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This open access book reviews the importance of ecological functioning within rangelands considering the complex inter-relationships of production agriculture, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat. More than half of all lands worldwide, and up to 70% of the western USA, are classified as rangelands—uncultivated lands that often support grazing by domestic livestock. The rangelands of North America provide a vast array of goods and services, including significant economic benefit to local communities, while providing critical habitat for hundreds of species of fish and wildlife. This book provides compendium of recent data and synthesis from more than 100 experts in wildlife and rangeland ecology in Western North America. It provides a current and in-depth synthesis of knowledge related to wildlife ecology in rangeland ecosystems, and the tools used to manage them, to serve current and future wildlife biologists and rangeland managers in the working landscapes of the West. The book also identifies information gaps and serves as a jumping-off point for future research of wildlife in rangeland ecosystems. While the content focuses on wildlife ecology and management in rangelands of Western North America, the material has important implications for rangeland ecosystems worldwide.

This book provides an integrated description of the indicators of rangeland sustainability that capture ecological, economic, and social dimensions. It takes a fresh look at the information available on current and emerging issues across rangelands, and presents collaborative research for future progress. Authors offer a framework for evaluating rangeland sustainability, the best available data to use, as well as an interactive tool for use at a variety of geographical scales. Readers with limited knowledge of rangelands, as well as professional rangeland ecologists and land managers, will gain an understanding of the best tools available today to assess sustainability across rangeland ecosystems in the U.S.

Horizons in Earth Science Research. Volume 18 opens with a chapter discussing the influence of canyons at the nearshore of river mouths on water dynamics and sediment transport, seawater intrusion into estuaries, and erosion-accumulative processes. The mouths of the rivers Congo and St. Lawrence are studied as examples of the effect of canyons of different genesis on estuary formation. Next, the authors use numerical examples to demonstrate qualitatively and quantitatively the variability of the Odum - Pianka ecosystem under different conditions. An analysis of stability shows that the Odum - Pianka ecosystem has two steady states. One of them corresponds to the situation when the total amount of the ecosystem material is accumulated in the mineral nutrition component, and the second steady state is stable and corresponds to the ecosystem equilibrium state. Following this, the authors present depth determination and source characteristics for North Korean nuclear tests using body wave and surface wave spectra. The source depths for the 2016J, 2016S and 2017S nuclear tests were estimated at 2.11 km, 1.99 km and 1.99 km, respectively using spectral nulls of P- and S- wave and Rg-wave spectra. Also in this compilation, ethnography, folklore and historical information is analyzed in order to restore the ancient celestial sphere (with the use of a special astronomy application) and identify the correlations between the megalithic complexes of Shaori Mountain and the Sun and Moon eclipses. Afterwards, a new Modified Levenberg-Marquardt Algorithm (M-LMA), improved from the Levenberg-Marquardt Algorithm (LMA), was used to minimize back propagation errors in training a back propagation neural network (BPNN). To compare this capability, both M-LMA and LMA were used to trace the vertical component of the Chi-Chi earthquake with the same learning rates of 0.3. The results showed that M-LMA generated smaller tracing errors. In a separate study, measurements of in-situ magnetic susceptibility were compiled from mainly Precambrian crystalline basement rocks beneath the Colorado Plateau and ranges in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. The susceptibility meter used samples about 33 cubic centimeters of rock and measures variations in the modal distribution of magnetic minerals that form a minor component volumetrically in these coarsely crystalline granitic to granodioritic rocks. Finally, a horizontal gradient analysis of the isostatic gravity and aeromagnetic anomaly grids of the New Mexico-Arizona-southern California area was carried out, focused on eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, to define the transitional boundary between the Proterozoic Yavapai province to the west and the Mazatzal province to the east. The two provinces differ substantially in their favorability to host Laramide porphyry copper deposits.

This book explores the most recent developments in earth science research. Chapter One discusses the geologic and ancient history of Dahr Safra, Syria. Chapter Two reviews the geographical distribution and geological occurrence of diatom ooze to diatomaceous sediments (diatomite) around the Japanese Islands, the Bering Sea and the Pacific coastal side of Peru and Chile, South America. Chapter Three explores the nature of tectonics and of axial tilt of the Earth. Chapter Four examines the major defects in the Toledo Bend Dam. Chapter Five proposes a projected-Gradient method for joint nonnegative matrix factorization to pansharpen multispectral data. Chapter Six discusses the main types of uranium deposits formed in a variety of geological and tectonic environments. Chapter Seven studies the unmixing of geological events by Gaussian deconvolution on Th-U-Pb age multicomponent data of monazite crystals of granite from São Francisco Craton (Brazil). Chapter Eight focuses on the properties and uses of the lanthanide series. Chapter Nine discusses concurrent design optimization of satellites and reconfigurable constellations. Chapter Ten assesses and compares vegetation indices, surface emissivity models and split-window algorithms used to estimate surface temperature from satellite images.

Horizons in Earth Science Research. Volume 17 opens with a discussion about the attainment of a new multichannel seismic profile in the Volturno Basin, located in the Northern Campania continental shelf of the Southern Tyrrhenian margin of Italy. This multichannel seismic profile has permitted geological sections to be constructed and interpreted to study the correlation between seismic units individuated through the seismo-stratigraphic techniques. Next, a conversation about the idea that human built structures can be studied as a geological system is presented. It will be argued that considering human works in the context of geological processes can be traced back, at least, to Lyell's works that set the foundations of modern Geology. One of the largest plutonic bodies in the European Variscan belt, Moldanubian batholith, is studied for composition, with the findings including coarse-grained, porphyritic I/S-type biotite granites to granodiorites of the Weinsberg suite, (2) two-mica S-type granites of the Eisgarn suite and (3) fine to medium-grained, and I/S-type biotite granodiorites of the Freistadt/Mauthausen suite. An analysis of satellite gravimetry is presented using several applied methodologies including entropial and information transformations, computing of various derivatives, coherence features and multistatistical characteristics, inverse probability, and advanced downward continuation. This book includes a chapter focused on the chemical and biological properties of the water in salt lakes in order to understand the mechanisms of the organisms adaptation to extreme conditions in hypersaline biotope. The history of the application of radiometric dating of speleothems physically related to rock art is reviewed to show that there are significant issues with both radiocarbon analysis and 230Th/234U analysis of carbonate precipitates in limestone caves. A geochemical and thermochronological study designed for the elucidation of the burial and exhumation history of an extensive pull-apart basin conducted on the East Eurasian longstanding convergent margin is presented. Several tests are described using an S8 Tiger spectrometer from Bruker Co., belonging to LARIN (Ionizing Radiations Laboratory) and UNESPetro (Geosciences Center Applied to Petroleum), IGCE-UNESP-Rio Claro (SP), Brazil. Next, Ions in water samples collected from rivers and wells are examined. In closing, a study comparing surface-to-volume (SV) allometries of natural water bodies and of the living systems inhabiting them is presented.