Public perceptions of biodiversity in Norway: From recognition to stewardship?

The authors surveyed a representative sample of the Norwegian population (N = 4077) to examine perceptions of biodiversity loss and management, the relative importance of biodiversity loss to other environmental issues, and perceived implications of biodiversity loss. The results showed that 50% of the sample population saw biodiversity as a reality and major environmental issue, and 75% recognized that biodiversity loss occurs. Biodiversity loss was perceived as a lesser global environmental problem than environmental toxins, climate change, air and water pollution, and loss of rainforest, despite the fact that these topics can be difficult to separate since biodiversity loss is a function of other environmental problems. Loss of biodiversity was seen to have negative impacts on people's relationship to the natural environment, to impact environmental resilience, to be at least partly human-induced, and to be an issue of importance and relevance to the general public, not merely to the scientific community. Self-reported levels of knowledge of environmental topics were associated with increasing concern about consequences of reductions in species diversity. The authors conclude that efforts to increase public support for biodiversity conservation can be strengthened by increased emphasis on aesthetic, emotional and cultural aspects of biodiversity.     

Legal Geographies—Governing Through Law: Rightsbased Conflicts and Property Development in Shanghai

This article examines recent legislation on the mandatory practice of government adjudication and its impacts on community residents' legal challenges to chaiqian (demolition and relocation) in Shanghai. In recent years, rights-based grievances over community displacement have become a major source of social conflict in urban China. The new legislation represents the Chinese state's efforts to establish a law-based model through which to govern an increasingly rights-conscious society. It is argued that the mandatory practice of government adjudication has smoothed out the conflict-laden property development process by establishing a legalized channel for affected residents to express their claims of rights and interests. Yet, at the same time, legislative practice has also reinforced the government's control in defining social interests to which residents' individual rights are subordinate.     

Chained to Development? Livelihoods and global value chains in the coffee-producing Toraja region of Indonesia

ABSTRACT

A popular rural development strategy in recent years has been through the adoption of what has been widely called a ‘value chain approach’, where improved linkages between small producers in underdeveloped rural communities and ‘lead firms’ constitute the foundations for development interventions. Whilst the global value-chain framework can deliver insights into the broad structural processes shaping livelihood possibilities, the adoption of value chains as a development strategy tends to disregard the complexity of smallholder livelihoods that shape poverty alleviation pathways in different contexts. The relationships between global value chains, development interventions, and rural livelihoods are explored in this article through a case study of smallholder coffee farming in the Toraja region of Indonesia. In this case, value-chain interventions in the coffee sector are unlikely to significantly contribute to improved rural welfare due to the diversified reality of local livelihoods, the nuances of how coffee production is embedded within Torajan culture and economy, and excellent prevailing market opportunities. The livelihood framework, therefore, provides an important corrective for the sometimes excessive optimism presented by advocates of a value-chain approach to rural development.     

“A Salute to the Bandido”: A Political Ecology of Voice Exploration into Peru’s Freedom of Voice Surrounding Hydrocarbon Development

This paper sets out to evaluate the freedom of voice for Peruvian stakeholders affected by hydrocarbon development. This occurs through the utilization of a political ecology of voice (PEV) theoretical framework based upon the theory of voice by Albert Hirschman and political ecology. PEV can be defined as the study of economic, political, social, and geographical factors over a specific time period and their impact upon the use of voice by stakeholders. Peru’s case study was focused on its main oil-producing Loreto Region and incorporated evaluation of hydrocarbon voice mechanisms (prior consultation and environmental impact assessments) supported by interview testimony of stakeholders and state officials. PEV analysis reveals a political environment which is dangerous, inflexible, and intolerant of Peruvian stakeholders voicing over hydrocarbon development. This is due to the state’s zealous pursuit of its “selva (rainforest) hydrocarbon and development vision” which severely undermines Peruvian stakeholder’s freedom of voice.     

