The Handbook of Environment and Society focuses on the interactions between people, societies and economies, and the state of nature and the environment. Editorially integrated but written from multi-disciplinary perspectives, The Handbook of Environment and Society is organised in seven sections: - Environmental thought: past and present - Valuing the environment - Knowledges and knowing - Political economy of environmental change - Environmental technologies - Redesigning natures - Institutions and policies for influencing the environment Key themes include: locations where the environment-society relation is most acute: where, for example, there are few natural resources or where industrialization is unregulated; the discussion of these issues at different scales: local, regional, national, and global; the cost of damage to resources; and the relation between principal actors in the environment-society nexus. Aimed at an international audience of academics, research students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers, The Handbook on Environment and Society presents readers in social science and natural science with a manual of the past, present and future of environment-society links.

Terrestrial Environments, Soils and Bioremediation

Terrestrial environments, soils and bioremediation

Energy and Matter Flow in Soil Systems

Terrestrial environments remove atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by plant photosynthesis during the day, which results in the growth of plant roots and shoots and increases in soil microbial bio-mass. When a plant sheds leaves and roots die, this plant litter decays, but some of it can become protected physically and chemically as dead organic matter (OM) in the form of humus, which can be stable in soils for even thousands of years. The decomposition of soil carbon by soil microbes (decomposers) also releases CO2 to the atmosphere. Soil represents the largest carbon pool on the Earth's surface (2,157,000–2,293,000 billion kg). Of this, around 70% is organic and the remaining consists ...

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