Competitive Productivism and Australia's Emerging ‘Alternative’ Agri-food Networks: producing for farmers' markets in Victoria and beyond

This paper advances the theoretical argument for moving beyond the conventional/alternative divide in the analysis of emerging ‘alternative’ agri-food networks (AAFNs). In order to understand how ‘place’, ‘nature’ and ‘quality’-based food networks emerge and develop, we argue that careful attention needs to be paid to the way in which specific political-economic environments shape the options available to farmers and consumers. Australia's ‘competitive productivism’ is the outcome of an export-oriented economy and a neoliberal political orientation, and this environment affects the development of AAFNs in various ways. Most notably, a case study of farmers that sell at farmers' markets in the State of Victoria shows that the competitive-productivist policies pursued by Australian governments entice some farmers who participate in AAFNs to develop their ideas into higher output businesses tailored to compete in emerging export markets. Other farmers deliberately choose to keep marketing through alternative channels despite competitive-productivist pressures to expand. These findings demonstrate the centrality to the experience of AAFN participants of negotiating productivist pressures, adding nuances to the story of the complex relations between AAFNs and conventional supply chains.     

Mineral and fluid thermobarometry within the Variscan shearzone of Monteferro-El Rosal (NW Galicia, Spain): a preliminary investigation

The Monteferro El Rosal shear zone is characterized by an intense ductile deformation produced during the third phase of the Variscan orogeny. The petrology of the metasediments and the study of the fluid inclusions from synkinematic andalusite-bearing quartz veins indicate that the major Variscan phase of deformation occurred at around 2. 5–4 kbar and 565 ± 25°C.     

X-ray digital-imaging petrography: Technique development for lunar mare soils

Abstract Remote sensing studies are the primary means of solar system exploration. In particular, spectral reflectance measurements involve determinations of the nature and compositions of other worlds through analysis of absorption features characteristic of the surface chemistry and mineralogy. These studies are particularly applicable to “airless” solar system bodies (e.g., the Moon), because atmospheres, such as on Earth, tend to interfere with the reflectance spectrum. The precision of the spectral measurements is greatly increased by calibration with actual lunar soils. In the past, these calibrations were done using particle-counting data collected for the study of soil formation processes, soil classification, and provenance determination. These particle counting data, while valuable in those areas of study, neither identify the true volume percentages of soil particles, nor give the true modal values for the various phases (i.e., minerals and glasses) which make up the soil grains. These data are paramount for accurate spectral reflectance calibrations. Therefore, in this paper, a new technique is presented that involves x-ray digital-imaging of lunar soils using an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) on an electron microprobe. In contrast to particle counting with an optical microscope, the digital-imaging method allows precise volume percentages of soil grains to be determined, including absolute modal abundances of the various phases locked within the particles as well as their chemistry. In order to validate this method for characterization of lunar soils, the technique was applied to four Apollo 17 soils that were previously described by Heiken and McKay (1974) via particle counts with an optical microscope, and similar results were obtained. In addition to verifying the x-ray digital-imaging technique, the obtained data were applied in order to better understand the lunar-soil formational process, specifically the variation of particle types with maturity.     

Flow over Hills: A Large-Eddy Simulation of the Bolund Case

Simulation of local atmospheric flows around complex topography is important for several applications in wind energy (short-term wind forecasting and turbine siting and control), local weather prediction in mountainous regions and avalanche risk assessment. However, atmospheric simulation around steep mountain topography remains challenging, and a number of different approaches are used to represent such topography in numerical models. The immersed boundary method (IBM) is particularly well-suited for efficient and numerically stable simulation of flow around steep terrain. It uses a homogenous grid and permits a fast meshing of the topography. Here, we use the IBM in conjunction with a large-eddy simulation (LES) and test it against two unique datasets. In the first comparison, the LES is used to reproduce experimental results from a wind-tunnel study of a smooth three-dimensional hill. In the second comparison, we simulate the wind field around the Bolund Hill, Denmark, and make direct comparisons with field measurements. Both cases show good agreement between the simulation results and the experimental data, with the largest disagreement observed near the surface. The source of error is investigated by performing additional simulations with a variety of spatial resolutions and surface roughness properties.     

