Here is an indispensable text and reference book for anyone interested in a systems approach to environmental studies. It will be useful not only to geographers but also to ecologists and other environmental scientists; planners; economists and other social scientists; philosophers; and applied mathematicians.

Bennett and Chorley's book has a number of broad aims: first, to employ the systems approach to provide an interdisciplinary focus on environmental structures and techniques; second, to use this approach to aid in developing the interfacing of social and economic theory with physical and biological theory; and third, to investigate the implications of this interfacing for human response to current environmental dilemmas, and hence to expose the technological and social bases of values which underlie our use of natural resources.

Interpreting the "environment" so as to embrace physical, biological, man-made, social, and economic reality, the authors show that the systems approach provides a powerful vehicle for the statement of environmental situations of ever-growing temporal and spatial magnitude, and for reducing the areas of uncertainty in our increasingly complex decision making arenas.

Originally published in 1979.

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"Atmosphere, Weather and Climate" provides a thorough introduction to weather processes and climatic conditions. Since the last edition, the recognition of the reality and possible effects of human activities on the environment has revolutionized attitudes to the study of atmosphere and of world climate. Beginning with an extended treatment of atmospheric composition and energy, stressing the heat budget of the earth and the causes of the greenhouse effect, the authors turn to manifestations and circulation of atmospheric moisture, including atmospheric stability and precipitation patterns in space and time. A consideration of atmospheric motion on small to large scales and modelling of general circulation leads to a decision of the structure of air masses, frontal cyclones and weather forecasting on different time scales. The treatment of weather and climate in temperate latitudes begins with studies of Europe and America, extending to the conditions of their polar and sub-tropical margins. Tropical weather and climate are also described through an analysis of the climatic mechanisms of monsoon Asia, Africa and Amazonia, together with the tropical margins of Africa and Australia.