Depiction of Wild Food Foraging Practices in the Media: Impact of the Great Recession

The practice of gathering and harvesting wild foods has seen renewed interest in recent decades. In addition to contributing to food security and food sovereignty, foraging plays a role in promoting socioecological resilience and creating communities of belonging. However, foraging is generally prohibited by regulations governing public lands in the United States and elsewhere. The growth in food forests suggests public policymakers and land managers’ may be interested in reconsidering this broad prohibition of foraging but require an information base to do so. While a body of research on foraging exists, news media coverage of foraging represents an additional, readily available source of input. As a consequence, framings of foraging in media coverage likely influence managers’ deliberations on this practice. The current paper uses automated content analysis to understand how the practice of gathering and consuming wild foods is framed in print and digital news media, and how these depictions have varied in a 15-year period that includes the Great Recession. Our results show that prevalent framings of foraging represent it variously as a self-provisioning practice or a source of luxury commodities and experiences, with economic uncertainty appearing to affect the frequency of each framing by news media sources. Given managers’ ease of access to them, these distinct framings may influence future regulatory landscapes of foraging.     

Carbonaceous chondrites as analogs for the composition and alteration of Ceres

The mineralogy and geochemistry of Ceres, as constrained by Dawn's instruments, are broadly consistent with a carbonaceous chondrite (CM/CI) bulk composition. Differences explainable by Ceres’s more advanced alteration include the formation of Mg‐rich serpentine and ammoniated clay; a greater proportion of carbonate and lesser organic matter; amounts of magnetite, sulfide, and carbon that could act as spectral darkening agents; and partial fractionation of water ice and silicates in the interior and regolith. Ceres is not spectrally unique, but is similar to a few other C‐class asteroids, which may also have suffered extensive alteration. All these bodies are among the largest carbonaceous chondrite asteroids, and they orbit in the same part of the Main Belt. Thus, the degree of alteration is apparently related to the size of the body. Although the ammonia now incorporated into clay likely condensed in the outer nebula, we cannot presently determine whether Ceres itself formed in the outer solar system and migrated inward or was assembled within the Main Belt, along with other carbonaceous chondrite bodies.     

Change of Support for Estimating Local Block Grade Distributions

An important aspect in mineral resource evaluation is the reduction of variance when post-processing the grade distributions defined on the support (volume) of the available data into distributions defined on the support of the proposed selective mining units. Although the volume-variance relationship is well understood for the estimation of global grade distributions, it is still an unsolved issue for local estimation studies based on non-parametric geostatistical methods, such as indicator kriging, for which the support correction is not inherent to the method. To clarify this relationship, the local change of support problem is examined in the scope of two parametric models (multi-Gaussian and discrete Gaussian models). It is shown that the variance reduction factor between point and block-support local distributions depends on the block being considered and is less than the global variance reduction factor. As a consequence, post-processing the local point-support grade distributions on the basis of the latter systematically understates the importance of the change of support at the local scale and makes selective mining appear more economically attractive than it really is. In the light of these results, a methodology is proposed to post-process the local point-support distributions obtained via non-parametric (indicator) methods into block-support distributions. An application to simulated data indicates that this methodology provides an accurate estimation at the block support when dealing with diffusion-type random fields.     

Geostatistical simulation of random fields with bivariate isofactorial distributions by adding mosaic models

This work deals with the geostatistical simulation of a family of stationary random field models with bivariate isofactorial distributions. Such models are defined as the sum of independent random fields with mosaic-type bivariate distributions and infinitely divisible univariate distributions. For practical applications, dead leaf tessellations are used since they provide a wide range of models and allow conditioning the realizations to a set of data via an iterative procedure (simulated annealing). The model parameters can be determined by comparing the data variogram and madogram, and enable to control the spatial connectivity of the extreme values in the realizations. An illustration to a forest dataset is presented, for which a negative binomial model is used to characterize the distribution of coniferous trees over a wooded area.     

Numerical forward modelling of peritidal carbonate parasequence development: implications for outcrop interpretation

The mechanisms responsible for formation of peritidal parasequences have been a focus of debate between proponents of contrasting autocyclic and allocyclic models. To contribute to this debate a three‐dimensional numerical forward model of carbonate production, transport and deposition has been developed. Shallowing‐upward parasequences are produced in the model via carbonate island formation and progradation, with an element of self‐organization, and no external forcing. These autocyclic parasequences have characteristics comparable with peritidal parasequences observed in outcrop. Modelled parasequence thickness and duration depend primarily on subsidence rate and sediment transport rate, illustrating the significance of sediment flux in formation of peritidal parasequences. Adding an element of stochastic variation of sediment transport rate and transport path leads to formation of nonuniform‐thickness parasequences that generate Fischer plots showing apparent hierarchies similar to those often interpreted as evidence of eustatic forcing. The model results do not rule out allocylic mechanisms, but suggest that shoreline and island progradation are also plausible mechanisms to create variable‐thickness, shallowing‐upward peritidal parasequences and should be considered in interpretations of such strata.     