From Lightning Rod to Community Asset? The Creation of a Protected Area in Northern California and its Evolving Relationship to a Nearby Community

Researchers have described shifting relationships between communities and Protected Areas (PAs), from excluding communities to consultative relationships to participatory models. This research focuses on a PA created on formerly industrial timberland that was the focus of conflict between environmental activists and the timber industry. In a nearby formerly timber-dependent community, we assessed community use and support of the PA, and its perceived purposes and benefits, through a survey of residents and interviews with key stakeholders. Despite intense conflict surrounding its creation, we found support for the PA, and our case suggests a new possible relationship between PAs and communities, which is mitigating and helping to resolve natural resource conflict. We also found that community well-being benefits of the PA were unclear; we suggest that PA management should include cultural, economic, and historical context in objectives and interpretive materials; and should work to create economic opportunities connected to the PA.     

The Legacy of Jedidiah Morse in Early American Geography Education: Forgotten and/or Forgettable Geographer?

Despite numerous and significant writings by historians of geography and biographers from other disciplines, and his authorship of the first geography textbooks written in and for the new American republic, most geographers are largely unaware of the contributions of Jedidiah Morse in academic geography. Writings about Morse suggest that he had alienated himself from many of his contemporaries early in his career through his authoritarian brand of Calvinistic republicanism, a perceived contradiction of that style with his entrepreneurial ambitions, his role in the controversial Bavarian Illuminati, and a dispute with a noted New England historian. But subsequent, broader intellectual movements sealed Morse's fate as a forgotten geographer (to most), including the end of the Second Great Awakening, Transcendentalism, Darwinism, and the “new,” process‐based geographical thinking inspired by Carl Ritter, Alexander von Humboldt, and Arnold Guyot. Regardless of the reasons for Morse's lost legacy, his contributions to geographical education are important and should be remembered.     

Territorial Development of Christianity in Africa in the 20<Superscript>th</Superscript>–Early 21<Superscript>st</Superscript> Centuries

The characteristic features of the transformation of the territorial geospace structure in the African Christianity religious geospace during 1910–2010 have been revealed. African countries within the boundaries of 2010 are used as territorial cells that have been fixed retrospectively over the course of the period analyzed. We used indicators, such as Ryabtsev’s index of relative structural shifts and the trajectory of the demographic center of the Christianity to assess changes in the inertia level of the territorial structure for the entire time interval as a whole and for each of the components of its 20-year long periods. It is found that to date the adherents of Christianity are extremely unevenly distributed in the countries of Africa; however, over the course of the period under consideration there was taking place a homogenization of their settlement. In accordance with changes of the values of the indicators used, we identified two development stages of geospace of African Christianity: colonial and post-colonial. It is determined that the colonial stage (1910–1970) is characterized by a “compression” of territorial structure from east and north, and by a predominance of the south-westward direction of movement of the demographic center because of a decrease in the proportion in the Christian population of East Africa first on account of Egypt and Ethiopia and Madagascar (1910–1930) and then North Africa on account of Egypt and Algeria (1930–1950). The territorial structure of Christianity’s geospace during the post-colonial stage is characterized by a higher degree of inertia at the background of the westward ”expansion” and the “compression” from the south as well as by a change of the vector of movement of the demographic center for north-westward.     

Predictive Mapping of Prospectivity in the Gurupi Orogenic Gold Belt,North–Northeast Brazil: An Example of District-Scale Mineral System Approach to Exploration Targeting

The Gurupi Belt hosts a Paleoproterozoic gold province located in north–northeastern Brazil, at the borders of Pará and Maranhão states. It is considered to be an extension of the prolific West African Craton’s Birimian gold province into South America. Additionally, the belt has been the object of recent mineral exploration programs with significant resource discoveries. This study presents the results of predictive mapping using up-to-date mineral system concepts and recently finished regional-scale geological mapping, stream sediment and airborne geophysical surveys conducted by the Geological Survey of Brazil. We relate gold mineralization to an initially enriched crust, metamorphism, deep fluid pathways, structurally controlled damage zones and hydrothermal alteration. Prospective targets were generated using only regional public datasets and knowledge-driven targeting technique. This work did not incorporate any known gold deposits, yet it predicted the largest known deposits and their satellite targets. Besides, high prospective targets mapped almost 40% of known primary gold occurrences within 7% of the project area. This work allowed considerable search area reduction and identification of new target areas, thus collaborating on reducing costs, time and risk of mineral exploration. Results indicate that we achieved an efficient understanding of the geological processes related to the Gurupi Belt mineral system.     

