Situating the Anthropocene: planetary urbanization and the anthropological machine

The anthropological machine is the discursive framework, the dispositif that grounds “Western man” in a sense of civility, secured through a violent division within and between the human and nonhuman: not the after-effect of the civilizing act but its very foundation. This paper explores Agamben’s machine at multiple sites: in its expression in everyday lives of urban citizens, and its legitimation of capitalist urbanization on broader spatial and temporal scales, its “worlding” through planetary urbanization and normalization of climate change. Complicit in capitalist urbanization and climate change, the anthropological machine has acted as a “switch point” since the 1600s. It now frames an emergent response: triage as the inevitable sacrifice of some peoples and parts of the planet to preserve others. If the urban is to become the site of mondialization, confronting the apparent inevitability of triage we must think beyond the either-or of a people or a planet. Thought in relation to the urban, the anthropological machine offers a meeting ground between urban political economy and assemblage urbanism. It enables us to situate the Anthropocene and differentiate the urban. But it also exposes a deep divide between scholars reframing the human beyond “Western man”: between those for whom the more-than-human expresses the dreams of a biophilic city and those for whom the less-than-human is increasingly its living nightmare.     

Dynamite fishing in northern Tanzania - pervasive, problematic and yet preventable

Dynamite fishing, although illegal, has resurfaced in recent years as a major threat to the reefs of northern Tanzania. This is despite the fact that institutional arrangements for co-management of the inshore fisheries by local communities and the district governments have been put in place and, through a 12-year donor-funded programme, numerous activities undertaken to build capacity for effective fisheries management. The use of dynamite is having widespread negative impacts, including damage to the reefs and their long-term productivity, deterrence of tourism investors, and potential threat to the large population of coelacanths in the area. The dynamite fishers are able to continue, even though enforcement efforts have been stepped up, because they are members of influential families or otherwise well-connected. Previous similar cases in Tanzania, and examples from elsewhere in the world, suggest that a major initiative is now needed to develop a zero-tolerance approach on the part of fishers and local and national leaders, that will shame the dynamiters through peer pressure, promote full implementation of sanctions and penalties by the judiciary, and lead to public recognition of and support for the work of the enforcement agencies.     

Climate change impacts on environmental geosciences: Introduction

正Climate change and its impacts have become topical issues of global news, scientific research and conferences. Environmental Geosciences incorporate the various disciplines of geosciences and their multifaceted interactions with life. Research discussions on the interaction of climate change, geosciences and environment may often be blur, and Schmidt-Thoméet al.(2010) stated that"Often past climate changes that can be deduced from geological records may help in understanding the speed of potential climate change effects, i.e. how quickly have sea levels changed, how drastic has nature reacted to ups and downs in temperature, etc. These analyses of past events help in giving outlooks on potential changes in our living environment. It is also of important to understand the magnitude and potential effects of extreme events, such as droughts and floods".     

Reconciling late faulting over the whole Alpine belt: from structural analysis to geochronological constrains

The significance of late-stage fracturing in the European Alps in a large geodynamic context is reappraised by studying brittle deformations over the entire belt. In the internal Western Alps, paleostress datasets display a major occurrence of orogen-parallel extension resulting in normal faulting and associated strike-slip mode. There the direction of subhorizontal extension rotates with the bending of the Alpine belt. In the Central Alps, paleostress tensors also indicate orogen-parallel extensional regimes, both in the Bergell area and the Lepontine Dome, where the brittle structures are associated with ductile structures related to the formation of large-scale upright folds that accommodate most of the collisional shortening due to the north-directed component of the movement of the South-Alpine indenter. This brittle deformation phase is of Miocene age and is coeval with the propagation of the Alpine front toward the external Alpine domains. In the Eastern Alps, brittle deformation of the Tauern Window displays an overwhelming occurrence of orogen-parallel normal faulting and associated strike-slip regimes again, which is inferred to be driven by lateral extrusion of the orogenic wedge toward the Pannonian basin, partly due to indentation on the Dolomites indenter. The major orogen-parallel extensional signal of the brittle Cenozoic deformations appears remarkably stable all over the internal Alps. Extensional brittle structures are part of a late phase of collisional deformation, during which the propagation of the Alpine front of the Western Alps and the northward movement of the Southern Alpine and the Dolomites indenters in the Central and Eastern Alps were accommodated by orogen-parallel extension in the inner zones, at the scale of the entire chain.     

