Table Of ContentJames N. Furze · Saeid Eslamian
Safanah M. Raafat · Kelly Swing Editors
Earth Systems
Protection and
Sustainability
Volume 1
Earth Systems Protection and Sustainability
James N. Furze • Saeid Eslamian
Safanah M. Raafat • Kelly Swing
Editors
Earth Systems Protection
and Sustainability
Volume 1
Editors
James N. Furze Saeid Eslamian
Royal Geographical Society Department of Water Engineering
(with the Institute of British Geographers) Isfahan University of Technology
London, UK Isfahan, Iran
Safanah M. Raafat Kelly Swing
Control and Systems Engineering Tiputini Biodiversity Station
Department College of Biological
University of Technology-Iraq and Environmental Sciences
Baghdad, Iraq University of San Francisco de Quito
Quito, Ecuador
ISBN 978-3-030-85828-5 ISBN 978-3-030-85829-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85829-2
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This volume is dedicated...
To you, who turns the page to discover the
next, for protection and continuation of the
beauty on Earth
(James N. Furze)
To my parents: my recently late mother,
Fatima, and my late father Mehdi both of
whom gave me the foundation of something
they never enjoyed – education
(Saeid Eslamian)
To all who seek to enrich their environment,
supporting their social and economic
development in natural balance with
aesthetic glory
(Safanah M. Raafat)
To those who refuse to simply accept the
legacy put upon their doorstep, to your
growing awareness and mounting creativity
that are the essence of hope for the future we
all wish for our children
(Kelly Swing)
Foreword
What does Earth Systems Protection (ESP) and Sustainability mean? Well, Earth is
the third planet from the Sun; our and that of vast proliferations of diversity and
resources home. Systems are sets of connected things or operations which find sym-
phonies of collective operation subject to their variance fields, through time and
space parameters. Protection is the instigation of defence against any stress or fluc-
tuation and refers to keeping someone or something safe from harm again within
temporal, spatial and material ranges. Sustainability entails being able to continue
over a period of time. Each of these terms can be applied in different contexts and
perspectives. Indeed the principle of protecting Earth Systems, essentially embody-
ing integrity, contains a seemingly infinite range of diversity and even dimensional
qualities which operate in different scenarios. Our definitions lead us to admit that
there is a certain paradox if we consider any one set or domain, after all how can we
protect multiple, sometimes opposing factors at the same time whilst ensuring that
individual elements are sustained? Thus, ESP becomes a matter of being able to
predict with intuition gained from insights into converse operations, both subjec-
tively and objectively.
Ironically, the usual connotation of ‘ESP’ relates to extrasensory perception,
clear-sightedness developed independently of known sensing processes. In this con-
text, one might say that ESP entails mysterious precognition, knowledge of the
future, without a complete understanding of input ranges or sets. However, the abil-
ity to know a systems operation has a probability function, determined by the extent
of the subject(s) within which any one element of a set exists. Moreover, the concept
for humans is somewhat blurred as surely it requires knowing when and how long
into the future one wishes to see.
Through appreciation of the different ways in which we (and other life units)
perceive our worlds’ geographic distribution of resources and evolutionary develop-
ment, it is possible to identify patterns of operation which may be seen to converge
or oppose each other in different ways. ‘Earth Systems Protection and Sustainability’
assists us by embracing elements of paradoxical nature to reach alignments. Such
alignments, when truly recognized, could indeed give our systems a self-feeding or
sustainable nature, whilst protecting the integrity of the systems and maximizing
vii
viii Foreword
maintenance of the diversity of life. The true promise of environmental sustainabil-
ity and thus resource management, proffering complementary/cooperative develop-
ment within life diversity seems to be within our reach. Yet on our approximately
five-billion-year-old rocky planet, we must face that our brief existence on Earth
and our development currently appear to be driving us towards collapses of life
diversity, amidst incredibly unstable flow fields rather than maintenance of life’s
beauty. The era of mass extinctions is upon us as recognized in the recently coined
Anthropocene.
What are the key areas in which we can consider the seemingly impossible
regeneration of our beautiful Earth in order to gain sagacity? One might take strate-
gic approaches in practical operations for policy directions. An understanding of
how a system balances itself might also be useful to enable sustainability into
the future.
Policies are formed by centralized bodies of authority, distributed according to
the parameters which separate our complete geographical spread and different cul-
tures. Imperatives stimulate our policy objectives. Thus policy imperatives and
operations are of different kinds but all are designed to sustain objectives in a stable
manner, potentially representing a self regulating optimally governed world. Our
imperatives recognize the key requirements of as many of the components of our
demographics as possible into the future. Without policies we lose structure, they
are the qualitative representation of our quantitative measurements and help us to
mitigate irregularities.
The concentration of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide in the terres-
trial atmosphere, increased significantly compared to pre-industrial levels, leading
to a generalized acceptance of the effect of human activities. In relation to pre-
industrial levels, world temperatures were augmented in temperature increases of
around 1 °C, though predictions set temperatures with an augmentation of 1.5 °C
between 2030 and 2052. The last three decades are commonly regarded as having
been the warmest on record, according to our Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC). However, certain regions manifest significant augmentations
beyond the world mean.
Supplementary heat output is produced at the most elevated latitudes; as a con-
sequence, the water cycle is affected greatly. This is evident especially in the Arctic,
where the pressure is equal to that of the world average, except that the rate is not
uniform. The warming of temperatures has led to melting of sea ice. In recent years,
global permafrost has melted and snow cover has decreased. In mid-latitude zones,
extreme temperatures and intense precipitations have increased with increasing fre-
quency. Lower latitude regions are expected to witness increases in the incidence of
extreme hot seasons.
Temperatures of the Earth have led to a number of changes in regional climate,
and it is evident that these temperatures are threatening humans, ecosystems and
organic life. Sadly, even with a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions,
studies show that the effects of climate change may not be reversed for at least one
thousand years.
Foreword ix
Nature has been created in a natural order, in harmonic balance, with extraordi-
nary aesthetic beauty, human beings are members of the community of nature.
Therefore, there must be a certain agreement between man and the environment.
Nature is a test to mankind, to what extent and in what manner will man execute his
task as trustee of the Earth socially and economically?
Mathematics is an essential requirement for the accomplishment of sustainable
engineering approaches towards working in real situations. Optimization algo-
rithms, for instance, can provide the most suitable mathematical solution for a sus-
tainable goal with complex constraints. Accordingly, adaptive, robust and optimal
control strategies can be formed to reach sustainable requirements. Moreover, the
recent progress in deep learning algorithms makes the inclusion of expert knowl-
edge in building a sustainable controlled system far more satisfying and suitable.
Advanced algorithms in many effective areas such as robotics, smart buildings,
green engineering and renewable energy generation clarify that driving sustainabil-
ity accentuates the importance of mathematical approaches.
Learning the domains in which systems operate and their relational convergence
assists us in developing self-feeding operations in different scenarios. Path planning
and deep learning approaches lead us to an understanding of the precise orientation
of operational elements and their embedded processes. From the viewpoint of math-
ematics, an appreciation of opposing subject weights could help to drive systems
sustainably through residual differences. The latter leads us to a potentially looped
system that could be present through infinite series expansions and contractions,
pending the pressures acting on the weights within a loop. Systems learning hence
helps us develop supervised learning approaches until the system has sufficient
residual variance to enable its natural operation and can function in an unsupervised
manner. In mathematic terms, the additive weight of expansions becomes the agents
that drive the system potentially indefinitely, even through uncertainties.
Humans, for the most part, are far too preoccupied with the demands of day-to-
day life to even have a chance to be worried about mid-century – a scant few decades
away – and the notion of nine or ten billion neighbours all looking to grab their
piece of the pie. Most of us never see more than dozens to hundreds of fellow human
beings at a time, so difficulties in comprehending scenarios beyond our own per-
sonal experience are entirely justifiable. Besides, the human mind probably did not
evolve to manage truly large numbers; for various reasons, it is no surprise that
enormous numbers remain abstract. Whether we might be trying to absorb an esti-
mate of the number of sand grains on a beach, molecules in a cup of coffee or the
tonnage of CO emissions from a city of one million inhabitants, any deeper signifi-
2
cance unquestionably tends to escape most of us. Certainly, extrapolation from
one’s own family to regional or global dimensions is further complicated by defi-
cient science education in combination with self-interested political or corporate
propaganda. Unfortunately, the numbers connected to anthropogenic impacts on
our environment are intimidatingly gigantic and will require participation en masse
accompanied by proportionate willingness to change mentalities and lifestyles.
