Description / Table of Contents: The research findings of this qualitative multi-case study disclose five common diffusional patterns: multi-faceted transmission, caring translation, clear turnaround, deep transformation, and continual retransmission.

Description / Table of Contents: Chapter 1 Fundamentals of industrial sludge -- Chapter 2 Management of textile industry sludge for environmental sustainability -- Chapter 3 Sustainable management of oily petroleum refinery sludge through anaerobic digestion with bioenergy production -- Chapter 4 Hydrothermal carbonization of industrial sludge -- Chapter 5 Sustainable management of industrial sludge through vermistabilization utilizing pollutants loaded spent biochar produced from wastewater treatment process -- Chapter 6 Production of microbial fuel cell material from industrial wastewater sludge -- Chapter 7 Industrial sludge as adsorbent for wastewater treatment and reclamation -- Chapter 8 Sustainable utilization of industrial sludge in the construction industry -- Chapter 9 Utilization of waste sludge and poplar trees for remediation -- Chapter 10 Sustainable production of enzymes using industrial sludge -- Chapter 11 Sustainable application of industrial sludge in agriculture land -- Chapter 12 Production of biodiesel from industrial sludge -- Chapter 13 Advancement in sustainable management and valorization of solid waste through composting and vermitechnology.

Description / Table of Contents: Chapter 1. Urbanization and urban climate in high-density cities -- Chapter 2. Origins and evolution of the Local Climate Zone classification system -- Chapter 3. Current popular methods for LCZ mapping -- Chapter 4. Recent improvements in supervised pixel-based LCZ classification -- Chapter 5. Application of LCZ to urban heat island studies -- Chapter 6. Application of LCZ to land use and land cover studies -- Chapter 7. Application of LCZ to wind environment studies -- Chapter 8. Application of LCZ to energy consumption and carbon emission modeling -- Chapter 9. Application of LCZ to thermal comfort and health-related studies -- Chapter 10. Application of LCZ to time-series urban morphology detection -- Chapter 11. Application of LCZ in mesoscale meteorological model simulations and climate projection -- Chapter 12. Integration of LCZ to planning strategies -- Chapter 13. Conclusions and outlook.

Description / Table of Contents: - A review of balanced scorecard application in public hospital setting -- Critical Success Factors in Implementing Sustainable Business Models: The ITAL case -- Earnings Conference Calls’ Tone in Just Meet-Beat Firms: Evidence from the UK -- Economic Sustainability through IPSAS: A Global Perspective -- ESG Reporting: Impacts, Benefits and Challenges -- Green Marketing Strategies: Research Agenda for Sustainable Consumer Behavior and Corporate Responsibility -- Size as a Motive for Bank Window Dressing: Evidence from an Emerging Economy -- Strengths and Weaknesses of Integrated Reporting: A Comprehensive Literature Review -- The impact of Jordanian tourism website performance on online purchase intention: Review -- Sustainability in Education -- Outstanding Support for Students Becoming a Social Entrepreneurship Course -- Environmental orientation and sustainable innovation performance: The role of dynamic capabilities -- Mapping the Landscape of Sustainable Finance: A Scopus Based Bibliometric Analysis -- Shedding Light on the Link: Salient Stakeholder Theory and Sustainability Connections -- Accounting in the Digital Era: Does Big Data add value? -- Driving Sustainability Forward: Do Fintech and Digital Transformation Matter? -- Factors affecting big data analytics in Jordanian commercial banks -- Investigating Firm-Generated Content's Influence on Digital Marketing Effectiveness in Private Hospitals – A Jordanian Perspective -- Sustainability Practices within Fin-Tech Firms: A Literature Review -- The Impact of Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) on Food Security in Jordan -- The moderating role of accountant’s capability on the relationship AIS and the quality of financial reporting: A literature review.

Description / Table of Contents: General introduction -- Navigating the dimensions of poverty from global goals to local realities -- Definition and importance of formal land titling -- Sub-Saharan Africa's customary practices and land titling policy reforms -- Land titling and its effects -- Is land titling beneficial for active poverty reduction?- Overcoming constraints and empowering small and medium-sized enterprises through land titling -- Summary and policy implications.