Measuring Spatial Variations in Sports Talent Development: the approach,methods and measures of ‘Talent Tracker’

Knowing where sports talent is produced is fundamental to identifying spatial factors in talent production and to assist with talent identification. This research develops spatial analysis methods—the ‘Talent Tracker’—to harness geographical information systems and identify regions that are over- and under-producing sports talent. The approach focuses on the professional Australian Football League (AFL), using data sourced from the AFL itself and other sources, to identify differences in regional ‘talent yield’ based on junior participation. Data from AFL draft records, informants and secondary sources identified the place of junior talent development for the 1290 players who were drafted and played at least one game of senior AFL football in the period 1997–2010. AFL national census data identified junior participation for 94 specified regions for the period 2002–09. AFL talent was assigned to these regions by using ArcGIS procedures, and the datasets synthesised to produce tables and maps of talent yield by participation for each of the 94 AFL regions. The results demonstrate the power of contemporary spatial analysis to open up new research methods for studies into sports talent production and identification. Clear spatial patterns emerge in talent yield at both the national and metropolitan scales. The results provide numerous avenues for further research to explore determining factors for the spatial patterns identified.     

A Review of “Villages,Women and the Success of Dairy Cooperatives in India: Making Place for Rural Development”

Conceptual advances for understanding the organization of family farms have not yet initiated parallel debates about how they might be aligned with the methods used to understand them. Customization of a novel research approach—farm life history—for an investigation of the socioeconomic organization of forty Australian farms responds to this literature gap. Individual farm life histories were initiated using farm tours (truck journeys) in which changes to the composition of land parcels prompted research conversations. The researcher and participants benefited from using motorized transport and traveling while talking, but the benefits were experienced unevenly across research encounters.     

Twenty years of land use and livelihood changes in SE-Niger: Obsolete and short-sighted adaptation to climatic and demographic pressures?

This paper explores the evolution of land use and natural resource management strategies over the past twenty to fifty years in a remote Sahelian region. The empirical example is Karagou village in SE Niger. Building on an in-depth survey from 1992 and a targeted, follow-up analysis of contemporary land use strategies in 2011, the change process is scrutinized.The analysis uses the conceptual lenses of land systems science, human–environmental timelines, and the notion of multiple exposures. Enabling and constraining conditions for local livelihoods in terms of the resource base (landscape, water, and population) are described. Results characterize how land use strategies have developed and how local people opportunistically use different landscape elements such as dune landscapes, valley bottoms (bas-fonds) and oases (cuvettes). Major concerns are rainfall variability, saturation of cropland, and perceived dwindling groundwater resources. It is concluded that the land use and livelihood strategies have remained remarkably stable in the face of the changing socio-ecological fringe conditions, but that this situation may hamper a sustainable transformation.     

Feminizing the University: The Mobilities,Careers, and Contributions of Early Female Academics in the University of Cambridge, 1926–1955

This article examines the role of early female academics at the University of Cambridge in the production and dissemination of knowledge between 1926 and 1955. A statistical comparison of women's use of academic leave of absence with that of their male colleagues reveals that, across disciplines, women were less integrated into (inter)national knowledge networks and thus less visible in their epistemic communities than men because women focused their academic leaves more on research, rarely attended conferences, traveled overseas less often than men, and went more frequently to destinations within Europe than the United States as the new economic hegemon. Biographical case studies of these early female academics demonstrate the importance, variously, of their upper middle-class background, academic excellence, and familial and nonfamilial patronage in developing their careers, overcoming multiple hurdles, and producing intellectual contributions of equal quality to that of their male peers. Conceptually, this article calls for the inclusion of academic travelers from disciplines other than geography into feminist histories of geographical knowledge and argues that rather than stereotyping gender differences, greater comparative research on the experiences of female and male academics is needed to understand the mechanisms of gender inequality within the university.     

Eco- immigr ation Policy for the Degr aded Rangeland and Responses of Herd Family in the Sour ce Region of Yellow River——Case Study Based on Household Investigation in Maduo County

Under the integrated influences of global climate changes and overgrazing, China rangeland has degraded over recent years. Maduo County locates in the Source Region of Yellow River and its rangeland has experienced expansive degradation. The government of Qinghai Province launched an eco- immigration policy in 2004. In order to analyze the responses of herd families to the eco- immigration and the reasons for these responses, the authors used three periods MSS and TM images for recent 25 years and interview survey data of 144 herd families in recent two years, getting the following results: (1) the rangeland had degraded extensively for recent 28 years; and (2) the immigrant families were mainly composed of the old, with little or no livestock. What's more, the percentage of immigrant households that share one rangeland certificate with parents or brothers in the immigrant family was 54.5%. Therefore, it is hard to greatly decrease the overgrazing degree through eco- immigration with those previous characteristics of eco- immigrant family structure.     

Medical Mapping: The Revolution in Teaching—and Using—Maps for the Analysis of Medical Issues

Abstract

As a result of advances in GIS, students from a range of disciplines (epidemiology, public health, medical sociology, and anthropology) are seeking to learn how to apply a mapped, spatial perspective to issues of disease and health. This paper describes a pilot program whose intent has been to develop an interdisciplinary, skills-based course in medical mapping using a case-based approach. The focus of its first module is the famous nineteenth-century case of a cholera epidemic in Soho, London. Here, however, that case–critical to a range of disciplines—is an opportunity to introduce modern GIS tools and their applicability to the issues surrounding the mapping of diseases in general.     

Quantitative identification and the evolution characteristics of production–living–ecological space in the mountainous area: From the perspective of multifunctional land

Developed here is an integrated framework for identifying production–living–ecological space(PLES) quantitatively at grid scale from the perspective of multifunction land use, and 25 compound space types are classified to highlight the multiple functions of PLES. As a typical mountainous city in northern Hebei province, Zhangjiakou is used as a case study, and the results show that more than 80% of the land space in Zhangjiakou has remarkable triple functionality. The living-dominated space and ...     

Gender Differences in Chronic Exposure to Traffic-Related Air Pollution—A Simulation Study of Working Females and Males

The objective of this study was to identify spatial variability in exposure to outdoor traffic-related air pollution with specific emphasis on comparing exposure estimates for working females and males across a metropolitan area. A spatial exposure simulation model was used to estimate annual average exposure to traffic-related nitrogen dioxide for males and females reporting regular work in census tracts other than that of their residence, in Vancouver, British Columbia. The model produced estimates of annual average exposure in six microenvironments (home indoor, work indoor, other indoor, outdoor, in-vehicle to work, and in-vehicle other) using time-activity patterns and work flow data, for males and females in each of 382 census tracts. This allowed for the identification of spatial variations in exposure estimates for each gender, due to mobility within the study region. Indoor sources of nitrogen dioxide were not included in the simulation. No significant differences in estimated total exposure were found between working females and males in general. Small but observable spatial differences, however, were found between working females and males at the 90th percentile of the exposure distributions associated specifically with the work indoor microenvironment. These were highest in suburban areas (+3 μ g/m³ for females, relative to total exposures in the range of 26 to 37 μ g/m³ annual average hourly nitrogen dioxide). These results identify specific geographic locations in the study area where personal monitoring studies might be warranted and suggest that the inclusion of workplace locations in multivariate modeling could be useful to further understand differences in estimated exposures.     

Geological Characterization of the Miocene–Pliocene Succession in the Semliki Basin,Uganda: Implications for Hydrocarbon Exploration and Drilling in the East African Rift System

Natural Resources Research - The Albertine Graben, an active sedimentary petroliferous basin, has gained global attention as the unexplored areas are recently being targeted for hydrocarbon...