TRANSACTIONAL AND TRANSFORMATIONAL THEORIES IN BEHAVIORAL GEOGRAPHY

Inadequate theoretical conceptualization of person/environment relations has characterized behavioral geography as an eclectic and incoherent subfield. Past work has failed to appreciate the person/environment unity as an entity of change. A transactional/transformational perspective is adopted in this paper as a basis for understanding the relationships between the dynamics of human behavior and the dynamics of the environment. Two conceptual models are developed which provide bases for understanding (i) different modes of person/environment transformation, and (ii) human behavior as it mediates change. The potential relevance of a transactional perspective for empirical research in behavioral geography is noted.     

Geology and regional significance of the Sarnoo Hills,eastern rift margin of the Barmer Basin,NW India

The Barmer Basin is a poorly understood rift basin in Rajasthan, northwest India. Exposures in the Sarnoo Hills, situated along the central eastern rift margin of the Barmer Basin, reveal a sedimentary succession that accumulated prior to the main Barmer Basin rift event, and a rift‐oblique fault network that displays unusual geometries and characteristics. Here, we present a comprehensive study of Lower Cretaceous sedimentology on the basin margin, along with a detailed investigation of rift‐oblique faults that are exposed nowhere else in the region and provide critical insights into Barmer Basin evolution. Lower Cretaceous sediments were deposited within a rapidly subsiding alluvial plain fluvial system. Subsequent to deposition, the evolving Sarnoo Hills fault network was affected by structural inheritance during an early, previously unrecognised, rift‐oblique extensional event attributed to transtension between India and Madagascar, and formed a juvenile fault network within the immediate rift‐margin footwall. Ghaggar‐Hakra Formation deposition may have been triggered by early rifting which tectonically destabilised the Marwar Craton prior to the main northeast–southwest Barmer Basin rift event. The identification of early rifting in the Barmer Basin demonstrates that regional extension and the associated rift systems were established throughout northwest India prior to the main phase of Deccan eruptions. Inheritance of early oblique fault systems within the evolving Barmer Basin provides a robust explanation for poorly understood structural complications interpreted in the subsurface throughout the rift. Critically, the presence of syn‐rift sedimentary successions within older oblique rift systems obscured beneath the present‐day Barmer Basin has significant implications for hydrocarbon exploration.     

Interdependent development? Problems of aggregation and implementation in the Brandt report

This paper argues that the Brandt Report's central concept of ‘mutuality’ is too imprecise and too impotent to serve as a useful guide to practical action on behalf of the Third World's poor. It is suggested that these shortcomings result from three, related, flaws in the Report's construction—a conceptual flaw, a modelling flaw, and a political flaw. To the extent that these failings are reproduced, too, in the wider geographical paradigm of interdependent development, geographers might draw a useful lesson from a critique of the Brandt Report.     

Review of Doppler satellite positioning in Canada

Canada has recently faced two geodetic problems. Existing control on land must be rapidly upraged for resource development and for the coming redefinition of North American networks. Geodetic methods of managing territorial and lease boundaries in the offshore region are required. A series of developments in Doppler Satellite techniques begun in 1968 have contributed to the solution of both these problems. Today these developments have resulted in a Canadian-made receiver, permanent Canadian tracking stations, a primary geodetic network of about 200 Doppler points, major Doppler processing software systems, and the routine use of Doppler points, major Doppler processing software systems, and the routine use of Doppler positioning for land surveying, drill rig positioning and precise navigation. The accuracy of Doppler positioning has been improved from 100 m in 1968 to better than 1 m in 1975. These developments have applications in other nations than Canada.     

Fast Nearest Neighbor Classification Methods for Multispectral Imagery

Nearest neighbor classifiers have not been widely used by remote sensing practitioners. The lack of acceptance of these classifiers may be partially due to their notoriously slow speed of execution which makes them impractical for the classification of mega-pixel images. However, training data reduction, distance measure optimization, and neighbor searching algorithms based on the modified k-d tree can speed nearest neighbor classification substantially.     

Plesiosaurs

Plesiosaurs are an unusual and intriguing group of extinct aquatic reptiles ( Fig. 1 ). They are sauropterygians, a group known from an array of semi‐aquatic forms during the Triassic period: placodonts, pachypleurosaurs and nothosaurs. The first plesiosaurs are known from the very latest Triassic, but by the Early Jurassic plesiosaurs were cosmopolitan in distribution and lasted successfully to the latest Cretaceous, when they became victims of the K‐T extinction event. Plesiosaurs were predominantly marine organisms, although their fossils are not uncommon in brackish or even fresh water deposits. We know that all plesiosaurs were carnivorous; many of them were top predators in their respective ecosystems. But with no living descendants (or analogues) plesiosaurs are mysterious fossil organisms—as we will see, many questions regarding their biology remain unanswered or contentious. However, plesiosaurs are currently undergoing renewed scientific attention.

Figure 1 Open in figure viewer PowerPoint The beautifully preserved skeleton of the plesiosaur Rhomaleosaurus victor seen in ventral view, from the Lower Jurassic (Toarcian) of Holzmaden, Germany (total length 3.44 m). Redrawn from Fraas (1910).     

Discrete-element modelling of detachment folding

A two‐dimensional, discrete‐element modelling technique is used to investigate the initiation and growth of detachment folds in sedimentary rocks above a weak décollement level. The model depicts the sedimentary rocks as an assemblage of spheres that obey Newton's equations of motion and that interact with elastic forces under the influence of gravity. Faulting or fracturing between neighbouring elements is represented by a transition from repulsive–attractive forces to solely repulsive forces. The sedimentary sequence is mechanically heterogeneous, consisting of intercalated layers of markedly different strengths and thicknesses. The interlayering of weak and strong layers within the sedimentary rocks promotes the localization of flexural flow deformation within the weak layers. Even with simple displacement boundary conditions, and straightforward interlayering of weak and strong layers, the structural geometries that develop are complex, with a combination of box, lift‐off and disharmonic detachment fold styles forming above the décollement. In detail, it is found that the modelled folds grow by both limb rotation and limb lengthening. The combination of these two mechanisms results in uplift patterns above the folds that are difficult, or misleading, to interpret in terms of simple kinematic models. Comparison of modelling results with natural examples and with kinematic models highlights the complexities of structural interpretation in such settings.     

Analysing telemetry data with a GIS-based vector structure

Abstract

This paper proposes a unique method for plotting field bearing locations, of the kind typically taken by wildlife biologists on free ranging species, directly on a computer-compatible habitat map. We show how to use a GIS data base to identify differential habitat use directly from the polygon formed by each set of bearings. A geometric algorithm is developed to interpret the bearings accurately. The technique avoids the most difficult errors associated with using point locations, namely those due to animal movement, and distance from receiver to transmitter, and is especially useful for habitat preference studies.