Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters

2nd Edition - June 22, 2023
Editors: Ramesh Sivanpillai, John F. Shroder
Language: English
Paperback ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 0 5 0 9 - 9
eBook ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 0 5 8 0 - 8

Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, Second Edition provides an integrated look at major impacts to the Earth’s biosphere caused by diseases, algal blooms, i… Read more

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Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, Second Edition provides an integrated look at major impacts to the Earth’s biosphere caused by diseases, algal blooms, insects, animals, species extinction, deforestation, land degradation, and comet and asteroid strikes, with important implications for humans.

This second edition from Elsevier’s Hazards and Disasters Series incorporates perspectives from the natural and social sciences to offer in-depth coverage of threats from microscopic organisms to celestial objects and their potential impacts. Contributions from expert biological, health, ecological, environmental, wildlife, physical, and health scientists, readers will gain valuable insights on damages, causality, economic impacts, preparedness, and mitigation.

Cover image
Title page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
List of contributors
Editorial foreword
Acknowledgments
Titles and descriptions of the cover images
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Part 1: Biological hazards, risks, and disasters
1.2. Part 2: Environmental hazards, risks, and disasters
Part I. Biological hazards, risks, and disasters
Chapter 2. Harmful algal blooms
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Historic examples of HAB incidents
2.3. HAB incidents in recent decades
2.4. Economic impacts of HABs
2.5. How do blooms form?
2.6. Vulnerability
2.7. Mitigation
2.8. Preparedness
2.9. Response
2.10. Recovery
Chapter 3. Grasshopper infestations and the risks they pose to western North America range and crop lands, North of Mexico
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Taxonomy
3.3. Basic biology
3.4. Ecology
3.5. Grasshopper outbreak damage
3.6. Long-term damage
3.7. Past grasshopper outbreak management
3.8. Early pesticide control efforts
3.9. Recent outbreaks
Chapter 4. Senegalese grasshopper—a major pest of the Sahel
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Distribution and pest status
4.3. Identification
4.4. Life history
4.5. Mortality factors and natural enemies
4.6. Migrations in the Sahel: adaptation and agricultural relevance
4.7. Population dynamics for a nonmodel locust
4.8. Management
4.9. Future directions
Chapter 5. Locusts: An introduction
5.1. Biology and ecology of Acrididae
5.2. Locusts versus grasshoppers
5.3. Pest management challenges
5.4. Natural sciences as necessary—but not sufficient
5.5. The need for new approaches
5.6. Summary
Chapter 6. The Australian plague locust—risk and response
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Ecology of the Australian plague locust
6.3. Population outbreaks
6.4. History of locust outbreaks and control in Australia
6.5. Economic and social impacts
6.6. The Australian plague locust commission and current approaches to locust management in Australia
6.7. The risks and hazards of locust control in Australia
6.8. Future considerations
6.9. Future climate risks
6.10. Conclusions
Chapter 7. The Central American locust: risk and prevention
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Economic and social impacts
7.3. Historical locust outbreak
7.4. Locust polyphenism
7.5. Locust program and regional coordination
7.6. Distribution area of the CAL
7.7. Risk factors
7.8. Risk management through increase the resilience
7.9. Research in new technology
7.10. Conclusions
Chapter 8. Animal hazards—their nature and distribution
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Animal attacks
8.3. Animal accidents
8.4. Diseases contracted from animals
8.5. Property damage and losses caused by animals
8.6. Summary
Chapter 9. Loss of biodiversity: concerns and threats
9.1. Introduction
9.2. How many species?
9.3. Extinction rates
9.4. Reasons for concern
Chapter 10. Threats to the sacred groves of Kerala
10.1. Threats
10.2. Protecting the sacred groves
Chapter 11. Multidrug resistance: a threat to antibiotic era
11.1. Introduction
11.2. History of antibiotics
11.3. Emergence of multidrug resistance
11.4. Drivers of multidrug resistance
11.5. Impact of multidrug resistance
11.6. Strategies to combat MDR
11.7. Conclusion
Part II. Environmental hazards, risks, and disasters
Chapter 12. Chronic environmental diseases: burdens, causes, and response
12.1. What is a chronic environmental disease?
12.2. The global burden of chronic environmental diseases
12.3. Causes of chronic environmental diseases
12.4. Public health response
12.5. Conclusions
Chapter 13. Bleaching of the world's coral reefs
13.1. Symbiosis: the secret of corals' evolutionary success
13.2. Thermal stress and coral bleaching
13.3. Differential tolerances of corals to thermal stress
13.4. Geographic patterns of coral bleaching
13.5. Repercussions of coral bleaching events
13.6. Effects on coral reproduction and recruitment
13.7. Coral recovery following bleaching
13.8. Future coral reefs
13.9. Concluding remarks
Chapter 14. Deforestation
14.1. Definitions
14.2. Rates and extent of deforestation
14.3. Effects of deforestation
Chapter 15. Deforestation in Nepal: status, causes, consequences, and responses
15.1. Introduction
15.2. Nepal
15.3. Vegetation and forest types in Nepal
15.4. Forest status and rate of deforestation in Nepal
15.5. Causes of deforestation in Nepal
15.6. Consequences of deforestation in Nepal
15.7. Responses to deforestation
15.8. Conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 16. Deforestation in Southeast Asia
16.1. Long-term changes in land use in Southeast Asia
16.2. Impacts of logging on the environment
16.3. Impacts of forest fragmentation on the environment
16.4. Impacts of habitat conversion on the environment
16.5. Conservation options
16.6. Conclusion
Chapter 17. Mangroves as coastal rainforests: imminent threats, hazards, and changing status of ecosystem services
17.1. Introduction
17.2. Global distributional pattern
17.3. Environmental services of mangrove ecosystems
17.4. Risks and hazards in the mangroves
17.5. Current status of vulnerability and responses: few case studies
17.6. Impacts of mangrove degradation on the global environment
Chapter 18. Land degradation and environmental change
18.1. Introduction
18.2. Indicators of land degradation
18.3. The global significance
18.4. Drivers
18.5. Conclusions
Chapter 19. Desertification
19.1. Historical roots, evolving definitions, and critiques of desertification
19.2. Drylands and their variability
19.3. Physical, climatic, and anthropogenic drivers of desertification and their impacts
19.4. Approaches to identifying desertification
19.5. Issues related to desertification analysis
19.6. Conclusions and the quest for sustainability in dryland environments
Chapter 20. Land degradation in rangeland ecosystems
20.1. Introduction
20.2. Definition and extent of rangeland degradation
20.3. Causes of rangeland degradation
20.4. Indicators of rangeland degradation
20.5. Monitoring rangeland degradation
20.6. Restoration and the degradation spiral
20.7. Conclusions and future directions
Chapter 21. The Aral Sea disaster: revisiting the past to plan a better future
21.1. Introduction
21.2. Lessons from the past
21.3. Human vulnerability of the Aral Sea region
21.4. Future outlook
Chapter 22. Ecological impacts of climate change
22.1. Introduction
22.2. Observed effects of climate change
22.3. Ecosystem services
22.4. The past and the future
Chapter 23. Understanding the risks of ionizing radiation exposure: a case of dichotomy between science and policy
23.1. Introduction
23.2. The morass of radiation dose terminology
23.3. From radiation dose to radiation risk
23.4. Assigning cancer risk to radiation doses
23.5. Tussle over the LNT model
23.6. The case of gonadal and fetal shielding in radiography
23.7. Concluding remarks
Chapter 24. Meteor impact hazard
24.1. Introduction
24.2. Planetary evidence
24.3. Historical record
24.4. Geologic record
24.5. Surviving meteor craters
24.6. Origins and properties of asteroids, meteoroids, and comets
24.7. Hypervelocity impact
24.8. Ocean impact
24.9. Near Earth asteroids
24.10. Evaluation of impact hazard and mitigation
Index

