This book covers the subject of grasslands used for grazing livestock. Grasslands can be split into improved and unimproved pastures (also a sub-set of rangelands). Land used for livestock industries occupy 70% agricultural land and about 40% of total land and produce 40% of agricultural gross domestic product (FAO, 2005; Steinfeld et al., 2006). Increasing populations and incomes, coupled with a change in diets and urbanisation in the developing world, is enhancing demand for pasture-based products (Devine, 2003; Schmidhuber and Shetty, 2005). For example, milk and meat production is predicted to double to just over 1 billion tonnes of milk and 465 million tonnes of meat by 2050 (Steinfeld et al., 2006). To meet these demands most effort will go into intensification of improved pastures, which translates into high stocking densities supported by large inputs of fertilisers, feed supplements and energy.

Several of the papers here deal with decision making under uncertainty.

The UK is a country with over 150 years of widespread exploitation of its principal aquifers for public water supply. Increasing demands, greater awareness of environmental pressures and more exacting legislation has heightened the need for quantitative models to predict the impacts of groundwater use. In the UK this has culminated in a unique national, regulator-led programme for England and Wales to develop conceptual and numerical models of the principal bedrock aquifers. The outcomes of this programme will be of interest to the international hydrogeological community, particularly as international legislation such as the European Water Framework Directive requires management of water issues across administrative boundaries with a varied cast of stakeholders. The collection of papers provides a contrast between practitioner- and research-based approaches to assess and predict the anthropogenic impacts and environmental pressures.

Groundwater is sometimes called “the hidden asset” – awareness of its existence and its importance is not well known and as a consequence the measures which are required to protect and manage it in an environmental sustainable way are either not taken or are taken too late. Where pollution has occurred and measures are taken too late it may take decades, or longer, until the necessary restoration of quality is achieved. This comprehensive text presents in the following sections: Groundwater monitoring in the regulatory and international context Conceptual modelling and network design Groundwater pollutants and other pressures Groundwater quality standards and trend assessment Case studies for groundwater assessment and monitoring in the light of EU legislation Groundwater measurements Associating external stakeholders The editors have collected state-of-the-art information on groundwater quality assessment monitoring from the international community, providing further stimulation to the work of all parties involved in the challenges this area creates to ensure sound quality assessment of groundwater.

In contrast to the classical books which largely focus on separate, individual physicochemical and biological aspects, this book aims to integrate the frontiers of knowledge on the fundamentals and the impact of physicochemical and biological interactions and processes of AOCs in soil, sediment, water and air. The specific objectives of this book are to address: (1) fundamental biophysico-chemical processes of AOCs in the environment, (2) occurrence and distribution of AOCs in air, water, and soil, and their global cycling, (3) the state-of-the-art analytical techniques of AOCs, and (4) restoration of natural environments contaminated by AOCs. The book also identifies the gaps in knowledge on the subject matter and as such provides future directions to stimulate scientific research to advance the chemical science on biophysico-chemical interfacial reactions in natural habitats. By virtue of complex nature of the interactions of AOCs with different environmental components and matrixes, no single available technique and instrument is satisfactory yet for determining their fate, transport, availability, and risk in the environment. In order to fully understand the biophysico-chemical interactions and processes of AOCs in the environment, it is critical to know chemical, physical and biological properties of AOCs and their analytical techniques. The book is unique because of its multidisciplinary approach as it provides a comprehensive and integrated coverage of biophysico-chemical reactions and processes of AOCs in various environments, associated analytical techniques, and restoration of natural environments contaminated by AOCs.