Book Chapters

A water budget is an accounting of water movement into and out of, and storage change within, some control volume. Universal and adaptable are adjectives that reflect key features of water-budget methods for estimating recharge. The universal concept of mass conservation of water implies that water-budget methods are applicable over any space and time scales (Healy et al., 2007). The water budget

No abstract available.

This chapter on wildlife underpasses on U.S. Highway 64 in North Carolina is from a book on highways, wildlife, and habitat connectivity. U.S. 64 is an important route in North Carolina connecting major population centers and highways that underwent a major upgrade from a two-lane rural road to a major highway. New routes were proposed for a large portion of the project (28 miles) to improve drive

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Extending nearly 400 km from Sabine Pass on the Texas-Louisiana border east to the Chandeleur Islands, the Louisiana coastal zone (Fig. 11.1) along the north-central Gulf of Mexico is the southern terminus of the largest drainage basin in North America (>3.3 million km2), which includes the Mississippi River delta plain where approximately 6.2 million kilograms per year of sediment is delivered to

Vadose water is subsurface water between the land surface and the saturated zone below the water table. The vadose (or unsaturated) zone includes soil water, which is immediately available to the biosphere. It acts as a controlling agent in the transmission of water and other substances between various components of the earth system: aquifers, land surface, bodies of water, atmosphere, and so on.

No abstract available.

While research projects have been conducted to examine the impacts and effectiveness of China's ecological restoration programs, few of them represent integrated, systematic efforts. The objective of this chapter is thus to articulate and outline a methodology for an integrative assessment, which, we believe, should embrace both the environmental and socioeconomic changes and engage investigations

Wetland ecosystems, known as the “kidneys of the earth,” are an important habitat for aquatic fl ora and fauna and provide valuable services and goods for the human beings. The wetlands in Poyang Lake of the Southeast China coastal region are one of the fi rst national natural reserves listed in the Ramsar convention in 1992. Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China and its natural wetl

Land use/land cover (LULC) is one of the most convincing aspects of the global change that has occurred in the terrestrial ecosystem (Meyer and Turner II, 1994; IPCC, 2001). Many changes in LULC refl ect the impacts of human activities on global environment (e.g., Houghton et al., 1999). Change in LULC is also recognized as a main driver affecting the local, regional, and global climate (e.g., Cha

Food security assessment in many developing countries, such as Afghanistan, is vital because the early identification of populations at risk can enable the timely and appropriate actions needed to avert widespread hunger, destitution, or even famine. The assessment is complex, requiring the simultaneous consideration of multiple socioeconomic and environmental variables. Since large and widely dis