Something in the Air: Civic science and contentious environmental politics in post-apartheid South Africa

The emergence of an environmental movement in post-apartheid South Africa has involved the reframing of the environment as a ‘brown’ issue, articulating the discourse of social and environmental justice and a rights-based notion of democracy. Environmental movements have pursued a dual strategy of deliberation and activist opposition. Environmental movements have deployed science to pursue the strategic task of democratic opposition and have established networks of environmental knowledge and expertise. Ecological modernization is the dominant approach to environmental governance and adopts a science-based policy approach. In this context the regulation and management of the environment is premised on the need for science, which provides the authoritative basis for a regulatory response. In local environmental movements, there exists a fundamental tension between a cumulative history of lay knowledge about pollution and the lack of official acknowledgement of qualitative narratives. This is accompanied by a lack and suspicion of reliable official data. Environmental movements have thus employed ‘civic science’ strategically to place the issue of air pollution on the political agenda. This paper uses the case of environmental politics in Durban to reflect on the ways in which civic science and lay knowledge, together constituting community hybrid knowledge, are produced and disseminated in order to pressure the state and capital. The three ways in which knowledge is deployed are: to frame environmental problems, in strategies of oppositional advocacy, and in deliberative policy forums. Empirical analysis shows that civic science is produced through knowledge networks, and both lay knowledge and civic science are opportunistically used by environmental movements to engage both inside and outside formal policy making arenas. This deployment of hybrid knowledge by environmental movements represents a broader challenge to the power of science and technology based on increasing evidence of the hazards and risks facing ordinary people in their daily lives.     

Assessing Possible Impacts of Climate Change on Species Important for Forestry in Vietnam

The likely effects on two tree species of a range of scenarios of climatic and atmospheric change expected by the year 2050 are investigated using a climatic mapping program, a simple simulation model and a process-based simulation model. Styrax tonkinensis is a native species for which relatively little information is available. Acacia mangium is an introduced species, which is important for pulp production in several other countries, and for which there is considerable information for growth and utilization. A climatic mapping program is used to show areas which may be suitable for these species under present and predicted conditions. Two simulation models are used to investigate likely effects on productivity of the two species for a range of climatic change scenarios for Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The estimated changes in production are predicted to be relatively small, though uncertainities associated with the simulations are quite high. However, the models highlight areas where more data are needed and also suggest some key regions in Vietnam which would be worth monitoring to detect early signs of the effects of climatic and atmospheric change.     

印支地体泥盆纪牙形石、放射虫和竹节石组合

Devonian faunas including conodonts, radiolari-ans, tentaculitids and other important fossils have re-cently been found at several localities in the Indochina Terrane. These faunas are biostratigraphically and tectonically important.     

The petroleum geology of the Unst Basin, North Sea

The Unst Basin is situated in the northern North Sea between the East Shetland Basin and the Shetland Isles. The basin is essentially a three-armed, Permo-Triassic fault-controlled basin containing up to 3600 m of red-beds. This is overlain by a westerly thickening Jurassic and early Cretaceous sequence, the stratigraphy of which is very similar to that of the East Shetland Basin. In particular, the Brent Group (140 m), Humber Group (685 m) and Cromer Knoll Group (300 m) are well represented.As a result of Laramide uplift of the area, the thick Upper Cretaceous and Palaeocene strata of the East Shetland Basin are absent from the Unst Basin. This uplift resulted in substantial erosion within the Unst Basin providing the major source for Palaeocene sands in the Viking Graben and the Faeroes Basin. Late Palaeocene and younger Tertiary strata transgress westwards across this erosion surface.Petroleum exploration within the basin culminated in the drilling of two exploration wells. These wells encountered potential reservoir and source rocks in the Jurassic section. However, geochemical analyses indicate these source rocks are immature for hydrocarbon generation within the Unst Basin. It is concluded that the Unst Basin has a low petroleum potential.     

