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Drawing on the bioecological theory developed by Bronfenbrenner, the researchers of this study examined four environmental systems—microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem—for gifted children in Israel as perceived by their parents, focusing on a comparison between rural and central contexts. The rural context comprises peripheral areas that are located in distant areas and characterized by small settlements. The central context refers to settlements that are located in the center of the country, characterized by large urban municipalities. The researchers developed a questionnaire that was taken by 284 Israeli parents of gifted students. Results indicated that parents perceived the macrosystem as less contributory to the development of gifted students in rural areas. Parents in rural areas also believed the governance system was less supportive of the needs of gifted students and offered fewer practical and educational and learning resources. The microsystem, in contrast, was seen as contributory in rural areas: Community, friends, and home/family were significantly stronger in the rural context. Thus, the contribution of the microsystem seems to balance the weaknesses or shortcomings of the macrosystem. This study identifies the best systems for gifted students in rural areas by highlighting the importance of the community while also pointing out the lack of support from government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart cities will be smart if they improve their citizens' quality of life; to do so, it is essential to listen to citizens and collaborate with service and technological companies. For that, digitalization seems essential. Environmental management systems are complex and expensive. If their lifecycle costs are reduced, these systems would be more sustainable. This can be achieved through citizen collaboration (CS), the use of low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and collaboration with local renewable energy businesses. All this leads to a real interoperability challenge. Systems engineering offers a valid framework for managing information and knowledge for environmental systems. It offers a range of guides for processes that can improve the quality of the related information and the reusability of knowledge throughout the lifecycles of these systems. After quantifying the opportunity and the cost for a motivational case of atmospheric neighborhood odor impact and introducing trends and opportunities in energy management, the authors propose a model for renewable energy-linked interoperable smart and sustainable urban environmental systems (re-ISSUES). The model's ontology is used to discover research trends and potential for improvements to the model itself, enabling semantic interoperability and knowledge reuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity loss is now recognised as one of the major challenges for humankind to address over the next few decades. Unless major actions are taken, the sixth mass extinction will lead to catastrophic effects on the Earth’s biosphere and human health and well-being. ELIXIR can help address the technical challenges of biodiversity science, through leveraging its suite of services and expertise to enable data management and analysis activities that enhance our understanding of life on Earth and facilitate biodiversity preservation and restoration. This white paper, prepared by the ELIXIR Biodiversity Community, summarises the current status and responses, and presents a set of plans, both technical and community-oriented, that should both enhance how ELIXIR Services are applied in the biodiversity field and how ELIXIR builds connections across the many other infrastructures active in this area. We discuss the areas of highest priority, how they can be implemented in cooperation with the ELIXIR Platforms, and their connections to existing ELIXIR Communities and international consortia. The article provides a preliminary blueprint for a Biodiversity Community in ELIXIR and is an appeal to identify and involve new stakeholders.

Biodiversity loss is now recognised as one of the major challenges for humankind to address over the next few decades. Unless major actions are taken, the sixth mass extinction will lead to catastrophic effects on the Earth’s biosphere and human health and well-being. ELIXIR can help address the technical challenges of biodiversity science, through leveraging its suite of services and expertise to enable data management and analysis activities that enhance our understanding of life on Earth and facilitate biodiversity preservation and restoration. This white paper, prepared by the ELIXIR Biodiversity Community, summarises the current status and responses, and presents a set of plans, both technical and community-oriented, that should both enhance how ELIXIR Services are applied in the biodiversity field and how ELIXIR builds connections across the many other infrastructures active in this area. We discuss the areas of highest priority, how they can be implemented in cooperation with the ELIXIR Platforms, and their connections to existing ELIXIR Communities and international consortia. The article provides a preliminary blueprint for a Biodiversity Community in ELIXIR and is an appeal to identify and involve new stakeholders.

Attila Kerényi, Professor of Geography, was born in 1943 in Sátoraljaújhely. He earned a degree as a teacher of Geography and Biology in 1967. During the 1980s, he gained national and international scientific recognition for his research on soil erosion processes, and completed his candidate dissertation in 1984. In the 1990s, he became nationally acknowledged for his publications, textbooks and scientific books on landscape and environmental protection, and earned an academic doctorate title in the topic. His scientific work was recognized with numerous awards. In 2020, he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit in recognition of his several decades of research and teaching activities which have greatly contributed to the renewal of geography education at the University of Debrecen. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, his colleagues interviewed Professor Kerényi about his family, profession, achievements and the state of global environmental systems.