Ramesh Sivanpillai

Ramesh Sivanpillai is a remote sensing scientist with the University of Wyoming where he teaches remote sensing and environmental sciences courses and directs the WyomingView program. Ramesh received his B. Sc in physics (PSG College of Arts & Science, India); M. Sc in environmental studies (Cochin University of Science & Technology, India); M. Phil in environmental sciences (Bharathiar University, India); M.S in environmental sciences (University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, USA), and PhD in forestry (Texas A&M University, USA). Since 1992, he has been working with remotely sensed data for applications in forestry, rangeland, agriculture, water bodies, disaster monitoring, and land cover/land use mapping. He has worked with national and international agencies, and academic institutions in India, United States of America, Mexico, Mali, Nicaragua, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Kenya, and Australia. Ramesh has published papers and book chapters in remote sensing applications in agriculture, forestry, environmental and habitat mapping, water and floods. He has served on the Board of Directors of AmericaView and is a member in the board of the ASPRS-RMR chapter. He serves as the associate editor for the Journal of Applied Remote Sensing and Frontiers of Earth Science. Ramesh has received the Project Manager training from the International Charter on Space Disasters and managed two of its activations in 2011 (flooding) and 2018 (wildfires). Ramesh was elected as the Fellow of the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing in 2021 for his contributions to remote sensing education and applied research.

Affiliations and expertise

Senior Research Scientist, Wyoming GIS Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA

John F. Shroder

Dr. John (Jack) F. Shroder received his bachelor’s degree in geology from Union College in 1961; his masters in geology from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst in 1963, and his Ph.D. in geology at the University of Utah in 1967. He has been actively pursuing research on landforms and natural resources in the high mountain environments of the Rocky Mountains, the Afghanistan Hindu Kush, and the Karakoram Himalaya of Pakistan for over a half century. His teaching specialties have been primarily geomorphology, but also physical and historical geology and several other courses at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where he was the founding professor of the Geology major. While there he was instrumental in founding the Center for Afghanistan Studies in 1972, and he was the lead geologist for the Bethsaida Archaeological Project in Israel in the 1990s. He taught geology as an NSF-, USAID, and Fulbright-sponsored professor at Kabul University in 1977-78, as well as a Fulbright award to Peshawar University in 1983-84. He has some 63 written or edited books to his credit and more than 200 professional papers, with emphases on landslides, glaciers, flooding, and mineral resources in Afghanistan. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has received Distinguished Career awards from both the Mountain and the Geomorphology Specialty Groups of the Association of American Geographers. In the recent decade as an Emeritus Professor, he served as a Trustee of the Geological Society of America Foundation where he set up a research scholarship, the Shroder Mass Movement award for masters and doctoral candidates. For the past two decades, he has been the Editor-in-Chief for the Developments in Earth Surface Processes book series of Elsevier Publishing, as well as the 10-volumes of the Treatise on Geomorphology, and the Hazards, Risks, and Disasters book series, both in second editions. Recently, Dr. Shroder was ranked among the top 2 percent of researchers worldwide by the October study conducted by Stanford University.

Affiliations and expertise

Senior Research Scholar, Center for Afghanistan Studies, Emeritus Professor of Geography and Geology, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA