urban heat islands. Flow phenomena such as extensive wakes, cavities, or horizontal
warping horseshoe vortices, speedup profiles in hills or katabatic and descending
flows under atmospheric inversion conditions are also assessed. Chapter 6 is dedicated to heat and mass transfer stationary and transient processes of conduction,
convection, and radiation for evaluation of local energy budgets and thermal environment control. Relevant topics on particle mass transfer processes which pose
serious environmental implications on seed and spore’s dispersion, or sediment
transport in land erosion and sediment transport in rivers and streams, were also
developed. Chapter 7 includes 13 worked-out exercise applications related to
microclimate variables, energy budgets, and vertical flows in canopies. Numerical
examples to illustrate many of the principles developed to help students to enhance
skills in using the equations involved in solving problems of heat flow, dissipation,
convection, carbon sequestration as well as measurement issues are presented. It is
expected that the resolution of real ecological problems presented in this chapter can
be a useful basis for a greater understanding and consolidation of the issues
developed in the previous applied theoretical chapters. Following the fundamentals
of heat and mass transfer in previous chapters, Chap. 8 addresses the issue of the
global carbon budget and its relationships with climate change. These are global
phenomena occurring within the convective boundary layer, whose relevance is
indisputable. It is a comprehensive chapter that brings together the most current
information on the predictions of climate change for various geographies on Earth
according to the magnitude of the carbon balance and its distribution in the atmosphere. This chapter ends up with the presentation of the transformation of biomass
to biochar, which owed to its stability in the conservation of CO 2 , offers a good
perspective for carbon sequestration. This is an accessible technology that along
with its carbon sequestration potential, and/or reducing biomass fuel enhancer in
forest fires, can boost social and economic benefits in rural areas favored by adequate
supplies of biomass and derivatives.
Finally, two annexes are added: Annex 1 dedicated to the treatment of instrumentation relevant to the evaluation of micrometeorological parameters and their
specificities, precision and accuracy, data acquisition devices, and inherent errors;
and Annex 2 reserved for the development and an adequate framework of Newton’s
laws and the concepts associated with the Moment Conservation law as well as the
fundamental topics associated with the conservation of mass and motion, buoyancy,
fluid viscosity, evaporation, and psychrometry.
Overall, the main environmental physical and mathematical tools on significant
environmental physical subjects are covered, so that the reader can have an intermediate to high-level insight on the issues addressed. Those tools are instrumental
to interpret the vast information available and to design strategies on data
Foreword II
ix
warping horseshoe vortices, speedup profiles in hills or katabatic and descending
flows under atmospheric inversion conditions are also assessed. Chapter 6 is dedicated to heat and mass transfer stationary and transient processes of conduction,
convection, and radiation for evaluation of local energy budgets and thermal environment control. Relevant topics on particle mass transfer processes which pose
serious environmental implications on seed and spore’s dispersion, or sediment
transport in land erosion and sediment transport in rivers and streams, were also
developed. Chapter 7 includes 13 worked-out exercise applications related to
microclimate variables, energy budgets, and vertical flows in canopies. Numerical
examples to illustrate many of the principles developed to help students to enhance
skills in using the equations involved in solving problems of heat flow, dissipation,
convection, carbon sequestration as well as measurement issues are presented. It is
expected that the resolution of real ecological problems presented in this chapter can
be a useful basis for a greater understanding and consolidation of the issues
developed in the previous applied theoretical chapters. Following the fundamentals
of heat and mass transfer in previous chapters, Chap. 8 addresses the issue of the
global carbon budget and its relationships with climate change. These are global
phenomena occurring within the convective boundary layer, whose relevance is
indisputable. It is a comprehensive chapter that brings together the most current
information on the predictions of climate change for various geographies on Earth
according to the magnitude of the carbon balance and its distribution in the atmosphere. This chapter ends up with the presentation of the transformation of biomass
to biochar, which owed to its stability in the conservation of CO 2 , offers a good
perspective for carbon sequestration. This is an accessible technology that along
with its carbon sequestration potential, and/or reducing biomass fuel enhancer in
forest fires, can boost social and economic benefits in rural areas favored by adequate
supplies of biomass and derivatives.
Finally, two annexes are added: Annex 1 dedicated to the treatment of instrumentation relevant to the evaluation of micrometeorological parameters and their
specificities, precision and accuracy, data acquisition devices, and inherent errors;
and Annex 2 reserved for the development and an adequate framework of Newton’s
laws and the concepts associated with the Moment Conservation law as well as the
fundamental topics associated with the conservation of mass and motion, buoyancy,
fluid viscosity, evaporation, and psychrometry.
Overall, the main environmental physical and mathematical tools on significant
environmental physical subjects are covered, so that the reader can have an intermediate to high-level insight on the issues addressed. Those tools are instrumental
to interpret the vast information available and to design strategies on data
Foreword II
ix