H2O–CO2 solubility in mafic alkaline magma: applications to volatile sources and degassing behavior at Erebus volcano, Antarctica

We present new equilibrium mixed-volatile (H₂O–CO₂) solubility data for a phonotephrite from Erebus volcano, Antarctica. H₂O–CO₂-saturated experiments were conducted at 400–700 MPa, 1,190 °C, and ~NNO + 1 in non-end-loaded piston cylinders. Equilibrium H₂O–CO₂ fluid compositions were determined using low-temperature vacuum manometry, and the volatile and major element compositions of the glassy run products were determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and electron microprobe. Results show that the phonotephrite used in this study will dissolve ~0.8 wt% CO₂ at 700 MPa and a fluid composition of $ X_{{{\text{H}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}}} $ ~0.4, in agreement with previous experimental studies on mafic alkaline rocks. Furthermore, the dissolution of CO₂ at moderate to high $ X_{{{\text{H}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}}}^{\text{fluid}} $ in our experiments exceeds that predicted using lower-pressure experiments on similar melts from the literature, suggesting a departure from Henrian behavior of volatiles in the melt at pressures above 400 MPa. With these data, we place new constraints on the modeling of Erebus melt inclusion and gas emission data and thus the interpretation of its magma plumbing system and the contributions of primitive magmas to passive and explosive degassing from the Erebus phonolite lava lake.     

Surge in sulphur and halogen degassing from Ambrym volcano,Vanuatu

Volcanoes provide important contributions to atmospheric budgets of SO₂ and reactive halogens, which play significant roles in atmospheric oxidative capacity and radiation. However, the global source strengths of volcanic emissions remain poorly constrained. These uncertainties are highlighted here by the first measurements of gas emission rates from Ambrym volcano, Vanuatu. Our initial airborne ultraviolet spectroscopic measurements made in January 2005 indicate fluxes of 18–270 kg s^-1 of SO₂, and 62–110 g s^-1 of BrO, into the atmosphere, placing Ambrym amongst the largest known contemporary point sources of both these species on Earth. We also estimate high Cl and F fluxes of ~8–14 and ~27–50 kg s^-1, respectively, for this period. Further observations using both airborne and spaceborne remote sensing reveal a fluctuating SO₂ output between 2004 and 2008, with a surge in the first half of 2005, and underline the substantial contribution that a single passively degassing volcano can make to the atmospheric budget of sulfur and halogens.     

Dispersal patterns of the eggs and larvae of spring-spawning fish in the Irish Sea, UK

Many marine species produce pelagic propagules which, because of their life-history characteristics and the local hydrodynamics, can disperse considerable distances from the point of release. Distances travelled are affected by factors such as: release time and location, egg and larval stage duration, local environmental conditions and active swimming and settlement behaviours. Understanding such dispersal patterns is important for the design of effective ecosystem-conservation strategies. We used a regional scale, coupled physical-biological model for the Irish Sea to simulate the possible dispersal of eggs and larvae of five species of fish with contrasting early life histories (cod Gadus morhua, plaice Pleuronectes platessa, witch Glyptocephalus cynoglossus, sprat Sprattus sprattus and pogge Agonus cataphractus). The hydrodynamic model was forced with meteorological data for 1995, a year when extensive plankton surveys were conducted in the Irish Sea. A particle tracking method featuring particle release (spawning) and species-dependent particle development and behaviour was then run based on flow and temperature fields from the hydrodynamical model. Modelled larval distributions and settlement areas corresponded favourably with observations from field sampling. The settlement destinations (or onset of shoaling for sprat) were affected both by their initial spawning location and by the species-specific development rates and behaviours coded into the model. Eggs and larvae typically remained within 160 km of their spawning origin, although a minority travelled up to 300 km. Even in a relatively enclosed sea such as the Irish Sea, fish eggs and larvae can be dispersed over 100s of km. This provides a major challenge for the design of effective spatial management strategies if it is necessary to protect a species across its life-history stages. Further progress in the design of effective conservation measures for species or communities will need an integrated approach taking account of key aspects of early life history and behaviour.