John B. Thornes - Böcker

The Mediterranean has been subject to changing human settlement and land use patterns for millennia, and has a history of human exploitation in an inherently unstable landscape. Environmental Issues in the Mediterranean reviews both physical and social aspects of this region, in relation to its environment.Ideal for students who are studying a range of environmental issues, but want to see them linked within one regional context. The book begins with an introduction to the Mediterranean region, its history, physical and human geography and its environmental problems. It then goes on to examine:* The Dynamic Environment - climate variables and fluctuations, vegetation, the hydrological cycle of the basin and its watershed, processes of erosion, fire and the Mediterranean Sea*The Human Impact on the Environment - prehistoric and historic land use, traditional agriculture, rural and urban settlement and use of mineral resources* The Mediterranean Environment Under Increasing Pressure - the present human landscape, changes in agriculture in the 20th century, the impact of depopulation, pollution, water resources, desertification and potential climatic change.It then concludes with a discussion of the region's on-going environmental issues of water resources, land degradation, agricultural intensification and tourism, and considers how these can be approached using management techniques and national and regional policies.

Desertification includes land degradation due to both climatic and anthropogenic causes, where land includes water, soil, and the biosphere.This book presents the most recent findings from the European Community's MEDALUS project, which was formed to understand and manage semi-arid environments that are undergoing great change. Covers climate and land use processes and responses in the MediterraneanFirst book to provide guidelines for the management of land degradation in Mediterranean environmentsBased on first-hand experience of the problems by those responsible for solving them

Desertification is land degradation due to climatic and anthropogenic causes where land includes soil, water and the biological productive capacity. This has become a major environmental, economic and political issue in Mediterranean countries. In order to address the problem in the European countries of the Mediterranean, the European Commission established a number of major research projects under its DGXII Environment and Climate Programme MEDALUS (Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use). This book describes the results from the first phase of the project, dealing with local physical, socio-economic and political controls on desertification. In particular the book concentrates on the models developed, calibrated and validated, the field investigations into biological, hydrological and erosional processes at the seven main sites, and provides an introduction to the problems associated with global warming in the Mediterranean context. GIS and remote sensing are an integral part of the investigation and the results are described and discussed in detail.