‘Seeing red’ in national parks: How visitors’ values affect perceptions and park experiences

People’s reasons for visiting national parks have been well researched. So too have their park activities and how diverse activities potentially affect visitors’ park experiences (e.g. perceptions of overcrowding). Far less research has examined how park users’ environmental values might affect their perceptions of other users and the appropriateness of different activities – a potential source of conflict. Relationships between personal environmental values and environmental and social perceptions are complex and interactive in the context of park visitation. Visitors’ encounters with other users can powerfully affect their experience and enjoyment of parks, in turn reflecting such factors as values-related expectations and judgments in the context of national parks. Personal and social values may also play an important role in influencing whether different activities are perceived as ‘out of place’ in the context of national park place meaning, yet the conceptualization of values within geographic literature on parks remains comparatively weak.This paper utilizes a definition of values, derived from a concise review of the geography and social psychology literatures, to explain the results of survey research we undertook within national parks in Queensland, Australia. We use a ‘values-behavior hierarchy’ conceptual framework to consider how the personal environmental values of a sample of park visitors (n = 404) potentially affected patterns of park visitation, user activities, and user conflicts. Findings suggest that visitors’ environmental values shaped how they perceived other park users and the appropriateness of their activities. This has international implications for geographic research and other disciplines and professions involved in national park visitation, park use, and human impacts, on and of these powerful places.     

邻近基坑施工对既有地铁结构影响的分析

针对城市地下空间不断建造和发展的过程中,越来越多出现的基坑邻近既有地铁结构开挖的现象,通过收集国内及广州地区的工程实例,分析了基坑开挖后土体位移场的变化,总结了邻近基坑施工对既有地铁结构的影响,并选取广州农贸园工程,采用有限元分析方法对其进行了三维数值模拟,通过与实测数据对比分析,得出一些能对今后类似工程起到一定借鉴作用的结论.     

基于最小邻近成本的喀斯特山地城市公园可达性分析

以典型喀斯特城市贵阳市为例,分析地貌特征对于公园绿地供给能力的影响,采用最小邻近成本分析法和空间自相关分析,对贵阳市公园绿地的供给特征以及不同类别公园可达性空间差异进行评价,探讨喀斯特城市公园可达性的提升策略。结果表明:研究区城市公园供给总量较高,但公园斑块面积二元结构明显,且坡度15°以上面积占比53%;公园可达性整体较好,91.89%的居民小区到公园的最小邻近成本低于500 m,但不同类别城市公园可达性存在一定差异。因此,喀斯特山地城市要提升公园服务水平,首先应补足公园服务的盲区,尤其是建成区残存孤峰、小峰丛公园服务能力不足造成的隐性盲区;其次,在老旧城区公园建设需避免盲目求大,应着重提高服务质量与效率,并且发挥自然山体优势建设独具特色的公园服务体系;应结合人口分布特征和不同类别的公园配置状况,合理进行喀斯特山体公园化利用,避免生态环境破坏与公园空置。      

Environmental protection in the Apuseni Mountains: The role of Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs)

The Apuseni Mountains constitute one of the most interesting parts of the Carpathians in terms of landscape, biodiversity and culture. Yet dislocations are now severe and there are development threats which also require a significant response. On the one hand there are some severe pollution problems associated with mining areas developed in the communist period which require remedial action and the cases of Roşia Montana and Zlatna are discussed. On the other hand, there are forest and pasture zones – especially the Padiş Plateau – which are coming under heavy pressure from farmers seeking to enhance their incomes following the decline of mining and manufacturing which has left many households without salaries. At the same time, tourist pressure is growing. Actions are already being taken to limit pollution damage and develop sustainable landuse practices. There is a national park project linked with nature reserves comprising picturesque landscapes, a rare flora and fauna and distinct geological and palaeotological formations (including fossil ice). There are major tourist attractions and with proper management they could become part of a development programme of the countryside. However it is essential that all stakeholders adopt sustainable practices and this means that official programmes – including the future national park authority administration's work in environment protection and tourism management – are backed up by Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs). The paper reviews their diverse activities and concludes that they are making a very substantial contribution in ensuring that the potentials of isolated regions can be utilised in a manner consistent with nature conservation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Community strategies to promote sustainable wetland-based food security in rural areas of Zimbabwe

This article explores the various strategies rural households employ to sustain wetland use and conservation in the context of the restrictions imposed by the existing legal framework in Zimbabwe. Wetland cultivation is a common feature of the rural landscape and is mainly triggered by subsistence households endeavouring to stabilize their food security, especially in semi-arid and arid environments of the developing countries. Data was collected through a household questionnaire survey, key informant interviews, document review and direct observations. Quantitative data was analysed using ANOVA, Spearman Correlation Coefficient and Wilcoxon in Statistical Package for Social Scientists, whereas qualitative data was subjected to thematic analysis. The results revealed that most households adjacent to wetlands were food secure as wetland conditions enable the provision of a wide range of crops and natural products, contributing almost half of the food directly consumed and 48.2 % of average annual household total cash income. It was also observed that various soil and water conservation practices were adopted and local institutional arrangements were put in place to oversee their effective implementation. Thus, the general result has been increased wetland productivity, improved livelihoods and ecosystem protection. This has largely rendered the impact of legislation restricting wetland cultivation subtle in the local context. The study concluded that there is a need to promote participatory wetland management based on low-cost approaches sensitive to local conditions and the needs and practices of the local communities.     

申报长白山新生代火山国家地质公园的可行性分析

本文介绍了长白山自然保护区的概况,说明建立长白山新生代火山国家地质公园具备的基础,论述了建立公园的意义,并将长白山地质遗迹景观与国土资源部颁发的《国家地质公园评审标准》进行了对比分析,认为长白山新生代火山地质遗迹景观和生态系统符合国家地质公园的标准,申报是可行的。最后提出了尚需进一步工作的建议。     

Review and Prospect of Human-land Relationship in Three River Headwaters Region:Based on the Perspective of People,Events, Time and Space

The Three River Headwaters Region is the pioneer of China’s ecological civilization construction and pilot of the national park system. It is also a unique plateau with complex man-land relationship, long-standing history and diverse civilizations. For thousands of years, the relationship between the people and the land has gone through primitive harmony, tension and conflict, and gradually tends to balance and coordinate. The whole process concentrates on the game of natural forces, historical evolution and regional culture. As the elements of human settlements in the region tend to become more complex, the relationship between human and land continues to develop in breadth and depth, and it is necessary to combine dynamic analysis of time and space. From the perspective of people, events, time and space, the research progress and interaction mechanism in the interest of subjects, conflicts, background, and human settlements in the Three River Headwaters Region were summarized. Its population distribution, production, life and culture feature a typical ethnic ecological yet poverty area. The harmonious development of man-land relationship is restricted by the conflicts between human activity and ecological environment as well as cultural environment. The historical evolution progress is largely influenced by factors such as government policies and political regimes, regional trading, herders’ migration and settlement. The human living space is deeply affected by geographical environment, animal husbandry and regional culture. Furthermore, the linkage mechanism among natural element, human element, time element and space element in man-land relationship system was also analyzed. Based on these, the author proposed that future research on man-land relationship in the Three River Headwaters Region should concentrate on fields such as government policies, cultural evaluation and human settlement improvement. To be more specific, further research was suggested to be carried out from the following three aspects：quantitative research, comparative research and objective evaluation of the internal mechanism of human intervention.     

Multi-topographical landscape: comparative vulnerability of climate-induced disaster-prone rural area of Pakistan

Pakistan, being an agro-based economy, is considered most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The country is susceptible to many natural catastrophes and climate-induced events due to intra-geographical and intra-topographical disparities. This paper is an attempt to measure the relative vulnerability of diverse topographies in rural areas of Pakistan using vulnerability and capacity index tool. The results are based on the findings of primary survey data (350 households from 17 rural communities). Accordingly, and as expected, the key relative differences are attributed to topographical conditions besides the basic quandary of rural areas of Pakistan. The topographical attributes are largely linked to the nature of hazards and relative impacts. While the other aspects of vulnerability in all topographies stem out of inappropriate infrastructure, low education, and institutional factors. The absence of multi-sectoral and productive economic opportunities also poses an adverse impact on the resilience of households in rural areas. The women and households headed by females are found relatively more vulnerable than male-headed households.

     

Nature and the Singapore resident

Singapore has witnessed rapid urban development in the last thirty years. Its landscape has changed from one of slums and squatters in the immediate post-war years to a city of gardens and high-rise high-density housing. The concept of a `garden city' was introduced to guide the development of a city-state with abundant greenery. In the process, many parks and gardens were created including park connectors which are green linkages between parks and other land uses. This paper presents the findings of an ongoing research into park connectors. It reports on that part of the survey results which examine the views of residents towards nature provision in park connectors and suggest some design options to enhance the planning of park connectors. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

From inflexible national legislation to flexible local governance: management practices in the Pelister National Park,Republic of Macedonia

The involvement of local people in protected area management a key factor in the sustainable and efficient protection of wildlife, and an economically preferable approach for the effective everyday care and protection of the environment. This paper aims to explore the community participation and protected area management challenges faced by national park authorities in developing countries, through a case study of the Pelister National Park in the Republic of Macedonia. The paper focuses on the multiple social, economic and political expressions of flexibility in national park management at the local scale. These examinations are based on field research in Pelister, executed in the summer of 2006, and involving 20 in-depth interviews with local policy-makers, nature protection experts and local inhabitants, as well as a questionnaire survey of 140 residents of three villages in and around the park (Nizhepole, Malovishta and Brajchino).     

毕节鸡鸣三省?贵州地质公园地质遗迹特征及价值研究

为了探讨毕节鸡鸣三省?贵州地质公园地质遗迹发育特征及旅游开发价值,本文在实地调查基础上,系统分析了公园内地质遗迹的类型与发育特征,根据地质遗迹景观的评价体系和方法对地质遗迹景观进行定性和定量研究。结果表明:（1）公园地处云贵高原向四川盆地过渡的斜坡地带,是斜坡带岩溶地貌的典型代表;（2）从分水岭到赤水河谷,岩溶地貌表现为由峰丛洼地→溶丘洼地→岩溶峡谷的系列变化,具有显著的地带分异性,展现了岩溶地貌在水文单元系统中的发育规律;（3）资源景观类型互补性强,具有极高的科研、观赏和旅游开发价值;（4）园区地质遗迹类型共分为6大类10类10亚类,以岩溶峡谷、洞穴、天生桥、天坑、峰丛、溶丘、石林、象形山等岩溶地貌为主,以水体景观、地质剖面、古生物、环境地质遗迹和地质构造遗迹为辅。园区内有国家级地质遗迹3处,省级地质遗迹11处。      

Beyond environmental frames: The social representation and cultural resonance of nature in conflicts over a Dutch woodland

Frame analysis has been widely employed to understand environmental conflicts. Such studies emphasize the internal dynamics of conflict and focus on how actors discursively struggle with each other in order to gain hegemony over the dominant discourse on the issue. In this paper, we argue that the explanatory power of framing theory could be enhanced by relating issue specific frames to the broader cultural context in which framing efforts are situated. In order to investigate the link between the success of framing strategies and the cultural background of such strategies, we suggest rethinking the concept of cultural resonance. We propose social representations theory as a novel way of understanding this cultural resonance of spatial and environmental frames. Based on a dispute over the management of a national park in the Netherlands, we empirically illustrate how contending stakeholders refer to different social representations of nature in the framing of local conflicts. A local protest group proves to be much more in touch with the views of the local community and is thus more successful in its framing of the dispute than the nature conservation agency involved. While the protest group uses a wide range of locally embedded representations of nature to enhance the currency of its framing efforts, the nature conservation agency responsible for the management of the forest refers to a much more limited range of representations. By making references only to the wilderness representation of nature, the cultural resonance of the agency’s framing efforts remains limited to those residents who adhere to this specific representation of nature. Consequently, this framing is not very successful among groups that adhere to other representations of nature, such as aesthetic or inclusive representations. Our analysis shows that combining framing theory with social representations theory enables one to disentangle the framing of environmental disputes from the more constant cultural values and opinions on which this framing is based.     

云南石林公园植被重大变化与意义

根据文献资料和实地调查,复原了石林公园原生性植被及与石林的关系;研究了植被变化历史与原因。结果表明,人地关系调整和产业结构变化是石林公园植被变化的动力。乃古石林景区出现的地带性植被萌生林展现了岩溶区石漠化地段植被自然恢复的一种过程,即保护岩溶地质遗迹能使残留的繁殖体(桩和根)得到萌生成熟,增加新繁殖体(有性繁殖体和无性繁殖体) ,实现乡土植被的恢复。但目前石林公园的现状植被与石林岩溶地质遗迹景观还存在不相适配问题。      

浅析四川成都龙泉山城市森林公园主要环境地质问题

本文在梳理前人研究成果的基础上,结合野外实地调查和样品分析数据,分析了四川成都龙泉山城市森林公园的主要环境问题。研究表明,龙泉山城市森林公园总体地质环境条件较好,其总体规划和地质环境相适宜,在建设过程中需要关注局部地区的地质灾害发育、浅层地下空间瓦斯赋存和地下水污染等环境地质问题。区内主要地质灾害发育类型为小型滑坡,其次为崩塌和不稳定斜坡,多发生于龙泉山复背斜核部及断裂带区域,建设旅游道路和游憩设施时,要加强防范。区内局部浅层地下空间瓦斯赋存,建议在园区内进行地下工程建设时,进行超前地质预报,在施工过程中要加强瓦斯浓度监测与通风,注意火源管控。区内浅层地下水类型主要为HCO_3-Ca·Mg和HCO_3-Ca型,局部地区浅层地下水因人类活动而受到污染,其中总硬度、氨氮、氯化物等超标,建议加强公园内重点规划建设区域的地下水用途管控和生态环境保护。     

福建屏南白水洋国家地质公园地质遗迹保护探讨

屏南白水洋国家地质公园以火山岩峰丛和峡谷地貌为主,园区内地质遗迹丰富,景观奇特。为保护这些珍贵的地质遗迹免遭受自然和人为的破坏,保护地质公园措施遵循“在保护中开发,在开发中保护”的原则,在详细编制地质公园规划的基础上,采取各种行之有效的措施保护地质遗迹,使之成为可永续利用的地学旅游资源,有效地促进了旅游业和地方经济的持...     

Got green? addressing environmental justice in park provision

We present a pragmatic approach to assist planners in addressing racial inequities in park access. Utilizing the Los Angeles metropolitan region as an example, we used Thiessen polygons to delineate a service area for each park, and described potential park congestion or ‘pressure’ in each park service area. Results show that Latinos, African-Americans, and low-income groups in general were likely to live close to parks with higher potential park congestion. On the other hand, predominantly White, high-income areas were typically located close to parks with lower potential park congestion levels. The park service area analysis presented here facilitates the identification of areas with greater park need and provides a pragmatic way to redress existing disparities in park access. Built into a set of web-based decision support tools, the approach fosters greater community participation and empowers local stakeholders in the process of park provision.     

