"The vertical farm is a world-changing innovation whose time has come. Dickson Despommier's visionary book provides a blueprint for securing the world's food supply and at the same time solving one of the gravest environmental crises facing us today."--Sting Imagine a world where every town has their own local food source, grown in the safest way possible, where no drop of water or particle of light is wasted, and where a simple elevator ride can transport you to nature's grocery store - imagine the world of the vertical farm. When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. Despommier's stroke of genius, the vertical farm, has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Despommier explains how the vertical farm will have an incredible impact on changing the face of this planet for future generations. Despommier takes readers on an incredible journey inside the vertical farm, buildings filled with fruits and vegetables that will provide local food sources for entire cities. Vertical farms will allow us to: - Grow food 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - Protect crops from unpredictable and harmful weather - Re-use water collected from the indoor environment - Provide jobs for residents - Eliminate use of pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides - Drastically reduce dependence on fossil fuels - Prevent crop loss due to shipping or storage - Stop agricultural runoff Vertical farms can be built in abandoned buildings and on deserted lots, transforming our cities into urban landscapes which will provide fresh food grown and harvested just around the corner. Possibly the most important aspect of vertical farms is that they can built by nations with little or no arable land, transforming nations which are currently unable to farm into top food producers. In the tradition of the bestselling The World Without Us, The Vertical Farm is a completely original landmark work destined to become an instant classic.

Bringing together some of the most recognized and influential researchers and scientists in various space-related disciplines, Lunar Settlements addresses the many issues that surround the permanent human return to the Moon. Numerous international contributors offer their insights into how certain technological, physiological, and psychological challenges must be met to make permanent lunar settlements possible. The book first looks to the past, covering the Apollo and Saturn legacies. In addition, former astronaut and U.S. Senator Harrison H. Schmitt discusses how to maintain deep space exploration and settlement. The book then discusses economic aspects, such as funding for lunar commerce, managing human resources, and commercial transportation logistics. After examining how cultural elements will fit into habitat design, the text explores the physiological, psychological, and ethical impact of living on a lunar settlement. It also describes the planning/technical requirements of lunar habitation, the design of both manned and modular lunar bases, and the protection of lunar habitats against meteoroids. Focusing on lunar soil mechanics, the book concludes with discussions on lunar concrete, terraforming, and using greenhouses for agricultural purposes. Drawing from the lunar experiences of the six Apollo landing missions to the many American and Soviet robotic missions to current space activities and research, this volume summarizes the problems, prospects, and practicality of enduring lunar settlements. It reflects the key disciplines, including engineering, physics, architecture, psychology, biology, and anthropology, that will play significant roles in establishing these settlements.

Lunar base scenarios; The lunar environment; Chemical and physical considerations for a lunar-derived soil; Biological considerations for a lunar-derived soil; Controlled ecological life support systems (CELSS): current research; Future research areas: the growth of higher plant in CELSS.

Advanced Technology for Human Support in Space was written in response to a request from NASA's Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications (OLMSA) to evaluate its Advanced Human Support Technology Program. This report reviews the four major areas of the program: advanced life support (ALS), environmental monitoring and control (EMC), extravehicular activities (EVA), and space human factors (SHF). The focus of this program is on long-term technology development applicable to future human long-duration space missions, such as for a hypothetical new mission to the Moon or Mars.

The environmental and economic importance of monitoring forests and agricultural resources has allowed remote sensing to be increasingly in the development of products and services responding to user needs.This volume presents the main applications in remote sensing for agriculture and forestry, including the primary soil properties, the estimation of the vegetation's biophysical variables, methods for mapping land cover, the contribution of remote sensing for crop and water monitoring, and the estimation of the forest cover properties (cover dynamic, height, biomass).This book, part of a set of six volumes, has been produced by scientists who are internationally renowned in their fields. It is addressed to students (engineers, Masters, PhD), engineers and scientists, specialists in remote sensing applied to agriculture and forestry.Through this pedagogical work, the authors contribute to breaking down the barriers that hinder the use of radar imaging techniques. - Provides clear and concise descriptions of modern remote sensing methods - Explores the most current remote sensing techniques with physical aspects of the measurement (theory) and their applications - Provides chapters on physical principles, measurement, and data processing for each technique described - Describes optical remote sensing technology, including a description of acquisition systems and measurement corrections to be made

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.