Who will leave? Oil,migration, and Scottish island youth

"Using survey data from high school students of Scotland's Shetland and Orkney Islands (affected by North Sea oil development), we explore relations between intentions to migrate and individual background, aspirations, and attitudes. Attitudes toward oil development do not predict migration intentions. Instead, migration intentions are predicted by essentially the same variables identified in other studies, in areas where energy development was not occurring. Thus, we found no evidence that oil development fundamentally changed young people's thoughts about leaving."     

Do perceptions of the Red‐tailed Hawk indicate a human‐wildlife conflict on the island of La Gonave,Haiti?

The Caribbean subspecies of the Red‐tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis solitudinus or B.j. jamaicensis) is the largest native carnivore on the island of La Gonave, Haiti, and the island's apex predator. On other Caribbean islands, raptors have been persecuted by local people typically because of their depredation of livestock. In addition to possible persecution from humans, Red‐tailed Hawks on La Gonave face challenges from island‐wide timber overharvest and rapid land‐cover changes. To better understand the human‐apex predator relationship on La Gonave, we surveyed islanders about their perceptions of, and interactions with, the Red‐tailed Hawk. According to 121 respondents from 10 villages, La Gonavans do not hunt, kill, or consume Red‐tailed Hawks. Our study revealed a notable absence of negative perceptions of the hawk by respondents despite intense hawk depredation of domestic chickens. While the chicken depredation may lead outside observers to consider the human‐hawk relationship on La Gonave as representative of a human‐wildlife conflict, our interview data do not support that conception. Our findings reflect an important conversation in related contemporary scientific literature about what constitutes human‐wildlife conflicts across various cultures. Despite tolerance by residents, Red‐tailed Hawks on La Gonave remain threatened by habitat degradation.     

Does Ski Tourism Improve the Regional Economy? The Case Study of Chongli,China

Chongli is one of the venues for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Since 2009, the government of Chongli has emphasized the development of a tourism strategy, which gradually contributed to alleviating regional poverty. With data collected from 2009 to 2019, ski tourism and the regional economy in Chongli were analyzed using the Coupling Coordination Degree (CCD) Model. This analysis indicated, first, there were three stages in the relationship between ski tourism and the regional economy in Chongli, including weak coordination (2009-2011), starting coordination (2012-2015), and strong coordination (2016-2019). Second, sport tourism, such as ski tourism, is likely to contribute to the regional economy and alleviate poverty. Third, the case of Chongli illustrates that policy and sports events are significant for helping a place to develop sports tourism, in addition to making full use of local resources. Finally, the development of skiing tourism has had a positive impact on citizens’ and farmers’ incomes, though it may have impacted citizens more. This research suggests that regional resources are essential for the development of sport tourism and the promotion of regional economies. Developing regions should seize the bonus period of sports events and policies. More attention should be paid to the differences between urban citizens and farmers in order to establish a better redistribution system. Considering the climatic factors, more studies need to analyze the sustainability of ski tourism in developing regions.     

Diatom–environment relationships and a transfer function for conductivity in lakes of the Badain Jaran Desert, Inner Mongolia, China

We describe a dataset of 26 modern diatom samples and associated environmental variables from the Badain Jaran Desert, northwest China. The influence of electrical conductivity (EC) and other variables on diatom distribution was explored using multivariate analyses and generalized additive modeling of species response curves. A transfer function was derived for EC, the variable with the largest unique effect on diatom variance, as shown by partial canonical correspondence analysis. Weighted-averaging partial least squares regression and calibration provided the best model, with a high coefficient of determination ( $ {\text{r}}_{\text{boot}}^{2} $  = 0.91) and low prediction error (RMSEP_boot = 0.136 log₁₀ μS cm^?1). To assess its potential for palaeosalinity and palaeoclimate reconstructions, the EC transfer function was applied to fossil diatom assemblages from ²¹⁰Pb-dated short sediment cores collected from two subsaline lakes of the Badain Jaran Desert. The diatom-inferred (DI) EC reconstructions were compared with meteorological data for the past 50 years and with remote sensing data for the period AD 1990–2012. Changes in DI–EC were small and their relationship with climate was weak. Moreover, remote sensing data indicate that the surface areas and water depths of these lakes did not change, which suggests that water loss by evaporation is compensated by groundwater inflow. These results suggest that the response of these lakes to climate change is mediated by non-climatic factors such as the hydrogeological setting, which control recharge from groundwater, and may be non-linear and non-stationary.     

