非洲国家世界遗产的地域特征与成因分析

从联合国教科文组织世界遗产中心网提供的按国家顺序排列的《世界遗产名录》中将属于非洲国家的世界遗产逐项析出,进一步通览每项遗产的介绍资料,根据最基本和最显著的特点将非洲世界遗产的地域特征归纳为:文化遗产远多于自然遗产而在全球自然遗产比例较高、自然遗产和双重遗产在热带地区分布比较集中、古城镇数量多、就地取材且原始性强、反映历史悠久的古老遗迹多、外来文化特征明显以及宗教和神秘色彩浓厚等方面。这些特征是在自然环境、历史发展和地缘位置的共同作用下形成的。     

Advancing development projects through mega-events: the 2010 football World Cup and bus rapid transit in South Africa

In 2010, the focus of the sporting world was on South Africa, the first African country to host a Football World Cup, and the largest mega-event ever held on the continent. Mega-events like the World Cup have become instruments for governments seeking material improvements to highways and telecommunications as well as the more elusive nation-building and sanguine legacies. Whereas the literature typically concentrates on stadia and sports-related infrastructure, this paper focuses on bus rapid transit (BRT) as an “indirect legacy” to understand the way in which cities exploit the financial and political capital made available to advance projects long delayed behind more pressing endeavors. The compressed time horizons, unlocked financing and focused planning can be a “mixed blessing” however by limiting the scope of the project to the event. The paper concludes that in South Africa advancing development through the World Cup reinforced state authority and legitimacy.     

Divergent Perspectives on Water Security: Bridging the Policy Debate

Environmental policy discussion is replete with references to water security, food security, ecosystem health, community resilience, sustainable development, and sustainable urbanism. These terms are, by their very nature, ambiguous and difficult to define; they allow room, however, for a variety of actors to conceptualize water, food, ecological, economic, and urban problems in ways that allow them to move forward on contentious issues. This article focuses on the idea of water security and asks how it is conceptualized and used for regional policy debate in western Canada. We asked fifty-eight water stakeholders from the Saskatchewan River Basin to define water security, identify major barriers to security, and prioritize water problems. Responses showed there are myriad ways to think about water security, ranging from narrow conceptualizations, such as reliability, quality, and quantity, to broader sustainability perspectives about the nature of resource development and its social and economic consequences. The human dimensions of water security (governance, land use, and competing demands) were assigned higher priority than its biophysical aspects (flooding, droughts, and climate change). Framing water security to emphasize the human capacity to manage uncertain and rapid biophysical and societal change offers the opportunity to unite actors who otherwise would be separated by core environmental values, definitions of water security, provincial context (Alberta vs. Saskatchewan), and occupation.     

文化遗产保护与开发的思考

经济建设发展与文化遗产保护之间的紧张关系到处存在。既不能以牺牲珍贵文物为代价,换取旅游业的发展,也不能因为保护而拒游客于门外。为此重申“中国原则”,即以“实现人类文明延续和可持续发展的必然要求”为准则。对石窟文化的保护,初步解决了游客拥挤对壁画、彩塑的潜在威胁,加强了对风沙侵蚀危害的防范,但仍然面临许多社会和自然环境问题。古城遗址的发现,涉及对古环境反演的科学问题。利用考古发掘的丰富信息,联系古自然环境变化和人文影响、物质传播的大背景,可能有助于开豁诠释、论证古代文明和古文化的新思路。破解中原许多古城遗址之谜,也需要从重建、虚拟古环境着手。古建筑的修复或重建,既要遵循“修旧如旧”的原则,也要考虑适应现代环境与生态功能,适度采用现代新工艺和新材料。考古发掘、文化遗产保护工作中,运用环境遥感监测技术,不乏成功先例。作者建议,进一步推广田间考古格网的经验,构建多层次的格网管理信息系统,促进文化遗产保护与开发的能力建设与现代化。     

从地理1到选择性必修1:联系基础上的进阶

地理1和选择性必修1课程内容要求之间的关系为联系基础上的进阶。整体联系体现在太阳辐射和地球自身特点共同作用下的自然带地域分异规律形成过程,是必修地理1和选择性必修1隐含的学科逻辑线索。这条内容线索也是理解“必修”二字的关键。在“必修”的基础上看“选择性”,地理1和选择性必修1内容要求之间的进阶,体现在内容构成上,从现象到规律、从单一要素到要素综合;在学习水平上,从“识记”、“领会”,提升到“领会”、“分析”水平。地理1和选择性必修1内容要求之间的联系与进阶,要求教师树立教学设计的整体意识,包括课程内容的结构化分析和教学目标的分层设计,从而在整体把握学科知识体系的基础上,有一条清晰的逐级递进、螺旋上升体现学习进阶过程的教学“路线图”。     

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

Contemporary research into extratropical cloud systems optimizes the increase in resolution of visible (VIS) and thermal infra-red (IR) sensors, and the ability to retrieve wind and atmospheric moisture variables at mesoscales using microwave radiometry. These passively-acquired remote sensing data are used to develop synoptic climatological (conceptual and simple statistical) ‘models’ of mesoscale cyclones in cold-air outbreaks (mesocyclones, ‘polar lows’) occurring over the otherwise data-void southern oceans. Mesocyclones present a limitation to successful weather forecasting for New Zealand and coastal Chile, southern Australia and South Africa, during the cold season. The synoptic climatological analyses show that: 1) the patterns of mesocyclone cloud vortex origins, movement and dissipation (‘mesocyclone regimes’), exhibit spatial dependence and have associations with upper-ocean conditions; 2) mesocyclone ‘outbreaks’ are embedded within characteristic larger-scale anomaly fields of tropospheric pressure, height, and layer thickness (mean temperature); and 3) composite (statistical average) models of cloud system structure based on the microwave retrievals of marine weather reveal mesocyclones to be relatively dry in comparison with synoptic cyclones, yet very windy. These analyses should permit the development of methods to better predict these important cold-season storms over southern middle latitudes, and a fuller assessment of their significance for the larger hydroclimatic system.     

Women in the Field: Critical Feminist Methodologies and Theoretical Perspectives*

Feminist scholars have traditionally emphasized the importance of incorporating “the everyday” worlds of women into the historically masculinist theoretical and empirical foundations of the social sciences. Such emphases have commonly resulted in smaller-scale research projects and more interactive kinds of research methods and methodologies. Feminist geographers have uniquely contributed to the body of feminist scholarship through drawing out the importance of place in everyday constructions of gender and, more recently, sexuality. Critical field-based research has therefore from the beginning been the mainstay of subdisciplinary research. Like the discipline as a whole, however, little explicit attention has been given in publications or pedagogically to the politics of fieldwork (including how a “field” is defined and the politics involved in choosing and working in a particular “field”) or the politics of representation (which includes considerations of the partiality of knowledge and how and to whom we represent our work, ourselves and others in various kinds of texts). These “Opening Remarks” show how these issues are addressed in the papers that follow and how feminist geography has much to contribute to critical analyses of global and multinational processes, including patriarchy, capitalism, and racism.