God,thine earth is burning: Nature attitudes and the Latvian drive for independence

The dominant element in Latvian culture is nature rather than history. Latvians are as bound to place, to landscape, to particular geographies, as other peoples are bound to tribal legends and religions. Incorporation of this Baltic land into the Soviet Union in 1940 occasioned dramatic conflicts between these deeply-rooted orientations to the concrete facts of nature and the abstract formulations of Marxism-Leninism. The nature culture of Latvia, celebrated in daina, folk arts and crafts, is the bedrock on which the current independence movement has been built. Two major challenges are being addressed: the overt political one between Moscow center and the Baltic republics, and a deep intellectual conflict between the closed ideology of Marxism-Leninism and the open-ended nature and place-oriented cultures of the Baltic peoples.     

Assessment of loess as parent material for agroecological potential

Due to its physical and chemical properties, areas with a loess mantle of proper thickness favour arable farming. Loess as a parent material promotes the formation of soils of good structure, nutrient supply and water budget. The ongoing land evaluation project places particular emphasis on the consideration of parent material in its scoring system as soil and climatic parameters are assessed in conjunction with the grain size composition of subsurface material and soil texture.A test area most suitable for the presentation of the method seems to be a sandy alluvial fan with loess mantle and this circumstance allows the contrasting of the agroecological potentials of soils developed on the two parent materials of different nature.The favourable water storage properties of loess make this deposit particularly valuable under the conditions of climatic aridification. The geographical information system applied here is capable of simulating the agroecological potential changes caused by reduced precipitation, increased evaporation and dropping groundwater levels.The research for this paper was carried out as part of the MEDALUS II (Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use) collaborative research project. MEDALUS II was funded by the EC under its Environment Progamme, contract no. EV5V 0128/0166. A grant was also provided by the OTKA (Hungarian National Science Foundation), project no 1278. The support is gratefully acknowledged.     

The role of principles and methods in loess-paleosol investigations

In the process of loessification, the development of loess fabric, the role of zonal, regional and partly of local environmental factors is regarded decisive. In the loess sequences various genetic types of loess pockets and paleosols occur and reflect different climatic and paleogeographical conditions.As a consequence, even within a single profile the colour, grain size and mineral composition, CaCO₃ content, degree of weathering and fabric of loess may vary. Zonal, regional or even local variations in such loess properties may equally derive from syngenetic or postgenetic processes. For similar reasons, spatially and temporally different forms, types and subtypes of paleosol also developed.This way, loess and soil formation resulted in various spatial types in the same glacial, interstadial or interglacial phase in the various geographical zones and regions. Although there exist major loess regions where the interglacial soils (eg brown forest soils) are markedly distinct from interstadial steppe soils or from other types of humic soils, continental loess areas can also be observed where the paleosols developed under interglacial and interstadial conditions (eg steppe or forest steppe soils) cannot be referred into different genetic types. In such cases the changes in paleoenvironments are difficult and uncertain to reconstruct.The interregional correlation of paleosols is occasionally hindered by the various terminologies applied to denote them. In addition, there are uncertainties concerning the dating and identification of paleoenvironments of polygenetic soils and of soil complexes consisting of paleosol units: how many soil formation phases they represent and how long erosional gaps can be reckoned with between these phases.     

Barotropic model of the atmosphere and short-term variations in the lod

Summary The classical barotropic model is used to indicate the possible connection between the intensification of atmospheric westerlies and the acceleration of the Earth's rotation.     

Parameters of the Earth's tri-axial level ellipsoid

Summary Four parameters defining the Earth's tri-axial ellipsoid (E) have been derived on the basis of the condition that the gravity potential on E be constant and equal to the actual geopotential value (W₀) on the geoid. The geocentric gravitational constant, the angular velocity of the Earth's rotation, the actual 2nd degree geopotential Stokes parameters and W₀ are taken to be the primary geodetic constants defining E and its (normal) gravity field.     

Statistical determination of the law of dispersion of marking material in the shattered zone

Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica -