' but downplays the implications of scarcity for open, liberal societies, and for inter-personal and inter-group violence. William Ophuls' trilogy on the politics of scarcity confronts precisely these issues, but it depends on an unconvincing sociology of individuation as a central process in modernity. A framework is advanced through which to explore the tensions, trade-offs and possibilities for a socially liberal, culturally cosmopolitan and science-based civilisation under conditions of degrowth and metabolic contraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concentration of mercury was determined in samples of the lichen Hypogymnia physodes, the moss Pleurozium schreberi, and the soil humus collected in Polish and Czech Euroregions Praded and Glacensis. The sampling sites were located in Bory Stobrawskie, Bory Niemodlińskie and Kotlina Kłodzka in Poland, and in Jeseniki and Gory Orlickie in the Czech Republic. The mean concentrations of mercury accumulated in the lichen (0.129 mg g), in the moss (0.094 mg g) and in soil (0.286 mg g) were fairly close to the corresponding concentrations in other low-industrialized regions. The highest concentrations of mercury were observed in the lichen and the moss samples from Kotlina Kłodzka. The primary deposition of mercury was evaluated using the comparison factor, defined as the ratio of a difference between the concentrations of a bioavailable analyte in lichens and in mosses, to the arithmetic mean of these concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sketches, very briefly, the theme of ‘Energy and Civilization’ on a far larger canvass. I shall reconsider the well-known fact that, in the course of time, humans have learned to exploit more and more sources of energy. This has required new technologies, new forms of social organization, and new individual skills. In the latter sense, learning to exploit new sources of energy always was also a process of civilization, involving new forms of personal discipline. Starting from what is called “foraging” (when rudimental tools and weapons provided humans with means for using their own physical strength more effectively in order to obtain food, as almost the only source of energy), following and in some ways widening Norbert Elias perspective, the paper analyses the role of fire domestication, agrarianization and industrialization in humanization and civilization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental engineering is a continuous expansive profession due to the globalization of environmental problems and the internationalization of engineering education. A global scale curriculum seems to be necessary for the actual environmental engineers, but there is no common university program to apply this idea. Alternatively, a pragmatic approach is proposed based on the idea to include a basic set of environmental computer modelling tools in the education program of environmental engineer. A group of computer simulating models is presented as scientific and mathematic tool for modern environmental engineers. Some environmental models were introduced in the education programs of students in Environmental Engineering Department of Constanta Maritime University to improve their computational and simulating skills for studying the complex processes in the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The achievement of Norbert Elias was to develop a paradigmatic foundation for sociology as the lynchpin in a broader human science encompassing the social and biological dimensions of human development. The extent to which he remains at the margins of a discipline profoundly suspicious of the biological sciences is perhaps an index of his originality. But this outsider status also obscures the unoriginality of his work. Elias’s unifying epistemological framework centring on ‘integrative levels’ and ‘emergent dynamics’ drew heavily on a long tradition of organicist biology. Reviewing developments in twentieth-century biology, it is argued that Elias simply absorbed an organicist Zeitgeist that had become subtly paradigmatic at around the time of the elaboration, in the 1940s, of the ‘modern synthesis’ in genetic-evolutionary theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study on the integration of urban systems into the geoscientific concept of spheres. It takes into account the importance of urbanization among the global changes for climate, ecosystems, and biodiversity. It refers to the role of urbanization as a global process, introducing the astysphere, a geoscientific sphere that constitutes the parts of the earth brought by urban systems. A discussion on anthropogenic activities in rural and urban environments is provided.

After nearly three decades of discussion about sustainable development are we any nearer to achieving it? And do we even know what a sustainable world will look like for future generations? Early definitions of sustainable development were so broad as to allow a range of interpretations based largely on individual interests and anthropocentric needs. We are measuring the performance of countless indicators of sustainable development, but is this more an exercise in applying data than meaningful progress? This article explores the ultimate goals of sustainable development and the most important means of achieving this by analyzing and comparing two frameworks designed to direct attention to the fundamental means and the ends of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inflow and stock (amount in use) of heavy metals (cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn)) in goods in 1995 have been quantified in the anthroposphere of Stockholm, Sweden. Statistics on national, regional and local level were used. Contacts were established with representatives from production and construction in the industrial sector and with authorities. The results show that the stock of Cd is 0,2 kg per capita. For the other heavy metals the corresponding result per capita is: Cr 8, Cu 170, Hg 0,01, Ni 4, Pb 73 and Zn 40 kg. The inflow varies between 2–8% of the stock indicating the importance of the stock. The lowest levels are for Cu and Pb. Heavy metal levels in solid waste are high, between 15–45% of the amount in the inflow (Hg excluded), the lowest values were for Cu and Pb. Thus, recycling is incomplete. Long life expectancy goods form the majority of the stock but there is a tendency that short life expectancy goods increase their importance in the inflow. Concealed goods are also more frequent in inflow than in the stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are the most complex forms of settlements which man has built in the course of his cultural development. Their 'metabolism' is connected with the world economy and is run mainly by fossil energy carriers. Up to now there are no validated models for the evaluation of a sustainable development of urban regions. The guidelines for a 'sustainable development' suggest the reduction of resource consumption. The article is concerned with the problem of how the 'sustainable-development concept' can be transformed from a global to a regional scale. In urban settlements the strategy of final storage should be applied. By this, the subsystem waste management can be transformed within 10 to 15 years to a 'sustainable status'. With regard to the system 'agronomy', the article concludes that agriculture in urban systems should focus on food production instead of promoting reduction of food production in favour of energy plants, which is not a suitable strategy. The main problems are the energy carriers. Transformation to a 'sustainble status' is only possible by a reconstruction of the urban system, i.e. of buildings and the transportation network. The rate determining step in achieving such a status is the change in the fabric of buildings and in the type of transportation networks. The reconstruction of an urban system needs, mainly for economical reasons, a time period of two generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]