The production of food and energy interfere with the natural nitrogen cycle of the earth. Many of these changes are beneficial, while others are detrimental to societies and the environment. The changing nature of nitrogen in the global environment crosses scientific disciplines, geographical boundaries and political divisions and challenges the creative minds of natural and social scientists, economists, engineers, business leaders and planners. The papers in this book give readers a panoramic view of the changing nature of reactive nitrogen in the global environment, enabling them to make better choices about nitrogen management in food production and consumption, energy production and use, and environmental protection.

Bringing together a wealth of knowledge, Environmental Management Handbook, Second Edition, gives a comprehensive overview of environmental problems, their sources, their assessment, and their solutions. Through in-depth entries and a topical table of contents, readers will quickly find answers to questions about environmental problems and their corresponding management issues. This six-volume set is a reimagining of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, published in 2013, and features insights from more than 400 contributors, all experts in their field. The experience, evidence, methods, and models used in studying environmental management are presented here in six stand-alone volumes, arranged along the major environmental systems. Features The first handbook that demonstrates the key processes and provisions for enhancing environmental management Addresses new and cutting-edge topics on ecosystem services, resilience, sustainability, food–energy–water nexus, socio-ecological systems, and more Provides an excellent basic knowledge on environmental systems, explains how these systems function, and offers strategies on how to best manage them Includes the most important problems and solutions facing environmental management today In this fourth volume, Managing Water Resources and Hydrological Systems, the reader is introduced to the general concepts and processes of the hydrosphere with its water resources and hydrological systems. This volume serves as an excellent resource for finding basic knowledge on the hydrosphere systems and includes important problems and solutions that environmental managers face today. This book practically demonstrates the key processes, methods, and models used in studying environmental management.

Air Emissions from Animal Feeding Operations: Current Knowledge, Future Needs discusses the need for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement a new method for estimating the amount of ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane, and other pollutants emitted from livestock and poultry farms, and for determining how these emissions are dispersed in the atmosphere. The committee calls for the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish a joint council to coordinate and oversee short - and long-term research to estimate emissions from animal feeding operations accurately and to develop mitigation strategies. Their recommendation was for the joint council to focus its efforts first on those pollutants that pose the greatest risk to the environment and public health.

This book addresses in detail multifaceted approaches to boosting nutrient use efficiency (NUE) that are modified by plant interactions with environmental variables and combine physiological, microbial, biotechnological and agronomic aspects. Conveying an in-depth understanding of the topic will spark the development of new cultivars and strains to induce NUE, coupled with best management practices that will immensely benefit agricultural systems, safeguarding their soil, water, and air quality. Written by recognized experts in the field, the book is intended to provide students, scientists and policymakers with essential insights into holistic approaches to NUE, as well as an overview of some successful case studies. In the present understanding of agriculture, NUE represents a question of process optimization in response to the increasing fragility of our natural resources base and threats to food grain security across the globe. Further improving nutrient use efficiency is a prerequisite to reducing production costs, expanding crop acreage into non-competitive marginal lands with low nutrient resources, and preventing environmental contamination. The nutrients most commonly limiting plant growth are N, P, K, S and micronutrients like Fe, Zn, B and Mo. NUE depends on the ability to efficiently take up the nutrient from the soil, but also on transport, storage, mobilization, usage within the plant and the environment. A number of approaches can help us to understand NUE as a whole. One involves adopting best crop management practices that take into account root-induced rhizosphere processes, which play a pivotal role in controlling nutrient dynamics in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. New technologies, from basic tools like leaf color charts to sophisticated sensor-based systems and laser land leveling, can reduce the dependency on laboratory assistance and manual labor. Another approach concerns the development of crop plants through genetic manipulations that allow them to take up and assimilate nutrients more efficiently, as well as identifying processes of plant responses to nutrient deficiency stress and exploring natural genetic variation. Though only recently introduced, the ability of microbial inoculants to induce NUE is gaining in importance, as the loss, immobilization, release and availability of nutrients are mediated by soil microbial processes.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Integrated Soil and Water Management: Selected Papers from 2016 International SWAT Conference" that was published in Water