Indigenous Land Management in Peri-Urban Landscapes: An Australian Example

This article examines roles, opportunities, and challenges for Indigenous land management in rapidly developing landscapes through a case study of Bunya Bunya Country Aboriginal Corporation, a not-for-profit organization on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. An analysis of data collected through semistructured interviews, participant observation, and analysis of secondary sources reveals that Aboriginal land managers work in a variety of roles to manage issues affecting the local environment and cultural heritage sites. These efforts are challenged by the absence of Native Title and colonial land management policies, which restrict Aboriginal involvement in land management. We conclude that there is a need for alternative pathways to engage with Aboriginal land managers who cannot, or choose not to, proceed with Native Title. Decolonized decision-making tools and sustainable enterprises are viable opportunities that partially address these challenges and could deliver tangible socio-economic and cultural benefits to local Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.     

The nation-state and the city: introduction to a debate

In recent years, the urban political landscape has become infused with a potent and incendiary mixture of popular-democratic, anti-globalisation, and separatist rhetoric. One central process driving this has been the problematic relations between the nation-state and the city. This Debates and Interventions forum aims to prompt a debate about where the city should be situated intellectually in respect of the nation-state. Four questions are addressed: (1) How do contemporary processes of urban development reflect changing national geopolitical priorities? (2) To what extent are struggles around immigration, citizenship and recognition conducted within cities rather than around the nation-state? (3) To what degree does the city (as e.g. a physical form, social environment or discourse) help to mobilise, propel and/or contest this new urban politics? And (4) Is the concept of a “post-national” global order appropriate for understanding the city and urban politics today?     

What can we learn about changing ethnic diversity from the distributions of mixed-race individuals?

It is hypothesized that self-defined mixed-race persons live in residentially mixed areas in the largest metropolitan areas in California. The hypothesis is tested by examining the distribution of mixed-race persons among ethnically and racially diverse and nondiverse neighborhoods in the San Francisco and Los Angeles Metropolitan Areas. The research confirmed that mixed-race individuals are more likely to live in areas with ethnic diversity and that the tendency is greater for the mixed-race population in the San Francisco–Oakland Metropolitan Areas than in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. Mixed-race individuals live in neighborhoods which are diverse with mixes of all four major ethnic and racial groups, and in “well-off” (but not the most affluent) neighborhoods. The study also shows that the mixed-race population is youthful. The association of mixed-race individuals and racially integrated neighborhoods will have important implications for the evolving nature of spatial integration in California specifically, and the United States more generally.     

Potential impact of ash eruptions on dairy farms from a study of the effects on a farm in eastern Bay of Plenty,New Zealand; implications for hazard mitigation

This paper investigates the impact ash fall would have on dairy farming, based on a study of ‘Tulachard’, a dairy farming operation at Rerewhakaaitu, North Island, New Zealand. It includes analysis of the potential effects on the dairy shed and milking machine, electrical supply and distribution, water supply and distribution, tractors and other farm vehicles, farm buildings (haysheds, pump sheds, implement sheds, etc.), milk-tanker access to the farm and critical needs of dairy cows and farm to keep milking. One of the most vulnerable areas identified in the study was the cooling of milk at the milking shed, pending dairy tanker pick-up. The cooling system’s condenser is exposed to the atmosphere and falling ash would make it highly vulnerable. Laboratory testing with wet and dry ash was conducted to determine its resilience to ash ingestion. It was found to perform satisfactorily during dry testing, but during wet testing significant clogging/blocking of the condenser’s radiator occurred, dramatically reducing airflow through the condenser. Specific mitigation recommendations have been developed that include cleaning with compressed air and adapting farm management techniques to lessen usage of the condenser during an ash-fall event. Specific recommendations for management of dairy farm operation are given to mitigate the effects of an ash-fall event.

High-Resolution Studies of the Solar Polar Magnetic Fields

We present high-resolution studies of the solar polar magnetic fields near sunspot maximum in 1989 and towards sunspot minimum in 1995. We show that, in 1989, the polar latitudes were covered by several unipolar regions of both polarities. In 1995, however, after the polar field reversal was complete, each pole exhibited only one dominant polarity region.Each unipolar region contains magnetic knots of both polarities but the number count of the knots of the dominant polarity exceeds that of the opposite polarity by a ratio of order 4:1, and it is rare to find opposite polarity pairs, i.e., magnetic bipoles.These knots have lifetimes greater than 7 hours but less than 24 hours. We interpret the longitudinal displacement of the knots over a 7-hour period as a measure of the local rotation rate. This rotation rate is found to be generally consistent with Snodgrass' (1983) magnetic rotation law.In an attempt to obtain some insight into the operation of the solar dynamo, sketches of postulated subsurface field configurations corresponding to the observed surface fields at these two epochs of the solar cycle are presented.     

