This book provides a compact, up-to-date and detailed overview of the vegetation of the Iberian Peninsula, a highly diverse part of Europe in the Mediterranean area. Written by a group of experienced researchers, the volume includes a first section with general chapters discussing the climate, the biogeography and the flora, and a second section with detailed descriptions of the 14 regional sectors into which the peninsula and Balearic Islands have been divided. A third section explores special features, such as aquatic vegetation, gypsum and dolomite vegetation, coastal vegetation, mountain flora and vegetation, conservation issues and alien flora.

This commemorative volume of invited papers in vegetation science covers a full range of topics, objectives, methods and applications, including conservation and management tasks. These require study at different temporal and spatial scales, often simultaneously. Methodology is important in science, since it responds to particular questions and raises others. It is also closely related to the scale of investigation. Chapters in this book illustrate this interdependence, even in basic tasks such as vegetation sampling and description, measurements and mapping. Individual chapters present globally applicable systems, regional syntheses and local analyses and applications, plus conceptual methodologies, including currently debated hot topics. Vegetation types treated include tropical rainforests, temperate forests, dry steppes and scrub and local turf, sedge and moss communities. There are also chapters on re-vegetation, woodlot management, ecology of an invasive species, and trajectory planning in conservation. This book will be useful to both students and practitioners, for its reviews and examples and as a potential textbook suitable for graduate-level courses and seminars.

The second revised edition of the Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science, Four Volume Set, provides both students and professionals with an up-to-date reference work on this important and highly varied area of research. There are lots of new articles, and many of the articles that appeared in the first edition have been updated to reflect advances in knowledge since 2006, when the original articles were written. The second edition will contain about 375 articles, written by leading experts around the world. This major reference work is richly illustrated with more than 3,000 illustrations, most of them in colour. Research in the Quaternary sciences has advanced greatly in the last 10 years, especially since topics like global climate change, geologic hazards and soil erosion were put high on the political agenda. This second edition builds upon its award-winning predecessor to provide the reader assured quality along with essential updated coverage Contains 357 broad-ranging articles (4310 pages) written at a level that allows undergraduate students to understand the material, while providing active researchers with a ready reference resource for information in the field. Facilitates teaching and learning The first edition was regarded by many as the most significant single overview of Quaternary science ever, yet Editor-in-Chief, Scott Elias, has managed to surpass that in this second edition by securing even more expert reviews whilst retaining his renowned editorial consistency that enables readers to navigates seamlessly from one unfamiliar topic to the next

This book provides a compact, up-to-date and detailed overview of the vegetation of the Iberian Peninsula, a highly diverse part of Europe in the Mediterranean area. Written by a group of experienced researchers, the volume includes a first section with general chapters discussing the climate, the biogeography and the flora, and a second section with detailed descriptions of the 14 regional sectors into which the peninsula and Balearic Islands have been divided. A third section explores special features, such as aquatic vegetation, gypsum and dolomite vegetation, coastal vegetation, mountain flora and vegetation, conservation issues and alien flora.

In Microclimate, Vegetation & Fauna the ecologist meets the meteorologist: it is about the biological aspects of microclimate and its variation in horizontal and vertical directions. The great diversity found in the various habitats is stressed, also as far as the microclimate is concerned.The stronghold of this book on microclimatology or the ‘minor weather’ in the immediate surroundings of plants and animals is its capacity to unravel the causal relationships between climate, topography, soils, vegetation and fauna. The manifold interactions in between are explained in detail and it is concluded that the connections are so intimate that each species has its own microclimate. This book is unique and interesting for a wide audience. It specifically targets natural scientists and students in biology with an interest in climatology and climatologists with an interest in biology.

Warm-temperate deciduous forests are "southern", mainly oak-dominated deciduous forests, as found over the warmer southern parts of the temperate deciduous forest regions of East Asia, Europe and eastern North America. Climatic analysis has shown that these forests extend from typical temperate climates to well into the warm-temperate zone, in areas where winters are a bit too cold for the ‘zonal’ evergreen broad-leaved forests normally expected in that climatic zone. This book is the first to recognize and describe these southern deciduous forests as an alternative to the evergreen forests of the warm-temperate zone. This warm-temperate zone will become more important under global warming, since it represents the contested transition between deciduous and evergreen forests and between tropical and temperate floristic elements. This book is dedicated to the memory of Tatsuō Kira, the imaginative Japanese ecologist who first noticed and described this general zonation exception and who proposed the name warm-temperate deciduous forest.

The accurate measurement of ecosystem biomass is of great importance in scientific, resource management and energy sectors. In particular, biomass is a direct measurement of carbon storage within an ecosystem and of great importance for carbon cycle science and carbon emission mitigation. Remote Sensing is the most accurate tool for global biomass measurements because of the ability to measure large areas. Current biomass estimates are derived primarily from ground-based samples, as compiled and reported in inventories and ecosystem samples. By using remote sensing technologies, we are able to scale up the sample values and supply wall to wall mapping of biomass. Three separate remote sensing technologies are available today to measure ecosystem biomass: passive optical, radar, and lidar. There are many measurement methodologies that range from the application driven to the most technologically cutting-edge. The goal of this book is to address the newest developments in biomass measurements, sensor development, field measurements and modeling. The chapters in this book are separated into five main sections.