The 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes: context and cause of injury

The aim of this study was to investigate causes of injury during the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes. Data on patients injured during the Darfield (4 September 2010) and Christchurch (22 February 2011) earthquakes were sourced from the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation. The total injury burden was analyzed for demography, context of injury, causes of injury, and injury type. Injury context was classified as direct (shaking of the primary earthquake or aftershocks causing unavoidable injuries), action (movement of person during the primary earthquake or aftershocks causing potentially avoidable injuries), and secondary (cause of injury after shaking ceased). Nine categories of injury cause were identified. Three times as many people were injured in the Christchurch earthquake as in the Darfield earthquake (7,171 vs. 2,256). The primary shaking caused approximately two-thirds of the injuries from both quakes. Actions during the primary shaking and aftershocks led to many injuries (51.3 % Darfield and 19.4 % Christchurch). Primary direct caused the highest proportion of injuries during the daytime Christchurch quake (43.6 %). Many people were injured after shaking stopped in both events: 499 (22.1 % Darfield) and 1,881 (26.2 % Christchurch). Most of these people were injured during clean-up (320 (14.2 %) Darfield; 622 (8.7 %) Christchurch). In both earthquakes, more females than males (1,453 vs. 803 Darfield; 4,646 vs. 2,525 Christchurch) were injured (except by masonry, damaged ground, and during clean-up); trip/fall (27.9 % Darfield; 26.1 % Christchurch) was the most common cause of injury; and soft tissue injuries (74.1 % Darfield; 70.4 % Christchurch) was the most common type of injury. This study demonstrated that where people were and their actions during and after earthquakes influenced their risk of injury.     

Children in disasters: the role of household preparedness

To increase children’s resilience to disasters, it is important to expand our understanding of what increases their vulnerability. One household factor that has been tied to disaster resilience in general is the extent to which households have prepared themselves. In the context of wildfire preparedness, the current study examined whether households with very young, young, or teenage children differ in the extent to which they prepare their household compared to childless households. A two-wave survey study amongst Australian residents of wildfire-prone areas (N _wave1 = 998, N _wave2 = 514) found that households with young (under twelve years old) and very young (under six years old) children had prepared their properties less for wildfires compared to childless households at the start of the wildfire season, but they had caught up in property preparedness by the end of it. However, households with younger children also performed fewer disaster-planning actions than childless households. This difference remained significant throughout the season. The former group also reported lower motivation to prepare, greater perceived difficulty in preparing, and greater lack of time to prepare than childless households. The majority of these findings were explained by the younger age of the adult parents rather than the presence of younger children per se. An exception was that those with young and very young children reported a greater lack of time to prepare than childless adults of a similar age. We discuss practice and public policy implications that follow from this research.     

Ecosystem Responses to Abrupt Climate Change: Teleconnections, Scale and the Hydrological Cycle

The occurrence of past and future abrupt climate change, such as could occur under thermohaline circulation (THC) weakening, is increasingly evident in the paleoclimate record and model experiments. We examine potential responses of ecosystem structure and function to abrupt climate change using temperature and precipitation patterns generated by HadCM3 in response to forced THC weakening. The large changes in potential ecosystem structure and function that occur are not focused in the North Atlantic region where temperature sensitivity to THC is highest but occur throughout the world in response to climate system teleconnections. Thus, THC weakening, which is often viewed as a European problem, has globally distributed ecosystem implications. Although temperature changes associated with THC weakening affect the extent of several high latitude biomes, the distribution of ecosystem change results primarily from changes in the hydrological cycle. Currently there remains large uncertainty in climate model projections of the hydrological cycle. Therefore, the predictions of the magnitude andlocation of ecosystem perturbations will also be characterized by large uncertainty, making impact assessment, and thus adaptation, more difficult. Finally, these results illustrate the importance of scale and disaggregation in assessing ecosystem responses. Small globally aggregated ecosystem responses to THC weakening, approximately five percent for NPP and biomass, mask large local and regional changes.     

Large Wind Farms and the Scalar Flux over an Heterogeneously Rough Land Surface

The influence of surface heterogeneities extends vertically within the atmospheric surface layer to the so-called blending height, causing changes in the fluxes of momentum and scalars. Inside this region the turbulence structure cannot be treated as horizontally homogeneous; it is highly dependent on the local surface roughness, the buoyancy and the horizontal scale of heterogeneity. The present study analyzes the change in scalar flux induced by the presence of a large wind farm installed across a heterogeneously rough surface. The change in the internal atmospheric boundary-layer structure due to the large wind farm is decomposed and the change in the overall surface scalar flux is assessed. The equilibrium length scale characteristic of surface roughness transitions is found to be determined by the relative position of the smooth-to-rough transition and the wind turbines. It is shown that the change induced by large wind farms on the scalar flux is of the same order of magnitude as the adjustment they naturally undergo due to surface patchiness.