Macro-engineering Seawater in Unique Environments Arid Lowlands and
The subjects refer to histories of ancient and modern use of seacoasts; possible macro-projects capable of massive changes in the coastlines of the Dead Sea, Red Sea and Persian Gulf caused by canal and massively scaled hydropower dam installations; relev
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Viorel Badescu Richard B. Cathcart Editors
Macro-engineering Seawater in Unique Environments Arid Lowlands and Water Bodies Rehabilitation
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Editors Prof. Viorel Badescu Candida Oancea Institute Polytechnic University Bucuresti Spl. Independentei 313 060042 Bucuresti, Romania e-mail: [email protected]
Richard B. Cathcart Geographos W. Olive Avenue 1300 Burbank, CA 91506-2225, USA e-mail: [email protected]
ISSN 1863-5520 ISBN 978-3-642-14778-4
e-ISBN 978-3-642-14779-1
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-14779-1 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: deblik, Berlin Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
This book is not dedicated to those complaining about the wind neither to those expecting it to change but to those who adjust the sails.
Foreword
Humans have for long had an impact on their environment. Very often the impacts were accidental and unintended consequences of human action—for example, vegetation loss due to fires getting out of control, or soil erosion produced by vegetation removal. However, as technological power developed humans have been capable of an increasing range of deliberate modifications of the environment as is made evident when one considers such features as the polders of the Netherlands, the huge irrigation systems of northern India, or the great levees of the Mississippi River. Today as our technological power increases still further, but also because our natural resources (such as water and fuel) are under increasing pressure, and because we are having a range of increasingly deleterious environmental impacts (such as climate change) that need to be halted or reversed, there is an opportunity and need to consider, in an imaginative and innovative way, possible means by which deliberate environmental modifications can be achieved by macro-engineering schemes. One area of particular recent concern has been the application of geoengineering to help cope with the threat of climate change. Suggested techniques have included changing the planetary albedo to reflect
