Configurations of community in flood risk management

ABSTRACT

Despite a notable increase in the literature on community resilience, the notion of ‘community’ remains underproblematised. This is evident within flood risk management (FRM) literature, in which the understanding and roles of communities may be acknowledged but seldom discussed in any detail. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how community networks are configured by different actors, whose roles and responsibilities span spatial scales within the context of FRM. Accordingly, the authors analyse findings from semi-structured interviews, policy documents, and household surveys from two flood prone areas in Finnish Lapland. The analysis reveals that the ways in which authorities, civil society, and informal actors take on multiple roles are intertwined and form different types of networks. By implication, the configuration of community is fuzzy, elusive and situated, and not confined to a fixed spatiality. The authors discuss the implications of the complex nature of community for FRM specifically, and for community resilience more broadly. They conclude that an analysis of different actors across scales contributes to an understanding of the configuration of community, including community resilience, and how the meaning of community takes shape according to the differing aims of FRM in combination with differing geographical settings.     

INTERSTATE HIGHWAY EXIT MORPHOLOGY: NON-METROPOLITAN EXIT COMMERCE ON 1-75*

The commercial non-metropolitan exit clusters of America's interstate highway system exhibit regularities of basic form, scale, mix of services provided, and the ordinal placement of establishments relative to the exit proper. An examination of 354 exits serving 1-75 indicates the typical morphology of interstate exit clusters.     

Potential implications of differential preservation of testate amoeba shells for paleoenvironmental reconstruction in peatlands

Testate amoebae are now commonly used in paleoenvironmental studies but little is known of their taphonomy. There is some experimental evidence for differential preservation of some testate amoeba shell types over others, but it is unclear what, if any impact this has on palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. To investigate this issue we looked at palaeoecological evidence for the preservation of different shell types. We then investigated the possible impact of selective preservation on quantitative palaeoenvironmental inference. We first used existing palaeoecological data sets to assess the vertical patterns of relative abundance in four testate amoeba shell types: (1) shells made of secreted biosilica plates (idiosomes, e.g. Euglypha), (2) idiosomes with thick organic coating (Assulina), (3) proteinaceous shells (e.g. Hyalosphenia), (4) shells built from recycled organic or mineral particles (xenosomes) (e.g. Difflugia, Centropyxis). In three diagrams a clear pattern of decay was only observed for the idiosome type. In order to assess the implications of differential preservation of testate amoeba taxa for paleoenvironmental reconstruction we then carried out simulations using three existing transfer functions and a wide range of scenarios, downweighting different test categories to represent the impact of selective test decomposition. Simulation results showed that downweighting generally reduced overall model performance. However downweighting a shell type only produced a consistent directional bias in inferred water table depth where that shell type is both dominant and shows a clear preference along the ecological gradient. Applying a scenario derived from previous experimental work did not lead to significant difference in inferred water table. Our results show that differential shell preservation has little impact on paleohydrological reconstruction from Sphagnum-dominated peatlands. By contrast, for the minerotrophic peatlands data-set loss of idiosome tests leads to consistent underestimation of water table depth. However there are few studies from fens and it is possible that idiosome tests are not always dominant, and/or that differential decomposition is less marked than in Sphagnum peatlands. Further work is clearly needed to assess the potential of testate amoebae for paleoecological studies of minerotrophic peatlands.     

Polarization observations of giant radio pulses from the millisecond pulsar B1937+21 at a frequency of 600 MHz

We performed polarization observations of giant radio pulses from the millisecond pulsar B1937+21. The observations were carried out in July 2002 with the 64-m Kalyazin radio telescope at a frequency of 600 MHz in two polarization channels with left-and right-hand circular polarizations (RCP and LCP). We used the S2 data acquisition system with a time resolution of 125 ns. The duration of an observing session was 20 min. We detected twelve giant radio pulses with peak flux densities higher than 1000 Jy; five and seven of these pulses appeared in the RCP and LCP channels, respectively. We found no event that exceeded the established detection threshold simultaneously in the two polarization channels. Thus, we may conclude that the detected giant pulses have a high degree of circular polarization, with the frequency of occurrence of RCP and LCP pulses being the same.     