ABSTRACTChanges to the Earth's environment, increasing anthropogenic pressure, and the global decline of biodiversity bring the need to establish spatial frameworks for the monitoring and assessment of such dynamic processes. Several environmental stratifications have been developed at the global level; however, most of them only include natural conditions in the classification process. Incorporating spatial patterns of biodiversity and the degree of anthropogenic pressure seems to be essential in an era of significant environmental transformation. We developed a new comprehensive classification of Global Environmental Systems based on general abiotic gradients, distribution of biodiversity, and spatial differentiation of human impact. This classification is based on 22 variables covering abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic factors. We identified 10 abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic classes using cluster analysis; their combination results in 169 unique Global Environmental Systems (GES) showing human-environment interactions. Each class shows an area with similar abiotic and biotic background and human pressure..

Biodiversity loss is now recognised as one of the major challenges for humankind to address over the next few decades. Unless major actions are taken, the sixth mass extinction will lead to catastrophic effects on the Earth’s biosphere and human health and well-being. ELIXIR can help address the technical challenges of biodiversity science, through leveraging its suite of services and expertise to enable data management and analysis activities that enhance our understanding of life on Earth and facilitate biodiversity preservation and restoration. This white paper, prepared by the ELIXIR Biodiversity Community, summarises the current status and responses, and presents a set of plans, both technical and community-oriented, that should both enhance how ELIXIR Services are applied in the biodiversity field and how ELIXIR builds connections across the many other infrastructures active in this area. We discuss the areas of highest priority, how they can be implemented in cooperation with the ELIXIR Platforms, and their connections to existing ELIXIR Communities and international consortia. The article provides a preliminary blueprint for a Biodiversity Community in ELIXIR and is an appeal to identify and involve new stakeholders.

Changes to the Earth’s environment, increasing anthropogenic pressure, and the global decline of biodiversity bring the need to establish spatial frameworks for the monitoring and assessment of such dynamic processes. Several environmental stratifications have been developed at the global level; however, most of them only include natural conditions in the classification process. Incorporating spatial patterns of biodiversity and the degree of anthropogenic pressure seems to be essential in an era of significant environmental transformation. We developed a new comprehensive classification of Global Environmental Systems based on general abiotic gradients, distribution of biodiversity, and spatial differentiation of human impact. This classification is based on 22 variables covering abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic factors. We identified 10 abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic classes using cluster analysis; their combination results in 169 unique Global Environmental Systems (GES) showing human-environment interactions. Each class shows an area with similar abiotic and biotic background and human pressure.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Terrestrial ecosystems perform functions directly related to the availability and quality of water resources. • This study presents a simple way to carry out watershed ecosystems services assessments. • We apply an InVEST model and map algebra to create a comprehensive importance index for hydrological services provision. • The environmental systems were ranked based on their performance in terms of eco-hydrological functions. Hydrologic services describe the way terrestrial ecosystems affect freshwater resources. This study employed an ecosystem-based approach and spatial models to assess the significance of ecosystems in providing hydrological services in a Watershed in southern Brazil. The environmental systems and hydrological services were characterized and evaluated for the significance weights assignment by expert opinion dynamics. Spatial and tabular data generated were applied in an ecosystem services model (InVEST-Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) for a relative importance analysis. Map algebra was performed to integrate relative importance with runoff values, resulting in an importance index (II), which enabled the identification of the most important ecosystems for the hydrological services provision. Among the environmental systems, riparian forests (0.2457), forests (0.2455), wetlands (0.2332), and fields with livestock (0.2291) demonstrated the highest II values. Ranking environmental systems and their vegetation cover based on their performance in terms of eco-hydrological functions and hydrological services has the potential to support management actions on land use in the pursue of sustainability regarding water resources use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Filters for both the body (N95) and for buildings (MERV-13 or greater) have gained unprecedented public interest during the past two years. This essay examines some of the historical periods in which respiration and filtration were driving concepts in architecture, and considers the degree to which future architecture might be mandated to respond to the public's newfound exactitude of air awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When these imported Frigidaire and Carrier air-conditioning units made their debut in India, marketed exclusively by European trading firms like Volkart, almost all this scientific data on the health benefits of air-conditioning was seamlessly transferred (Figure 3). Many high-end air-conditioning installations, such as at the Plaza Theater in Bombay, were forced to admit copious amounts of exterior air to counter the "foul, smoky and stuffy" tobacco-laden air inside.[29] There were sociocultural reasons as well. Clean, Cool Air: Health and Air-Conditioning in India (1920s-1960s). [Extracted from the article]

