Norman J. Rosenberg - Böcker

Recognizing drought as a characteristic feature of the North American climate, the contributors to this volume seek to organize available evidence of both prehistoric and modern drought events and to provide information on the severity of droughts, especially those which have occurred since weather records have been kept. The impacts of modern-era droughts on production and the potential impact of future droughts on the productivity of North American agriculture are examined. The authors explore the effeats of past droughts on the social, cultural, and political life of the population; the possible effects of drought on today's energy- and techno logy-intensive society; and the ramifications of drought for the national economy. The social and political strategies that local, state, and federal governments may use to meliorate the effects of drought are also considered, as are some possible technological defenses against drought—weather modification, expanded irrigation, new techniques of water harvesting and storage, and new agronomic adaptations. Finally, the critical question of whether future droughts can be forecast is examined.

This book explores the effects of past droughts on the social, cultural, and political life of the population of North America; the possible effects of drought on energy- and technology-intensive society; and the ramifications of drought for the national economy.

An up-to-date and much enlarged edition of this text on the microclimate, emphasizing its effect on plants, animals, and humans. Provides a basis for understanding environmental biophysics, then covers the prediction, manipulation, and management of the climate near the ground.

General circulation models state that the central United States (and other mid-latitude continental regions) will become warmer and drier as the result of greenhouse warming. On this premise, the dustbowl period of the 1930s was selected as an analogue of climate change and its weather records imposed on the Missouri-Iowa-Kansas region to assess how current agriculture, forestry, water resources and energy and the entire regional economy would be affected. The same climate was also imposed on a MINK region 40 years into the future, by which time climate change may actually be felt, to assess whether technological and societal change would alter the region's vulnerability to climate change. Another premise of the study was that people would not suffer the impacts of climate change passively, but would use available tools to ease the stress. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, expected to be the major cause of greenhouse warming, also works to improve plant growth and reduce plant water use. Therefore the effects of this "Co2 fertilization" were also considered in the analysis.The results, some of them surprising, of this fully-integrated analysis of climate change impacts and responses are reported in this book.

This volume characterizes the current state of natural science and socioeconomic modelling of the impacts of climate change and current climate variability on forests, grasslands and water. It identifies what can be done currently with impact assessments and suggests how to undertake such assessments. Impediments to linking biophysical and socioeconomic models into integrated assessments for policy purposes are identified, and recommendations for future research activities to improve the state of the art and remove these impediments to model integration are provided. This book is for natural and social scientists with an interest in the impacts of climate change on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their socioeconomic impacts, and policy makers interested in understanding the status of current assessment capabilities and in identifying priority areas for future research.

Soil carbon sequestration can play a strategic role in controlling the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and thereby help mitigate climatic change. There are scientific opportunities to increase the capacity of The vast areas of degraded and desertified lands throughout the world offer great potential for the sequestration of very large quantities of carbon. If credits are to be bought and sold for carbon storage, quick and inexpensive instruments and methods will be needed to monitor and verify that carbon is actually being added and maintained in soils. Large-scale soil carbon sequestration projects pose economic and social problems that need to be explored. This book focuses on scientific and implementation issues that need to be addressed in order to advance the discipline of carbon sequestration from theory to reality. The main issues discussed in the book are broad and cover aspects of basic science, monitoring, and implementation. The opportunity to restore productivity of degraded lands through carbon sequestration is examined in detail.

Originally published in 1989, Greenhouse Warming combines papers presented at a workshop held in 1987 to discuss climate change. This study identifies ways that climate impacts upon agriculture, forestry and water resources in order to advise on safeguarding against drought, flood and extreme cold as well as what policies can be implemented to adapt to the probable physical and socioeconomic impacts of climate change. This study will be of interest to students of environmental studies.

Originally published in 1989, Greenhouse Warming combines papers presented at a workshop held in 1987 to discuss climate change. This study identifies ways that climate impacts upon agriculture, forestry and water resources in order to advise on safeguarding against drought, flood and extreme cold as well as what policies can be implemented to adapt to the probable physical and socioeconomic impacts of climate change. This study will be of interest to students of environmental studies.