IR spectroscopy of COmosphere dynamics with the CO ?rst overtone band

We discuss observations of the weak ?rst overtone (Δν = 2) CO absorption band near 2300 nm with the U.S. National Solar Observatory Array Camera (NAC), a modern mid‐infrared detector. This molecular band provides a thermal diagnostic that forms lower in the atmosphere than the stronger fundamental band near 4600 nm. The observed center‐to‐limb increase in CO line width qualitatively agrees with the proposed higher temperature shocks or faster plasma motions higher in the COmosphere. The spatial extent of chromospheric shock waves is currently at or below the diffraction limit of the available CO lines at existing telescopes. Five minute period oscillations in line strength and measured Doppler shifts are consistent with the p‐mode excitation of the photospheric gas. We also show recent efforts at direct imaging at 4600 nm. We stress that future large‐aperture solar telescopes must be teamed with improved, dynamic mid‐infrared instruments, like the NAC, to capitalize on the features that motivate such facilities (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A high-resolution radio study of neutral gas in the starburst galaxy NGC 520

We present subarcsec angular resolution observations of the neutral gas in the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 520. The central kpc region of NGC 520 contains an area of significantly enhanced star formation. The radio continuum structure of this region resolves into ∼10 continuum components. By comparing the flux densities of the brightest of these components at 1.4 GHz with published 15-GHz data we infer that these components detected at 1.4 and 1.6 GHz are related to the starburst and are most likely to be collections of several supernova remnants within the beam. None of these components is consistent with emission from an active galactic nuclei. Both neutral hydrogen (H  i ) and hydroxyl (OH) absorption lines are observed against the continuum emission, along with a weak OH maser feature probably related to the star formation activity in this galaxy. Strong H  i absorption  ( N _H∼ 10²² atoms cm⁻²)  traces a velocity gradient of 0.5 km s⁻¹ pc⁻¹ across the central kpc of NGC 520. The H  i absorption velocity structure is consistent with the velocity gradients observed in both the OH absorption and in CO emission observations. The neutral gas velocity structure observed within the central kpc of NGC 520 is attributed to a kpc-scale ring or disc. It is also noted that the velocity gradients observed for these neutral gas components appear to differ with the velocity gradients observed from optical ionized emission lines. This apparent disagreement is discussed and attributed to the extinction of the optical emission from the actual centre of this source hence implying that optical ionized emission lines are only detected from regions with significantly different radii to those sampled by the observations presented here.     

Radio spectra of the low-luminosity active galactic nucleus NGC 266 at centimetre-to-submillimetre wavelengths

We report multi-frequency and multi-epoch radio continuum observations with multi-spatial resolution for the low-luminosity active galactic nucleus (LLAGN) NGC 266. In the centimetre regime, we find diffuse components with Very Large Array (VLA) observations, and a variable compact core with a rising spectrum with Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations. Although the spectral index of the rising spectrum is consistent with the prediction of the simple advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) model, the observed radio power is slightly high compared with that of the model prediction. A spectral break at centimetre-to-millimetre wavelengths is inferred from the upper limits of flux densities from Nobeyama Millimetre Array (NMA) and James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) data at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths, respectively. More complicated considerations are required for the theoretical model to interpret such observed radio properties.     

UBV photometry of lapetus: Results from five apparitions

Measurements of the brightness and B-V color index of the leading and trailing hemispheres of Iapetus during the past five apparitions of Saturn are presented. The dependence of brightness on solar phase angle is determined for the two faces of the satellite. After correction for solar phase angle and distance effects, the brighter trailing hemisphere of Iapetus was found to be constant in brightness and color index throughout the interval covered by the observations. The brightness of the dark leading hemisphere, however, decreased by about 0.2 mag over the same period, and its B-V color index reddened by 0.05 mag. These changes are interpreted as evidence for the existence of a bright southern pole cap on Iapetus.