Author: Thomas S. Bianchi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199764174
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185
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Book Description
Humans have had a long relationship with the ebb and flow of tides on river deltas around the world. The fertile soils of river deltas provided early human civilizations with a means of farming crops and obtaining seafood from the highly productive marshes and shallow coastal waters associated with deltas. However, this relationship has at times been both nurturing and tumultuous for the development of early civilizations. The vicissitudes of seasonal changes in river flooding events as well as frequently shifting deltaic soils made life for these early human settlements challenging. These natural transient processes that affect the supply of sediments to deltas today are in many ways very similar to what they have been over the millennia of human settlements. But something else has been altered in the natural rhythm of these cycles. The massive expansion of human populations around the world in both the lower and upper drainage basins of these large rivers have changed the manner in which sediments and water are delivered to deltas. Because of the high density of human populations found in these regions, humans have developed elaborate hydrological engineering schemes in an attempt to "tame" these deltas. The goal of this book is to provide information on the historical relationship between humans and deltas that will hopefully encourage immediate preparation for coastal management plans in response to the impending inundation of major cities, as a result of global change around the world.
Author: Robert J. Nicholls
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319710931
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 615
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Book Description
This book answers key questions about environment, people and their shared future in deltas. It develops a systematic and holistic approach for policy-orientated analysis for the future of these regions. It does so by focusing on ecosystem services in the world’s largest, most populous and most iconic delta region, that of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. The book covers the conceptual basis, research approaches and challenges, while also providing a methodology for integration across multiple disciplines, offering a potential prototype for assessments of deltas worldwide. Ecosystem Services for Well-Being in Deltas analyses changing ecosystem services in deltas; the health and well-being of people reliant on them; the continued central role of agriculture and fishing; and the implications of aquaculture in such environments.The analysis is brought together in an integrated and accessible way to examine the future of the Ganges Brahmaputra delta based on a near decade of research by a team of the world’s leading scientists on deltas and their human and environmental dimensions. This book is essential reading for students and academics within the fields of Environmental Geography, Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy focused on solving the world’s most critical challenges of balancing humans with their environments. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Author: Thomas S. Bianchi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190627700
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Humans have had a long relationship with the ebb and flow of tides on river deltas around the world. The fertile soils of river deltas provided early human civilizations with a means of farming crops and obtaining seafood from the highly productive marshes and shallow coastal waters associated with deltas. However, this relationship has at times been both nurturing and tumultuous for the development of early civilizations. The vicissitudes of seasonal changes in river flooding events as well as frequently shifting deltaic soils made life for these early human settlements challenging. These natural transient processes that affect the supply of sediments to deltas today are in many ways very similar to what they have been over the millennia of human settlements. But something else has been altered in the natural rhythm of these cycles. The massive expansion of human populations around the world in both the lower and upper drainage basins of these large rivers have changed the manner in which sediments and water are delivered to deltas. Because of the high density of human populations found in these regions, humans have developed elaborate hydrological engineering schemes in an attempt to "tame" these deltas. The goal of this book is to provide information on the historical relationship between humans and deltas that will hopefully encourage immediate preparation for coastal management plans in response to the impending inundation of major cities, as a result of global change around the world.
Author: Robert J. Nicholls
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030235173
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
The Anthropocene is the human-dominated modern era that has accelerated social, environmental and climate change across the world in the last few decades. This open access book examines the challenges the Anthropocene presents to the sustainable management of deltas, both the many threats as well as the opportunities. In the world’s deltas the Anthropocene is manifest in major land use change, the damming of rivers, the engineering of coasts and the growth of some of the world’s largest megacities; deltas are home to one in twelve of all people in the world. The book explores bio-physical and social dynamics and makes clear adaptation choices and trade-offs that underpin policy and governance processes, including visionary delta management plans. It details new analysis to illustrate these challenges, based on three significant and contrasting deltas: the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, Mahanadi and Volta. This multi-disciplinary, policy-orientated volume is strongly aligned to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals as delta populations often experience extremes of poverty, gender and structural inequality, variable levels of health and well-being, while being vulnerable to extreme and systematic climate change.
