Issues and options for a Martian calendar

In the past 125 years, more than 70 authors have published ideas for keeping time on Mars, describing how to divide the Martian day and Martian year into smaller units. The Martian prime meridian was established in the mid-19th century, and the design of the Martian clock has been standardised at least since the Viking missions of the 1970s. Scientists can tell time on Mars; however, despite the constant stream of data that is downlinked from Mars these days, there is still no standardised system for expressing the date on Mars. Establishing a standard epoch—at a specific time of year on Mars, and a specific Martian year—should be the next priority in Martian timekeeping as a minimal system required for the physical sciences. More elaborate ideas, including the number and length of weeks and months, and names thereto, can be deferred for the present, but may become important considerations in coming years.     

发达国家地质大数据管理现状分析与启示：以美、英、澳、加为例

科学数据是国家重要战略资源,数据共享是这种资源有效开发利用的手段之一,也是当今科学研究范式向数据密集型转变的重要基础。现代信息技术与勘查方法的深度融合,使得地质勘查和地学研究领域被急速推向大数据时代,亟需从宏观层面上进行科学管理。欧美一些国家通过颁布政策方针及铺设数据基础设施等方式,推动着本国地质大数据管理的有效实施。文章对美、英、澳、加四国地质调查局的数据管理工作方面做了调查,从数据管理范围、数据政策、战略计划、重要数据库及主要数据工具等方面现状进行了介绍与分析,并对中国地质调查行业数据管理工作提出了一些建议：（1）数据管理政策应采用自顶向下设计,自底向上实施;（2）数据开放共享、融合交流是世界地调机构的发展趋势;（3）大力推进地质云建设,三位一体实现大数据治理;（4）促进数据共享基础设施建设,通过参与国际治理争取拿到更多的话语权。     

顾及语义的室内三维模型数据组织与可视化

本文提出了一种顾及语义的"实体-区域-入口"数据组织机制,有效整合了现有的城市三维地理空间数据与建筑物室内精细模型数据,实现了高效的室内场景数据调度与可视化;并基于此构建了三维可视化系统,验证了该方法的有效性和可行性。     

Social capital and community preparation for urban flooding in China

Social capital can enhance community resilience to environmental change. Productive and trusted relations among social actors and effectual social norms can help local residents share resources, information and risks. The main objective of our study is to understand the ways in which social attributes and risk considerations influence adoption of resilient economic measures by individuals for reducing potential losses due to catastrophic rainstorm and flooding. This article provides evidence from China on how social capital contributes to anticipatory adaptation to environmental change. The inquiry is based on structured interviews with local residents of Tianjin, a flood-prone port city in China, and a standard regression analysis. Findings show that the intention to make preparation increases with the levels of social expectation, social relationship, and institutional trust. Perceived risk and damage experience, however, have no significant impacts. This suggests that building social capacity and trust will be more effective in enhancing community resilience than merely increasing awareness of hazard risks. We call for greater efforts on strengthening the capacity of formal and informal communal institutions. The structural changes required, however, are challenging.     

中国城市网络的空间组织及其复杂性结构特征

全球化、信息化与快速城市化深刻影响了中国的城市体系,多区位企业组织所形成的城市网络正处于日益复杂的空间嬗变过程.基于2010年企业名录的总部—分支机构型关联数据,研究构建了330×330的地级以上城市网络连接关系,并运用复杂网络分析工具来探索中国城市网络的空间组织特征.研究发现:①中国的城市网络联系呈现以“北京—上海—广深—成都”为核心的菱形空间结构,不同等级的网络流强度具有显著的空间异质性,城市网络的空间组织是一个择优性和地理邻近性复杂作用的过程;②中国城市网络正处于一个简单随机向复杂有序结构的转化期,整体大尺度的网络结构还有待形成;③中国城市网络整体表现出明显的小世界网络效应;④中国城市的二值点度网络为明显的异配性连接特征,而加权强度网络连接则一定程度上表现出“富人圈”的现象;⑤中国城市网络的层级性并不明显,城市网络的点度和强度的关系呈非线性增加特征.     

Environmental governance through “Speaking Like an Indigenous State” and respatializing resources: Ethical livelihood concepts in Bolivia as versatility or verisimilitude?

This research addresses recent environmental governance in Bolivia through its relations to indigeneity and respatializations. It introduces and develops the concept of “speaking like an indigenous state” to examine the Bolivian state’s recent use of a pair of indigenous linguistic concepts, Living Well and Earth Mother, representing the identities of citizens and their rights to resources and livelihoods. State relations to indigenous social movements highlight the use of Living Well and Earth Mother concepts through accommodation, resistance, and protaganism. Six active issues of environmental governance are examined: (1) climate change and justice movement; (2) agrarian reform, agrobiodiversity, and food justice; (3) water resources; (4) indigenous territories; (5) Protected Areas; and (6) extractive industries (mining, hydrocarbons). The usages of Living Well and Earth Mother show versatility as they have been mobilized in the respatializing of the politics and social-power dynamics of environmental issues at scales of the state, global and international institutions, and community and local levels. Analysis also reveals deployment of Living Well and Earth Mother that is discursively influential and yet conceptually reduced and unevenly applied, thus suggesting a characteristic of verisimilitude. My analysis determines that respatialization at various levels, including territorial transitions of sub-national regional spaces, are associated with the heightened articulation of environmental governance through indigeneity and “speaking like an indigenous state” amid resource nationalism. Linkages and logics operating within this conjuncture differ from the prevailing interpretation of the Bolivian state’s use of Living Well and Earth Mother as solely an unwitting contradiction or instrumentalist camouflage.     

