Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals

Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 543
Release: 1996-12-21
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309055784

Where should the United States focus its long-term efforts to improve the nation's environment? What are the nation's most important environmental issues? What role should science and technology play in addressing these issues? Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals provides the current thinking and answers to these questions. Based on input from a range of experts and interested individuals, including representatives of industry, government, academia, environmental organizations, and Native American communities, this book urges policymakers to: Use social science and risk assessment to guide decision-making. Monitor environmental changes in a more thorough, consistent, and coordinated manner. Reduce the adverse impact of chemicals on the environment. Move away from the use of fossil fuels. Adopt an environmental approach to engineering that reduces the use of natural resources. Substantially increase our understanding of the relationship between population and consumption. This book will be of special interest to policymakers in government and industry; environmental scientists, engineers, and advocates; and faculty, students, and researchers.

Green Plans

Green Plans
Author: Huey D. Johnson
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780803275966

Green Plans are the most effective strategies yet developed for moving from industrial environmental deterioration to postindustrial sustainability. Huey D. Johnson provides the first detailed and understandable examination of the theory, implementation, and performance of green plans in the Netherlands, Canada, and New Zealand. Plans being considered in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, and the European Community are also discussed. Green plans will serve future generations as models of creative collaboration between government and business.

Tools to Aid Environmental Decision Making

Tools to Aid Environmental Decision Making
Author: Virginia H. Dale
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2012-11-26
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1461214181

This book is unique in identifying and presenting tools to environmental decision-makers to help them improve the quality and clarity of their work. These tools range from software to policy approaches, and from environmental databases to focus groups. Equally of value to environmental managers, and students in environmental risk, policy, economics and law.

Water Quality Indices

Water Quality Indices
Author: Tabassum Abbasi
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2012-03-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0444543058

This book covers water quality indices (WQI) in depth – it describes what purpose they serve, how they are generated, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how to make the best use of them. It is a concise and unique guide to WQIs for chemists, chemical/environmental engineers and government officials. Whereas it is easy to express the quantity of water, it is very difficult to express its quality because a large number of variables determine the water quality. WQIs seek to resolve the difficulty by translating a set of a large number of variables to a one-digit or a two-digit numeral. They are essential in communicating the status of different water resources in terms of water quality and the impact of various factors on it to policy makers, service personnel, and the lay public. Further they are exceedingly useful in the monitoring and management of water quality. With the importance of water and water quality increasing exponentially, the importance of this topic is also set to increase enormously because only with the use of indices is it possible to assess, express, communicate, and monitor the overall quality of any water source. - Provides a concise guide to WQIs: their purpose and generation - Compares existing methods and WQIs and outlines strengths and weaknesses - Makes recommendations on how the indices should be used and under what circumstances they apply

Ecological Indicators

Ecological Indicators
Author: Daniel H. McKenzie
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 858
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1461546591

Today environmental problems of unprecedented magnitude confront planet earth. The sobering fact is that a whole range of human activities is affecting our global environment as profoundly as the billions of years of evolution that preceded our tenure on Earth. The pressure on vital natural resources in the developing world and elsewhere is intense, and the destruction of tropical forests, wildlife habitat, and other irreplaceable resources, is alarming. Climate change, ozone depletion, loss of genetic diversity, and marine pollution are critical global environmental concerns. Their cumulative impact threatens to destroy the planet's natural resources. The need to address this situation is urgent. More than at any previous moment in history, nature and ecological systems are in human hands, dependent on human efforts. The earth is an interconnected and interdependent global ecosystem, and change in one part of the system often causes unexpected change in other parts. Atmospheric, oceanic, wetland, terrestrial and other ecological systems have a finite capacity to absorb the environmental degradation caused by human behavior. The need for an environmentally sound, sustainable economy to ease this degradation is evident and urgent. Policies designed to stimulate economic development by foregoing pollution controls both destroy the long-term economy and ravage the environment. Over the years, we have sometimes drawn artificial distinctions between the health of individuals and the health of ecosystems. But in the real world, those distinctions do not exist.

Anthropogenic Pollution

Anthropogenic Pollution
Author: Arun Arya
Publisher: The Readers Paradise
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

The global environment has been going through significant challenges in recent times due to a number of factors such as industrial pollution, expansion of agricultural land way beyond the fringe forest zones, destruction of virgin forests, loss of quality agricultural lands due to soil erosion, loss of global wildlife and biodiversity, climate change, global warming, devastating forest fires, floods, draughts, melting of glaciers to mention only a handful. The list could possibly go on and on with never ending items being added covering every aspect of modern human life. But there is an important underlying hidden factor behind all these that we all need to identify and realize. The most alarming fact about this hidden factor is that they are all directly or indirectly impacted by human activities in some way or other. Human civilizations have reached great strides from the earliest days when men first discovered wheel or learnt the art of agriculture and crop and livestock breeding. We have seen the age of computronics, robotics and now moving into the age of biotechnology, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Our science quests have stretched beyond the borders of the home planet and we have even started stretching hands in unlocking the secrets of distant members of our solar system. This is indeed tremendous progress; there could be no doubt about that. But at the same time we also need to remember about the impending darkness too beneath the lamp that provides light to the rest of room. While we are standing in gaining a lot; but are we paying enough attention to what we are also loosing at the same time. The loss of forested areas, building up carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere, pollution of both fresh and salt water via number of toxic chemicals both of inorganic and organic nature, poor quality of the air we are breathing and the catastrophic loss of global biodiversity- are these not a sign of regress instead of the so called and highly cherished progress towards a darker and destructive future. Human or anthropogenic impacts are in turn devastating the planet with our attention being shifted only to the shinning aspect of our civilizations. There is indeed a darker side of every bright picture that is being placed in front of our glaring eyes. There is no silver lining in every cloud that we see on the sky. We are becoming seriously myopic and choosing to ignore the deadly symptoms that are showing up in front of us every now and then as a result of our own activities. Anthropogenic impacts have been devastating to our global ecosystems and are challenging our local environments in a significant manner. As responsible global citizens we strongly believe that we need to voice our concerns to the incessant global environmental pollution happening at every instance at different corners of earth. Hence is the humble effort of coming up with an international, peer-reviewed volume on Anthropogenic Pollution: Causes and Concerns. The current volume is a collection of a number of articles from scientists, academics, researchers, journalists, bureaucrats and technocrats from different parts of the world. Each article talks about a separate story and highlights some specific problems caused by anthropogenic impact and resulting in detrimental forms of environmental pollution. Each article is complete with its table, graphs, diagrams and bibliography to cater to a wide range of readers from serious academics, researchers and students to environmental enthusiasts and general public interested in stretching their boundary of knowledge way beyond traditional education. The volume will also be useful for both under graduate and post graduate students specializing in environmental science/studies and also for the MPhil curriculum and entry level PhD courses at different academic institutes.