Current Environmental Issues and Challenges

This book’s aim is to bring together, in one volume, state-of-the-art information on a number of current environmental issues and challenges.

·         The chapters dealing with air pollution from mobile sources, air pollution and health effects, and air quality modelling fall into the air pollution category.

·         Chapters related to microalgae for carbon dioxide sequestration/biofuels production, fuel cells, and solar energy technology, respectively, can be ascribed to the energy topic.

·         Several technologies to handle a wide spectrum of environmental pollutants are taken into account in the corresponding chapters: self-propagating high-temperature reactions, catabolic plasmids biodegradation, dust removal, glyphosate biodegradation, bioleaching, and probiotic bacteria for water sanitation.

·         The chapter on biodiversity is clearly related to the conservation issue, while the water pollution subject is tackled by the chapter on water quality monitoring.
·         Environmental management is considered with a general analysis on green business, as well as a chapter on using grid/cloud computing technology for collaborative problem solving and shared resources management.
Each chapter is stand-alone to allow the user rapid access to the subject of interest. Few books currently exist that cover such a wide spectrum of topics. For this reason it is intended as a text for graduate courses in environmental science and engineering, as well as for reference by researchers and practitioners interested in the latest developments in the environmental field.