Risk posed to vegetation net primary productivity by drought on the Mongolian Plateau

The increasing frequency of recent droughts has an adverse effect on the ecosystem of the Mongolian Plateau. The growth condition of NPP is considered an indicator of the ecological function. Therefore, identifying the relationship between NPP and drought can assist in the prevention of drought-associated disasters and the conservation of the ecological environment of the Mongolian Plateau. This study used the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach(CASA) model to simulate the NPP capacity of the Mongol...     

Reply to “Comments on Climatology: The Challenge for the Eighties Revisited”

Book reviews in this article

The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality. ROBERT C. BALLING JR. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1992. xxxvi and 195 pp., diags., tables, index, and biblio. $21.95 cloth (ISBN 0-936488-47-6).

Mountain Weather and Climate, 2nd edition. ROGER G. BARRY. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1992. xx and 402 pp., maps. diags., photos, index, and biblio. $89.95 cloth (ISBN 0-415-07112-7); $29.95 paper (ISBN 0-415-07113-5).

Late Quaternary Environmental Change: Physical and Human Perspectives. MARTIN BELL and MICHAEL J. C. WALKER. Essex, England: Longman Group, 1992. xiv and 273 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $39.95 paper (ISBN 0-582-04514-2).

Planning for Earthquakes. PHILIP R. BERKE and TIMOTHY BEATLEY. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. xv and 210 pp., maps, diags., photos, tables, app., acronyms, index, and biblio. $38.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-4255-7).

Industrialization and Development in the Third World. RAJESH CHANDRA. London: Routledge, 1992. xvii and 124 pp., maps, figs., photos, and index. $14.95 paper (ISBN 0-415-01380-1).

Waste Location: Spatial Aspects of Waste Management, Hazards and Disposal. MICHAEL CLARK, DENIS SMITH, and ANDREW BLOWERS, eds. London: Routledge, 1992. xv and 257 pp., maps, diags., index, and refs. $85.00 cloth (ISBN 0-415-04824-9).

Water Diversion and Export: Learning from Canadian Experience. J. C. DAY and FRANK QUINN. Waterloo, Ontario: Department of Geography, University of Waterloo, 1992. xx and 215 pp., 14 maps, 4 diags., 17 tables, 12 photos, glossary, and biblio. $25.00 (Can.) paper (ISBN 0-921083-42-4).

The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 2nd edition. WILLIAM M. DENEVAN, ed. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. xxxviii and 353 pp., maps, figs., tables, index, biblio. $45.00 cloth (ISBN 0-299-134-30-X); $14.95 paper (ISBN 0-299-13434-2).

Touring North America (series). ANTHONY R. DE SOUZA, ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. 13 volumes; pages varying from approximately 100 to approximately 300 each; maps, diags., indices, and biblios. $9.95 each paperback; $25.00 each volume in cloth; boxed gift set of all 13 volumes in paperback $129.95. (ISBNs for cloth and paperback editions range from 0-8135-1870-9 to 0-8135-1895-4 inclusive).

Urban Transport Planning: A Developmental Approach. HARRY T. DIMITRIOU. New York: Routledge, 1992. xviii and 346 pp., diags., index, and biblio. $92.50 cloth (ISBN 0-415-03857-X).

Colonialism and Development in the Contemporary World. CHRIS DIXON and MICHAEL HEFFERNAN, eds. Rutherford, NJ: Mansell, 1991. viii and 232 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $70.00 cloth (ISBN 0-7201-2072-1).

The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. J. NICHOLAS ENTRIKIN. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. xii and 196 pp., notes, and indices. $38.50 cloth (ISBN 0-8018-4083-X); $13.95 paper (ISBN 0-8018-4084-8).

The Women Outside: Meanings and Myths of Homelessness. STEPHANIE GOLDEN. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ix and 265 pp., index and biblio. $25.00 cloth (ISBN 0-520-07158-1).

The Transformation of Agriculture in the West. DAVID GRIGG. Oxford, England, and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1992. xiv and 141 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-631-17094-4).

Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America's Built Environment. JOHN A. JAKLE and DAVID WILSON. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992. xviii and 342 pp., illus., index, biblio. $65.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8476-7735-4); $23.50 paper (ISBN 0-8476-7736-2).

Iranian Cities: Formation and Development. MASOUD KHEIRABADI. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. xiv and 132 pp., maps, diags., photos, appendices, notes, glossary, biblio., and index. $27.50 cloth (ISBN 0-292-72468-3).

The Pentagon and the Cities. ANDREW KIRBY, ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991. Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, vol. 40. x and 207 pp., tables, maps, index, and biblio. $43.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8039-3845-4); $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-8039-3846-2).

Geographic Perspectives on Soviet Central Asia. ROBERT A. LEWIS, ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. xv and 323 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $69.95 cloth (ISBN 0-415-07592-0).

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatan Highlands, 1500–1821. W. GEORGE LOVELL. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992. xxxviii and 279 pp., maps, diags., glossary, notes, index, and biblio. $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-7735-0903-8).

Contested Lands: Conflict and Compromise in New Jersey's Pine Barrens. ROBERT J. MASON. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. xii and 257 pp., maps, tables, index, and biblio. $44.95 cloth (ISBN 0-87722-925-2).

Making Sense of Place: Children's Understanding of Large-Scale Environments. M. H. MATTHEWS. Savage, MD: Harvester Wheatsheaf, Barnes and Noble Books, 1992. xiv and 271 pp., maps, diags, tables, index, and biblio. $54.50 cloth (ISBN 0-389-20987-2).

Sources of Metropolitan Growth. EDWIN S. MILLS and JOHN F. MCDONALD, eds. New Brunswick: Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 1992. xxvii and 306 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $29.95 cloth (ISBN 0-88285-135-7).

Resource Management in Developing Countries. PETER H. OMARAOJUNGU. Harlow, England: Longman, 1992. xvi and 213 pp., maps, diags., tables, index, and biblio. $39.95 paper (ISBN 0-582-30102-5).

A Moveable Shore: The Fate of the Connecticut Coast. PETER C. PATTON and JAMES M. KENT. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992. viii and 143 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $49.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8223-1128-3); $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-8223-1147-X).

Agricultural Reform in China: From Communes to Commodity Economy 1978–1990. SIMON G. POWELL. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1992. viii and 231 pp., maps, diags., tables, and biblio. $69.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7190-3382-9).

The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992: A Regional Geography. BONHAM C. RICHARDSON. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xvi and 235 pp., maps, tables, index, and biblio. $49.95 cloth (ISBN 0-521-35186-3); $16.95 paper (ISBN 0-521-35977-5).

Scavengers, Recyclers, and Solutions for Solid Waste Management in Indonesia. DANIEL T. SICULAR. Berkeley: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1992. xii and 197 pp., maps, tables, photos, glossary, biblio., and index. $16.50 paper (ISBN 0-944613-13-6).

The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women. ELIZABETH WILSON. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. 191 pp., plates, index, and biblio. $35.00 cloth (ISBN 0-520-07850); $14.00 paper (ISBN 0-520-07864-0).

The Cultural Geography of the United States: A Revised Edition. WILBUR ZELINSKY. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1992. ix and 226 pp., maps, diags., index, and biblio. $21.95 paper (ISBN 0-13-194424-X).     

From stay to play – A travel planning tool based on crowdsourcing user-generated contents

Conventional ways of trip planning using online reviews from multiple sources are often cumbersome and uncustomizable. The advance in information and communication technology (ICT) and the surge in user-generated contents (UGC) provide great opportunities to facilitate trip planning. This paper proposes a travel-planning tool by crowdsourcing multiple UGCs to provide customized information for tourists. We harvested hotel customer reviews from TripAdvisor, photo information from Flickr, and travel costs between destinations from Uber. First, we used geospatial data mining approaches to extract tourism attractions information from Flickr; identified multi-facet characteristics of hotels with natural language processing (NLP); and provided travel route recommendations with graph analysis. Second, we developed a web-based interface to let users communicate with the system interactively, which provides integrated recommendations including attractions, hotels, and visit route sequences. Two cities in the United States (i.e. Atlanta and Chicago) were used as cases to illustrate our approaches. The proposed travel planning tool is not only beneficial to support customized travel decision-making, but also supportive for hotel managers with strategic management implications.     

Reply to Comment on ‘Marine GIS: Identification of mesoscale oceanic thermal fronts’

Geographic information service (GIService) has become popular in the last decade to develop applications for addressing global challenges. Performance is one of the most important criteria to help users select distributed online GIService for developing geospatial applications including natural hazards and emergency responses. However, performance accuracy is limited by the single-location-based evaluation mechanism while service performance is dynamic in space and time between end-users and services. We propose a spatiotemporal performance evaluation mechanism to improve the accuracy. Specially, a cloud and volunteer computing mechanism is proposed to collect performance information of globally distributed GIServices. A global spatiotemporal performance model is designed to integrate spatiotemporal dynamics for better performance evaluation for users from different regions at different times. This model is tested to support GIService selection in global spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). The experiment confirms that the proposed model provides more accurate evaluations for global users and better supports geospatial resource utilizations in SDIs than previous mechanisms. The methodology can be adopted to improve the services of other regional and global distributed operational systems.     

Gaps,Intellectual Enthusiasms,Personal Insecurities: Response to “Stages on Journeys”

Abstract

The Department of Geography at Arizona State University implemented a field exam as part of its PhD program requirements. This field exam requires students to develop an independent field-based research project based on a general question in the student's specialty area. A survey of current and former PhD students and faculty members document how the field exam assists students in developing skills necessary for continuing graduate research and for preparing them for the rigors of academic employment. The outcomes of the exam include both long-term, process-related benefits and more immediate tangible rewards. For some students, the preliminary fieldwork and results redirect student interests and form the basis for their eventual dissertation. The field exam is adaptable to a diversity of geography research methods, subject areas, and graduate degree programs, while remaining grounded in the discipline's vibrant, widely respected fieldwork tradition.

     

Council Approaches to Implementing Sustainability: a case of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Local government has a key role to play in implementing sustainability. Yet even councils attempting to address the issue of sustainability are often unacceptably slow and ineffective in their endeavours. This study investigates the approaches that councils currently take in implementing sustainability, as this may shed additional light on the slow progress of councils towards sustainability. The approaches of three New South Wales councils were examined and assessed using a model developed for the study that utilised the Ecological Footprint as the primary assessment tool. The model assessed three key aspects of council approaches to implementing sustainability: (1) the issues councils target for change; (2) the methods councils use to change behaviours; and (3) the clarity and holistic nature of their approaches. All three council approaches scored poorly against the model mainly as a result of the councils' failure to target the behaviours of their residents that are causing the greatest ecological harm. The major implication is that councils need to reconsider, and possibly overhaul, their approaches to implementing sustainability as these approaches are unlikely ever to achieve sustainability.     

Limnological responses to warming on the Xizang Plateau,Tibet, over the past 200 years

Paleolimnological analyses can be used to evaluate limnological responses to changing climate over decadal to centennial timescales, especially in regions with sparse lake monitoring data. We used a training set with 90 lakes to develop a diatom-based conductivity transfer function and address climate-driven changes in lakes on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Tibet. This new training set is an expanded version of a previous model (Yang et al. in J Paleolimnol 30:1–19, 2003) and shows improved performance statistics for the conductivity model. The expanded training set also contains diatom species not previously identified from the region, such as Stephanodiscus sp. and Cyclotella sp., which are common eutrophic indicator species in other regions, but can also be influenced by water column conductivity. The new conductivity transfer function was applied to Lakes Nam Co and Chen Co in Tibet. Recent conductivity inferences were compared with climate data from the Dangxiong weather station and water level records from Yangzhuyong Co, which show increasing temperature and lower water levels, respectively, since AD 1960. Other studies showed that the water balance for many lakes on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau is complex, affected by both evaporation and glacial melting. Our paleolimnological reconstructions, which include sediment particle size data, indicate that over relatively short timescales glacial meltwater can influence lake hydrology, but over decadal timescales, increases in evaporation, driven by rising temperatures, dominate. Our findings suggest that regional warming is lowering water levels at these sites and will continue to do so given predicted future climate warming.     

Gods of the City? Reflecting on City Building Games as an Early Introduction to Urban Systems

For millions of gamers and students alike, city building games (CBGs) like SimCity and the more recent Cities: Skylines present a compelling initial introduction to the world of urban planning and development. As such, these games have great potential to shape players’ understanding and expectations of real urban patterns and processes. In this article I argue that, despite the fundamental role of agency in CBGs and other sandbox type games, players are constrained by the developers’ assumptions and biases regarding how cities ought to look and function. Of particular consideration is the tendency among CBGs to emphasize personal transportation over transit, autocentric over mixed-use development, and simplified social dynamics over a more realistic model.     

