This is the first truly ecosystem-oriented book on peatlands. It adopts an ecosystems approach to understanding the world's boreal peatlands. The focus is on biogeochemical patterns and processes, production, decomposition, and peat accumulation, and it provides additional information on animal and fungal diversity. A recurring theme is the legacy of boreal peatlands as impressive accumulators of carbon as peat over millennia.
Provides the conceptual backbone and specific information necessary for the ecologically sound restoration and sustainable development of boreal ecosystems.
In a world filled with breathtaking beauty, we have often overlooked the elusive magic of certain landscapes. A cloudy river flows into an Arctic wetland where sandhill cranes and muskoxen dwell. Further south, cypress branches hang low over dismal swamps. Places like these-collectively known as swamplands or peatlands-often go unnoticed for their ecological splendor. They are as globally significant as rainforests, yet, because of their reputation as wastelands, they are being systematically drained and degraded. Swamplands celebrates these wild places, as journalist Edward Struzik highlights the unappreciated struggle to save peatlands by scientists, conservationists, and landowners around the world. An ode to peaty landscapes in all their offbeat glory, the book is also a demand for awareness of the myriad threats they face. It inspires us to see the beauty and importance in these least likely of places. Our planet's survival might depend on it.
Based on more than 20 years of research and lecturing, Jordi Vil...-Guerau de Arellano and his team's textbook provides an excellent introduction to the interactions between the atmosphere and the land for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and a reference text for researchers in atmospheric physics and chemistry, hydrology, and plant physiology. The combination of the book, which provides the essential theoretical concepts, and the associated interactive Chemistry Land-surface Atmosphere Soil Slab (CLASS) software, which provides hands-on practical exercises and allows students to design their own numerical experiments, will prove invaluable for learning about many aspects of the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system. This book has a modular and flexible structure, allowing instructors to accommodate it to their own learning-outcome needs.
Fire plays a key role in Earth system processes. Wildfires influence the carbon cycle and the nutrient balance of our planet, and may even play a role in regulating the oxygen content of our atmosphere. The evolutionary history of plants has been intimately tied to fire and this in part explains the distribution of our ecosystems and their ability to withstand the effects of natural fires today. Fire Phenomena and the Earth System brings together the various subdisciplines within fire science to provide a synthesis of our understanding of the role of wildfire in the Earth system. The book shows how knowledge of fire phenomena and the nature of combustion of natural fuels can be used to understand modern wildfires, interpret fire events in the geological record and to understand the role of fire in a variety of Earth system processes. By bringing together chapters written by leading international researchers from a range of geological, environmental, chemical and engineering disciplines, the book will stimulate the exchange of ideas and knowledge across these subject areas. Fire Phenomena and the Earth System provides a truly interdisciplinary guide that can inform us about Earth’s past, present and beyond. Readership: Advanced students and researchers across a wide range of earth, environmental and life sciences, including biogeochemistry, paleoclimatology, atmospheric science, palaeontology and paleoecology, combustion science, ecology and forestry.
This book provides a comprehensive and up to date overview of peatland ecosystems. It examines the entire range of biota present in this habitat and considers management, conservation, and restoration issues.
The aim of this guidebook is to support the reduction of GHG emissions from managed peatlands and present guidance for responsible management practices that can maintain peatlands ecosystem services while sustaining and improving local livelihoods. This guidebook also provides an overview of the present knowledge on peatlands, including their geographic distribution, ecological characteristics and socio-economic importance.
Covers the influencing factors, distribution, evolution, classification, regionalization and methodologies for study of the wetlands of Canada. Specific chapters are devoted to the arctic, subarctic, boreal, prairies, eastern temperate, Atlantic and Pacific regions as well as the salt marshes of Canada.
