There are many urgent problems in arid land hydrogeology and it is these issues which are tackled in this volume on desert environments. The UAE-Japan symposia provide a venue for the exchange of expertise, confronting such problems as purification, usage and management of groundwater, the assessment and protection of sustainable water resources, and soil enhancement techniques for moisture control in arid lands. The hope is that a better understanding of dryland environment, combined with innovative solutions and technologies, will contribute to the greening of desert lands.

A comprehensive collection of contributions from the Middle East and Japan, dealing with pressing problems concerning sustainability in arid zones, this time with the accent on environmental science and engineering. The symposium brought together researchers and field engineers who discussed issues such as sulphur utilization in agriculture and construction engineering, renewable energy sources, and hazardous and waste-water treatment technologies. At a broader level, compliance with the Kyoto Protocol was on the agenda, with lively debate on global warming issues, which are of particular...

Time domain electrometry (TDE) is a general term which includes time domain reflectrometry and time domain transmissiometry. It is a commercially-viable technique for leak detection, contaminant monitoring, and moisture content determination in contaminant transport modelling. Under demographic pressure, contaminated sites are increasingly being re-developed for domestic and industrial use; and this presents an urgent need for reliable, non-intrusive and integrated methods of subsurface characterization, detection and monitoring of organic and inorganic pollutants, soil moisture content...