WEGS—A working club of Western European geological surveys

WEGS was established in 1971 as a working club of all the directors of the geological surveys in Western Europe. The purpose is to encourage the exchange of information between the 21 member-surveys representing all of the Western European countries.

WEGS has annual plenary meetings convened by all member countries in turn. The general exchange of information includes the surveys' relationships to national and international organisations, institutions and large scale projects. Also on the agenda are reports from WEGS Working Groups on Environmental Geology, Geochemistry and Computers. At each meeting the opportunity is taken during field trips to examine the local geological conditions and problems related to geology.

Current activities of WEGS include initiatives concerning standardisation and transfer of data between the member-surveys, a guideline book on environmental geology with case histories from all parts of Western Europe and possible joint activities within marine geology.     

The symbolic and political appropriation of scales: A critical analysis of the Amazonian ranchers’ narrative

There are many examples of “local” discourses aiming to delegitimize environmental issues, demands, actions and governance by arguing that they pursue international goals, defined by international actors that do not meet local needs and frequently oppose them. We focus on the narrative held by large ranchers in the Eastern Amazon, which disqualifies the so-called top-down creation of protected areas that jeopardizes the “local development” these actors have, following the narrative, encouraged and sustained for years. Through the combination of an ontological and constructivist approach of scales, our contribution challenges this scalar construction questioning the “locality” of the large ranchers and showing that their role as “local developers” is actually rooted in regional/national/international scales. We then study the most important effect of the anti-environmental grand scalar narrative: its influence on regional and national decision makers. Well-conceived and publicized scalar scenarios are efficient in this context as in many others.     

Earth Science Education in Botswana

In Botswana, the Earth Science Education programme is based at the University of Botswana in the Department of Geology, which is one of seven departments in the Faculty of Science. Initially the new department had three academic staff members; this number has later increased to eight and, most recently, to ten academic posts. Since the programme's inception in 1980, 84 graduates completed the undergraduate geological studies. The Geology B.Sc. programme gives a choice between a single major in Geology and three combined majors: Geology/Environmental Sciences, Geology/Chemistry and Geology/Physics. Postgraduate programmes are currently under preparation. All Geology graduates are employed by the Botswana Government institutions and private companies. An active research programme, related to both local and international projects is conducted. This involves co-operation with national institutions and international organisations.     

Circulating climate services: Commercializing science for climate change adaptation in Pacific Islands

In order to address the impacts of climate change, global multilateral institutions, development organizations, and national and regional science organizations are creating climate services – packages of useful climate information intended to help decision makers. This diffuse collection of actors and institutions suggest that producing climate services will help bridge gaps between climate scientists and decision-makers and will therefore help vulnerable countries and people manage the risks and optimize the impacts of climate change. This article examines this global science-policy ecosystem using the case of climate services produced by Australian science agencies for consumption in adaptation programming in the Pacific Island countries of Kiribati and Solomon Islands. Linking research on geographies of marketization and the neoliberalization of science, I demonstrate that within the climate service movement a focus on usefulness is paired with an emphasis on commercialization. As a result, this case shows the inherent tensions in the climate service model: first, a focus on competition and circulating service products at the expense of collaborative relationships; second, difficulties in negotiating uncertainty; and third contradictions between ‘objective’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ science. In each of these instances, the commercialized mechanisms through which climate services are governed, and the political economic circumstances within which they are produced, magnify rather than ameliorate gaps between science and policy.     

The competitive advantage of clusters: Cluster organisations and greenfield FDI in the European life sciences industry

This paper examines the effect of cluster organisations on the international competitive advantages of clusters in the European life sciences industry. Data on coordinated cluster organisations are used to assess whether cluster development policies enhance the attractiveness of clusters to multinational corporations (MNCs). We estimate mixed logit models using a sample of 481 greenfield investments by life sciences MNCs in West-European regions during the period 2010–2013. Contrary to the beliefs of policymakers, our results indicate that both the presence of cluster organisations and higher-order activities of cluster organisations have only a small effect in attracting greenfield investments. In addition, cluster organisations help attract economic activities with less specific location requirements, such as production plants and sales and marketing offices. This finding provides valuable insights for policymakers, as investing public funds in cluster organisations is not found to attract high value-added business activities, such as those that occur in headquarters and R&D facilities, which are often the target of such investments.     