Description / Table of Contents: Marine fish play important functional roles within the carbon cycle, including the production and excretion of intestinal carbonates. With fish accounting for at least 3-15% of total marine carbonate production, the global significance of this process is clear. A comprehensive assessment of the drivers of fish carbonate excretion rate and mineralogy is however lacking. Closing this gap is imperative to fully understand the role of fish in the inorganic carbon cycle and to predict how it may change in future. Focusing on tropical and subtropical reefs, this thesis assessed the drivers of fish contributions to the inorganic carbon cycle at different ecological levels and spatial scales. At the individual level, this project compiled intestinal traits for 142 species and carbonate excretion rates and mineralogy for 85 species. A comprehensive modelling approach then identified the species traits and environmental factors that influence individual excretion rates and mineralogy. At the community level and at the global scale, a novel analysis of 〉1,400 reefs mapped distribution patterns in fish carbonate excretion and mineralogy. A causal inference analysis identified the major ecological, environmental, and socio-economic factors driving these community-level patterns. At the regional scale (i.e., in the Australian coral reefs context), structural equation models disentangled the indirect effects of human gravity (i.e., a proxy for human pressure) and fisheries management on fish contributions to inorganic carbon cycling. Findings at the individual level confirmed the long-assumed direct link between fish carbonate excretion and metabolic rate and showed that diet strongly influences intestinal morphology. Relative intestinal length was uncovered as a strong driver of carbonate excretion rates and mineralogy, as were taxonomic identity and temperature. Current global patterns of fish contribution to the inorganic carbon cycle are primarily driven by fish community structure, sea surface temperature, and human gravity. Carbonate excretion rates peaked in highly productive areas supporting high fish biomass, especially within the upper trophic levels, and where human gravity is low. Globally, fish communities predominantly excrete the more soluble carbonates and their proportion increases with increasing temperature. On Australian reefs, fish carbonate excretion was strongly affected by human impact through reduced fish biomass despite the region’s relatively low fishing pressure. In this particular geographic context, current fisheries management is not sufficient to maintain fish carbonate excretion, despite positive effects on fish biodiversity. This thesis advances our understanding of the role of fish in inorganic carbon cycling from the physiological, ecological, biogeographic, chemical, mineralogical, and conservation perspectives. It unravels the complex variability of this function across ecological levels and spatial scales. Coupled with predictive models, this information could yield solid predictions of the future levels of this function in light of anthropogenic impacts and climate-driven range shifts. While fish carbonate excretion may increase with climate change, excreted carbonates will dissolve faster and/or at shallower water depths, thereby changing their influence on seawater chemistry and reducing their sedimentation potential. Protecting large predators would promote inorganic carbonate production and other fish roles within the carbon cycle. However, fisheries management has in places limited capacity to sustain fish inorganic carbon cycling. The need for effective, context-tailored management approaches that address socio-economic factors beyond fishing pressure is strongly emphasised.

