Skip to main content

Books in Earth and planetary sciences

Elsevier's Earth and Planetary Sciences collection brings together pioneering research on the complexities of our planet and beyond. Covering topics from Earth's structural dynamics and ecosystems to planetary exploration, these titles support advancements in geoscience, environmental science, and space studies, offering essential insights for researchers, professionals, and students.

  • Weather to Energy

    A Complex Voyage
    • 1st Edition
    • December 1, 2019
    • Christopher Clack
    • English
    Weather to Energy: A Complex Voyage synthesizes several vertically integrated disciplines, allowing new researchers to become involved in renewable energy studies. The book covers the basics needed to jump into the field, including sections on electrical load data and weather model data. The research on optimizing weather-driven renewable energies requires working knowledge of certain disciplines, such as economics, mathematics, atmospheric physics, statistics, fluid dynamics, power modeling and engineering. This book's aim is to inspire new research in renewable energy for interested scientists who may not have the required skills.
  • The Dynamical Ionosphere

    A Systems Approach to Ionospheric Irregularity
    • 1st Edition
    • November 27, 2019
    • Massimo Materassi + 3 more
    • English
    The Dynamical Ionosphere: A Systems Approach to Ionospheric Irregularity examines the Earth’s ionosphere as a dynamical system with signatures of complexity. The system is robust in its overall configuration, with smooth space-time patterns of daily, seasonal and Solar Cycle variability, but shows a hierarchy of interactions among its sub-systems, yielding apparent unpredictability, space-time irregularity, and turbulence. This interplay leads to the need for constructing realistic models of the average ionosphere, incorporating the increasing knowledge and predictability of high variability components, and for addressing the difficulty of dealing with the worst cases of ionospheric disturbances, all of which are addressed in this interdisciplinary book. Borrowing tools and techniques from classical and stochastic dynamics, information theory, signal processing, fluid dynamics and turbulence science, The Dynamical Ionosphere presents the state-of-the-art in dealing with irregularity, forecasting ionospheric threats, and theoretical interpretation of various ionospheric configurations.
  • Reading the Soil Archives

    Unraveling the Geoecological Code of Palaeosols and Sediment Cores
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 18
    • November 25, 2019
    • Jan M. Van Mourik + 1 more
    • English
    Reading the Soil Archives: Unraveling the Geoecological Code of Palaeosols and Sediment Cores, Volume 19, provides details of new techniques for understanding geological history in the form of quantitative pollen analyses, soil micromorphology, OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) dating, phytolith analysis and biomarker analysis. The book presents the genesis of a cultural landscape, based on multi-proxy analysis of paleosoils and integration of geomorphological, pedological and archaeological research results, which can be a model for geoecological landscape studies. Beginning with analytical methods for interpreting soil archives, the book examines methods for reconstructing the landscape genesis. The book presents strengths and weaknesses of applications, especially in relation to the data from case studies in the Netherlands. The final chapter of the book addresses landscape evolution in different cultural periods. This book offers an integrated approach to geoecological knowledge that is valuable to students and professionals in quaternary science, physical geography, soil science, archaeology, historical geography, and land planning and restructuring.
  • Fluid Inclusion Effect in Flotation of Sulfide Minerals

    • 1st Edition
    • November 22, 2019
    • Shuming Wen + 2 more
    • English
    Fluid Inclusion Effect in the Flotation of Sulfide Minerals gives a detailed introduction to how fluid inclusions affect the flotation of sulfide minerals. The book introduces the various fluids found in geology, detailing the properties of fluid inclusions and how to identify and analyze their composition. It gives the common chemical compositions of fluid inclusions, investigates the release of fluid inclusions in sulfide materials and some gangues, and presents the concentrations and solution chemistry of the released ions. Finally, the book considers the absorption mechanism and the interaction of some typical metal ions from fluid inclusions on the surface of sulfide minerals.
  • The Trans-Neptunian Solar System

    • 1st Edition
    • November 22, 2019
    • Dina Prialnik + 2 more
    • English
    The Trans-Neptunian Solar System is a timely reference highlighting the state-of-the-art in current knowledge on the outer solar system. It not only explores the individual objects being discovered there, but also their relationships with other Solar System objects and their roles in the formation and evolution of the Solar System and other planets. Integrating important findings from recent missions, such as New Horizons and Rosetta, the book covers the physical properties of the bodies in the Trans-Neptunian Region, including Pluto and other large members of the Kuiper Belt, as well as dynamical indicators for Planet 9 and related objects and future prospects. Offering a complete look at exploration and findings in the Kuiper Belt and the rest of the outer solar system beyond Neptune, this book is an important resource to bring planetary scientists, space scientists and astrophysicists up-to-date on the latest research and current understandings.
  • Advanced Remote Sensing