In this volume, an improved Integrated Assessment methodology is used to analyze climate change impacts on agriculture, water resources, unmanaged ecosystems, irrigation, and land use in the United States and the economic implications of these impacts. This book contains a series of papers documenting the methods, models, analysis, and results of this integrated assessment for a wide-ranging set of scenarios describing future climate change. Innovations described include the integration of water resource and agricultural modeling and the refinement of an agriculture and land-use economics model to incorporate results from process-level ecosystem models of agriculture, water, and natural ecosystem resources. Scenarios selected for this study address a range of uncertainties associated with choice of climate model, presence or absence of a ‘CO2-fertilization effect’, impacts on international trade in agricultural commodities, and their consequences for producers and consumers. Reprinted from Climatic Change, Vol. 69, No. 1, 2005

WHY THIS BOOK? This book is an exploration of the possibility that a significant portion of the North American Great Plains (NAGP), now primarily in rangeland, corn, soybean, and small-grain production, can be converted to the production of biomass-energy crops. Biomass can be used as a substitute for some of the fossil fuels the use of which is now increasing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO ) 2 and contributing to global warming and climatic change. Such a land use change to biomass could lead not only to a global good but also to specific economic and environmental benefits for the NAGP region. This analysis is prompted by the following facts and trends: The emission of CO from fossil fuel combustion and tropical deforesta- 2 tion and the rising concentrations of other greenhouse gases make global warming a virtual certainty in this century; indeed the evidence is strong that a warming is already discernible. Global warming will lead to climatic change and, while the geographic d- tribution of this change is not yet known, most general circulation models (GCMs) suggest that midcontinental regions in the northern hemisphere (such as the NAGP) are likely to become drier as well as warmer. NAGP, one of the world’s major breadbaskets, is subject to periodic droughts and other climatic stresses that may worsen with global wa- ing.

Soil carbon sequestration can play a strategic role in controlling the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and thereby help mitigate climatic change. There are scientific opportunities to increase the capacity of soils to store carbon and remove it from circulation for longer periods of time. The vast areas of degraded and desertified lands throughout the world offer great potential for the sequestration of very large quantities of carbon. If credits are to be bought and sold for carbon storage, quick and inexpensive instruments and methods will be needed to monitor and verify that carbon is actually being added and maintained in soils. Large-scale soil carbon sequestration projects pose economic and social problems that need to be explored. This book focuses on scientific and implementation issues that need to be addressed in order to advance the discipline of carbon sequestration from theory to reality. The main issues discussed in the book are broad and cover aspects of basic science, monitoring, and implementation. The opportunity to restore productivity of degraded lands through carbon sequestration is examined in detail.This book will be of special interest to professionals in agronomy, soil science, and climatology.

WHY THIS BOOK? This book is an exploration of the possibility that a significant portion of the North American Great Plains (NAGP), now primarily in rangeland, corn, soybean, and small-grain production, can be converted to the production of biomass-energy crops. Biomass can be used as a substitute for some of the fossil fuels the use of which is now increasing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO ) 2 and contributing to global warming and climatic change. Such a land use change to biomass could lead not only to a global good but also to specific economic and environmental benefits for the NAGP region. This analysis is prompted by the following facts and trends: The emission of CO from fossil fuel combustion and tropical deforesta- 2 tion and the rising concentrations of other greenhouse gases make global warming a virtual certainty in this century; indeed the evidence is strong that a warming is already discernible. Global warming will lead to climatic change and, while the geographic d- tribution of this change is not yet known, most general circulation models (GCMs) suggest that midcontinental regions in the northern hemisphere (such as the NAGP) are likely to become drier as well as warmer. NAGP, one of the world’s major breadbaskets, is subject to periodic droughts and other climatic stresses that may worsen with global wa- ing.

In this volume, an improved Integrated Assessment methodology is used to analyze climate change impacts on agriculture, water resources, unmanaged ecosystems, irrigation, and land use in the United States and the economic implications of these impacts. This book contains a series of papers documenting the methods, models, analysis, and results of this integrated assessment for a wide-ranging set of scenarios describing future climate change. Innovations described include the integration of water resource and agricultural modeling and the refinement of an agriculture and land-use economics model to incorporate results from process-level ecosystem models of agriculture, water, and natural ecosystem resources. Scenarios selected for this study address a range of uncertainties associated with choice of climate model, presence or absence of a ‘CO2-fertilization effect’, impacts on international trade in agricultural commodities, and their consequences for producers and consumers. Reprinted from Climatic Change, Vol. 69, No. 1, 2005

This volume characterizes the current state of natural science and socioeconomic modeling of the impacts of climate change and current climate variability on forests, grasslands, and water. It identifies what can be done currently with impact assessments and suggests how to undertake such assessments. Impediments to linking biophysical and socioeconomic models into integrated assessments for policy purposes are identified, and recommendations for future research activities to improve the state of the art and remove these impediments to model integration are provided. This book is for natural and social scientists with an interest in the impacts of climate change on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their socioeconomic impacts, and policy makers interested in understanding the status of current assessment capabilities and in identifying priority areas for future research.