Description / Table of Contents: Quantifying species responses to the effects of changing environmental conditions is critical for a better understanding of how climate change affects invasion, expansion, and contraction of marine coastal species. Climate change is leading to modifications in the marine coastal environment, to conditions not experienced before; climate change results in that marine organisms experience simultaneous changes in several environmental variables (=drivers: e.g. temperature, salinity, food). How simultaneous changes in multiple drivers are experienced depend on species-specific traits (e.g. physiological tolerance, developmental time); for instance, co-occurring native and non-native species may experience and respond to climate change in different ways. In addition, within species, responses to multiple drivers may vary across populations and environmental gradients. The general objective of this thesis was to quantify the effects of environmental drivers (temperature, salinity and food limitation) on performance of native and non-native species with focus on larval stages and using crabs as model systems. There were two main objectives, first to compare native and non-native species in the responses to multiple environmental drivers and to quantify larval responses to temperature across their distribution range. I focused on larvae because they play a critical role in population dynamics: larvae are important for the dispersion and connectivity of populations, and are more sensitive to changes in environmental conditions than adults. I used three ecologically relevant species of coastal areas of the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean as models: Hemigrapsus sanguineus, Carcinus maenas and Hemigrapsus takanoi. C. maenas is native to Europe; Hemigrapsus spp. are both non-native species in the European coast, where they coexist with C. maenas as juveniles and adults in the benthos. I used factorial experiments rearing larvae from hatching to megalopae at different combinations of temperature and other environmental drivers (salinity, food limitation). Larval performance was quantified as survival, duration of development, and growth. The first series of result show that both non-native (Hemigrapsus spp) species had higher performance (high survival, shorter duration of development and high growth rates) than the native C. maenas at higher temperatures and at moderately low salinities (18 – 24 °C, 20 – 25 ‰). These results are comparable to another non-native species in Europe, the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis. In H. sanguineus, larvae show moderate level of tolerance to limited access to food at high temperature, which contrasted to the low tolerance shown in native C. maenas. Experiments and modelling show that the nature of the multiple driver response depends strongly on the metric used to measure time, where my emphasis is on biological time (time to metamorphosis). The results from the populations comparisons showed species and gradient-specific responses. For H. takanoi, distributed over a salinity gradient (North Sea -Baltic Sea), larvae from the North Sea populations always showed higher survival and faster development compared with those from the Baltic Sea. The population near the limit of the distribution showed very low survival, suggesting that subsidies or complex ontogenetic migration patterns are needed for population persistence. Results did not show genetic differentiation among the studied populations in the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit one gene (COI) suggesting that there is high connectivity among populations. For C. maenas distributed across a latitudinal gradient (South: Vigo, Spain; North: Bergen and Trondheim, Norway) and reared under different temperatures (range 6 to 27 °C in steps of 3 °C), there was little variation in survival and growth among populations. However, larvae from the Norwegian populations had a slightly shorter duration of development at low temperatures than those from Vigo, this response has an adaptive value in that it could sustain survival in scenarios of reduced temperature, by shortening the larval phase, when mortality rates are high. Besides, results from this experiment (as well as for the mentioned above) showed high intrapopulation variability in larval performance which has a potential to affect range expansion of the above-mentioned species. Variation in the responses of larval stages to the effects of different environmental drivers highlights the importance of using physiological descriptors to quantify the performance of marine invertebrates to changing environments. Larval responses vary in rates of survival but also in the duration of time to achieve metamorphosis, as well as the rate at which the organisms grow, with concomitant effects on post-metamorphic success, which in seasonal habitats may strongly depend on temperature. The results from the thesis highlight the importance of quantifying the responses of marine invertebrates to changing environmental conditions, considering different species and species distributed across different gradients as well as variations among and within species.

Description / Table of Contents: State-of-the-art climate models and computing infrastructure are now able to resolve mesoscale ocean eddy activity in many contexts. However, in computationally intensive model applications, such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) or simulations of the high latitudes, grid resolutions largely remain eddy-parameterizing due to resource constraints. These missing mesoscale processes are understood to be crucial drivers of ocean circulation and climate and may become still more relevant in the context of anthropogenic climate change. To overcome the computational limitations of traditional models, multiscale modeling strategies have been developed which can distribute grid resolution and resources based on resolution requirements and research goals. Here, several strategies for resolving the mesoscale using multiscale methods are described and the results of their implementation with the Finite volumE Sea ice Ocean Model (FESOM) are reported. In the first application, FESOM participates in CMIP6 with the strategy of concentrating computational resources on the major eddy-rich regions of the ocean. The resulting simulations are able to reproduce between 51 and 82% of observed eddy kinetic energy (EKE) in each region and project substantial climate change impacts on mesoscale activity for the first time at such a scale. The results include a poleward shift of eddy activity in most western boundary currents; EKE intensification in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), Brazil and Malvinas Currents, and Kuroshio Current; EKE decline in the Gulf Stream; and intensification of Agulhas leakage. In a second application, FESOM is used to concentrate computational resources in the Southern Ocean and cost-reducing modeling strategies are used to enable fully eddy-resolving climate change projections with the regionally focused grid. The simulations faithfully reproduce EKE in the Southern Ocean and project intensified eddy activity in line with the CMIP6 analysis. The climate change signal is difficult to reliably discern from natural variability after 1 °C of warming, but becomes clear after 4 °C. Finally, the high-resolution Southern Ocean simulations are used to investigate high-latitude eddy activity where ice cover and low eddy size make observations and traditional modeling methods difficult. Detailed, near circumpolar mesoscale activity is detected and related to gyre circulation, the Antarctic Slope Current, and bathymetry. There is a strong seasonal cycle which suppresses winter eddy activity at the surface and selectively dampens cyclonic eddies. After prolonged anthropogenic warming, broad intensification of eddy activity occurs alongside regional decline, ACC eddy activity encroaches further into the high latitudes, and the seasonal cycle is diminished. Collectively, this work demonstrates the effectiveness of multiscale modeling in reducing the cost of resolving mesoscale ocean activity, facilitating the study of eddy activity and its interactions with the broader climate in previously unachievable contexts.