Maximising efficiency,marginalising equity: a genealogy of Australian wheat export market deregulation and ‘the good farmer’

ABSTRACT

The Australian government deregulated the wheat export market in 2008, ending 60 years of statutory wheat marketing by the Australian Wheat Board (AWB). In this article, I explore the discursive shifts which contributed to this change. I adopt a genealogical approach to this research, by collecting and analysing policy documents produced between 1983 and 2012, to understand how truths—such as efficiency, competition and the ‘good farmer’—were constructed and reproduced to facilitate wheat export market deregulation in Australia. Through analysing the case of wheat export market deregulation, and the process by which this shift was made possible, this article contributes more broadly to research examining the neoliberalisation of Australian rural industries, and the discursive construction of norms, values and identities to facilitate these changes.     

Effect of the environment in Antarctica on immune function and electroencephalogram

ＥｆｆｅｃｔｏｆｔｈｅｅｎｖｉｒｏｎｍｅｎｔｉｎＡｎｔａｒｃｔｉｃａｏｎｉｍｍｕｎｅｆｕｎｃｔｉｏｎａｎｄｅｌｅｃｔｒｏｅｎｃｅｐｈａｌｏｇｒａｍＹｕＹｏｎｇｚｈｏｎｇ（于永中）；ＷａｎｇＺｏｎｇｈｕｉ（王宗惠）；ＺｈａｎｇＷｅｎｃｈｅｎｇ（张文诚）...     

Family or Enterprise? What shapes the business structures of Australian farming?

Australian farmers navigate their contemporary circumstances through the use of different business and legal arrangements that are shaped by the commercial realities of farming and the aspirations of farm-owning households. In posing the question ‘Family or Enterprise?’, this paper examines the extent to which various household and farm business indicators are associated with different forms of farm ownership, namely sole proprietorships, partnerships, trusts and companies. Results from a postal survey of farm enterprises in Victoria, Australia suggest that both household and enterprise factors contribute to the business structure used, although the strongest determinants appear to be those factors that are less well understood in the rural geographical and sociological literature: household composition, farmer age and farm size. Greater scrutiny of the business instruments deployed by farmers to manage family and enterprise pressures should inform expectations of the fate of family farming in advanced financialised economies.     

The Northern Myth Revisited? Aborigines,environment and agriculture in the Ord River Irrigation Scheme,Stages One and Two

Western Australia's Ord River Irrigation Scheme has been controversial since its establishment more than twenty-five years ago. A substantial expansion of the scheme, known as Ord Stage Two, is currently underway as a joint project of the Western Australian and Northern Territory governments. In this study I examine and compare Stages One and Two in the context of the significant social and economic changes that have occurred during this period, focusing on attitudes to, and conceptualisations of, nature and the human place in it. Despite a context in which consideration of both Aboriginal and environmental issues is now integrated into the development process, three colonial themes persist in the rhetoric of Stage Two. These are the empty landscape, the invisible Aborigine, and the idealisation of agricultural land use. When expressed together these three help to naturalise the development process as both inevitable and strategically implemented. The contradictions inherent in this process enhance existing doubts about the social and ecological sustainability of continuing attempts to 'develop' Australia's north.     

Macassan/Indigenous Australian ‘sites of memory’ in the National Museum of Australia and Australian National Maritime Museum

For over two centuries people from Makassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi came to northern Australia with the onset of the northeast monsoon winds. They came in search of trepang that, with the help of Indigenous Australians, they collected and traded on to China. Their impact on the Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land was considerable. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, they built relationships, many ongoing, that are celebrated in Yolngu art, song and stories. These stories of contact are well known to many archaeologists and anthropologists but for many Australians the only place where they come into contact with these stories is in a museum display. In this paper I examine the ways in which these stories are disseminated by two national museums, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. As important ‘lieux de mémoire’ or ‘sites of memory’, they tell of Macassan visits to northern Australia as part of Australian history. In both cases not only are the stories situated in the past but both Macassan and Indigenous Australian voices are largely absent.     