This essay highlights how nineteenth-century epidemic diseases catalyzed environmental thinking in architecture by examining air and vapor bathing technologies and their role in transmitting environmental medical principles into British building culture. Vapor baths were popular medical devices used to fortify a patient's health by passing hot or cold air charged with steam over the skin, a vital membrane through which impurities were thought to be excreted from the body. This essay discusses vapor bathing's role in establishing environmental mediation as an underlying principle of modern British architecture. It shows how bathing practices were adapted to deliver localized forms of atmospheric medicine inside buildings, making architectural interiors a key site for the formulation of Victorian ideas of public health. Bathing offers evidence of how the climate-controlled interior emerged out of a confluence of medical ecology, moral demography, and technical innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Environmental Planning studies of the Territory (EPeT) provide a zoning model and at the same time a tool that demands the territorial planning process to articulate policies and planning actions compatible with the expectations of sustainability. In order to delimit and describe “environmental systems” (EPeT) of the Upper Arroyo Tandileofú Basin (study area), a work was carried out supported by soil cartography. For this work a methodological sequence was followed developing intermediate thematic maps up to the Environmental Planning studies of the Territory map that integrated the previous ones. The methodological sequence began with the Superficial Morphological Zoning, followed by the Edaphic Zoning. These maps derived from the Morphoedáphic Zoning. The latter map was correlated with vegetation, getting the Morpho- Phytoedic Zoning or Ecological Zoning. Then the Current Land Use (CLU) was incorporated. This made it possible to analyze the relationship between society and nature in the study area and to identify possible environmental problems derived from this relationship, and prepare the (EPeT) map of the study area. The results obtained: -made it possible to interpret the internal heterogeneity of the ecological-landscape systems and obtain 7 ecological subsystems; -the (CLU) study and mapping showed that the lands are mainly occupied by mixed crop-livestock farming (46,4%), crop activity (31,3%) and dairy farm activity (12.4%); -with the (EPeT) of study area they were obtained 16 types of cartographic units that describe territorial entities with ecological restrictions and potentialities, with the spatial structure and functions of types and forms of the (CLU). In conclusion, it is possible to infer and correlate topographiclandscape information by analyzing the soil cartography and the information of each system and subsystem represented, and the methodology highlights the use of resources and products that arise from Cartographic Science in territorial management and planning tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the time of upheaval and crisis, what is the point of design education? In nearly every school of architecture or design there is a central, unspoken rejoinder to this question: the point of design education is to condition each successive generation of students for a lifetime of exploited labor that is detached from any critical relationship to the role that designers play in aestheticizing and instrumentalizing global capitalism. While there are always spaces of exception in the academy—the long tradition of community-engaged studios (e.g., Auburn's Rural Studio and a number of design-build studios elsewhere)—most efforts tend to reproduce the long hours and infinite production that underpins so much of design education. This goal is not written in mission statements or strategic plans—to do so would threaten the machinery of student recruitment and major gift fundraising. But it is there, plain to see, in the tendency of design institutions to reproduce their most common traits: valorizing individuality and competition, endless work and infinite production, and service to the elites that fund much of the field's work. Put another way, design education exists to reproduce the social and racial order of capitalism. And the core of its pedagogy is rooted in the studio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warming and hydrological changes have already affected and shifted environments in the Arctic. Arctic wetlands are complex systems of coupled hydrological, ecological, and permafrost‐related processes, vulnerable to such environmental changes. This review uses a systems perspective approach to synthesize and elucidate the various interlinked responses and feedbacks of Arctic wetlands to hydroclimatic changes. Starting from increased air temperatures, subsequent permafrost thaw and concurrent hydrological changes are identified as key factors for both shrinkage and expansion of wetland area. Other diverse factors further interact with warming, hydrological changes, and permafrost thaw in altering the Arctic wetland systems. Surface albedo shifts driven by land cover alterations are powerful in reinforcing Arctic warming, while vegetation‐related factors can balance and decelerate permafrost thaw, causing negative feedback loops. With the vast amounts of carbon stored in Arctic wetlands, their changes in turn affect the global carbon cycle. Overall, the systems perspectives outlined and highlighted in this review can be useful in structuring and elucidating the interactions