Experimenting with spaces of encounter: Creative interventions to develop meaningful contact

To-date geographical research on encounters has primarily comprised observation of naturalistic settings (both micro publics and everyday public spaces) or narrative accounts of encounters generated by conventional methods, this paper focuses on a contrived spatial experiment to create meaningful contact across difference. Inspired by, and drawing on insights from, Architecture – a discipline relatively neglected by geographers in recent times – we use a creative form of spatial play to stimulate groups of people to explore their differences and to develop shared understandings. Whereas previous studies have identified the importance of material objects in art projects and home spaces in mediating relations between people, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the physical configuration of space in work on encounters, despite the fact that geography is a spatial discipline. Here, we engage directly with the role of the form and function of space. Our spatial experiments demonstrate how paying attention to the materiality of micro-spaces rather than social relations alone, can provide insights into the generation of positive interactions by contributing to a greater understanding of how meaningful encounters happen, and what can be done to facilitate them. Specifically, by exploring the size and configuration of space, issues of ownership and surveillance, the relationship between primary and secondary space, and aural architecture this research identifies how working together to create a shared private or intimate space – might facilitate a sense of empowerment and the production of social relations characterised by democracy and inclusion.     

Novel insights on intensity and typology of direct human-nature interactions in protected areas through passive crowdsourcing

Recent advances in geotagging, sharing and automatically analyzing online content from Social Networking Sites (SNS) offer unprecedented opportunities for the analysis of human-nature interactions. Previous studies in this field, however, offer limited insights regarding the benefits of automated content analysis especially at large scales, biases arising from the selection of SNS sources, and the predictive power of visitation models based on SNS data. We explore quantitative and qualitative aspects related to intensity, interests and sentiments associated with on-site experiences in 568 protected areas in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We analyze counts and content of >100,000 photographs and tweets from four different SNSs, calibrate visitation models and predict visitation in unmonitored sites, cluster sites based on the typology of human-nature interactions reflected in online photographs, and characterize the polarity of sentiments associated with experiences in individual sites and clusters thereof. We find benefits in combining data from multiple sources and controlling for biases related to sites’ photogenicity and type of human-nature interactions. Our results suggest that current best estimates of visitation in unmonitored sites underestimate by 39% the actual number of visits. We discuss how the techniques and findings in this study are applicable in the broader context of the management and conservation of sites of environmental or cultural interest.     

Impact of justice and solidarity variables on the acceptability of managed realignment

Sea-level rise due to climate change will have significant effects on coastal areas and populations. Adaptation policies recommend the managed realignment of the most vulnerable assets and activities. Despite their medium- and long-term benefits, these policies face significant friction due to social acceptability in the communities where they are implemented.

This article investigates the hypothesis that respecting principles of justice in the implementation of managed realignment should increase its acceptability. We compare preferences of those people who are exposed to the risk of climate-change-induced flooding and those who are not, as regards funding managed retreat policies and defining compensation criteria for assets at risk. The main theories of social justice provide the four principles included in the analysis: efficiency, need, responsibility and priority assigned to property rights.

A choice experiment survey was conducted with 258 residents of coastal and hinterland communities in the south of France. Four attributes were selected to define the managed realignment policy: the dialogue arrangements, the implementation period, the policy implementation schedule and the cost. The results show support for a relatively fast launch of these policies (within 15 years) but in stages and through a process of dialogue with the population. People's perceptions of the funding criteria reveal a preference for national solidarity. Finally, national funding of managed retreat policies and compensation criteria based on market prices have a significant positive influence on the acceptability of managed realignment policies, whereas introducing responsibility-based compensation criteria tends to favour the status quo over the adaptation policy.

Policy relevance

Prioritization of the funding criteria reveals the preference for national solidarity. Preferences for the justice criteria underpinning compensation reveal a great diversity of values. Besides implantation modalities, preferences for managed realignment policies depend on which level they are implemented at, on the expropriation criteria (the emphasis given to property rights, i.e. market price), on the attachment (people perceived as worst off, i.e. the property is their main residence rather than a second home or they have lower levels of income) and on the degree of responsibility (related to the date of purchase, i.e. on the information given at the time on the risk).     

An ecological economics framework for assessing environmental flows: the case of inter-basin water transfers in Lesotho

This paper used the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) that transfers water from the Orange River Basin in Lesotho to the Vaal River Basin in South Africa as a case study to show how environmental sustainability aspects can be integrated into economic development planning. Using the Ecological Social Accounting Matrix (ESAM) for Lesotho that integrates ecological implications of the LHWP with economic benefits of the project, the paper analysed the impact of lost ecological services downstream the LHWP dams in Lesotho on the well-being of households directly affected by the project (riparians) and the general economy of the country. The results revealed that despite significant economic benefits, the project has unintended impacts on ecological resources and services with resultant deleterious well-being implications for riparians. The results from the ESAM analysis indicated that not only the income of riparians is likely to suffer, but also that of other households and social groups, as well as the general economy of Lesotho. While results of the ESAM analysis did not indicate large income impacts on the economy at large, they were significant for riparians. The importance of integrating ecological consequences into impact assessment of IBWT before such transfers can be implemented to ensure sustainable development and considering economy-wide impacts associated with IBWT was proven necessary for a holistic impact assessment of IBWT.