The Textbook
It provides an integrated, system-oriented introduction to the concepts, theories and issues surrounding the quest for a sustainable future for Planet Earth.Lectures & Tools
In this section we are collecting lectures and interactive tools that can be used for research and teaching.Featured Content
Other Educational Material, Narratives and Relevant Content
Depletion dynamics: Oil in the USA and gas in the Netherlands
Models of oil and gas exploitation
An important issue in sustainable development discourses is the depletion of finite resources of fossil fuels and minerals. The concepts of supply cost curves and reserve-production ratios (RPR) have been […]
Energy: forms, conversions, quality, exergy
Energy forms and conversions
Energy is a fundamental quantity in nature that is transferred between systems or parts of systems. It is ‘stored’ in a variety of forms and is associated with movement, combustion, heat and […]
Energy use: units and flows
Energy use: units
Energy units. It is important to get some familiarity with the units of energy quantities (stocks) and flows. The energy stored in systems is a stock. Examples are the chemical energy stored […]
Acquiring knowledge: strong and weak knowledge
It is a very fundamental principle indeed that Knowledge is always gained by the orderly loss of information, that is, by condensing and abstracting and indexing the great buzzing confusion of information that comes from […]
Fishing strategies: an agent-based simulation
Already for decades, ecologists are aware that proper modelling and management of fisheries has to incorporate the behaviour of fishermen. An early example was a model of two different fishing strategies (Allen and McGlade 1987). […]