Agribusiness,contract farmers and land‐use sustainability in North‐West Tasmania

The core questions pertaining to contract farming or ‘vertical co‐ordination’ relate to the ownership of decision‐making. Where decision‐making is partly removed from farmers there arise issues of sustainability which are inadequately addressed by current practice. A mail questionnaire conducted in North‐west Tasmania in 1990–91 obtained responses from 310 farmers, a 68 per cent return rate from the 456 valid cases initially identified. At the time of the survey, 119 respondents were involved in contract cropping, and a majority of these responses indicated a need for greater co‐ordination in farm planning. This co‐ordination requires a re‐think of the roles of both agribusiness firms and farmer organisations, as well as acceptance by farmers that long‐term planning for crop rotation and soil management has associated self‐benefit. Responsibility for soil erosion is seen to lie partly at the feet of processing firms which relegate production tasks to farmers under contract, but frequently appear to ignore the impact of short‐term planning horizons upon farmer capacity to manage soils for erosion minimisation. With few exceptions, such as the processor firm specialising in the perennial crop pyrethrum and one onion processor that encourages soil conservation, in North‐west Tasmania processing firms generally play no part in planning for sustainable land use.     

Retail Area Overlap: A Case in Forensic Geography

A retail dealer was given an exclusive market area in which to sell the product of a manufacturer. Later, this manufacturer assigned part of that exclusive area to another dealer. The first dealer subsequently sued the manufacturer for a breach of contract and damages resulting from the overlap. The attorney for the defense (the manufacturer's attorney) asked me to form an opinion on damages as an expert witness in economic geography. I used two methods: (1) a thought experiment based on a retail gravity model, and (2) an elementary regional shift‐share analysis. This case study in applied geography is presented here in the form of a narrative.     

Evolution of a mixed siliciclastic‐carbonate deep‐marine system on an unstable margin: The Cretaceous of the Eastern Greater Caucasus,Azerbaijan

Mixed siliciclastic‐carbonate deep‐marine systems (mixed systems) are less documented in the geological record than pure siliciclastic systems. The similarities and differences between these systems are, therefore, poorly understood. A well‐exposed Late Cretaceous mixed system on the northern side of the Eastern Greater Caucasus, Azerbaijan, provides an opportunity to study the interaction between contemporaneous siliciclastic and carbonate deep‐marine deposition. Facies analysis reveals a Cenomanian–early Turonian siliciclastic submarine channel complex that abruptly transitions into a Mid Turonian–Maastrichtian mixed lobe‐dominated succession. The channels are entrenched in lows on the palaeo‐seafloor but are absent 10 km towards the west where an Early Cretaceous submarine landslide complex acted as a topographic barrier to deposition. By the Campanian, this topography was largely healed allowing extensive deposition of the mixed lobe‐dominated succession. Evidence for irregular bathymetry is recorded by opposing palaeoflow indicators and frequent submarine landslides. The overall sequence is interpreted to represent the abrupt transition from Cenomanian–early Turonian siliciclastic progradation to c. Mid Turonian retrogradation, followed by a gradual return to progradation in the Santonian–Maastrichtian. The siliciclastic systems periodically punctuate a more widely extensive calcareous system from the Mid Turonian onwards, resulting in a mixed deep‐marine system. Mixed lobes differ from their siliciclastic counterparts in that they contain both siliciclastic and calcareous depositional elements making determining distal and proximal environments challenging using conventional terminology and complicate palaeogeographic interpretations. Modulation and remobilisation also occur between the two contemporaneous systems making stacking patterns difficult to decipher. The results provide insight into the behaviour of multiple contemporaneous deep‐marine fans, an aspect that is challenging to decipher in non‐mixed systems. The study area is comparable in terms of facies, architectures and the presence of widespread instability to offshore The Gambia, NW Africa, and could form a suitable analogue for mixed deep‐marine systems observed elsewhere.     

