A Landscape Ecology Approach to Assessing Development Impacts in the Tropics: A Geothermal Energy Example in Hawaii

Geographic information systems (GIS) are increasingly being used in environmental impact assessments (EIA) because GIS is useful for analysing spatial impacts of various development scenarios. Spatially representing these impacts provides another tool for landscape ecology in environmental and geographical investigations by facilitating analysis of the effects of landscape pattern on ecological processes and examining change over time. Landscape ecological principles are applied in this study to a hypothetical geothermal development project on the Island of Hawaii. Some common landscape pattern metrics were used to analyse dispersed versus condensed development scenarios and their effect on landscape pattern. Indices of fragmentation and patch shape did not appreciably change with additional development. The amount of forest to open edge, however, greatly increased with the dispersed development scenario. In addition, landscape metrics showed that a human disturbance had a greater simplifying effect on patch shape and also increased fragmentation than a natural disturbance. The use of these landscape pattern metrics can advance the methodology of applying GIS to EIA.     

Forest Fragmentation in the Humid Tropics: A Cross–National Analysis

While habitat destruction always causes species extinctions, the rate of extinction may be highest in those habitats which become the most fragmented as they decline in size. For this reason, knowledge about the patterns and origins of rain forest fragmentation in the tropics may prove useful in efforts to preserve biodiversity. This paper calculates the degree of fragmentation in the tropical rain forests of 51 nations containing 83 per cent of the world's tropical forests. By these measures, West Africa and Central America have the most fragmented tropical rain forests in the world. Not surprisingly, rain forests in the Amazon basin are the world's least fragmented. Some patterns of tropical deforestation appear to produce more fragmentation than others. A two-stage least squares analysis of these data suggest that deforestation driven by smallholders is most likely to produce highly fragmented forest habitats. The implications of these findings for policy and for further research are briefly discussed.     

Brazilian health regions and scales: A geographical perspective

Abstract:  This paper offers a geographical perspective on the way in which health regions have been defined and established in São Paulo as part of overall Brazilian health policy. To accomplish this, I first situate the Brazilian case in the international debate over the regionalization of health services. Second, I examine health regionalization in the case of São Paulo and show how the process is dynamic and complex, involving geographical scales that go well beyond the administrative boundaries of Brazilian municipalities.     

Decolonizing Benjamin in the Tropics: The long history of Guayaquil's arcades

This essay interrogates the long historical development of Guayaquil's arcades, or soportales, by analysing their historical development and relation to global commerce through littoral Ecuador's experience of cacao capitalism (1700–1925). I do so by employing and referencing Walter Benjamin's now paradigmatic texts concerning commodity culture and modernity in Paris' arcades. My work critically and synthetically examines archival and historical sources that catalogue Guayaquil's urban and architectural development in that tropical city-region. I explore how environmental factors, indigenous architectural techniques, globalizing commercial culture, cacao exports, and liberal ideologies form historical constellations expressing the multi-layered influences contributing to the growth and modification of Guayaquil's arcades. This transnational history of the particular attempts to recast understandings of urban space, architecture, and the tropical as dynamic edges of capitalist cultural modernity. This essay both deepens and decolonizes Benjamin's work by analysing the importance of the ‘coloniality of power’ on the formation of Guayaquil's arcades and their afterlives as aura. Whereas the arcades of Benjamin's Paris presented him with the primary form of capitalism's cultural modernity, I argue that Guayaquil's soportales serve as constellations for reading an alternative (tropical) modernity predicated on plantation agriculture, Eurocentrism, and cultural hybridization as an expression of political economy.     

Globalisation and Border Dynamics: impacts on the urban development of Darwin,Australia

National boundaries and border cities have been transformed globally. This is partly due to neoliberal globalisation, the continuous formation of a ‘borderless world’ and partly to the global ‘war on terror’. Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory (NT), is on the northern coast of Australia, bordering its overseas Asian neighbours. Far away from the main Australian population centres in the south, the city grows slowly, relying mainly on Australian government investments, infrastructure, and the incorporation of defence programs in the north. The rise of Asia, as well as Australia's increasing economic reliance on Asia, has created new opportunities for Darwin's growth. The development of Asian economies has resulted in growing global investment in resource extraction in NT. Asia, though, has been seen as a key threat in the modern history of Australia. This national sensitivity is underpinned by the global ‘war on terror’ in which Australia is deeply involved. Australia has tight border control regimes and a growing military presence on the northern border area. This paper examines how these co-existing but contradictory dynamics have reshaped the urban development of Darwin City. The consequential social and spatial patterns are identified and discussed.     

