Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes Impact on Climate and Air Quality [Paperback]

Wildfires, changing glaciers, deforestation, open-pit mining, increasing demands for food and bio-fuel production and the growth of megacities change our landscape. The book comprehensively reviews the current knowledge on how natural and anthropogenic land-use/cover changes affect weather, air quality and climate worldwide and explains how these changes may trigger further land-use/cover changes. It discusses how anthropogenic land-use/cover changes have affected local and regional climate and air quality since the settlement of America and the industrialisation. It addresses the topic?how long-range transport of pollutants and dust of devasted areas as well as teleconnections may cause changes far away from the areas where the land-use/cover changes occurred, for which land-use/cover change may become an international issue similar to CO2. It also discusses relations to global change and future societal and scientific challenges related to land-use/cover changes.

1. Introduction.

1.1 Natural land-cover changes
1.2 Anthropogenic land-cover changes
1.3 Land-cover changes and weather and climate
1.4 References

2. Physical and chemical principles
2.1 Energy balance
2.1.1 Latent and sensible heat fluxes
2.1.2 Surface heterogeneity
2.2 Clouds and precipitation
2.3 Air chemistry
2.3.1 Emissions
2.3.2 Background chemistry
2.3.3 Polluted air
2.3.4 Aqueous chemistry
2.3.5 Gas-to-particle formation
2.3.6 Removal of gaslc0