Spatial pattern reconstruction of regional habitat quality based on the simulation of land use changes from 1975 to 2010

Reconstruction of the spatial pattern of regional habitat quality can revivify the ecological environment background at certain historical periods and provide scientific support for revealing the evolution of regional ecological environmental quality.In this study,we selected 10 driving factors of land use changes,including elevation,slope,aspect,GDP,population,temperature,precipitation,river distance,urban distance,and coastline distance,to construct the CA-Markov model parameters and acquired the land use spatial data for 1975,1980,1985,1990,and 1995 by simulation based on the land use status map for 2010.On this basis,we used the InVEST model to reconstruct the spatial pattern of habitat quality in the study area and conducted classification division and statistical analysis on the computed habitat degradation degree index and the habitat quality index.(1)The results showed that from 1975 to 2010,the habitat degradation degree gradually increased,and the habitat degradation grade spatially presented a layered progressive distribution.Habitat quality presented a constantly decreasing trend.The high-value zones were mainly distributed in the mountainous areas,while the low-value zones were mostly located in built-up areas.During the period of 1975-2010,low-value zones gradually expanded to their surrounding high-value zones,and the high-value zones of habitat quality tended to be fragmented.(2)The spatial-temporal variation characteristics of habitat quality from 1975 to 2010 showed that the regions with low habitat quality were difficult to be restored and mostly maintained their original state;the regions with poor habitat quality,which accounted for 6.40%of the total study area,continued to deteriorate,mainly around built-up areas;the regions with good and superior habitat quality,which accounted for 5.68%of the total study area,were easily converted to regions with bad or poor habitat quality,thus leading to the fragmentation of the regional habitat.(3)From 1975 to 2010,land use changes in the study area were significant and had a huge influence on habitat quality;the habitat quality in the study area decreased consistently,and the area of the regions with bad and poor habitat quality accounted for more than 60%of the total study area.Construction land was the largest factor threatening habitat quality.     

A land-use-based modelling chain to assess the impacts of Natural Water Retention Measures on Europe’s Green Infrastructure

This article details the process of integrating models to answer a specific policy-driven question: ‘What could be the impact of proposed Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRMs) on Europe’s Green Infrastructure (GI)?’ It describes the new Land Use Modelling Platform (LUMP), now enabling a high spatial scale (100-m) and large coverage (pan-European), whereby several sector-specific models contribute to assessing the impact of regional-level policy on a given spatial topic of concern. The configuration (land claims and land allocations modules) and calibration (accessibility and biophysical suitability) of the LUMP are explained. Four NWRM scenarios (riparian areas, afforestation, grassland and baseline scenario) are configured to run the simulations. For the reference: year 2006, the spatial representation of GI is based on land-use features of a refined version of the CORINE Land Cover (CLC), and resumed as connected components made of nodes and links.

Mathematical morphological image processing and network graph theory model, available from the free software package GUIDOS (the Joint Research Center of the European Commission), enabled the measurement of the GI connectivity and identified most critical links. Results show that the competition for land claimed by different economic sectors, combined with policy-driven rule-sets for the implementation of different NWRMs, yields very different results for the 2030 land-use projections, and subsequently for the morphology of GI. Three indicators associated with the morphology of GI are computed in order to assess the model outputs for 2030. The indicators are computed to answer the following questions: (1) How is the quantity of GI affected by each of the NWRM, and what proportion of that GI is most valuable? (2) What is the location of the most critical nodes and connectors of GI, and what land-use conversions occur under these? (3) Are the average components getting larger or smaller?

Whereas the grassland measure results in the largest net increase of GI, the afforestation measure results in the overall largest number of hectares of key nodes and links within the network. Land conversions occur under the critical GI nodes and links, with a large increase in agricultural areas, especially for the riparian measure under critical nodes and the grassland measure under critical links. Also predominant is the swapping of land from pasture to forest under critical links with the afforestation measure. The riparian measure most increases the average size of GI components, and all three measures contribute to bridging two large components which were divided in the 2006 land-use map, thus increasing the size of the largest component by more than 50%.     