‘A citizen of all the different bits’: emotional scaling of identity

Scale is a debatable term in the humanities and social sciences. Conceptualized in human geography as spatial categories of thought, as the arenas where social processes occur, as bounded political-economic frames or as unhelpful binaries privileging either the local or the global, scale intersects a significant body of geographical research. The unfolding and intermeshing of topological connections that help to share moments and experiences are important sources for the differentiation, renewal and recalibration of individual identities, but they often work as co-components to scalar identifications. Engaging with the recent discussion on scale and the upsurge of emotional geographies, I seek to understand how people contextualize space through situated scalar perspectives and how they realign and recognize their identities through embodied emotions. The analysis of the empirical material, that comprises 23 focus groups with locally and universally-orientated civic organizations in Finland and England, focuses on the ways people use landscapes and communities as emotional signposts in their scalar identification. I argue that scale is a situated category, whose spectrum individuals negotiate through the performance of social discourses and cultural practices. In such negotiation, people scale their identity narratives to overcome or emphasize the distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘others’.     

Making spaces: The ethnic Brao people and the international border between Laos and Cambodia

On December 6, 1904 the present international border between Laos and Cambodia was unilaterally established when the French colonial government extracted Stung Treng Province from Laos and transferred it to Cambodia. The ethnic Brao people living in the border region were not well known to the French, and in any case, their views were not deemed important. But since then the Brao have utilised this state administrative boundary in ways not intended by its designers, or governments since then, to give them more power to create new spaces. When conditions in Cambodia have been deemed unfavourable, the Brao have often crossed into Laos, and similarly, when circumstances have been less advantageous in Laos they have moved to Cambodia.This paper traces the history of the Brao as it specifically relates to the international border between Laos and Cambodia. While this administrative boundary was created to help national governments keep populations confined within nation-states, Brao human agency has sometimes confounded these efforts, through transforming its significance and role. The boundary has separated Brao populations in ways that are sometimes upsetting to them, but it has also allowed the Brao to position themselves at the margins of different nation-states, in spaces where they have been able to, at least temporarily, avoid or reduce state control over them. These are not non-state spaces; they are fundamentally constituted by a state-established boundary, even if the Brao have been able to mobilise this resource to empower themselves, and sometimes to resist the state itself.     

Multivariate Categorical Modeling with Hierarchical Truncated Pluri-Gaussian Simulation

Multiple categorical variables such as mineralization zones, alteration zones, and lithology are often available for geostatistical modeling. Each categorical variable has a number of possible categorical outcomes. The current approach for numerical modeling of categorical variables is to either combine the categorical variables or to model them independently. The collapse of multiple categorical variables into a single variable with all combinations is impractical due to the large number of combinations. In some cases, lumping categorical variables is justified in terms of stationary domains; however, this decision is often due to the limitations of existing techniques. The independent modeling of each categorical variable will fail to reproduce the collocated joint categorical relationships. A methodology for the multivariate modeling of categorical variables utilizing the hierarchical truncated pluri-Gaussian approach is developed and illustrated with the Swiss Jura data set. The multivariate approach allows for improved reproduction of multivariate relationships between categorical variables.

     

Producing Certified Reference Materials at the Central Geological Laboratory of Mongolia

This paper briefly outlines the production and certification of reference materials at the Central Geological Laboratory (CGL) of Mongolia. The marketing of CRMs produced in Mongolia, as well as problems encountered in internationally recognised certification attempts and some proposed solutions, are discussed. The basic elements of the CGL’s strategy for the development of the CRM sector are to produce high quality CRMs according to the requirements of internationally recognised norms, to consider the market needs, to certify the RMs at the international level and to widely advertise them to the geochemical community. The CGL has already established the basis for the further development of this sector by, for instance, accreditation under ISO/IEC 17025, by modernising its preparation technology, by cooperation with international organisations in the field of CRMs and by permanent participation in the International Association of Geoanalysts’ GeoPT™ proficiency testing programme.     

我国土壤热流场及与深层大地热流场的比较

本文提出岩石圈内的某些过程是气候变迁的重要原因之一。并依据对土壤热流、大地热流、地震和旱涝关系研究所得到的一些现象和结论,利用气象站地温资料计算了土壤热流,初步分析得到如下主要结论:(1)据线性热传导理论设计的热流的计算方法基本上可以满足多年平均土壤热流场计算精度的要求;(2)平均土壤热流场、深层大地热流场、地震带三者之间有很好的对应关系。平均土壤热流高值带一般都有大地热流高值带和地震带与之对应;(3)土壤热流距平场与汛期降水场有相似的分布形势,土壤热流距平的变化与强震也有一定的联系。     

我国土壤热流场及与深层大地热流场的比较

本文提出岩石圈内的某些过程是气候变迁的重要原因之一。并依据对土壤热流、大地热流、地震和旱涝关系研究所得到的一些现象和结论,利用气象站地温资料计算了土壤热流,初步分析得到如下主要结论:(1)据线性热传导理论设计的热流的计算方法基本上可以满足多年平均土壤热流场计算精度的要求;(2)平均土壤热流场、深层大地热流场、地震带三者之间有很好的对应关系。平均土壤热流高值带一般都有大地热流高值带和地震带与之对应;(3)土壤热流距平场与汛期降水场有相似的分布形势,土壤热流距平的变化与强震也有一定的联系。     