Author: K. J. Beven
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
The book is the first in the Benchmark Papers in Hydrology series. Each volume tackles a specific topic and is edited by a recognised scientific authority. The volume editor selects and provides an introduction to, and a commentary on, the papers that are reproduced in that volume. Thirty-one papers spanning the period 1933 - 1984, commencing with Horton's earliest on infiltration in the hydrological cycle, are reproduced in this book.
Author: Debjani Bhattacharyya
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108681727
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 485
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Book Description
What happens when a distant colonial power tries to tame an unfamiliar terrain in the world's largest tidal delta? This history of dramatic ecological changes in the Bengal Delta from 1760 to 1920 involves land, water and humans, tracing the stories and struggles that link them together. Pushing beyond narratives of environmental decline, Bhattacharyya argues that 'property-thinking', a governing tool critical in making land and water discrete categories of bureaucratic and legal management, was at the heart of colonial urbanization and the technologies behind the draining of Calcutta. The story of ecological change is narrated alongside emergent practices of land speculation and transformation in colonial law. Bhattacharyya demonstrates how this history continues to shape our built environments with devastating consequences, as shown in the Bay of Bengal's receding coastline.
Author: Mikko Saikku
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820325341
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
This environmental history of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta places the Delta's economic and cultural history in an environmental context. It reveals the human aspects of the region's natural history, including land reclamation, slave and sharecropper economies, ethnic and racial perceptions of land ownership and stewardship, and even blues music.
Author: Adam Mandelman
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807173193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
In The Place with No Edge, Adam Mandelman follows three centuries of human efforts to inhabit and control the lower Mississippi River delta, the vast watery flatlands spreading across much of southern Louisiana. He finds that people’s use of technology to tame unruly nature in the region has produced interdependence with—rather than independence from—the environment. Created over millennia by deposits of silt and sand, the Mississippi River delta is one of the most dynamic landscapes in North America. From the eighteenth-century establishment of the first French fort below New Orleans to the creation of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan in the 2000s, people have attempted to harness and master this landscape through technology. Mandelman examines six specific interventions employed in the delta over time: levees, rice flumes, pullboats, geophysical surveys, dredgers, and petroleum cracking. He demonstrates that even as people seemed to gain control over the environment, they grew more deeply intertwined with—and vulnerable to—it. The greatest folly, Mandelman argues, is to believe that technology affords mastery. Environmental catastrophes of coastal land loss and petrochemical pollution may appear to be disconnected, but both emerged from the same fantasy of harnessing nature to technology. Similarly, the levee system’s failures and the subsequent deluge after Hurricane Katrina owe as much to centuries of human entanglement with the delta as to global warming’s rising seas and strengthening storms. The Place with No Edge advocates for a deeper understanding of humans’ relationship with nature. It provides compelling evidence that altering the environment—whether to make it habitable, profitable, or navigable —inevitably brings a response, sometimes with unanticipated consequences. Mandelman encourages a mindfulness of the ways that our inventions engage with nature and a willingness to intervene in responsible, respectful ways.
Author: John W. Day
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401787336
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
Human impacts and emerging mega-trends such as climate change and energy scarcity will impact natural resource management in this century. This is especially true for deltas because of their ecological and economic importance and their sensitivity to climate change. The Mississippi delta is one of the largest in the world and has been strongly impacted by human activities. Currently there is an ambitious plan for restoration of the delta. This book, by a renown group of delta experts, provides an overview of the challenges facing the delta and charts - a way forward to sustainable management.
Author: P.H. Nienhuis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402082134
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 640
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Book Description
This unique text presents the environmental history of the lowland delta of the rivers Rhine and Meuse. It is an ecological story of evolving human-environmental relations and how they cope with climate change and sea-level rise. The text offers a combination of in-depth ecology and environmental history. The synthesis presents a blueprint for future management and restoration, from progressive reclamation of land in the past, to adaptation of human needs to the forces of nature.
