Environmental Modelling: An Introduction

The global environment is a complex mix of interlinked processes, about which observation can tell us a great deal. But how can we use current observation to model future events, or to predict the consequences of scenarios that don't yet exist? Environmental Modelling: An Introduction shows how modelling can be used to explain experimental observations, and how these observations - and the data gathered - can be extrapolated to help us understand new environments and processes, and to solve environmental problems. The book begins by explaining why modelling is such a powerful experimental tool, before walking the reader through the process of constructing a model - what the key considerations are, and how different models should be used to probe different types of problem. It then illustrates how models are actively applied, before introducing a series of case studies to show how modelling has been used in real environmental and ecological studies.