黄土孢粉分析的新途径——筛滤分析法

黄土-古土壤序列在全球古气候、古环境研究中占有不可替代的重要地位,而其中的孢粉是黄土高原生态环境演化过程中保存的直接生物学证据,它对建立黄土高原降水或湿度状况的时空变化特征,认识季风变迁的过程、规律以及未来发展趋势等具有重要的意义。随着黄土研究工作的不断深入,作为直接生物学证据的孢粉研究相对薄弱。其中最困扰的因素是从黄土中提取孢粉极其困难,分析技术上始终未能找到一个突破口,因此需要一种分析效果好、快捷、成本低的分析方法以获得大量高精度的孢粉数据。筛滤分析法正是为了适应黄土研究的需要而设计的一种新型的黄土孢粉分析方法。筛滤分析法利用真空状态下的气压差使样品在水中完全悬浮跳动,样品得到充分的冲洗并促使孢粉与其它无机质与有机质分离。相对真空的状态减少了微细颗粒对极为细小的网眼的阻塞,重力作用促使水及各类颗粒不断冲击筛网,使粒径小于10μm的物质较容易被过滤到聚水容器中,而孢粉与较少的大颗粒物质则被隔离在筛网之上,这使我们很容易用重液浮选出干净、清晰的孢粉底样。筛滤分析法与常规的黄土孢粉分析相比,具有以下特点:①大大降低了分析样品的重量及药品的消耗,一般仅需样品30 g左右,是常规分析法用量的1/6~1/8。②整个分析流程短, 12个样品一个流程仅需3~4 d。③筛滤分析法使孢粉几乎全部被隔离在筛网上而丢失极少,提高了黄土孢粉研究精度。④筛滤分析法几乎不破坏孢粉的结构,孢粉底样干净、清晰。使用筛滤分析法共分析耀县全新世黄土剖面69块孢粉样品,均发现数量不等的孢粉。孢粉底样干净、杂质少,结构清楚。共统计孢粉14978粒,分属27个科属,这些科属包括了黄土高原主要的孢粉类型。从孢粉结果可以初步确定,在全新世时期,位于黄土高原南缘的耀县地区,草本植物占全部孢粉总量的93.6%,而乔木植物仅占孢粉总量的4.7%。在整个剖面中没有出现乔木植物含量超过30%,可以认为在黄土高原的全新世时期是以草原植被为主,并无森林生长。     

Explosive volcanic eruptions—X. The influence of pyroclast size distributions and released magma gas contents on the eruption velocities of pyroclasts and gas in Hawaiian and Plinian eruptions

Previous treatments of the relationship between the mass fraction of released magma volatiles and the eruption speeds of gas and pyroclasts in steady explosive eruptions have not taken detailed account of the dynamic effects associated with the finite size distribution of the pyroclasts. When this is done, it is found that previously published estimates of exsolved magma volatile contents obtained from the analysis of pyroclast size distributions in near-vent deposits overestimate the volatile content by approximately 20 per cent in the case of Plinian eruptions. The discrepancy is much worse for pyroclast size distributions skewed towards coarse clasts, as is common in basaltic lava fountains; in such cases pyroclast dispersal studies may overestimate the exsolved magma volatile content by at least 200 per cent. An analogous problem arises if released magma volatile amounts deduced from studies of fluid inclusions in pyroclasts are inserted into most current computer models of eruption dynamics, but the gas eruption speeds deduced have an even larger error, being underestimated by up to 300 per cent in the case of coarse-grained eruptions. The more sophisticated of the currently available numerical models of eruption dynamics can in principle avoid this problem, but practical implementation limitations have so far prevented such models being run with a sufficiently wide range of grain sizes for the importance of these effects to be fully appreciated.     

Volcanoes and peat bogs

Peat bogs in the British Isles contain tephra from volcanic eruptions in Iceland; tephra in the Falkland Islands most likely derives from Andean volcanoes. Study of these far-travelled volcanic products is making a significant contribution to our understanding of past environmental changes.