Voices and silences: the problem of access to embeddedness

The economic geography literature invokes a broad range of socio-cultural factors in explaining the performance of economic actors. The Polanyian–Granovetterian notion of embeddedness is among those often used in this context. This paper discusses epistemological problems involved in doing empirical research on the embeddedness of business firms in the local context. The obvious group of actors addressed in such studies are corporate managers. They can be depicted as agents who derive their power from the corporate resources that they control as well as from the social capital that they gain through their connectedness to a range of social relations.Interviews between academic researchers and corporate managers are viewed as Bakhtinian dialogues. They are analysed in terms of voice and silence, multivoicedness, social language and speech genre. Voices represent managerial elites in their different roles as well as the social relationships in which they are involved. They are resonated in managers’ utterances in interview dialogues. What is not expressed at all or is expressed unclearly or inadequately is captured by the metaphor of silence. Managers’ embeddedness in multiple sets of social relations results in multivoicedness, which leads to the need for the researcher to try to identify the different voices and their social origins.The paper elaborates on the complexities involved in carrying out empirical research on embeddedness. It can also be read as a warning against pursuing such an endeavour without careful conceptual elaboration on the very notion of embeddedness.     

Government policies and international migration of skilled workers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since a central concern of the geography of international migration is to consider how and why stocks and flows of migrants are variable from country to country, the study of skilled international migration must address policies of individual governments towards local and foreign skilled workers. These policies are most evident in immigration and emigration legislation, regulations and practice, but also, less directly but often of more fundamental significance, in policies in education, manpower planning and towards wages and salaries. In Sub-Saharan Africa there is a wide range of experience of recent skilled international migration, driven by direct and indirect policies pursued by individual governments since independence. At an intercontinental scale the deleterious effects of the global division of labour have not merely been passively accepted; within the continent new patterns of skilled-labour migration have been created by increasingly differentiated economic performance and political relationships. A case study of Kenya, a country of small current net immigration of skilled workers, is used to specify some of the processes that establish the relationships between immigration and emigration policies, and how these have been mediated by conditions for skilled workers. The concluding section of this paper sets the general experience and that of the Kenyan case study in the wider context of the role of the state as a factor in the geography of skilled international migration in the Third World.     

国道212线甘肃段地貌特征与滑坡泥石流关系研究

国道212线甘肃段是甘肃省南北向的主要通道,在甘肃境内全长707km,公路沿线是我国滑坡、泥石流的主要发育区,特别是陇南市的宕昌武都段是我国最主要的滑坡、泥石流灾害区之一。线路通过地区的自然地理条件迥异,造成滑坡、泥石流类型和性质有很大差别。本文分析了该区地形地貌时、时空规律性及其与滑坡、泥石流的关系,为未来的高速公路建设提供理论依据。     

Of tidy gardens and clean houses: housing officers as agents of social control

This paper seeks to contribute to the theme of institutional geographies by exploring how the prevailing socio-spatial order is recreated and legitimated in the ways in which public rented housing is managed and delivered by housing associations and local authorities in the UK. The public rented sector has been increasingly catering for the most vulnerable sections of the population who are dependent on state benefits and cannot afford any other form of housing. As a result, housing staffs have found themselves having to take on a welfare role which entails controlling and policing social tenants who are seen to be causing disorder in society. This paper shows how a dominant housing management discourse reproduced by policies and staff at both front-line and management levels is that of an emerging ‘underclass’ promoted by right wing politicians and the media since the 1980s. According to dominant housing management discourse the members of this underclass are disrupting traditional patriarchal and capitalist institutions and values. Tenants’ houses and gardens not conforming to culturally and socially acceptable standards of cleanliness and tidiness symbolises tenants’ lack of conformity to the prevailing institutional order. Drawing on in-depth interviews with housing officers and managers, and observations of interviews between staff and tenants in six housing organisations, this paper analyses the ways in which housing organisations seek to control social tenants through the imposition of certain norms of cleanliness over their houses and gardens.     