of wetlands with climate, hydrological, and other environmental changes in the Arctic, including the essential permafrost‐carbon feedback. This article is categorized under:Water and Life > Nature of Freshwater EcosystemsWater and Life > Stresses and Pressures on EcosystemsScience of Water > Water and Environmental Change [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are bio-electrochemical devices that directly convert organic substrates into electrical energy, by exploiting micro-organism metabolism at the electrodes. Such a technology has been shown to be promising in dealing with the waste management issue. In fact, by means of these systems, the waste disposal issue may be turned into an economic opportunity. In this work, we develop a three-dimensional numerical model grounded on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to analyze the electrochemical performance of MFCs. Despite a simplified, yet effective, modeling of the electrochemical mechanisms driving the motion of ions inside the reactor, the proposed computational approach is capable of accurately capture the main involved physical phenomena and provide a fair estimation of the ion distribution within the batch reactor. The numerical predictions are then compared with available experimental data for a similar layout of solid-waste MFCs. Despite some differences in the prediction of the concentration-loss phase, which is not clearly observable in the experiments, the results obtained by the proposed methodology show that either power and polarization curves reflect the general trends of MFCs operation. This highlights the significant potential of the present computational approach for the accurate evaluation of MFC performance. • Numerical modeling of microbial fuel cells for analysis of electrochemical performance. • A typical thriving curve for bacteria activity is considered. • Accurate prediction of hydrogen ion distribution within the batch reactor. • Numerical results show a marked concentration-loss phase, in contrast with experiments. • Transport of hydrogen ions inside the reactor affects the evolution of OFMSW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity loss is now recognised as one of the major challenges for humankind to address over the next few decades. Unless major actions are taken, the sixth mass extinction will lead to catastrophic effects on the Earth's biosphere and human health and well-being. ELIXIR can help address the technical challenges of biodiversity science, through leveraging its suite of services and expertise to enable data management and analysis activities that enhance our understanding of life on Earth and facilitate biodiversity preservation and restoration. This white paper, prepared by the ELIXIR Biodiversity Community, summarises the current status and responses, and presents a set of plans, both technical and community-oriented, that should both enhance how ELIXIR Services are applied in the biodiversity field and how ELIXIR builds connections across the many other infrastructures active in this area. We discuss the areas of highest priority, how they can be implemented in cooperation with the ELIXIR Platforms, and their connections to existing ELIXIR Communities and international consortia. The article provides a preliminary blueprint for a Biodiversity Community in ELIXIR and is an appeal to identify and involve new stakeholders., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed., (Copyright: © 2024 Waterhouse RM et al.)

Rhodium is an open source Python library for robust decision making (RDM), many-objective robust decision making (MORDM), and exploratory modeling. These decision-support frameworks enable the identification of robust strategies for the management of complex environmental systems, by evaluating the tradeoffs among candidate strategies, and characterizing their vulnerabilities. Robust strategies refer to management options that perform sufficiently well or acceptably under a range of potential system conditions, rather than optimally in a single, nominal state of the world. Exploratory modeling allows for the simulation of the system under an ensemble of states of the world, so as to discover the ones with consequential effects on the system [1]. Rhodium facilitates rapid application of the RDM and MORDM frameworks by providing a suite of optimization, visualization, scenario discovery, and sensitivity analysis functions. Rhodium is written in Python and can interface with models written in Python, C and C++, Fortran, R, and Excel. The source code is freely available at https://github.com/Project-Platypus/Rhodium. Funding statement: This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (1639268). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The sudden release of toxic contaminants that reach indoor spaces can be hazardous to building occupants. For an acutely toxic contaminant, the speed of the emergency response strongly influences the consequences to occupants. The design of a real time sensor system is made challenging both by the urgency and complex nature of the event, and by the imperfect sensors and models available to describe it. In this research, we use Bayesian modeling to combine information from multiple types of sensors to improve the characterization of a release. We discuss conceptual and algorithmic considerations for selecting and fusing information from disparate sensors. To explore system performance, we use both real tracer gas data from experiments in a three story building, along with synthetic data, including information from door position sensors. The added information from door position sensors is found to be useful for many scenarios, but not always. We discuss the physical conditions and design factors that affect these results, such as the influence of the door positions on contaminant transport. We highlight potential benefits of multisensor data fusion, challenges in realizing those benefits, and opportunities for further improvement.

