Tweet Me Your Talk: Geographical Learning and Knowledge Production 2.0

We are in a Gutenberg moment in which we are migrating from book reading to Internet browsing. We are subtly shifting to more ephemeral, summary methods of learning and producing knowledge, shaped by how we consume information on the Web. Thus, a strong determinant of learning might be the very technology that hosts the information, such that technology is both the arbiter of our understanding of the world and how we come to gain that understanding. Based on recent evidence that the Internet is reshaping our learning processes, I argue that geographical knowledge production and translation are not so much products of individualism but rather shaped by rapidly changing work styles that favor concise and highly accessible methods of academic production. I offer examples of changes in journal formats, academic social networking, and academic reviewing to reveal that we are catering to shorter attention spans that prefer to browse.     

A novel probe for point injections in groundwater monitoring wells

Hydrogeology Journal - Groundwater monitoring wells or boreholes often show complex flow behaviors that are essential to understand for the characterization of aquifer systems. In karst or...     

Style for the Zeitgeist: The Stealthy Revival of Historicist Housing Since the Late 1960s

A revival has occurred in the use of historical architectural styles for modern suburban houses but this has attracted little attention from journalists and academics. Those who have noted it disagree about when it began and gathered momentum. Newspaper and trade journal evidence for Canadian cities indicates that the revival began in the late 1960s; that it has reached market saturation; and that Victorian and neo-classical styles became dominant after 1980. Coinciding with the beginnings of inner-city gentrification, the historicist revival in suburban dwellings preceded the recent interest in neotraditional urban design. Not a fringe taste, it says something about the zeitgeist.     

MaskMy.XYZ: An easy‐to‐use tool for protecting geoprivacy using geographic masks

Geographic masks are techniques used to protect privacy when publishing sensitive data in maps, but are not well adopted among researchers and may be difficult to execute for some GIS users. We developed a client‐side web application called MaskMy.XYZ that makes geographic masking easy to perform. It executes donut geomasking, a well‐known geographic mask, on thousands of points in seconds, and visualizes the original and masked point patterns in an integrated web map for visual comparison. MaskMy.XYZ also features metrics for both privacy protection and information loss, and allows users to rapidly and iteratively adjust masking parameters based on these metrics. The user interface was designed to prioritize usability, and clear documentation has been included to educate users about geographic masks, which is otherwise only found in niche literatures. By developing this application, we hope that geographic masks will be more widely adopted such that privacy is better protected in research.     

The retention of ammonia and sulfur dioxide during riming of ice particles and dendritic snow flakes: laboratory experiments in the Mainz vertical wind tunnel

Laboratory experiments were carried out in the Mainz vertical wind tunnel to determine the retention of the trace gases ammonia and sulfur dioxide dissolved in supercooled cloud droplets during riming. The conditions during riming were similar to the ones in atmospheric mixed phase clouds: temperatures from ?18 °C to ?5 °C, liquid water contents between 1 and 1.5 g m^?3, liquid drop radii between 10 and 20 μm, liquid phase concentrations from 1 to 22 mg/l. As collectors, floating ice particles and snow flakes with diameters between 6 mm and 1.5 cm were used. After riming the retention coefficients, i.e. the fractions of the species which remained in the ice phase after freezing were determined. Retention coefficients lying between 0.1 and 1.0 were measured depending on the solubility and dissociation of the trace gas, liquid phase concentration, ambient air temperature, and shape of rimed collector. This can be explained from the chemists’ point of view by the effective Henry’s law constant of the species and physically with the rate of latent heat removal from the rimed collector during freezing. Parameterizations derived from the different experimental cases describe the retention coefficients as a function of temperature. In general, an average retention of ammonia of 92?±?21 % was determined independently of liquid phase concentration while mean values for sulfur dioxide were 53?±?10 % at low liquid phase concentrations and 29?±?7 % at high liquid phase concentrations.     

Integrating biophysical and socio-economic evaluations to improve the efficacy of adaptation assessments for agriculture

This paper demonstrates how biophysical and socio-economic assessments of adaptation options can be integrated to test the effectiveness of options and anticipate social risks and potential barriers to adoption. We present the approach by combining a model analysis with a multiple-criteria evaluation of 12 adaptation options by graziers from the Australian rangelands. Our results show that strategies to manage stocking rates and pasture spelling are likely to be effective in improving climate resilience in the rangelands and are easy-to-implement, short-term solutions. Improving land condition is found to have the greatest potential long-term benefits, but was not considered by the graziers to be feasible or effective due to perceived difficulties of implementation. Areas of concordance identified in the assessments may be used to engage with stakeholders and build a foundation for incorporating climate change considerations into management and policy. The approach also highlights discordant views within the assessments that may result from differing management objectives, adaptive capacity and climate-risk perception. These factors are potential impediments to adaptation. The integrated assessment approach enables adaptation strategies and policy recommendations to be developed that have greater relevance to individual stakeholders, and supports capacity building to facilitate the most effective adaptation actions.     

Numerical quantification of sources and phase partitioning of chemical species in cloud: application to wintertime anthropogenic air masses at the Puy de Dôme station

The Model of Multiphase Cloud Chemistry M2C2 has recently been extended to account for nucleation scavenging of aerosol particles in the cloud water chemical composition. This extended version has been applied to multiphase measurements available at the Puy de Dôme station for typical wintertime anthropogenic air masses. The simulated ion concentrations in cloud water are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data. The analysis of the sources of the chemical species in cloud water shows an important contribution from nucleation scavenging of particles which prevails for nitrate, sulphate and ammonium. Moreover, the simulation shows that iron, which comes only from the dissolution of aerosol particles in cloud water, has a significant contribution in the hydroxyl radical production. Finally, the simulated phase partitioning of chemical species in cloud are compared with measurements. Numerical results show an underestimation of interstitial particulate phase fraction with respect to the measurements, which could be due to an overestimation of activated mass by the model. However, the simulated number scavenging efficiency of particles agrees well with the measured value of 40% of total number of aerosol particles activated in cloud droplets. Concerning the origin of chemical species in cloud water, the model reproduces quite well the contribution of gas and aerosol scavenging estimated from measurements. In addition, the simulation provides the contribution of in-cloud chemical reactivity to cloud water concentrations.     

预料之外的安第斯地震

沿南美安第斯山脉西缘的俯冲带边界预期会发生大地震。而沿东边界的地表运动测量表明,曾预期不会发生大地震的安第斯山脉东缘也具有发生同等规模大地震的潜在可能。