Between the Centre and the Periphery: the development of port trade in Darwin,Australia

Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, is a port city located in Australia's Top End and facing Southeast Asia. The distance from Darwin to Australia's main economic centres of Sydney and Melbourne is almost the same as to Singapore. This central geographical location has inspired the development of the Port and the City of Darwin from time to time while being held back by its remoteness, and especially the lack of an efficient railway link to Australia's major southern centres. The Port of Darwin has been redeveloped with the vision of repositioning the City of Darwin as Australia's gateway to Asia which it was expected to achieve with the completion of the transcontinental railway link from Adelaide to Darwin. This paper analyses trade and cargo movements for the Port of Darwin between 2000 and 2009—5 years for each period before and after the availability of intermodal transport—and examines the processes by which transformation of the gateway is actually occurring. The evidence to date, however, suggests that the landbridge development has had little material effect in terms of trans-shipments and throughputs for the Port of Darwin. The volume of container trade and interstate export and import cargo that passes through the port has in fact declined since the availability of the transcontinental railway in 2005.     

A Mirror Cracked: Ten Keys to the Landscape of the Calumet Region

Abstract

Southeast Chicago's Calumet region is many things to many people. Home to wetlands and wildlife, mills and millgate communities, landfills and brownfields, it seems to defy easy characterization. This paper argues that it is the jarring juxtaposition of each of these features that best reflects the area. Ten interpretive “keys” -or significant landscape-shaping elements form an interpretive frame.     

Landscape Models and Explanation in Landscape Ecology—A Space for Generative Landscape Science?

Further development of process‐based spatial models is needed to facilitate explanation in landscape ecology. We discuss the dual modeling goals of prediction and explanation and identify challenges faced in explaining landscape patterns. These challenges are especially acute in attempts to explain patterns that result from complex adaptive systems. We compare examples of two process models used to describe landscape changes in Yellowstone National Park as a consequence of predator‐prey interactions. Generative landscape science is offered as a complementary approach to explanation, combining models of candidate processes that are believed to give rise to observed patterns with empirical observations.     

中国热带第四纪气候波动特征

中国热带早更新世气候波动以高频率小幅度为特征。“中更新世革命”发生在MIS20／MIS21之交。中更新世气候波动一般为三大旋回。晚更新世为两大旋回,但有变暖事件D／01～21及变冷事件H1～H6的表现。可以识别末次间冰期MISS及其阶段5a～5e。末次亚间冰期有4～7次冷暖波动。末次冰期温度一般比今低1～2℃或3～5℃。终止点Ⅰ为15000～13670aB．P．。终止点Ⅱ为0．135～0．130MaB．P．。新冰期Ⅰ、Ⅱ、Ⅲ都有表现。历史时期出现南北朝冷期、北宋冷期、明清小冰期。近200a的气候,前百年升温,后百年降温。     

景观与景观生态学的综合研究

景观具有“风景”,“自然综合体”,“异质性镶嵌体”等多种含义,是风景美学,地理学和生态学等学科的研究对象,并成为现代景观生态学的重要学科基础,以景观为研究对象的景观生态学,以其多学科基础而获得了加大的生命力,但同时也使景观生态学面临强烈的分化危机,景观生态学的整合是未来景观生态学的唯一出路,实现整合的根本途径是景观生态学综合研究的发展和应用,景观生态学的综合研究包括景观的复杂性,全球环境问题,遥感和GIS技术以及文化等与景观生态学的综合研究,笔者以绿洲景观为例,对绿洲景观的综合研究进行了讨论。     

城市传统文化旅游地景观格局与景观审美耦合研究——以南京夫子庙秦淮风光带为例

以景观美和生态美的关系研究为基点,选取南京夫子庙秦淮风光带作为城市传统文化旅游地的典型个案,采用景观格局指数和平衡不完全区组比较评判法,实证分析景观格局与景观审美的耦合特征及规律。结果表明：1）案例地整体景观破碎度较高,但不同景观组分受到人为干扰的程度不同,景观斑块的多样性和异质性较为适中,但斑块面积、空间分布及空间集聚度存在结构性差异;2）本地居民对夫子庙秦淮风光带的景观审美感知较好,但更偏好“十里秦淮”优美的自然风光及蕴含丰厚城市记忆要素的历史建筑和文化景观;3）总体上,景观格局与景观审美存在耦合互补与和谐共生的关系。夫子庙秦淮风光带历史文化积淀深厚,但在城市化快速发展的时代背景下,文化特色不断缺失,“去地方化”进程不断加快,作为城市传统文化旅游地的典型代表,其担负的城市记忆和文化传承功能,应该引起学界和社会各界的广泛关注。     

水乡城市景观规划与旅游形象建设--以浙江绍兴市为例

在城市旅游发展中,城市旅游形象是城市的"招牌"和"名片",是城市的一个重要组成部分,它影响一个城市或地区实际景观规划设计,也影响城市旅游事业的发展.文章以浙江省绍兴市为例,通过对绍兴市水乡特征的分析研究,探索以水乡特色为基础的景观规划设计方案,建设和维系绍兴"水乡"形象.