Principles of Environmental Physics: Plants, Animals, and the Atmosphere

Principles of Environmental Physics: Plants, Animals, and the Atmosphere, 4e, provides a basis for understanding the complex physical interactions of plants and animals with their natural environment. It is the essential reference to provide environmental and ecological scientists and researchers with the physical principles, analytic tools, and data analysis methods they need to solve problems. This book describes the principles by which radiative energy reaches the earth’s surface and reviews the latest knowledge concerning the surface radiation budget. The processes of radiation, convection, conduction, evaporation, and carbon dioxide exchange are analyzed. Many applications of environmental physics principles are reviewed, including the roles of surface albedo and atmospheric aerosols in modifying microclimate and climate, remote sensing of vegetation properties, wind forces on trees and crops, dispersion of pathogens and aerosols, controls of evaporation from vegetation and soil (including implications of changing weather and climate), and interpretation of micrometeorological measurements of carbon dioxide and other trace gas fluxes.

• Presents a unique synthesis of micrometeorology and ecology in its widest sense
• Deals quantitatively with the impact of weather on living systems but also with the interactions between organisms and the atmosphere that are a central feature of life on earth
• Offers numerous worked examples and problems with solutions
• Provides many examples of laboratory and field measurements and their interpretation
• Includes an up-to-date bibliography and review of recent micrometeorological applications in forestry, ecology, hydrology, and agriculture

Michael Unsworth is Professor Emeritus of Physics of Oceans and Atmospheres at Oregon State University. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Southampton and the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Before his tenure at Oregon State University, he was Professor and ultimately Dean of the Faulty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at Nottingham University. He has also served as Head of Station and the NERC Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Edinburgh Research Station and Director at the Center for Analysis of Environmental Change. His work specializes in environmental physics, microclimatology, and agricultural and forest meteorology. He has published numerous journal articles, book chapters, and books on these topics over his prolific career of more than 50 years.