The 10th International Symposium on Permafrost Engineering——Challenge and adaption of permafrost engineering to a changing climate

Permafrost engineering has been developing rapidly in recent years. Many projects have been undertaken with the latest technologies and show their importance in supporting regional social and economical development. For example, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has been a milestone project in permafrost engineering. However, when designing and building infrastructures in cold regions,     

AN UNPRECEDENTED GRAND GATHERING——Welcoming the IGU Regional Conference on Asian Pacific Countries to Be Beld at Beijing

The International Geographical Union is going to convene its Regional Conference on Asian Pacific Countries on 13-20 August 1990, at Beijing.The Chinese geographical circle ex-     

Impacts and effects of government regulation on farmers’ responses to drought: A case study of North China Plain

Frequent extreme weather events like drought, etc. in the context of climate change present huge challenges to agricultural production. To find out if farmers have taken measures against them and identify governments’ impact on their response measures are the foundation of and key to further improving relevant policies and farmers’ responsiveness. Taking the North China Plain as an example, the study analyzes farmers’ responses to frequent climate change-induced drought, and assesses the impacts of governments’ early-warning, policy support and other factors on farmers’ responses based on questionnaire survey data and an econometric approach. The results show that: (1) Farmers are responsive to drought, and they are more likely to take measures as the degree of drought deepening. (2) Governments’ regulation affects farmers’ responses, although only part of its regulation measures has remarkable effects. Governments’ early-warning messages can increase the possibility of farmers’ responding to drought, however, only when they get the early-warning in all the processes including before, during, and after disasters can the effects be significant. Currently, as the primary channel through which early-warning information is released, television cannot change farmers’ behaviors significantly. Early-warning is most effective when spread via two or more types of channels. In addition, governments’ (especially town and village level institutions’) policy support has certain impacts on farmers’ responses to drought, yet with less prominent effects in disaster years than in normal years; to provide subsidies, as a regulation measure, can encourage farmers’ initiative a lot in adopting response measures, but most of the farmers haven’t got support from any institutions. Both the structure and strength of government regulation need to be improved. (3) Farmers with different conditions respond differently. Farmer households in irrigation areas, those whose farmland is lower fragmented, and those with numerous agricultural family members tend to take response measures. The study can provide scientific reference to the making of relevant regulation policies under the background of acidifications.     

What motivates single women to migrate from northern Ghana to Accra?

In recent decades there has been a large migration stream of single women from the north to Accra in Ghana. Existing studies have focused on young migrant women’s livelihood strategies in their place of destination. However, once-married women – divorced and widowed women and neglected wives – also migrate, and their motivations for migration are less known. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative methods, the authors investigate the effects of gender norms, age, marital status, socio-economic status, and position in households on women’s decisions to migrate. The results revealed that migrant women from resource-poor households, regardless of age, marital status and position in households, commonly cited a gain in autonomy as an important motivation for their migration. From a differentiated perspective, young unmarried women aspired to prepare themselves for often expensive religious marriage ceremonies, whereas once-married women invest in their children’s education and build their own housing. By paying attention to the effects of gender norms, age, marital status, socio-economic status, and position in households on women’s decisions to migrate, the study illuminates the contradictory ways in which their migration practices are both shaped by and shape gender ideologies in parts of contemporary northern Ghana.     

Elevation response of above-ground net primary productivity for Picea crassifolia to climate change in Qilian Mountains of Northwest China based on tree rings

Current ecosystem models used to simulate global terrestrial carbon balance generally suggest that terrestrial landscapes are stable and mature, but terrestrial net primary productivity(NPP) data estimated without accounting for disturbances in species composition, environment, structure, and ecological characteristics will reduce the accuracy of the global carbon budget. Therefore, the steady-state assumption and neglect of elevation-related changes in forest NPP is a concern. The Qilian Mounta...     

Competing Place Meanings in Complex Landscapes: A Social–Ecological Approach to Unpacking Community Conservation Outcomes on the Wild Coast,South Africa

Despite a general awareness of the social–ecological complexities within which conservation interventions are embedded, approaches to understanding a diversity of local perspectives of heterogeneous landscapes and how they matter for the outcomes of these interventions are seldom demonstrated. We apply a social–ecological approach to exploring the multiple place meanings related to key landscape elements around a proposed community conservation intervention on the Wild Coast, South Africa, by identifying and analyzing three narratives about this impending change. These narratives mobilize competing meanings of the landscape to argue for or against the conservation project. By linking place meanings to locally defined landscape units (ecotopes), we engage multiple interpretations of the heterogeneous and changing landscape to gain a holistic and more inclusive picture of social–ecological landscape processes such as increasing woodlands and field abandonment. The obstruction of this particular intervention indicates the importance of engaging with multiple cultural values of nature.