This article considers how solar energy discourse in the 1970s othered rural bodies in India. In the 1970s, proponents of solar energy seized the opportunity provided by the oil crisis to argue for their technology as a clean, cheap, abundant, and universal alternate. The community characterized solar energy as a technical problem, yet in house design, they relied on subjective parameters like thermal comfort. Investigating the designs of solar cooling and heating systems for houses in semi-arid rural Punjab in the 1970s, this article argues that first world parameters like "comfort" and "house" were taken as universal standards when in fact they were historically constituted ideas. This elision of history had the effect of othering the rural bodies for which they were designed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erzincan plain is located in an area, where earthquakes, landslides, avalanches, floods and other natural disasters are mainly dominant in the upper part of Fırat River basin in the East Anatolian Region. Earthquakes of various magnitudes occurred throughout the history of Erzincan. Earthquakes occurred in the 1939 and 1992 years led to many casualties and lost of the properties. In the present study, in the light of regional and local geology of the Erzincan Plain and vicinity considering - its geomorphology, hydrogeology, natural resources, land-use capability, currentland-use and its environmentel geology have been presented and related future land use planning have been evaluated. Environmental systems have been defined in the frame of environmental geology. These systems are mainly Erzincan Plain System, Ergandağ System and Man-made or Antropogenic System. Environmental units those characterize each system have been identified. Thus, land-use capabilities of 26 environmental units have been evaluated depending on their general properties, index characteristics and natural disaster risks. The evaluations of land-use capabilities have been carried out on the basis of land-use forms. The matters, which are necessary to be considered to wards to the planning of the region in the future, have been presented. Based on the recommended plan, it is possible to control a great deal of environmental problems and protect the Erzincan Plain and surroundings, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Homabay County, women are predominant in fish marketing and processing. However there are bottlenecks towards women economic progress. Socio-economic and demographic characteristics are indicators of performance in the society. A study was undertaken to understand the constraints to economic performance among women fish processors. Structured questionnaires were administered randomly to 120 women fish processors. Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis. Results indicate that poor environmental condition and poor personal hygiene contribute to poor quality of fish. The study recommends that there is the need for awareness creation on food safety regulations and implementation of environmental management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To illustrate how q'waq'wala7owkw is practiced, we take a closer look at clam gardens: deliberately constructed rock-walled intertidal terraces meticulously managed to enhance clam productivity and to provide a habitat for a host of other species. The name "clam garden" is a bit deceptive, for while clams are the most well-known species benefiting from this oceanic terrace, a wide diversity of other marine species are attracted to its rock walls and beaches. This species richness is directly connected to a diversity of technologies and management strategies developed by coastal indigenous peoples to enhance both food productivity and the marine habitat in the clam gardens. [Extracted from the article]

Landowners and irrigators were required to take part in the construction, repair, and maintenance of the ditches, while a ditch master, or I mayordomo i , adjudicated disputes and coordinated irrigation schedules. Critical to the conservation of the ditches will be the building of an informed ditch public that understands and values the multiple functions of the ditches. [Extracted from the article]

In the Paso del Norte at the US-Mexico border, water—as an agent of geopolitics, commodification, and social reproduction—produces charged physical spaces and asymmetrical material realities in the borderland. While the waters of the Rio Grande and the rapidly diminishing aquifers contribute to the reproductive capacity of land within the desert climate, it is the infrastructures of water supply, sanitation, and flood control that reproduce sociospatial injustices and imbalances. Drawing on discourses and techniques that aim to redirect complex systems toward alternative societal ends, a studio design project attempts to remap the potential agency of water as shared matter and to rethink forms and formats of emergent urban infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the twentieth-century water infrastructure of Phoenix, Arizona. An extensive network of canals transformed the desert into farmland, then farmland into suburban sprawl. This infrastructure can be studied as a vital force, one whose arrival so contradicted preexisting geology and ecology that it produced unexpected effects and admitted uninvited visitors. Historical documentation of the canals' transition from agricultural to suburban infrastructure reveals complex human-nature interactions mediated by engineered waters. This brief account argues for the potential of infrastructural history as a form of vibrant postnatural history, one which challenges the notion of genius loci on sites where terrestrial definitions of region have been ruptured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhodium is an open source Python library for robust decision making (RDM), many-objective robust decision making (MORDM), and exploratory modeling. These decision-support frameworks enable the identification of robust strategies for the management