Working a fraction and making a fraction work: a rough guide for geographers in the academy

Little is known about the issues facing geographers working on fractional appointments in higher education institutions in the UK. This paper draws on a survey of UK geography departments and personal experiences to explore some of that territory for the first time. The purpose is both to set the agenda for institutional policy issues and to provide some immediate points of reflection for staff intending to take up fractional work. We consider the place of fractional working in the dominant discourses around paid work, problems of workload division and the impact on professional standing (including the RAE). We suggest that while personal 'life' reasons for fractional working are often positive, fractional workers in the academy risk professional marginalization.     

Publication of new and revised taxa: a guide to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature for Diatomists

As revision of diatom taxonomy has become crucial to many recent palaeolimnological studies, the number of nomenclatural changes required has increased. Publication and validation of new names for diatoms is governed by a set of principles published periodically and known collectively as the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. Creation of a computerised taxonomic database, designed to record recent nomenclatural changes, has revealed many of the names published to be invalid as they fail to comply with all requirements of the code. This paper outlines briefly the criteria needed to validly publish new or revised taxa.     

Morphometry and distribution of isolated caves as a guide for phreatic and confined paleohydrological conditions

Isolated caves are a special cave type common in most karst terrains, formed by prolonged slow water flow where aggressivity is locally boosted. The morphometry and distribution of isolated caves are used here to reconstruct the paleohydrology of a karstic mountain range. Within a homogenous karstic rock sequence, two main types of isolated caves are distinguished, and each is associated with a special hydrogeologic setting: maze caves form by rising water in the confined zone of the aquifer, under the Mt. Scopus Group (Israel) confinement, while chamber caves are formed in phreatic conditions, apparently by lateral flow mixing with a vadose input from above.     

Navigating the Roles of the Social Learning Researcher: a critical analysis of a learning approach to guide climate change adaptation

Climate change adaptation is now a core theme of Australian geographical research. Climatic risks to socio-ecosystems are unbounded and highly uncertain and as a result require learning-based approaches to generate appropriate adaptation responses. Geographical research can effectively integrate knowledge developed through the mutual learning of researchers and stakeholders within a place to help guide adaptation planning. The roles of the geographer as a social learning researcher are critically analysed within the context of climate change adaptation research undertaken to support regional natural resource management adaptation planning in South Australia. Three research roles from the social learning literature are used to frame the analysis: the organic intellectual; the advocate for social justice; and the contemporary professional academic. While the social learning helped to develop a range of experimental adaptation policies and actions, the research would have proceeded more effectively if the challenges of the approach had been initially understood. The problems which emerge from social learning research, including inevitable tensions between real-world and academic outcomes, need to be acknowledged along with any successes to prepare future geographers to facilitate learning about socio-ecological risk.     

Automatic revision of rules used to guide the generalisation process in systems based on a trial and error strategy

Automating the generalisation process, a major issue for national mapping agencies, is extremely complex. Several works have proposed to deal with this complexity using a trial and error strategy. The performance of systems based on such a strategy is directly dependent on the quality of the control knowledge (i.e. heuristics) used to guide the trials. Unfortunately, most of the time, the definition and updation of knowledge is a fastidious task. In this context, automatic knowledge revision can not only improve the performance of the generalisation, but also allow it to automatically adapt to various usages and evolve when new elements are introduced. In this article, an offline knowledge revision approach is proposed, based on a logging of the system and on the analysis of outcoming logs. This approach is dedicated to the revision of control knowledge expressed by production rules. We have implemented and tested this approach for the automated generalisation of groups of buildings within a generalisation model called AGENT, from initial data that reference a scale of approximately 1:15,000 compared with the target map's scale of 1:50,000. The results show that our approach improves the quality of the control knowledge and thus the performance of the system. Moreover, the approach proposed is generic and can be applied to other systems based on a trial and error strategy, dedicated to generalisation or not.     