Further, we must create new technologies and strategies and sincerely seek a func-
tional balance between short-term political or personal economic gains and
x Foreword
long-term global benefits, involving significant investments in the distant future. In
short, approaches need to become proactive at the macro-scale rather than reactive
at the micro-scale.
To understand the implications of having to share space and other vital resources
like food and water with another billion or two new arrivals should be a simple mat-
ter of summing and dividing. Our brains, and populist governments, however, tend
to prefer to oversimplify things and go on using analogies that cannot be scaled up
rationally. Where a dozen can eat, so can thirteen. Incidentally, it has been suggested
that humankind will require the production of more food in the next three decades
than we have produced in all of previous history. Even if those calculations are
somewhat awry, the idea is, to say the least, daunting.
Whenever we consider the natural world and our relationship with it, we too
often put humankind in a position of lording over the entire planet as though we
were not part of the workings of the whole, that we are entitled to every resource out
there, that we have been given absolute dominion over everything, that we may
consume or make use of all things in our purview, that the mere condition of being
human gives us some right to consider everything outside ourselves property to be
exploited. While we indeed seem to have control over some aspects of the world we
have created, many factors still lie well beyond our powers. It is precisely our arro-
gance related to the definition of the boundary between the two, the servile versus
the indomitable, that gets us into trouble over the long haul. For a couple of centu-
ries, the solution for most perceived problems has been money.
Many problems of the past could be resolved with moderate expenditures, but
human nature drives us to hold the purse strings tight until no other alternatives can
be employed. The allocation of significant financial outlays, by individuals or gov-
ernments, often requires a traumatic experience, especially when any portion of the
concept approaches something that might be interpreted as being altruistic. The
question at present seems to be: just how big will that slap in the face have to be?
Looking into the near and not-too-distant future (in relation to the climate crisis,
mass extinction, ocean acidification, expanding desertification, plastic saturation,
chemical pollution, energy consumption, solid waste and wastewater management,
agricultural demand and wild harvest of biotic resources), it appears that humanity
will need far greater access to financial assets than ever before in relation to the
environment because the challenges have grown far beyond previous dimensions,
precisely in proportion to our immensely growing population.
London, UK James N. Furze
Isfahan, Iran Saeid Eslamian
Baghdad, Iraq Safanah M. Raafat
Quito, Ecuador Kelly Swing
28 May 2021
Preface: From the Coordinating Editor
I am pleased to write the preface for the second book of the Mathematical Advances
Towards Sustainable Environmental Systems (MATSES) series. The first book was
published in 2017. It recognized the need to understand our planet and learn to man-
age its resources. Dr James Furze and his associate editors successfully met that
need, by presenting pertinent disciplines involved with MATSES, consequently
contributing to developing sustainable environmental systems.
A wide range of specialties require a working knowledge of mathematical devel-
opments of sustainable systems. Each chapter of MATSES includes a specific field’s
background information emphasizing a certain sustainable mathematical or engi-
neering problem.
The first volume of Earth Systems Protection and Sustainability represents new
ideas that have evolved in various fields of science and technology, as well as reflect-
ing age-old fundamental areas and historical communities. New mathematical
approaches and social and community perspectives have been tackled and intro-
duced to increase our knowledge of Earth systems, whilst highlighting the overarch-
ing themes of protection of both structural integrity and the highly vulnerable
components which are essential facets in the dynamical nature of our Earth.
It’s our hope and expectation that this book will provide an appealing and effec-
tive experience for those that have interest in learning, working or enjoying this
increasingly developing area which supports us all into the indefinite future.
Unique points include:
• Frontier research and imperatives for environmental sustainability
• Management and directions for resource usage in both human and naturalized
aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems
• An expansive collection of leading authors in both qualitative and quantitative
chapters across refined sections
• Community and subject driven ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ which reward owner-
ship for sustainability directly to the individuals/communities the volume is
designed to assist
xi