of complex environmental systems, by evaluating the tradeoffs among candidate strategies, and characterizing their vulnerabilities. Robust strategies refer to management options that perform sufficiently well or acceptably under a range of potential system conditions, rather than optimally in a single, nominal state of the world. Exploratory modeling allows for the simulation of the system under an ensemble of states of the world, so as to discover the ones with consequential effects on the system [1]. Rhodium facilitates rapid application of the RDM and MORDM frameworks by providing a suite of optimization, visualization, scenario discovery, and sensitivity analysis functions. Rhodium is written in Python and can interface with models written in Python, C and C++, Fortran, R, and Excel. The source code is freely available at https://github.com/Project-Platypus/Rhodium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape is an integrated system between the physical environment and its continuous transformation processes, both natural and caused by anthropic action. The municipality of Formosa-GO was incorporated into the "developmentalist" process to which the Brazilian Cerrado has been subjected and territorialized by the agribusiness, resulting in the suppression of natural vegetation. This study aimed to identify the geoenvironmental units and the changes in the use of soil in the municipality with the goal of supporting territorial planning and management. The theoretical basis for the survey is the systemic concept and its use in Geography, with the landscape being the resulting visual appearance. The main outcome was the delimitation of five geoenvironmental units, integrating the environmental variables. The mapping of land use has shown a suppression of Cerrado areas connected to the advancement of farming activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Joint efforts and interdisciplinary approach are proper means to face the issue of global warming. An adequate response should be to employ state of the art scientific knowledge for the technology advancement, as well as for fostering new scientific insights. Together with resource efficiency, circular economy is getting in focus of researchers and consequently policymakers. Sustainable development is a multidisciplinary topic and interaction of energy, water and environment systems plays one of the central roles. Within the paradigm of circular economy, there is growing need for system integration where a by-product of one system can represent resource for the other. This review is dedicated to the 12th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Sysmems, and discusses some latest developments in three main areas of sustainability themes: (i) Energy, (ii) Water and (iii) Environmental Systems. Examples of circular economy approach have been emphasized which improve economic efficiency of the whole chain and further decrease environmental burden, enabling cleaner production. Although integrative concept of energy, water and environmental systems is coming in the research focus, more effort is necessary for further integration of those systems, whereby increased complexity is going to be handled only by multidisciplinary, intersectoral scientific cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Data Mining (DM) is a fundamental component of the Data Science process. Over recent years a huge library of DM algorithms has been developed to tackle a variety of problems in fields such as medical imaging and traffic analysis. Many DM techniques are far more flexible than more classical numerial simulation or statistical modelling approaches. These could be usefully applied to data-rich environmental problems. Certain techniques such as artificial neural networks, clustering, case-based reasoning or Bayesian networks have been applied in environmental modelling, while other methods, like support vector machines among others, have yet to be taken up on a wide scale. There is greater scope for many lesser known techniques to be applied in environmental research, with the potential to contribute to addressing some of the current open environmental challenges. However, selecting the best DM technique for a given environmental problem is not a simple decision, and there is a lack of guidelines and criteria that helps the data scientist and environmental scientists to ensure effective knowledge extraction from data. This paper provides a broad introduction to the use of DM in Data Science processes for environmental researchers. Data Science contains three main steps (pre-processing, data mining and post-processing). This paper provides a conceptualization of Environmental Systems and a conceptualization of DM methods, which are in the core step of the Data Science process. These two elements define a conceptual framework that is on the basis of a new methodology proposed for relating the characteristics of a given environmental problem with a family of Data Mining methods. The paper provides a general overview and guidelines of DM techniques to a non-expert user, who can decide with this support which is the more suitable technique to solve their problem at hand. The decision is related to the bidimensional relationship between the type of environmental system and the type of DM method. An illustrative two way table containing references for each pair Environmental System-Data Mining method is presented and discussed. Some examples of how the proposed methodology is used to support DM method selection are also presented, and challenges and future trends are identified. Highlights • A methodology to support Data Mining (DM) method choice in environmental sciences. • DMMCM is a conceptual map providing an overview of common Data Mining methods. • DMMT provides templates of main DM families, to simplify use by practicioners. • Extensive real environmental applications and 5 detailed case studies are shown. • Existing and future challenges in DM for Data Science are postulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]