LegalGEO: Conservation tool to guide the siting of legal reserves under the Brazilian Forest Code

The Brazilian Forest Code, enacted in 1965, was the first national law to mandate that private landowners maintain a portion of their land in natural vegetation. Effective implementation of the law is not only a national priority, but also a global one as Brazil hosts some of the greatest biodiversity and the largest carbon stores in the world. Under the Forest Code, landowners have options to either protect, restore, or offset to meet the legal requirements. Collectively planning and guiding where to locate these options within and outside a rural property can have positive impacts for the environment at both local and landscape levels. To that end, we developed the LegalGEO toolkit to assist government and non-government organizations in offering landowners solutions for complying with the Forest Code requirements while promoting positive outcomes for the environment. Here, we introduce the tools and spatial data associated with LegalGEO and discuss how these data are used within a spatial multi-criteria analysis to produce landscape prioritization maps to guide landowner decisions at the property level. As a case study, we apply LegalGEO to a collection of rural properties within the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil and compare the differences in the resulting landscape patterns against a scenario where landowners lack this guidance. Results from this comparison suggest that the use of the LegalGEO tool improves conservation outcomes at both landscape and property levels scales.     

A guide to free films available for classroom use

Abstract

Educators Guide to Free Films. Compiled and edited by Mary Foley Horkheimer and John C. Diffor. 37th annual edition. Educators Progress Service, Inc., Randolph, Wisconsin 53956. xvii + 731 pages, 1977. $12.95. Paperbound.     

An illustrated guide of subfossil Chironomidae (Insecta: Diptera) from waterbodies of Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula

Journal of Paleolimnology - We provide a photographic guide and taxonomic diagnosis of Chironomidae larval remains obtained from surface sediments and short cores of 92 waterbodies situated on the...     

Seabirds and fronts: a brief overview

Oceanographic fronts are the sites of enhanced physical and biological activity, including locally concentrated feeding by marine birds. Two general hypotheses relating marine birds to fronts have been developed. The first is that enhanced primary production at fronts increases prey supply through increased animal growth, reproduction, or immigration. The second is that prey patches develop at fronts either through behavioural responses of prey to thermal or salinity gradients, or through interaction between prey behaviour and circulatory patterns. Several recent studies support the second hypothesis. The first hypothesis, that birds benefit from enhanced primary production at fronts, has yet to be evaluated. We need a better understanding of trophic mechanisms at fronts in order to determine (1) the proportion of daily energy requirements extracted by predators at fronts; (2) the proportion of natural mortality of prey populations at fronts; and (3) the probability of contact between seabirds and point source pollutants.     

Developing a Learning Progression for Place: A Provocation and a Response

The purpose of this short article is to offer a critical perspective on Larsen and Harrington's ambitious and stimulating review article. It does so by drawing a distinction between teaching and learning and discussing how progression metaphors for describing the latter can distort the moral purpose of the former. My response to the provocation offered by the review article is to resist the temptation to urge yet more research effort on developing a learning progression for place and instead focus on what is required to teach about place effectively. This would need to be driven by clear teaching goals rather than some technical learning progression.     

Religion and fertility: a study in differentials

Fertility differentials among religious groups in India are examined, with a focus on minority status and on demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural factors. The impact of these factors on acceptance of family planning programs is discussed.     

Neurohydrology: implementation options and a research agenda

Summary This paper recommends further investigation into the use of artificial neural networks for tackling complex hydrological modelling tasks. Three possible modes of implementation are discussed, and a research agenda is proposed—comprising an organizational framework within which to examine and report on the potential benefits.     

Public housing and migration: a multi-level modelling approach

"This paper...[analyzes] the distance moved by one-year migrants using a multi-level modelling approach. Controlling for a range of socio-economic variables, derived from the 1991 British Census Sample of Anonymised Records (SAR), at both the individual and area level, the distance moved by household heads in public, privately rented and owner-occupied housing within Britain is assessed.... It is confirmed that migrants in public housing are less likely to migrate long distances than owner-occupiers and that the proportion of public housing in a SAR area, and the absolute reduction in public housing in a SAR area between 1981 and 1991, does not have a significant effect on the distance that in-migrants have moved."     

Constructing a Dialogue: Geographic Education and Geographic Research

Geographic researchers and those who specialize in educational issues have paid insufficient attention to one another. Many theoreticians are openly contemptuous of those who study education; many who focus on pedagogy are unnecessarily defensive. This essay calls for a program of sustained intercourse that is explicitly mutually transformative in nature. It reviews what each perspective offers the other. A change in attitude among those who emphasize geographic research is needed that takes pedagogy far more seriously than it has hitherto. Conversely, geographers whose professional interest is in education would benefit from including new conceptual material such as social theory and political economy in pedagogic works. The results of such an intersection would be to inject new energy into the field, including secondary schools, widen geography's audience, and enhance its popular reputation.