Mankind has created pollution, and has suffered its consequences since time immemorial. This has intesified greatly since the industrial revolution. One of the main problems in society, and a major function of government is how to cope with this pollution. 80 years ago the maxim used to be "the solution to pollution is dilution"; to dilute any pollted water supply in a large river, or to build a tall chimney stack to dilute air pollutants into the air so that concentrations of pollutants are always low. Since 1950 western countries have gone further and made major attempts to reduce the emissions of the most important pollutants. The discussion of what is an important pollutant has changed. To S02 and heavy metals such as cadmium or arsenic we now add fine particles and even (when we discuss global climate change) C02. The experience and practice of the western countries was only partly followed in the USSR (although the switch from use of coal to natural gas in major cities around 1970 was very important). Since the collapse of the USSR it has become fashionable both in the west and inside Russia to blame all society's ills on pollution. The statistics do not bear out that conclusion, but pollution remains an important issue which can be reduced without significant detriment to other societal values.

The Ural Mountains form the 1,500-mile boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Most of these mountains pass through and divide the country of Russia. The Urals are what geologists call folded mountains, created when two of Earths large continental plates bump into each other and wrinkle. Valleys carved from melting ice have created Russias Kama and Belaya Rivers, which form the Volga River. Chapters discuss the mining and industrial history of the Urals, and the efforts by environmentalists to clean up one of the worlds most polluted regions.

The protection of our environment is one of the major problems in the society. More and more important physical and chemical mechanisms are to be added to the air pollution models. Moreover, new reliable and robust control strategies for keeping the pollution caused by harmful compounds under certain safe levels have to be developed and used in a routine way. Well based and correctly analyzed large mathematical models can successfully be used to solve this task. The use of such models leads to the treatment of huge computational tasks. The efficient solution of such problems requires combined research from specialists working in different fields. The aim of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (NATO ARW) entitled “Advances in Air Pollution Modeling for Environmental Security” was to invite specialists from all areas related to large-scale air pollution modeling and to exchange information and plans for future actions towards improving the reliability and the scope of application of the existing air pollution models and tools. This ARW was planned to be an interdisciplinary event, which provided a forum for discussions between physicists, meteorologists, chemists, computer scientists and specialists in numerical analysis about different ways for improving the performance and the quality of the results of different air pollution models.

This book, originally published in 1992, describes the Soviet environment at its crisis point in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Beolorussia and the Ukraine had, as a result of the Chernobyl accident, been declared ecological disaster zones and across the country as a whole as many as 20 per cent of the population lived in environmental danger areas and another 35-40 per cent in unsatisfactory conditions. According to a Supreme Soviet Environment Committee report of 1989, 80% of all illness in the USSR related either directly or indirectly to environmental problems. In this book, leading specialists from both the West and the Soviet Union present a comprehensive analysis of these problems. The contributors examine the aftermath of Chernobyl, the catastrophic causes and effects of the Aral Sea's shrinkage, the environmental issues and public unrest. The depth of analysis in this volume together with the breadth of topics addressed will ensure that it is read by students and specialists of the Soviet Union and environmental issues, as well as by all government officials, journalists and industrialists with an interest in the Soviet environment.

The NATO ARW in Irkutsk was an excellent occasion for the coming together of Eastern and Western scientists who are involved in tropospheric science; the workshop has greatly contributed to the scientific and social understanding among the participants from the many different countries. Many new personal contacts were made which will help to strengthen future collaborations. In particular, the Lake Baikal area and the Limnological Institute offer splendid opportunities for environmental research which, in part, is already on going. For most participants it was the first time to see the impressive nature of the Lake Baikal region. Hopefully, there will be a chance for a follow-up event in Siberia where researchers from the East and West can again meet and engage in fruitful scientific dialogue. The book contains extended abstracts of the lectures and the poster presentations presented at the NATO ARW "Global Atmospheric Change and its Impact on Regional Air Quality" Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, Russian Federation, August 21-27, 2001. The ARW was composed of 22 oral presentations by key lecturers and 6 additional shorter oral presentations from participants. In a special poster session the 36 poster contributions were presented and discussed. Unfortunately not all contributors submitted extended abstracts, however, to compensate two contributions have been added from 2 participants who were originally invited but were unable to attend.

This book examines how regimes influence the behavior of their members and those associated with them.

Always awe-inspiring, mountainous areas contain hundreds of millions of years of history, stretching back to the earliest continental landforms. This book shows how mountains are characterized by their distinctive geological, ecological, and biological conditions. Often, they are so large that they create their own weather patterns. They also store nearly one-third of the world’s freshwater—in the form of ice and snow—on their slopes. Despite their daunting size and often formidable climates, mountains are affected by growing local populations, as well as distant influences, such as air pollution and global climate change. Three detailed case studies are presented. The first shows how global warming in East Africa is harming Mount Kenya’s regional population, which relies on mountain runoff to irrigate farms for subsistence crops. The second examines the fragile ecology of the South Island Mountain in New Zealand’s Southern Alps and how development threatens the region’s endemic plant and animal species. The third discusses the impact of mountain use over time in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, where management efforts have been used to limit the growing footprint of millions of annual visitors and alpine trekkers.