Invasion Dynamics

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Humans have moved organisms around the world for centuries but it is only relatively recently that invasion ecology has grown into a mainstream research field. This book examines both the spread and impact dynamics of invasive species, placing the science of invasion biology on a new, more rigorous, theoretical footing, and proposing a concept of adaptive networks as the foundation for future research. Biological invasions are considered not as simple actions of invaders and reactions of invaded ecosystems, but as co-evolving complex adaptive systems with emergent features of network complexity and invasibility.

Invasion Dynamics focuses on the ecology of invasive species and their impacts in recipient social-ecological systems. It discusses not only key advances and challenges within the traditional domain of invasion ecology, but introduces approaches, concepts, and insights from many other disciplines such as complexity science, systems science, and ecology more broadly. It will be of great value to invasion biologists analyzing spread and/or impact dynamics as well as other ecologists interested in spread processes or habitat management.

Rock Dynamics

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Rock dynamics has become one of the most important topics in the field of rock mechanics and rock engineering. The spectrum of rock dynamics is very wide and it includes the failure of rocks, rock masses and rock engineering structures such as rockbursting, spalling, popping, collapse, toppling, sliding, blasting, non-destructive testing, geophysical explorations, science and engineering of rocks and impacts. The book specifically covers fundamentals of rock dynamics, constitutive models, numerical analysis techniques, dynamic testing procedures, the multi-parameter responses and motions of rocks during fracturing or slippage in laboratory experiments, earthquakes and their strong motion characteristics and their effect on various rock structures such as foundations, underground structures, slopes, dynamic simulation of loading and excavation, blasting and its positive utilization in rock engineering, the phenomenon of rockburst in rock excavations, non-destructive testing of rockbolts and rock anchors and impacts by meteors or projectiles. The main goal of this book is to present a unified and complete treatise on Rock Dynamics and to represent a milestone in advancing the knowledge in this field and in leading to new techniques for experiments, analytical and numerical modelling as well as monitoring of dynamics of rocks and rock engineering structures.

Forest Insect Population Dynamics, Outbreaks, And Global Warming Effects

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Research in insect population dynamics is important for more reasons than just protecting forest communities. Insect populations are among the main ecological units included in the analysis of stability of ecological systems. Moreover, it is convenient to test new methods of analyzing population and community stability on the insect-related data, as by now ecologists and entomologists have accumulated large amounts of such data. In this book, the authors analyze population dynamics of quite a narrow group of insects - forest defoliators. It is hoped that the methods proposed herein for the analysis of population dynamics of these species may be useful and effective for analyzing population dynamics of other animal species and their effects and role in global warming.

What can insects tell us about our environment and our ever-changing climate? It is through studies like this one that these important answers can be obtained, along with data on the insects and their behaviors themselves. The authors present new theories on modeling and data accumulation, using cutting-edge processes never before published for such a wide audience. This volume presents the state-of-the-art in the science, and it is an essential piece of any entomologist's and forest engineer's library.