Pollution and threats to the environment

The proceedings of the joint BMB 15 and ECSA 27 Symposium provides the reader with some of the advances in the study of biology, ecology, and physical and biochemical modelling of enclosed or semi-enclosed marine, brackish and estuarine systems (the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the White Sea, the Black Sea, and the Ionian Sea).

GeoENV96, the First European Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications held in Lisbon, was conceived to bring together researchers, mostly from, but not limited to Europe, working on environmental issues approached by geostatistical methods.

Our understanding of the quantitative aspects of free radical chemistry and the involvement of radicals in such areas as biology, medicine, the environment, etc.

This Special Issue of Water, Air and Soil Pollution offers contributions from the th 18 IUFRO workshop on Air Pollution Stress, Forest Responses to the Pollution st Climate of the 21 Century held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from September 21 to 23,1998.

Global pesticide use is currently estimated at approximately 2.

Environmental Hydrology presents a unified approach to the role of hydrology in environmental planning and management, emphasizing the consideration of the hydrological continuum in determining the fate and migration of chemicals as well as micro-organisms in the environment, both below the ground as well as on it.

Environmental informatics is a field of applied computer science that develops and uses the techniques of information processing for environmental protection, research and engineering.

This Special Issue of Water, Air, and Soil Pollution offers original contributions from BIOGEOMON, The Third International Symposium on Ecosystem Behavior, which was held on the campus ofVillanova University from June 21-25, 1997.

Bioprocess engineering has played a key role in biotechnology, contributing towards bringing the exciting new discoveries of molecular and cellular biology into the applied sphere, and in maintaining established processes, some centuries-old, efficient and essential for today's industry.

Radioactivity can be detected at different levels in almost all objects all over the world, including the human body.

Over recent years there has been an increasing awareness of the risks of locating hazardous industries near heavily populated, environmentally sensitive areas.

As the coastal human population increases in the United States, there will likely be increasing environmental and socioeconomic pressures on our coastal and estuarine environments.

Much of Europe has been complaining recently of unseasonal weathe- disastrous floods in Eastern Europe, temperatures reaching over 40"e;C in Central Europe, no decent rain for months in parts of the Balkans, coupled with unusually long and severe frosts in winter.

The effects of light pollution on flora, fauna -including humans and their widely varying night-time activities- are often subtle and need extensive field studies to be quantified in a sensible manner.

Life Cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for environmental decision-support in relation to products from the cradle to the grave.

This is the first book to examine comprehensively the chlorine industry and its effects on the environment.

During recent decades, millions of tonnes of man-made chemicals have been produced and released into the environment, with very little safety testing.

During the last century international trade has become indispensable for many economies.

Most publications on heavy metals and the environment have focused on environmental pathways and risks.

The complexity of issues requiring rational decision making grows and thus such decisions are becoming more and more difficult, despite advances in methodology and tools for decision support and in other areas of research.

In the present scenario, stresses induced due to global environmental change have indeed become a focal point of researches and study programmes worldwide.

In the field of biosensors the previous focus has been almost entirely on medical diagnostics.

The threats posed by air pollution and climate change have resulted in considerable public debate about forest condition and growth during the past two decades.

Climate variability has major impacts in many parts of the world, including Australia.

In the climate change discussion, non-CO2 greenhouse gases (NCGGs) received official political recognition for the first time in 1997, when agreement was reached on the Kyoto Protocol.

Response to Marine Oil Pollution - Review and Assessment is the essential source book, now updated, for all involved in marine oil pollution consequences and response.

The Second European Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Ap- plications took place in Valencia, November 18-20, 1998.

In the continuing fight against organic environmental xenobiotics, the initial success attributed to bioremediation has paled, in part due to the low availability of xenobiotics entrapped within a soil or sediment matrix.

By their adoption of Agenda 21, most of the world's governments have acknowledged the need for sustainable development.

In recent years, the adequacy of collected water quality data and the performance of existing monitoring networks have been seriously evaluated for two basic reasons.

This book is the outgrowth of the COMETT II Course on Advanced Instru- mentation, Data Interpretation, and Control of Biotechnological Processes organized by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Universiteit Gent, and held at Gent, Belgium, October 1994.

Since 1950 the population of the world has more than doubled, and the proportion of people living in cities has increased by a factor of four.

The diverse nature of environmental problems mankind has encountered within the last decade has developed a new understanding of the nature of environmental processes.

This volume summarises the result of an interdisciplinary research programme entitled `Rehabilitation of the Atmosphere of the New States of Germany - Effects on Terrestrial Ecosystems'.

Environmental issues continue to burden governments and economies throughout the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union.

11.

In regions as densely populated as Western Europe, prediction of the ecological implications of pollutant transport are important in order to minimise damage in the case of accidents, and to evaluate the possible influence of existing or planned sources.

Happy he who could learn the causes of things (Virgil, Georgics 11) There is clearly a place for a book on the environmental aspects of trace elements in coal, especially with the increasing use of coal for power production.

Wetlands could be described as land and water at Tropical wetlands: one and the same time, and as such are very specific on the brink ecosystems.

When this two-day meeting was proposed, it was certainly not conceived as a celebration, much less as a party.

Based on a unique industrial European membership, the European Oceanic Association, "e;non-profit Association has as its object the pooling of talents, resources and ex- perience in the marine field with the purpose of promoting in Europe a concentration of efforts to foster the study and exploration of the seas in the light of their industrial exploitation"e; (articZe 2 of the statutes).

The report examines the extent of environmental damage in the Community and in certain other European countries that may be attributable to acid pollutant emissions within Member States.

Environmental pollution is one of the main problems to confront humanity, with the heavy metals occupying a leading role among the most pernicious pollutants.

In situ remediation techniques have experienced a boom over the last few years, thereby producing a wide range of valuable experiences.

Acknowledgements Conference Summary R.

The General Assembly of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in its meeting on August 28, 1994, selected for 1996 only four Mechanics Symposia, of which ours is the only one related to Fluid Mechanics: Variable Density Low Speed Turbulent Flows.

This volume comprises the proceedings of the First International Rehovot Conference on Modem Agriculture and the Environment, held at the Rehovot Campus of the Faculty of Agriculture, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 2-6 October 1994.

`Are the Great Lakes getting better or worse?

An international symposium on `Ocean, River and Lakes: Energy and Substance Transfers at Interfaces' was held in Nantes, France in October 1996.