中国历史文化名村的时空分布特征及成因

古村落是具有文化遗产性质的乡村聚落,选取古村落发展中最具代表性的国家级历史文化名村来分析中国古村落的空间分布特征,探讨其影响因素和分布原因,从而进一步引导中国乡村地区的同步发展,促进城乡一体化进程。研究表明:① 我国历史文化名村主要沿河流分布、多是历史上的经济文化中心、交通要塞和文明的发祥地,并形成了3 大集中区、3 大相对集中区和4 大过渡扩散区,孕育了6 个文化区;② 中国历史文化名村建造时间跨度较大,但多集中在唐宋明清4 个朝代,明朝保留下来的古村落最多,分布范围最广;③ 造成中国历史文化名村分布不均衡的主要原因有资源禀赋特点、评定标准的局限、依托腹地的经济发达程度和区域政策导向。     

Earthquake‐induced landslide hazard monitoring and assessment using SOM and PROMETHEE techniques: A case study at the Chiufenershan area in Central Taiwan

Monitoring and assessment of landslide hazard is an important task for decision making and policy planning in the landslide area. Massive landslides, caused by the catastrophic Chi‐Chi earthquake in 1999, occurred in Central Taiwan, especially at Chiufenershan area in Nantou county. This study proposed two useful indicators coupled with the Self‐organizing map (SOM) neural network and the Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) technique to quickly extract accurate post‐quake landslides from multi‐temporal Système Probatoire de l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) images. A GIS‐based system was developed to simplify and integrate the procedures such as image pre‐processing, the SOM training, the PROMETHEE calculation, landslide extraction and accuracy assessment. The evaluated result shows that the landslide area soon after the earthquake is 209.50 ha (Kappa coefficient 96.88%). Over seven years of vegetation recovery, the denudation area has declined to 112.64 ha (Kappa coefficient 90.64%). Most earthquake‐induced landslides could be restored by natural vegetation succession. The developed system is a useful decision‐making tool for landslide area planning.     

Floodscapes? A Reading of Space‐Making and Place‐Making Processes in Regions Affected by Flood Hazard

The study of flood hazard has been a key theme within the spatial analysis of natural hazards. A number of authors have expanded on this tradition by adopting a society‐oriented approach to risk perception. Thus a new framework has become available for exploring social response to risk and describing the relationship between human communities and hazards in terms of contemporary interpretative categories such as social representation and “stigmatization,” the latter defined as the process by which media and social actors mark places affected by disastrous events as dangerous and unsafe sites. This literature has made a vital contribution to the geographical reading of flood hazard, showing how flood risk generates both space‐ and place‐making processes. In this paper I discuss the relationship between these two processes, suggesting that the political response to flood hazard may be viewed as a hetero‐directed strategy that influences place‐making at a local level. I illustrate this perspective using a field research conducted in 2006–2007 on the Po River Basin in Piemonte, an Italian region with high flood risk that has been affected by a series of events in recent decades.     

Fruitful Liaison or Folie à Deux? The AAG and the AGS*

A century ago, the American Geographical Society (AGS), then a half‐century old, helped give birth to the Association of American Geographers (AAG), succored the fledgling association, and long rendered it invaluable support. By the mid‐twentieth century, the shoe was on the other foot: a mature and much larger AAG was being urged to lend help to the AGS. This article details their intertwined histories and personnel and reflects on their differing takes on geography as a specialized academic discipline and as a comprehensive amateur enterprise.     

Negotiating Technology — (Re)considering the Use of GIS by Indigenous Peoples

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been increasingly touted for their ability to help empower indigenous peoples. The opportunity to discuss the development of an iwi‐based GIS with Te Ruunanga O Raukawa provides a platform for reflecting critically on issues that impact the effective use of GIS by indigenous groups. The dialectical context of GIS is explored by (re)considering the opportunities and challenges of applying GIS as a cross‐cultural communication device. A position is negotiated which interprets GIS as conditionally empowering provided that indigenous peoples consider their symbolic representation in, and physical access to GIS before making an initial investment in the technology.     

Twenty years of change in the Fijian periphery: The case of the Kadavu Island

This paper reviews changes in the development and peripheralized status of the Fijian island of Kadavu from a 20‐year perspective. A combination of microgeographic studies in three villages and a mesogeographical analysis show that the conditions of internal dependency found in Kadavu in the early 1980s had not changed much: the pattern of cash crop production and trade remained almost entirely dependent on the yaqona (Pacific kava) beverage crop; shipping services provided by core agents had not improved; the island had experienced significant outmigration; and government initiatives to change the trend were limited. These elements perpetuate a core–periphery structure in Fiji that hampers the development of a self‐sufficient periphery. For Kadavu villagers, however, the benefits derived from the continued form of non‐capitalist production afford them a certain degree of autonomy vis‐à‐vis the market economy, which might be to their advantage under the ongoing conditions of peripheralization.     

