Global Environmental Change: Modelling and Monitoring

The growing number of published works dedicated to global environmental change leads to the realization that protection of the natural environment has become an urgent problem. The question of working out principles of co­ evolution of man and nature is being posed with ever-increasing persistence. Scientists in many countries are attempting to find ways of formulating laws governing human processes acting on the environment. Numerous national and international programs regarding biosphere and climate studies contribute to the quest for means of resolving the conflict between human society and nature. However, attempts to find efficient methods of regulating human activity on a global scale encounter principal difficulties. The major difficulty is the lack of an adequate knowledge base pertaining to climatic and biospheric processes as wen as the largely incomplete state of the databases concerning global processes occurring in the atmosphere, in the ocean, and on land. Another difficulty is the inability of modern science to formulate the requirements which must be met by the global databases necessary for reliable evaluation of the state of the environ­ ment and fore casting its development for sufficiently long time intervals.

From the reviews:

"This book takes as its initial premise the recognition that a new type of global environmental science is required in order to tackle complex real world issues ... . The authors propose that their Geoinformation Monitoring System (GIMS), a modular integration of mathematical modelling with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology, can achieve this worthy aim. ... it would be of most value to those interested in ... open mindedly considering a novel approach to modelling environmental phenomena, with special emphasis on the biosphere." (Iain Brown, The Holocene, Vol. 14 (2), 2004)

"It is a contribution to the synthesis of complex problems for the collection of environmental information and for uniting GIS, remote and local measurements with models. Such systems are called geo-information monitoring systems (GIMS) ... . it provides insight in an interesting area of research that has mainly been published in Russian. ... Researchers who are interested in global environmental problems and applied mathematics, such as hydrologists and geophysicists, should find useful information in this publication." (Luc Hens, International Journal of Environment and Pollution, Vol. 21 (6), 2004)