Ecological Risks of Emerging Pollutants in Urbanizing Regions

This book characterizes the major pollution patterns of emerging contaminants, such as sources, emission effluents, temporal and spatial distributions, multi-media transportation and transformation processes, exposure pathways to ecosystems and humans, and ecological risks. Based on this, it establishes an urbanizing region management concept and highlights how urbanization and its regional ecology have evolved into a more integrated vision. It also decouples the relations between urbanization and emissions of emerging pollutants that are framed within a broad socio-ecological context considering institutions, policies, and governance. All the theory, methods, and case studies have been taken from the authors’ publications, which have undergone rigorous international peer review. The book presents the spatial distribution, pathways, and flow diagrams of the pollutants as well as the interactions between urbanization and regional pollution and includes detailed figures and pictures. It also investigates ecological risk characterization and expression using maps based on geographic information systems to illustrate the general profile and the spatial variation of risks.

The book is a valuable resource for postgraduates, researchers, academics, environmental NGOs, and regional managers such as urban planners, environmental agency staff, legal regulators, and decision makers. Bridging the gap between environmental science and policy, it offers interdisciplinary theory, approaches, and case studies that facilitate applications of frontier science in ecology and environmental science to regional social and economic development.