Dating of small gully formation and establishing erosion rates in old gullies under forest by means of anatomical changes in exposed tree roots (Southern Poland)

Small gullies occur in forested gully systems on the undulating loess plateau in southern Poland. The old gully hillslopes are mainly covered with 200-year old beech trees in contrast with the surface of the summit plateau, which is cultivated agricultural land. Beech roots are exposed in the gullies through erosion. Wood vessels in the root tree rings divide into early wood and late wood and, after the roots are exposed, start to make fewer vessels. These anatomical changes in root tree rings allow us to date erosion episodes.Small gullies form in a different manner on the valley floor and on hillslopes. In valley bottoms, erosion features are often formed at some distance from one another, and in time small gullies combine to form a single, longer one. Depending on local conditions, such as the hillslope profile, hillslopes may exhibit headward erosion or may be eroded downwards. Hilllope gullies may be transformed into side valleys as a result of gradual widening and deepening.Dating the exposure of roots indicates that small gullies had already formed in the valley system by 1949. Intensive gully erosion was recorded between 1984 and 2002, during intense precipitation in 1984 and, of particular note, during the extraordinary flood of 1997 which affected all of Central Europe. The mean rate of small gully erosion in the old gully system studied is 0.63 m/year. On hillslopes the mean gully erosion rate is 0.21–0.52 m/year, and on the valley bottoms 0.18–1.98 m/year. High bottom erosion rates resulted from the emergence of long gullies during the erosion episodes in 1984 and 1997. Sheet flow in valley floors intensifies at times of heavy rainfall which causes long gullies to form.Taking into account the fact that conditions favoured erosion, the rate at which the old gullies under forest were transformed should be considered slow. New side gullies form slowly within the valley and it appears that if erosion progressed at the rate observed, new side valleys would take a few hundred years to form.     

EARLY PLIOCENE ALPINE GLACIATION IN ANTARCTICA: TERRESTRIAL VERSUS TIDEWATER GLACIERS IN WRIGHT VALLEY

ABSTRACT. Alpine glacier deposits in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica have been interpreted to indicate that early Pliocene climate in that region was not warmer than it is today. Correlation of these alpine‐glacier till sheets to marine deposits that contain evidence consistent with warmer‐than‐present climate has been used to constrain the age of both deposits, preclude the warm interpretation of the marine evidence, and constrain mountain uplift as determined from the marine deposit. We tested the interpretation that, in the early Pliocene, the alpine glaciers in Wright Valley terminated in a fjord and, thereby, constrain the age, temperature, and depth of the fjord. We did this by mapping the surficial geology in this region using the newly available microtopography based on the light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technique. Stratigraphic issues like these need to be resolved in order to quantify early Pliocene climate in Antarctica and contribute to understanding warm global‐climate dynamics. We found that the Pliocene Alpine‐IIIA (A‐IIIA), A‐IIIB and A‐IV drift sheets were more likely deposited from terrestrial alpine‐glacier lobes than glaciers terminating either at tidewater or with a floating appendage. The principal evidence is the occurrence of moraine fragments well below the minimum elevation of the early Pliocene fjord surface, and moraine arrangement in arcs indicative of arcuate glacier fronts without flairing near the proposed shoreline. Our A‐IIIA till is more widespread in the proglacial areas of the five alpine glaciers examined than previously proposed. We propose that the existing distribution of A‐IIIB till reflects glaciers even less extensive than today rather than truncation at a hypothetical fjord surface. Additionally, the A‐IV moraine remnants outline glaciers that were significantly larger than those associated with A‐III moraines. If we are correct, the age of the A‐III till, 3.4 ± 0.1 Ma at maximum, does not constrain the age of the Prospect fjord episode which can be closer to 5.5 ± 0.4 Ma as previously inferred. Moreover, if the alpine tills are not as old as the Prospect fjord episode, the polar paleoclimatic interpretation from those tills does not preclude the high temperature (0–3°C) and reduced salinity previously inferred for the Prospect fjord. However, if alpine glacier extent was not limited by Prospect fjord surface elevation, then paleoclimate during the A‐IIIA, A‐IIIB, and A‐IV glacial episodes can be quantitatively reconstructed. The Prospect fjord might have been deep, not shallow, and, hence, mountain uplift might be greater than currently thought which would explain minimal alpine‐glacier erosion into the valley sides.     