Vegetation history of the English chalklands: a mid‐Holocene pollen sequence from the Caburn,East Sussex

A pollen diagram has been produced from the base of the Caburn (East Sussex) that provides a temporally and spatially precise record of vegetation change on the English chalklands during the mid‐Holocene (ca. 7100 to ca. 3800 cal. yr BP). During this period the slopes above the site appear to have been well‐wooded, with vegetation analogous to modern Fraxinus–Acer–Mercurialis communities in which Tilia was also a prominent constituent. However, scrub and grassland taxa such as Juniperus communis, Cornus sanguinea and Plantago lanceolata are also regularly recorded along with, from ca. 6000 cal. yr BP onwards, species specific to Chalk grassland (e.g. Sanguisorba minor). This supports suggestions that elements of Chalk grassland persisted in lowland England through the Holocene. Such communities are most likely to have occupied the steepest slopes, although the processes that maintained them are unclear. Human interference with vegetation close to the site may have begun as early as ca. 6350 cal. yr BP and initially involved a woodland management practice such as coppicing. From the primary Ulmus decline (ca. 5700 cal. yr BP) onwards, phases of limited clearance accompanied by cereal cultivation occurred. Taxus baccata was an important component of the woodland which regenerated between these phases. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lateglacial and Holocene relative sea‐level changes and first evidence for the Storegga tsunami in Sutherland,Scotland

We reconstruct one of the longest relative sea‐level (RSL) records in north‐west Europe from the north coast of mainland Scotland, using data collected from three sites in Loch Eriboll (Sutherland) that we combine with other studies from the region. Following deglaciation, RSL fell from a Lateglacial highstand of +6?8 m OD (Ordnance Datum = ca. mean sea level) at ca. 15 k cal a BP to below present, then rose to an early Holocene highstand and remained at ca. +1 m OD between ca. 7 and 3 k cal a BP, before falling to present. We find no evidence for significant differential Holocene glacio‐isostatic adjustment between sites on the north‐west (Lochinver, Loch Laxford), north (Loch Eriboll) and north‐east (Wick) coast of mainland Scotland. This suggests that the region was rapidly deglaciated and there was little difference in ice loads across the region. From one site at the head of Loch Eriboll we report the most westerly sedimentary evidence for the early Holocene Storegga tsunami on the Scottish mainland. The presence of the Storegga tsunami in Loch Eriboll is predicted by a tsunami wave model, which suggests that the tsunami impacted the entire north coast of Scotland and probably also the Atlantic coastline of north‐west Scotland.

     

A Web-based system enabling the integration,analysis, and 3D sub-surface visualization of groundwater monitoring data and geological models

The 3D Water Chemistry Atlas is an intuitive, open source, Web-based system that enables the three-dimensional (3D) sub-surface visualization of ground water monitoring data, overlaid on the local geological model (formation and aquifer strata). This paper firstly describes the results of evaluating existing virtual globe technologies, which led to the decision to use the Cesium open source WebGL Virtual Globe and Map Engine as the underlying platform. Next it describes the backend database and search, filtering, browse and analysis tools that were developed to enable users to interactively explore the groundwater monitoring data and interpret it spatially and temporally relative to the local geological formations and aquifers via the Cesium interface. The result is an integrated 3D visualization system that enables environmental managers and regulators to assess groundwater conditions, identify inconsistencies in the data, manage impacts and risks and make more informed decisions about coal seam gas extraction, waste water extraction, and water reuse.     

The first use of Fulton's K for assessing and comparing the conditions of inter‐tidal fish populations

Fulton's K condition factor was applied, for the first time, to inter‐tidal specimens of the shanny (Lipophrys pholis) and long‐spined scorpion fish (Taurulus bubalis) from two English rocky shore and two Welsh rocky shore sites during summer 2010 and winter 2011. As both species contribute to the diet of commercial species such as cod (Gadus morhua) and near‐threatened species such as the European otter (Lutra lutra), their condition may affect that of these predators. Fulton's K found that inter‐tidal Welsh fish maintained a ‘good’ condition between seasons, whereas the inter‐tidal English fish were in a poorer condition during winter. Although condition also changed amongst the sites on each coast, further studies are needed into fish morphologies, environmental parameters, prey availabilities and abundances, and fish specimen sex and maturities.     

Agroclimatological suitability mapping for dryland maize production in Lesotho

The climatic potential of maize under dryland farming in Lesotho, southern Africa, was investigated using five suitability indices comprising probability of accumulating heat units of greater than 1,500 growing degree days, probability of a frost-free growing season, probability of seasonal rainfall of more than 500 mm, probability of drought during the flowering to grain-filling stages and the slope of an area. A geographic information system layer was prepared for each of these parameters and the layers overlaid using different weights for each of the climatic suitability indices to obtain an agroclimatic maize suitability map for Lesotho. This analysis yielded different suitability classes. This variability points to prevalence of climatic constraints that need to be acknowledged when attempting to identify management strategies that can optimize the rain-fed maize production in climatically variable environments.