Part of the action, or 'going native'? Learning to cope with the 'politics of integration'

Summary Despite continuing work within feminist research on issues of political commitment and critical forms of engagement, and an increasing desire within geography to effect social change through our privileged positions as academics, active collaboration with groups involved in social action continues to be fraught with ambiguity and anxiety. In this paper, I consider the potential role of the 'researcher as activist' through documentation of my interaction and repositioning of identities while becoming involved in credit union development in Kingston upon Hull. I hope to illustrate how the maintenance of a critical, multi-positioned (and repositioned) identity can be seen as a beneficial, reflexive learning experience for researchers operating within ethnography, and for the research itself.     

Does the invisible hand have a green thumb? Incentives, linkages, and the creation of wealth out of industrial waste in Victorian England

'Loop closing', that is, the creation of waste recycling linkages between different industries, has been hailed as a means of simultaneously achieving improved economic and environmental performance. As a result of the widespread assumption that traditional market incentives and institutions are not conducive to such an outcome, however, there remains a fair amount of scepticism as to what the capacity of business self-interest to promote this behaviour actually is. This article challenges the dominant negative perspective by discussing by-product development in one of the most market-oriented societies in human history, Victorian England. Building on nineteenth and early twentieth century writings on the topic, as well as a more detailed analysis of the development of valuable by-products from highly problematic iron and coal gas production residuals, a case is made that the search for increased profitability within the context of private property rights often simultaneously promoted economic and environmental progress in the long run, as well as on different geographical scales.     

Change in Extent of Meadows and Shrub Fields in the Central Western Cascade Range,Oregon∗

We examined change in areal extent of mountain meadows and fields of deciduous shrubs and conifer saplings in the central western Cascade Range of Oregon, based on analysis of aerial photographs taken in 1946 and 2000. These nonforest vegetation patches are distinctive habitats in dominantly forested landscapes, such as the Cascades, and change in extent of these habitats is of interest to scientists and land managers. We mapped and dated even-aged forest stands of probable postfire origin around the nonforest patches, using tree-ring analysis and interpretation of aerial photographs. We used these and archival data to interpret possible influences of past wildfire and sheep grazing on the extent of nonforest patches. The total area of nonforest vegetation patches decreased from 5.5 percent of the study area in 1946 to 2.5 percent in 2000. Significantly more cases of contracted patches were observed for mesic and xeric meadows which have adjacent forest established after wildfire in the approximately 150 years preceding 1946. A higher proportion of mesic (47 percent, n = 47) than xeric (17 percent, n= 115) meadows contracted between 1946 and 2000. Broad-leaved shrub fields were unchanged, probably because of topo-edaphic controls, dense cover of shrubs, and snow effects; but all fields of conifer saplings underwent succession to forest. We observed no strong influences of sheep grazing on the extent of meadows.     

Improving understanding of the spatial dimensions of biophysical change in atoll island countries and implications for island communities: A Marshall Islands’ case study

Using coarse-scale approaches, existing national assessments of vulnerability and adaptation highlight physical land instability as a major threat to atoll island nationhood. However, such evaluations are bereft of detailed, ground-truthed analyses of the physical impacts of climatic change on reef islands, treating islands as homogenous in both biophysical and social characteristics. The distinct geomorphic context of two proximate reef islands (Jeh and Jabat) in the Marshall Islands was examined through conventional land survey techniques. A template documenting the nuances in island topography was used to evaluate simple inundation scenarios, reflecting current and future sea-level changes under storm surge conditions. The variations in local scale community exposure to inundation were discernible. The study highlights the importance of treating coarse-scale assessments with caution and underscores the need for continued commitment to resolving variations in community experiences to environmental change. Notions of risk and exposure are complex and embedded in both the biophysical and social contexts of each island community. Despite a number of targeted urban vulnerability studies in the Pacific there remains a need for efforts to document localised differences in experience to better inform contemporary adaptation efforts.     

