XX
Preface
• Legislative data bases on ecology including international and national
aspects;
Biodiversity data bases including taxonomy, inventories of main species,
industrial and social aspects;
• World wide preservation of water (surface and underground) quality
data bases including mapping, pollution levels, cleaning processes;
• World wide preservation of uncontaminated soil data bases, in
agriculture, national parks, industrial and urban wastes, including acid
rainfall and radiation aspects;
• Software information systems for modeling and simulating ecological
risk analysis;
Retention level of ecological information including air, soil and water
pollution.
Several International Scientific Programs are involved in these areas. All of them
need validated data and information on a world scale. Lack of controlled data may
lead to misunderstanding or neglect some aspects of important problems such as
anthropic impacts on the Earth's system or the evaluation of natural resources. The
paper presented by Dr. Rodda as an introduction to the Chapter "Water in
Ecosystems: a non renewable resource" of this volume illustrates perfectly the
problem of unreliable data. On the resource evaluation of water at the word scale,
this author concludes "It is very strange that at the time when global demand for
water is growing faster than ever, knowledge of the world's water resources is
declining ... ".
CODATA contributes to various international actions in the Global Change
Research Program. CODATA is a Committee of ICSU specializing in data for the
Global Change Programme (IGBP - International Geosphere Biosphere
Programme) whose purpose is to provide an answer to the debated question of
possible human responsibility in the observed warming of the Earth. Is the
peculiar inertia of the Earth's system taken into account in present speculation on
global warming? Do the models developed by different groups account for the
ability of interference and retroactive actions of every component of the Global
Change System? Are models completely effective? For example, it is admitted
nowadays that when observing the land degradation of the Sahel one has to
specify the causes resulting from natural cycles of the climate and those resulting
from human activities (land cover degradation). Two chapters of this volume
"Global atmospheric evolution: impact of anthropic activities" and "Regional
environmental changes: application to soil erosion modeling" are devoted to these
important questions.
IGBP uses data bases, maps and atlases on different scales- in order to diffuse
images and data on the state of the Earth via the multimedia highway. IGBP needs
various studies from geophysics to human settlement pollution, together with
many other topics dealing with the 2-D or 3-D coordinates (including the relief)
and even 4-D (including time).
Preface
• Legislative data bases on ecology including international and national
aspects;
Biodiversity data bases including taxonomy, inventories of main species,
industrial and social aspects;
• World wide preservation of water (surface and underground) quality
data bases including mapping, pollution levels, cleaning processes;
• World wide preservation of uncontaminated soil data bases, in
agriculture, national parks, industrial and urban wastes, including acid
rainfall and radiation aspects;
• Software information systems for modeling and simulating ecological
risk analysis;
Retention level of ecological information including air, soil and water
pollution.
Several International Scientific Programs are involved in these areas. All of them
need validated data and information on a world scale. Lack of controlled data may
lead to misunderstanding or neglect some aspects of important problems such as
anthropic impacts on the Earth's system or the evaluation of natural resources. The
paper presented by Dr. Rodda as an introduction to the Chapter "Water in
Ecosystems: a non renewable resource" of this volume illustrates perfectly the
problem of unreliable data. On the resource evaluation of water at the word scale,
this author concludes "It is very strange that at the time when global demand for
water is growing faster than ever, knowledge of the world's water resources is
declining ... ".
CODATA contributes to various international actions in the Global Change
Research Program. CODATA is a Committee of ICSU specializing in data for the
Global Change Programme (IGBP - International Geosphere Biosphere
Programme) whose purpose is to provide an answer to the debated question of
possible human responsibility in the observed warming of the Earth. Is the
peculiar inertia of the Earth's system taken into account in present speculation on
global warming? Do the models developed by different groups account for the
ability of interference and retroactive actions of every component of the Global
Change System? Are models completely effective? For example, it is admitted
nowadays that when observing the land degradation of the Sahel one has to
specify the causes resulting from natural cycles of the climate and those resulting
from human activities (land cover degradation). Two chapters of this volume
"Global atmospheric evolution: impact of anthropic activities" and "Regional
environmental changes: application to soil erosion modeling" are devoted to these
important questions.
IGBP uses data bases, maps and atlases on different scales- in order to diffuse
images and data on the state of the Earth via the multimedia highway. IGBP needs
various studies from geophysics to human settlement pollution, together with
many other topics dealing with the 2-D or 3-D coordinates (including the relief)
and even 4-D (including time).