Globalising initiatives for gender equality and poverty reduction: Exploring ‘failure’ with reference to education and work among urban youth in The Gambia and Ghana

This paper focuses on what observers have perceived to be a failure of development leading to a ‘crisis of youth’ as increasing numbers of young people find it more difficult to gain education, access to health, a job and meet standard of living aspirations. For some, a possible escape is offered by migration to Europe, the United States or Australia, often illegally. For those remaining behind, however, international development agencies offer a ‘globalisation of solutions’ to employment, gender inequality and poverty through the millennium development goals and the programmes to attain them. In this paper we do not take the failures of development at face value but look at local contexts to present a more complex picture of the relation between education, work and social life. Based on fieldwork conducted in urban areas of The Gambia and Ghana, we argue that rather than education as a catch-all solution we need to give more attention to the costs incurred by and for young people in pursuing education and training, to the operation of and actual opportunities in labour markets, and to patterns of gender socialisation which give women limited scope to exercise agency. This paper explores key gender dimensions of work and education among low-income urban youth noting that despite on-going efforts to increase young women’s enrolment in schools and access to employment, gender inequalities have been far from eradicated. Our field interviews reveal how social expectations that women should perform the bulk of reproductive labour in their youth as well as in adulthood and constraints placed on young women’s personal freedom in respect of their social relationships reduce time dedicated to education and establish fewer contacts relevant to securing paid employment. The result is for men to end up with more educational qualifications, more skills, and higher-paying jobs, even if unemployment among young people in general remains a major problem.     

Debris flows in the Lushan earthquake area: formation characteristics,rainfall conditions,and evolutionary tendency

Debris flows often occur in the mountainous watersheds of earthquake-affected areas, and in the Lushan earthquake area of southwestern China, they have become a significant hazard. In this study, the influencing factors and spatial distribution of debris flows were analyzed through a review of their occurrence history. Debris flows are mainly distributed in the northwestern part of the study area, which hosts the greatest density of active faults. The debris flows are generally formed by the ‘progressive bulking’ effect in channels, and deep incision, lateral erosion, and blockage breaking are common processes that amplify the magnitude of such debris flows. Rainfall thresholds for different types of debris flow were proposed to explain the spatial differences between debris-flow regions, and the temporal variations of those thresholds highlighted how the rainfall conditions required for the occurrence of debris flows have changed. Natural vegetation recovery, reduction in the availability of solid material, and artificial debris-flow control projects play important roles in raising the threshold of the rainfall conditions required for triggering debris flows.

     

Politics of scale and community-based forest management in southern Malawi

This article uses insights from theory on the social production of scale and multiple social and natural science methods to interrogate village-scale community-based forest management (CBFM) in southern Malawi, focusing on boundary demarcation, rule formulation and scaling, and dynamics of external facilitation. Examination of political agendas of those who pursued, gained from, or protested particular scalar CBFM arrangements uncovered otherwise hidden scalar politics, whose outcomes impeded more than they advanced CBFM goals. I argue that clarifying the scalar politics and configuration of forest governance arrangements can lead to a more nuanced understanding of CBFM challenges and create new opportunities for addressing them. Containerized, single-level CBFM institutions mismatched interacting social, ecological and institutional scalar configurations and relations, and confounded CBFM. Unequal international-donor/national and national/community scalar relations were as important as intra-community dynamics in explaining performance of CBFM. They constructed CBFM on a shaky foundation that put institutional and personal agendas and short-term goals over long-term socioecological sustainability. The politics of rescaling forest rules from village to (broader) Traditional Authority level alienated them from communities and undermined enforcement. Diverse motivations behind a scale-related strategy that separated usufruct from territorial rights in allocating forests mostly undermined socioecological CBFM goals. While scale is not the key or only explanation of CBFM performance, negotiated scaling offered a proactive way to anticipate scale-related conflicts in particular settings, and for communities to create institutional forms that minimize such conflicts at local or intermediate scale levels. Findings support strong, well-resourced states and caution against donor-driven quick fixes.     

Using Historical Documents for Landslide, Debris Flow and Stream Flood Prevention. Applications in Northern Italy

Landslides, debris flows and stream floods are common natural processes inNorthern Italy. Their occurrence can be correctly assessed in space and timeonly through a sound basis of knowledge acquired by the scientific use of alarge number of historical documents. Over the last 30 years, the CNR IRPIInstitute of Turin has made archive data utilisation one of its main points ofscientific research, through the collection of hundreds of thousands of recordscontained in published and unpublished documents and historical reports onnatural damaging events over the last 500 years, particularly since XIX Century.The historical data, interpreted and selected on a scientific basis, have beenorganised in a database and utilised for landscape planning and hydrogeologicalprevention. In co-operation with public organisations, the IRPI Institute hassupplied information (type, location, magnitude, frequency and effects) abouthazardous events in Northern Italy. To give an example, in the last 4 yearsabout 4,500 failure events have been detected along the road network of theTurin Province and many debris flow, rockfall, landslide and flood events inthe Lombardy Region. These data are reported as points linked to the relevantevent-card on technical cartography (scale 1:10,000 or 1:25,000), so that theycan be immediately utilised either on paper or digitally (e.g., GIS, Arcview software).The present day elaboration of archival data permit the possible analytical applications for structural interventions in natural hazard remediation in built-up areas. In all cases, the results of research allow public awareness of natural danger and the correct layout of civil protection strategies.