Who owns the name? Fandom,social inequalities and the contested renaming of a football club in Timişoara,Romania

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship in critical toponymy has raised questions about the impacts on urban residents of selling naming rights and the possibility of contesting the commodification of urban place names. This article examines these issues using Poli Timi?oara, the major football team of Timi?oara, Romania, as a case study. The cash-strapped local authority sold the naming rights for the team to raise revenue. However, when the club’s private owner was unable to finance the team, the local authority reacquired the naming rights of Poli, now under the name Asocia?ia Club Sportiv Poli (a new team with a small fan base). Drawing on the everyday narratives of fans, this article explores how the commodification of a local club name can cause social tensions. This is important for understanding urban residents’ access, or lack thereof, to social capital resources and how this leads to the manifestation of social inequalities which co-determine fans’ reactions and responses to the change in the name of a sports team. The findings suggest that commodifying names can mobilize serious contestations among partisan groups about who owns the name, although such contestations appear to be on uncertain ground because of post-communist urban practices of delayed economic restructuring.     

Assessment of Thermal Maturity,Source Rock Potential and Paleodepositional Environment of the Paleogene Lignites in Barsingsar,Bikaner–Nagaur Basin,Western Rajasthan,India

Natural Resources Research - Investigations on the Paleogene lignites were carried out through geochemical, mineralogical and petrographic analyses to assess their paleodepositional environment,...     

Rural homes and urban dwellings? Gender,migration and the importance of tenure in Gaborone,Botswana

"The issue of return migration has been widely debated in African migration literature in view of strong rural-urban ties and urban growth based largely on in-migration. On the basis of fieldwork in Botswana, it is argued that there are important gender differences in terms of the commitment to rural and urban areas. It has been postulated in past studies that the decision to remain in towns depends in part upon urban tenure and it is argued that home owners are more likely than tenants to be permanent urban dwellers. Again, there are important gender differences and women appear to be more committed to the urban dwelling than men."     

What is the topset of a shelf-margin prism?

The siliciclastic topset of a continental margin, or a shelf-margin prism in subsiding nonplate-margin deepwater basins, is the flat-lying upper part of the margin succession; it is coeval basinwards with deepwater slope clinoforms. Topsets develop by the aggradation of repeated, cross-shelf, shoreline regressions and transgressions, thereby hosting the shelf portion of stacked, fourth-order stratigraphic sequences. Sediment spreading downdip and along strike during the cross-shelf transit of the sediment delivery system, as well as process regime changes of deltas and shorefaces (regressive) and of estuaries, barrier–lagoon systems and shelf ridges (transgressive) are highly variable over short distances, so that correlation within a single stratigraphic sequence is far more difficult than correlation of the cross-shelf maximum flooding surface boundaries. Thickness of individual regressive–transgressive, fourth-order sequences is given by shelf accommodation, typically <10 m in embayment or on the inner shelf and up to 200 m on outer shelf. Tectonic subsidence and compaction will enhance this thickness only if rates are very high compared to shelf-transit time. In very high subsidence rate settings, the transgressive tracts are well preserved and often thickly developed. Topset sequences in an Icehouse climate setting tend to have a high proportion and greater landward development of marine vs nonmarine deposits, compared to Greenhouse sequences, because of the importance of eustatic rise of sea level in the former. Previous numerical experiments show that even for very wide shelves and irrespective of Icehouse or Greenhouse conditions, deltas rarely take more than 10 s of ky to reach their shelf edge, suggesting that it is fourth-order (or higher) sequences that are the fundamental ones in sequence stratigraphy.     

Sleeping with the past? Heritage,recreation and transition in New Zealand tramping huts

New Zealand tramping huts are a rudimentary but valued form of recreational accommodation. While huts fundamentally offer shelter, their aesthetics and history can also be valued. We review the origins of the huts system and draw on entries in visitor books to demonstrate divergent views regarding newer and more traditional huts. We conclude that while ‘new‐generation’ huts facilitate a broader spectrum of users, ‘heritage’ huts may need partnerships with user groups and corporate sponsorship to ensure their survival.