Coping strategies with floods in Bangladesh: an empirical study

In the time of the flooding, rural people in Bangladesh suffer from the lingering effects of labor market disruption and income deficiency. This study shows a model based analysis on the research question, ??what coping strategies are followed by the flooded households in Bangladesh and how???. Data are collected through a three stage stratified random sampling technique on 595 flooded and rural households??. Survey is carried out aftermath of the flood in the year 2005, from four different districts in Bangladesh. A major proportion of households are found to borrow money or resources from informal sources, such as nearby shops or the pharmacy, friends or relatives, or local money lenders, to buy food items and other essentials. A censored tobit model analysis shows that households initiate coping with borrowing money after the realization of floods, and gradually lead to cope with savings and selling assets as the duration of flood increases.     

The Berchtesgaden National Park (Bavaria, Germany): a platform for interdisciplinary catchment research

The Berchtesgaden National Park (Bavaria, Germany), a study site of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere program in the catchment of Berchtesgadener Ache, is introduced as a platform for interdisciplinary research. As the investigation of how human activities affect the natural resources in the park area, which has been defined a main aim of the program, naturally requires expertise from different scientific fields, interdisciplinary research has been fostered in the national park plan since the very beginning of the Man and the Biosphere program in 1981. To analyze the complex interactions and mutual dependencies between socio-economic and natural systems, a variety of monitoring programs have been initialized in different disciplines (e.g. climate sciences, zoology, botany) that are addressed in this paper. As a result of these research efforts, the park offers a profound data basis to be used in future studies (e.g. land cover classifications, maps of geological and soil conditions). Detailed information is provided on a climate monitoring network that has been installed in the park starting in the year 1993. The network has been continuously extended over the years and now provides extraordinary comprehensive information on meteorological conditions in the park, setting the basis for current as well as for potential future climate-related studies. A special characteristic of the station network is the fact that it covers a large range of elevations from 600 m a.s.l in the valleys to 2,600 m a.s.l in the summit regions and is therefore able to capture altitudinal gradients in meteorological variables as typical for Alpine regions. Due to the large number of stations in high elevations (15 stations are in elevations higher than 1,500 m a.s.l) the network provides information on the complex hydrometeorological conditions in summit regions which are often insufficiently represented in observation networks due to the increased costs for maintenance of climate stations in these locations. Beside the various monitoring programs, a variety of numerical models have been (further) developed for application in the park area that make extensive use of the different data collected and therefore largely benefit from the comprehensive data pool. The potential and necessity of the climate monitoring network for modelling studies is demonstrated by utilizing the meteorological recordings in the framework of a hydrometeorological simulation experiment. Further examples of environmental modelling efforts are shortly described together with preliminary model results.     

Migration and urban survival strategies in Windhoek, Namibia

Based on recent research in Windhoek, this paper demonstrates that it is the well established and widespread social linkages that persist between rural and urban households that are central to the ability of poor urban households to survive. Whereas informal coping mechanisms that include borrowing, piecework and credit are pervasive in rural areas of Namibia, intra-urban sources of food are poorly developed, and outside of kinship circles, social networks within Windhoek are used sparingly, even in times of greatest need. In addition, urban agriculture plays a very limited role at present in urban food supply. The research demonstrates that urban households that are most vulnerable to hunger are those that have limited social connections to the rural areas, and must rely on intra-urban opportunities to get food (including borrowing, begging, piecework and crime). The most vulnerable are female- and male-headed households with no access to farm income and limited/irregular urban incomes. In contrast, those with active rural-urban linkages enjoy significant transfers of food from rural areas that offset hunger and vulnerability in the urban context. Urban-rural reciprocity is therefore not only a one-way movement of people and resources from the urban to the rural areas, but also a transfer of food from rural to urban households.     

合肥市大蜀山—紫蓬山地质公园地质遗迹保护研究

合肥市大蜀山—紫蓬山地质公园是一个集多种地质遗迹资源并存的综合性地质公园。园内有代表合肥地区的侏罗纪层型剖面,也有喷发于古近纪的火山遗迹,同时还有大量其他地质构造遗迹。本文在对公园主要保护对象的分析评价基础上,结合目前该园区地质遗迹保护存在主要问题,给出了公园地质遗迹保护的措施,对该地质公园地质遗迹的合理保护起到一定的指导作用。