Recent years have seen increasing rigour being applied in many industrialised countries to the regulation of industrial emissions and to the quality of water, air, food and soil. This welcome official concern with the quality of the human habitat will, through the regular monitoring of environmental media that it implies, have important consequences for the training of professional environmental scientists. Monitoring agencies will require more analysts familiar with the special obstacles that compositionally diverse environmental materials can put in the path of reliable analysis. Professionals who interpret such analyses, too, though they may not be trained in the the technicalities of geochemical analysis, will need to recognise the limitations of the analytical methods employed and understand the quality control mechanisms upon which the industry depends, if they are to draw objective
and reliable conclusions from their data.

Biogeochemistry is becoming an increasingly popular subject in graduate education. Courses in ecology, geography, biology, chemistry, environmental science, public health, and environmental engineering all have to include biogeochemistry in their syllabuses to a greater or lesser extent. Humanity’s ever growing impact on the Environment, and the consequent local, regional, and global effect demand a profound understanding of the mechanisms underlying the sustainability of the biosphere and its compounds. The ideas of biogeochemistry about the universality of biogeochemical cycles involving the mass exchange of chemical elements between living organisms and the environment in the Earth’s surface appear to be quite productive in this high priority academic and scientific discipline. In biogeochemical cycling the active principles come from biota which global biological and geological activity alter slowly the biosphere’s compartments. On the other hand, the environment causes the living organisms evolve.

Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with the matter. There are three aspects of the spectroscopic measurement: irradiation of a sample with electromagnetic radiation; measurement of the absorption, spontaneous emission and scattering (Rayleigh elastic scattering, Raman inelastic scattering) from the sample; and analysis and interpretation of these measurements. The main subject of our book is spontaneous luminescence of natural minerals. We have used the term luminescence, which is the general term of the phenomenon. Luminescence may be subdivided to the fast fluorescence with spin-allowed transition and slow phosphorescence with spin-forbidden transition. Afterglow may be added, which is related to emission after trapping of an electron elsewhere. <...>

This book presents nine chapters of technical knowledge about pressure transient analysis. All of the chapters cover different subjects and provide the reader with a complete understanding of the well testing methodology and analysis, enabling well test engineers to comprehend the interpretation process together with the procedures required for reservoir interpretation.