This practical handbook provides a clearly structured, concise and comprehensive account of the huge variety of atmospheric and related measurements relevant to meteorologists and for the purpose of weather forecasting and climate research, but also to the practitioner in the wider field of environmental physics and ecology. The Springer Handbook of Atmospheric Measurements is divided into six parts: The first part offers instructive descriptions of the basics of atmospheric measurements and the multitude of their influencing factors, fundamentals of quality control and standardization, as well as equations and tables of atmospheric, water, and soil quantities. The subsequent parts present classical in-situ measurements as well as remote sensing techniques from both ground-based as well as airborn or satellite-based methods. The next part focusses on complex measurements and methods that integrate different techniques to establish more holistic data. Brief discussions of measurements in soils and water, at plants, in urban and rural environments and for renewable energies demonstrate the potential of such applications. The final part provides an overview of atmospheric and ecological networks. Written by distinguished experts from academia and industry, each of the 64 chapters provides in-depth discussions of the available devices with their specifications, aspects of quality control, maintenance as well as their potential for the future. A large number of thoroughly compiled tables of physical quantities, sensors and system characteristics make this handbook a unique, universal and useful reference for the practitioner and absolutely essential for researchers, students, and technicians.

The book informs about agricultural landscapes, their features, functions and regulatory mechanisms. It characterizes agricultural production systems, trends of their development, and their impacts on the landscape. Agricultural landscapes are multifunctional systems, coupled with all nexus problems of the 21th century. This has led to serious discrepancies between agriculture and environment, and between urban and rural population. The mission, key topics and methods of research in order to understanding, monitoring and controlling processes in rural landscapes is being explained. Studies of international expert teams, many of them from Russia, demonstrate approaches towards both improving agricultural productivity and sustainability, and enhancing ecosystem services of agricultural landscapes. Scientists of different disciplines, decision makers, farmers and further informed people dealing with the evolvement of thriving rural landscapes are the primary audience of this book.

This book reviews comprehensively the opportunities and responsibilities of science, society and politics to combat plastic pollution in marine and freshwaters. It provides insights on what information is needed, and from whom, and it outlines policies proposed by various institutions including OSPAR, HELCOM and the European Union. Plastic waste has become a global threat to the aquatic environment that does not stop at country borders. Meanwhile, there are many efforts in science, industry, commerce and governments to tackle the problem worldwide. School education, NGO public actions, voluntary trade reduction measures, governmental management options and governmental regulatory actions are part of the portfolio of efforts to deal with the problem. Together with the companion volume Plastics in the Aquatic Environment - Part I: Current Status and Challenges, it provides scientists, policymakers and environmental managers with essential reference information on how this problem is being solved, what challenges and barriers are expected and how they can be overcome.

This book offers a comprehensive review of how plastic pollution is affecting fresh and marine waters, and what the current challenges in plastic waste assessment and management in the aquatic environment are. Plastic waste comprises particles with heterogeneous physicochemical properties such as large size-range, different shapes and polymer types with various additives determining their environmental fate and risk. This complexity raises several open research questions which are explored in this book. Examples are the plastic uptake by aquatic organisms, degradation processes as well as sources and sinks in the environment. Readers will discover real case studies of plastic pollution detection and management in different parts of the world, including Asia, America and Europe, which provide an integrated overview of the global scope of this issue. This book and the companion volume Plastics in the Aquatic Environment - Part II: Stakeholders' Role Against Pollution are valuable resources to students, researchers, policymakers and environmental managers interested in plastic pollution and working towards its reduction.

How to interpret meteorological measurements made at a given level over a surface with regard to characteristic properties such as roughness, albedo, heat, moisture, carbon dioxide, and other gases is an old question which goes back to the very beginnings of modern micrometeorology. It is made even more challenging when it is unclear whether these measurements are only valid for this point/region and precisely describe the conditions there, or if they are also influenced by surrounding areas. After 50 years of field experiments, it has become both apparent and problematic that meteorological measurements are influenced from surfaces on the windward side. As such, extending these measurements for inhomogeneous experimental sites requires a quantitative understanding of these influences. When combined with atmospheric transport models similar to air pollution models, the ‘footprint’ concept – a fundamental approach introduced roughly 20 years ago – provides us with information on whether or not the condition of upwind site homogeneity is fulfilled. Since these first models, the development of more scientifically based versions, validation experiments and applications has advanced rapidly. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of these developments, to analyze present deficits, to describe applications and to advance this topic at the forefront of micrometeorological research.

The authors shed new light on the time frame and pathways used by Homo sapiens on its journey from Africa to Europe and provides new insights into the intricate interplay of culture and environment during the past 200,000 years. The new findings also take into account the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental history of East, North-East and North-West Africa, the Middle East, South-East and Central Europe as well as the Iberian Peninsula. The book is a compilation of the key results of a multidisciplinary research project (CRC 806, funded by the German Research Foundation DFG) which studied the dispersal of anatomical modern humans from Africa to Europe. The findings presented here are based on a wealth of new data of recent, intensive studies of archaeological sites, lake sediments and Loess archives which were dated using radiocarbon, luminescence, Uranium/Thorium and paleomagnetic methods. Models based on recent ethnological findings from Africa sharpen our understanding of the possible mixing of societies in the past. Moreover, complex algorithms such as the "Human Dispersal Model" which describes the expansion of hunter-gatherer societies and population development are presented for South-Eastern to Central Europe between 45,000 and 25,000 years ago. Last but not least, educational theories, teaching material and an Open Educational Resource are presented to facilitate the integration of the results from CRC 806 into school-class lectures and to foster competencies in argumentation and comparison. The data presented in this volume are a valuable reference for experts in archaeology, geosciences, anthropology and ethnology including life-science students and academics. The book may be used as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate students, for interested school teachers and the public. It should be attractive and relevant to all readers interested in understanding the pre-history of our own species, their migration routes and motivation to migrate, triggered by complex interactions of their culture and environment.