Forests provide many supporting, regulating and cultural services. Extensive environmental changes have resulted in a substantial loss or degradation of forest ecosystem services (ES). Unclear interactions of climate-change phenomena make it difficult to estimate forest ES. Research on interactive effects of climate change and air pollution has become a central issue in forest science during the past decade. Climate change in interaction with air pollution brings novel combinations of severity and timing of multiple stresses, which may significantly affect many forest ES. The aims of the present chapter are to identify basic concepts of evaluating ES with a focus on forest ES, to provide physiological and ecological bases for their evaluation, and to discuss the interactive effects of climate change and air pollution on forest ES based on selected tree physiological functions. Climate regulation mediated by deforestation-induced changes in the hydrological cycle is discussed. Adaptive governance and communication to the public promotes sustainable forest–multi-stakeholder collaboration. A case study is presented evaluating selected ES in a forest–agricultural landscape in the Czech Republic on the basis of monitored energy, water and material flows estimation. From this study, it is apparent that future research must include multi-factorial anthropogenic and natural interactions of climatic changes and air pollution in conjunction with sustainable forest ES provisions. Sustainable forest management is an essential tool for reducing the vulnerability of forests to environmental change.
Simulation-Based Reliability Assessment for Structural Engineers provides an overview of the basic concepts in structural reliability and introduces an alternative based on direct Monte Carlo simulation techniques, on parameters-generated histograms, and on available personal computers. This approach is a powerful tool that allows (in accordance with the Limit States Design philosophy) one to explore the effect of variables and uncertainty on design decisions. This new book also discusses single- and multi-component load effects and explores combinations of such effects. Limiting values are defined and applied to reliability assessments with respect to carrying capacity and serviceability states. Examples that clearly illustrate the application of simulation techniques are provided, and the tremendous potential of these techniques for use in design is reviewed. Also included are carefully-selected examples that allow the reader to compare the deterministic Allowable Stress Design (ASD), the semi-probabilistic Partial Factors Design (LRFD), and the probabilistic Simulation-Based Reliability Assessment (SBRA) concept. Simulation-Based Reliability Assessment for Structural Engineers includes a computer diskette that contains five user-friendly computer programs (M-Star, AntHill, ResCom, LoadCom, and DamAc) capable of calculating load effect combinations, resistance of structural components, and probability of failure. The use of these programs is demonstrated in two hundred well-designed and realistic examples that clearly identify the range of problems to which simulation-based reliability assessments can be applied.
In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrew the tsar of Russia and established a new, communist government, one that viewed the Imperial Russia of old as a righteously vanquished enemy. And yet, as Pavel Khazanov shows, after the collapse of Stalinism, a reconfiguration of Imperial Russia slowly began to emerge, recalling the culture of tsarist Russia not as a disgrace but as a glory, a past to not only remember but to recover, and to deploy against what to many seemed like a discredited socialist project. Khazanov's careful untangling of this discourse in the late Soviet period reveals a process that involved figures of all political stripes, from staunch conservatives to avowed intelligentsia liberals. Further, Khazanov shows that this process occurred not outside of or in opposition to Soviet guidance and censorship, but in mainstream Soviet culture that commanded wide audiences, especially among the Soviet middle class. Excavating the cultural logic of this newly foundational, mythic memory of a "lost Russia," Khazanov reveals why, despite the apparently liberal achievement of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Boris Yeltsin (and later, Vladamir Putin) successfully steered Russia into oligarchy and increasing autocracy. The anti-Soviet memory of the pre-Soviet past, ironically constructed during the late socialist period, became and remains a politically salient narrative, a point of consensus that surprisingly attracts both contemporary regime loyalists and their would-be liberal opposition.
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