Collaborative Visioning or Urban Planning as Therapy? The Politics of Public‐Private Policy Making

One aspect of a recent restructuring of urban economies, societies, and spaces has been a change in urban planning practice. Planning is increasingly privatized and decentralized in U.S. cities. Private planning consultants are often hired by public‐private coalitions in order to shape the future of cities, while the planning processes they institute are frequently claimed to be consensus‐based, collaborative, and inclusionary, rather than elite‐centered and expert‐driven. This paper discusses the use of “visioning”—an increasingly popular technique that develops goals for the future of a city through consensus‐based meetings, open to all parties—as developed by New Century Lexington, a public‐private planning initiative in Lexington, Kentucky. It argues that: (1) new public‐private planning procedures, incorporating collaborative techniques, frequently become the institutional sites of political struggle over how future urban geographies are produced; (2) in order to understand the role of visioning in contemporary urban politics and in policy making outcomes, we must recognize the sociospatial context in which it is deployed; and (3) in the case of New Century, the way in which local elites controlled the mechanics of the visioning process made dissent difficult and, therefore, produced a vision of the future largely parallel to their standard economic development models.     

Places of Agribusiness: Displacement,Replacement, and Misplacement in Mato Grosso,Brazil

This article investigates the spatial logic and different moments of place‐making during the expansion of Mato Grosso's agribusiness frontier, in the southern section of the Brazilian Amazon. The analysis is informed by three conceptual concerns: the tensions between representation and experience, between humanist and class‐based explanations, and between the intensity of place‐making and place‐framing. Empirical results from a qualitative case study (carried out between 2013–2015, when agribusiness was the undisputed locomotive of the Brazilian economy) demonstrate that socio‐spatial changes in the last four decades evolved due to the complementary pressures and controversies of displacement (particularly in the 1970s–1980s) and replacement (in the 1990s–2000s), which eventually resulted in the widespread sense of misplacement due to accumulated inequalities and entrenched forms of socioeconomic exclusion. The principal conclusion found that the places dominated by agribusiness in Mato Grosso evolved around a totalizing spatial strategy that undermined alternative forms of production and livelihoods that do not fit in the export‐oriented agricultural model.     

In the Critical Zone: Geography at the U.S. Geological Survey

Geography is again becoming an integral part of the premier natural‐science agency of the federal government. Geographic research emphasizes the surface of the earth, a portion of the earth system that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) defines as the “critical zone.” Although geography was part of the USGS from the creation of the agency, in recent years geography in the agency has largely been limited to topographic mapping. Recently, the USGS and an advisory committee of the National Research Council (NRC) reviewed the role of geography at the Survey. The committee's report, along with ongoing decision‐making in the federal government, is likely to reshape geography in the USGS. The newly defined USGS has a regional structure and four disciplines: geology, hydrology, biology, and geography. The NRC report emphasizes the need for the creation of a spatial database called the National Map to replace the existing series of paper topographic maps. The report also outlines the need for geographic research in geographic information science (GIScience), nature‐society connections, and bridging of science to decision‐making. The NRC report has been briefed throughout the USGS, in the federal executive branch, and in Congress. The changing role for geography in the USGS requires change in the agency culture, revised budgetary decisions, and the establishment of a long‐term core agenda for research. Academic geographers will need to prepare a new generation of geographers for participation in the USGS and similar agencies.     

Institutional environments and the livelihood impacts of voluntary sustainability standards: A Village‐based analysis from southern Sumatra's coffee sector

Lead roasting firms are operating through Indonesia's coffee exporters to introduce voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) in an attempt to secure supply, and to simultaneously meet corporate social responsibility requirements, even as empirical studies continue to show uncertain benefits for producer livelihoods. Value chain interventions like VSS, however, are not rolled out over a blank canvas, and many contributing factors determine their overall impact on livelihoods, particularly the local institutional environment. This study assesses the extent to which variability of empirical outcomes is determined by the institutional environment, by identifying specific processes through which VSS interact with pre‐existing social, political and economic institutions to influence livelihood outcomes. These include: firm‐specific corporate strategies (including producer training); livelihood strategies of households (including access to assets); government programs; and local political economy, as manifest particularly through patronage between traders and suppliers. VSS have thereby become an additional institutional layer shaping livelihood strategies and regional development outcomes, best viewed as providing access to a new social network that may be exploited by producers. The interaction between VSS programs, livelihood strategies and pre‐existing institutional environments in a particular place often dictates the variable outcomes for producers, making attribution of impact causation to VSS enrolment problematic.     