    Terrestrial Information Extraction and Applications
    • 2nd Edition
    • November 22, 2019
    • Shunlin Liang + 1 more
    • English
    Advanced Remote Sensing: Terrestrial Information Extraction and Applications, Second Edition, is a thoroughly updated application-based reference that provides a single source on the mathematical concepts necessary for remote sensing data gathering and assimilation. It presents state-of-the-art techniques for estimating land surface variables from a variety of data types, including optical sensors like RADAR and LIDAR. The book provides scientists in a number of different fields, including geography, geophysics, geology, atmospheric science, environmental science, planetary science and ecology with access to critically-important data extraction techniques and their virtually unlimited applications. While rigorous enough for the most experienced of scientists, the techniques presented are well designed and integrated, making the book’s content intuitive and practical in its implementation.
  • Decision Making in Emergency Management

    • 1st Edition
    • November 20, 2019
    • Jan Glarum + 1 more
    • English
    Decision-Making in Emergency Management examines decisions the authors have made over their careers based on their combined training, experience and instinct. Through a broad range of case studies, readers discover how experience impacts decision-making in conjunction with research and tools available. While the use of science, data and industry standards are always the best option when it comes to handling emergency situations, not all emergency situations fit one known solution. This book comprehensively explores the question "Is ‘instinct’ a viable factor when faced with a challenging situation and how close does it match up with the best science available?"
  • Big Data Mining for Climate Change

    • 1st Edition
    • November 20, 2019
    • Zhihua Zhang + 1 more
    • English
    Climate change mechanisms, impacts, risks, mitigation, adaption, and governance are widely recognized as the biggest, most interconnected problem facing humanity. Big Data Mining for Climate Change addresses one of the fundamental issues facing scientists of climate or the environment: how to manage the vast amount of information available and analyse it. The resulting integrated and interdisciplinary big data mining approaches are emerging, partially with the help of the United Nation’s big data climate challenge, some of which are recommended widely as new approaches for climate change research. Big Data Mining for Climate Change delivers a rich understanding of climate-related big data techniques and highlights how to navigate huge amount of climate data and resources available using big data applications. It guides future directions and will boom big-data-driven researches on modeling, diagnosing and predicting climate change and mitigating related impacts. This book mainly focuses on climate network models, deep learning techniques for climate dynamics, automated feature extraction of climate variability, and sparsification of big climate data. It also includes a revelatory exploration of big-data-driven low-carbon economy and management. Its content provides cutting-edge knowledge for scientists and advanced students studying climate change from various disciplines, including atmospheric, oceanic and environmental sciences; geography, ecology, energy, economics, management, engineering, and public policy.
  • Climate Extremes and Their Implications for Impact and Risk Assessment

    • 1st Edition
    • November 19, 2019
    • Jana Sillmann + 2 more
    • English
    Climate extremes often imply significant impacts on human and natural systems, and these extreme events are anticipated to be among the potentially most harmful consequences of a changing climate. However, while extreme event impacts are increasingly recognized, methodologies to address such impacts and the degree of our understanding and prediction capabilities vary widely among different sectors and disciplines. Moreover, traditional climate extreme indices and large-scale multi-model intercomparisons that are used for future projections of extreme events and associated impacts often fall short in capturing the full complexity of impact systems. Climate Extremes and Their Implications for Impact and Risk Assessment describes challenges, opportunities and methodologies for the analysis of the impacts of climate extremes across various sectors to support their impact and risk assessment. It thereby also facilitates cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary discussions and exchange among climate and impact scientists. The sectors covered include agriculture, terrestrial ecosystems, human health, transport, conflict, and more broadly covering the human-environment nexus. The book concludes with an outlook on the need for more transdisciplinary work and international collaboration between scientists and practitioners to address emergent risks and extreme events towards risk reduction and strengthened societal resilience.
  • Semi-Lagrangian Advection Methods and Their Applications in Geoscience

    • 1st Edition
    • November 18, 2019
    • Steven J. Fletcher
    • English
    Semi-Lagrangian Advection Methods and Their Applications in Geoscience provides a much-needed resource on semi-Lagrangian theory, methods, and applications. Covering a variety of applications, the book brings together developments of the semi-Lagrangian in one place and offers a comparison of semi-Lagrangian methods with Eulerian-based approaches. It also includes a chapter dedicated to difficulties of dealing with the adjoint of semi-Lagrangian methods and illustrates the behavior of different schemes for different applications. This allows for a better understanding of which schemes are most efficient, stable, consistent, and likely to introduce the minimum model error into a given problem. Beneficial for students learning about numerical approximations to advection, researchers applying these techniques to geoscientific modeling, and practitioners looking for the best approach for modeling, Semi-Lagrangian Advection Methods and Their Applications in Geoscience fills a crucial gap in numerical modeling and data assimilation in geoscience.