Fire and ice: unravelling the climatic and volcanic history of James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula

Back in the mid-nineteenth century British explorer James Clark Ross took his ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus , farther south than anyone else had been. He now lends his name to James Ross Island, a part-volcanic edifice that rises out of the sea off the north-east tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The island records a geological history dating back to the Cretaceous, though its great peaks are volcanic. The most recent rocks of the island record a monumental struggle between fire and ice, the volcanoes, and the ice sheets that cover them. The glacigenic sediments that are interspersed with the volcanic rocks contain rich fossil assemblages which suggest that at times, the climate was warmer, with the ice retreating. Their study may help us to delimit the patterns of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula region as Earth's global climate warms.     

River sediments,great floods and centennial‐scale Holocene climate change

A new analysis of all 346 published ¹⁴C dated Holocene alluvial units in Britain offers a unique insight into the regional impacts of global change and shows how surprisingly sensitive British rivers have been to relatively modest but repeated changes in climate. Fourteen major but probably brief periods of flooding are identified bracketed within the periods 400–1070, 1940–3940, 7520–8100 and at ca. 10 420 cal. yr BP. There is a strong correspondence between climatic deteriorations inferred from mire wet shifts and major periods of flooding, especially at ca. 8000 cal. yr BP and since ca. 4000 cal. yr BP. The unusually long and complete British record also demonstrates that alterations in land cover have resulted in a step change in river basin sensitivity to variations in climate. This has very important implications for assessing and mitigating the impact of increasing severe flooding. In small and medium‐sized river basins land use is likely to play a key role in either moderating or amplifying the climatic signal. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Chasing a 'loose and baggy monster': almshouses and the geography of charity

This paper goes some way towards redressing the lack of geographical literature on charity through exploring the geography of the British domestic charitable sector. The size and geography of the third sector is outlined, followed by an analysis of how almshouses can be understood as inherently geographical and deeply embedded in local social networks of inclusion as well as exclusion.     

Frequency-dependent anisotropy due to meso-scale fractures in the presence of equant porosity

Fractured rock is often modelled under the assumption of perfect fluid pressure equalization between the fractures and equant porosity. This is consistent with laboratory estimates of the characteristic squirt-flow frequency. However, these laboratory measurements are carried out on rock samples which do not contain large fractures. We consider coupled fluid motion on two scales: the grain scale which controls behaviour in laboratory experiments and the fracture scale. Our approach reproduces generally accepted results in the low- and high-frequency limits. Even under the assumption of a high squirt-flow frequency, we find that frequency-dependent anisotropy can occur in the seismic frequency band when larger fractures are present. Shear-wave splitting becomes dependent on frequency, with the size of the fractures playing a controlling role in the relationship. Strong anisotropic attenuation can occur in the seismic frequency band. The magnitude of the frequency dependence is influenced strongly by the extent of equant porosity. With these results, it becomes possible in principle to distinguish between fracture- and microcrack-induced anisotropy, or more ambitiously to measure a characteristic fracture length from seismic data.     

A geographical analysis of the Atalanti alluvial plain and coastline as the location of a potential tourist site, Bronze through Early Iron Age Mitrou, East-Central Greece

Tourism accounts for 15% of Greece’s gross domestic product. In the wake of a struggling economy many of Greece’s coastal villages have turned to tourism to supplement local economies. Preliminary analysis of structural and cultural materials recovered from an excavation on Mitrou, a small islet near the coastal village Tragana located 140 km north of Athens has established the site’s contribution to a fuller understanding of settlement practices in Central Greece from the end of the Bronze Age through the Early Iron Age. The site’s historic importance combined with its scenic coastal setting has considerable potential to be developed into an important tourist site. The physical geography of the region is the product of the complex interaction of coastal, alluvial, fluvial, and seismic processes. This investigation integrates the archaeological material with a geographical analysis employing a variety of geographical techniques (soil and sediment analysis, past climatic data, environmental surveys, and geospatial modeling) to reconstruct the geomorphological history of the site and to evaluate the area as a potential tourist site.