Integrating disaster risk reduction into post‐disaster reconstruction: A long‐term perspective of the 1931 earthquake in Napier,New Zealand

This article is a long‐term retrospective study of the reconstruction that followed the 1931 earthquake that struck the city of Napier in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. It particularly focuses on the positive outcomes in reducing the risk of future disaster at both local and national levels. These were facilitated by three key decisions and strategies: (i) reconstruction was initiated immediately after the disaster; (ii) it was designed as a balance between continuity and change; and (iii) it relied on a decentralised, integrative decision‐making process.     

POACHING STATE POLITICS IN SOCIALIST CHINA: UXIN JU'S GRASSLAND CAMPAIGN, 1958–1966*

ABSTRACT. This study explores the local experience of a state‐initiated campaign to improve the grassland in Uxin Ju, a Mongolian community in northern China, from 1958 to 1966. The contrast between the local experience and the official representation reveals great discrepancies and attests to the ability of local people to utilize state policies to meet local needs, transforming socialist ideologies into local rationales. Applying Michel de Certeau's theory of everyday practice that sees book reading as poaching and the use/consumption of political and cultural discourses as a process of creative empowerment, I examine how the Mongols in Uxin Ju “poached” state politics to their own advantages and appropriated the grassland campaign in the making of the local landscape. This poaching further elucidates James Scott's concept of ideological resistance by focusing on the creative use of nonoppositional nature, which is an important way in which local people could express their agency in the oppressive regime of socialist China. This article calls attention to how nonsubversive co‐optation of state policies can function as an expression of agency in the making of local human‐environmental history, even on the part of individuals who are actively accommodating to the ideology of the dominant regime.     

Watering the suburbs: distinction,conformity and the suburban garden

Research on domestic water use has conventionally been confined to understanding the role of physical variables such as rainfall and temperature in influencing patterns of consumption. In limiting research to this narrow focus, the significance of socio‐cultural variables has been largely ignored. This paper seeks to develop socio‐cultural understandings of domestic water use by examining water consumption as part of a broader set of consumption practices associated with suburban space. In particular, the socio‐cultural dimensions are explored on a local scale through an exploration of water‐use patterns associated with the new suburban garden: an important site of home‐making processes, and one associated with a substantial proportion of domestic water consumption. The notion of cultural capital is adopted as a framework for examining these consumption patterns. Water consumption is analysed as a practice through which cultural capital can be accumulated. It is argued that the contrasting notions of social distinction and social conformity in the suburban garden shape the accumulation of cultural capital and influence patterns of water consumption. Understanding these socio‐cultural dimensions of water consumption is important in shaping water‐use management, an issue discussed throughout the paper.     

How does the ownership of land affect household livelihood pathways under conditions of deagrarianization? ‘Hanging in’, ‘stepping up’ and ‘stepping out’ in two north Indian villages

In rural parts of the global South, livelihoods are diversifying away from agriculture. Nevertheless, agriculture typically still remains the backbone of rural life and is usually considered the prime source of economic security, social prestige and self‐identity. The task of narrating these somewhat contradictory processes in a conceptually coherent fashion has proven a major challenge for research. This paper responds to this problem by deploying an adapted version of Andrew Dorward's schema of households ‘hanging in, stepping up or stepping out’ of their landed interests. Dorward's middle‐ground theory provides an appropriate analytical vehicle for capturing the vagaries and situated complexities of the land‐livelihoods nexus. However the theory fails to fully appreciate the extent to which household livelihood decision making rests on complex entanglements that leverage land‐based and nonfarm activities against one another. We demonstrate the critical importance of these processes through the results of in‐depth interviews with 32 households in two north Indian villages. These interviews lead us to propose that land factors in livelihood aspirations in three fundamental ways: an arena for interpenetrated agrarian and nonagrarian livelihood streams; a base for social reproduction; and a bulwark of food (and by extension, livelihood) security through own‐production capabilities.