Assessment of hydrodynamic simulation results for eco‐hydraulic and eco‐hydrological applications: a spatial semivariance approach

Output from a three‐dimensional numerical flow model (SSIIM) is used in conjunction with high‐resolution topographic and velocity data to assess such models for eco‐hydraulic applications in river channel design and habitat appraisal. A new methodology for the comparison between field measurement and model output is detailed. This involves a comparison between conventional goodness‐of‐fit approaches applied to a spatially structured (riffle and pool) sample of model and field data, and a ‘relaxation’ method based upon the spatial semivariance of model/field departures. Conventional assessment indicates that the model predicts point‐by‐point velocity characteristics on a 0·45 m mesh to within ±0·1 m s⁻¹ over 80% of the channel area at low flow, and 50% of the area at high in‐bank flow. When a relative criterion of model fit is used, however, the model appears to perform less well: 60–70% of channel area has predicted velocities that depart from observed velocities by more than 10%. Regression analysis of observed and predicted velocities gives more cause for optimism, but all of these conventional indicators of goodness of fit neglect important spatial characteristics of model performance. Spatial semivariance is a means of supplementing model appraisal in this respect. In particular, using the relaxation approach, results are greatly improved: at a high in‐bank flow, the model results match field measurements to within 0·1 m s⁻¹ for more than 95% of the total channel area, provided that model and field comparisons are allowed within a radius of approximately 1 m from the original point of measurement. It is suggested that this revised form of model assessment is of particular relevance to eco‐hydraulic applications, where some degree of spatial and temporal dynamism (or uncertainty) is a characteristic. The approach may also be generalized to other environmental science modelling applications where the spatial attributes of model fits are of interest. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Patterns and rates of fluid flow during burial diagenesis of the Middle Jurassic Lincolnshire Limestone, eastern England

A phase of ferroan burial calcite from the Middle Jurassic Lincolnshire Limestone exhibits a systematic spatial arrangement of oxygen isotopic characteristics. Mean δ¹⁸O values of the ferroan calcites from each of 15 core and outcrop localities over a study area 25 × 25 km were obtained. These values show a marked depletion from west to east across the study area of approximately 3‰, such that the oxygen isotopic composition of the ferroan calcites can be contoured. The systematic change in oxygen isotopic composition across the study area is believed to have recorded the thermal gradient in the limestone during ferroan calcite precipitation. This thermal gradient can be partially attributed to approximately 200 m of differential burial of the Lincolnshire Limestone across the study area during the Chalk deposition, with a maximum burial of 550 m to the east of the area at this time. A component of up-dip fluid flow (from east to west) through the formation is required to generate the temperature enhancements above those predicted for conduction alone by simple differential burial. Using a finite-difference step computer program, rates of fluid flow during ferroan calcite precipitation are calculated to be approximately 25 m/year. This rate of fluid flow is considerably greater than rates usually predicted for buried sedimentary basins. The causes of such rapid, probably relatively short-lived flow-rates may be the sudden dewatering of adjacent shales, the release of overpressure within the formation of interest, seismic pumping, or fluid circulation round a supracrustal convective loop.     

Mean temperature-salinity,salinity-depth and temperature-depth curves for the North Atlantic and the North Pacific

All available hydrographic data are used to compute average temperature-salinity, salinity-depth and temperature-depth curves for 5° squares in the North Atlantic and North Pacific (10°S to 60°N). Both objective and subjective methods are used to filter out obviously erroneous data. Summary maps of all 5° square mean curves, and their corresponding standard deviations, are used to select regions of spatial homogeneity over which the curves are averaged. Scatter diagrams of each parameter pair are used to identify 5° squares containing a variety of water masses.The area average curves, and their standard deviations, are presented individually along with tables of the parameter values. These curves, in conjunction with the 5° square summary maps, provide a comprehensive picture of the distributions of these properties in the upper and mid-depth portions of these oceans. This well resolved picture of the water mass structure both confirms and adds new insights into the traditional concepts of these property distributions.The application of the mean temperature-salinity and salinity-depth curves to the inference of salinity from observed temperature profiles, is examined. Shallow (0/500 db) dynamic heights, calculated from observations of temperature and salinity (true dynamic height), are compared with dynamic heights computed from observed temperature profiles and salinities inferred from the mean property curves. Maps of the RMS differences between true and inferred dynamic heights (by 5° square) reveal those areas where salinities, inferred from either temperature-salinity or salinity-depth curves, yield reliable dynamic heights.     

Variations of the Fraser River Plume and their relationship to forcing by tide,wind and discharge

Abstract

Temporal and spatial variations of the Fraser River Plume, in the central Strait of Georgia (British Columbia, Canada), are monitored by continuous salinity sampling of the engine cooling water on two B.C. ferries. Travelling along two different routes between Vancouver Island and the mainland the ferries provide eight crossings per day both north and south of the river outflow. From each crossing, characteristic measures of the plume are extracted, such as the average salinity and the maximum salinity gradient. These parameters we then formulated as time series and used to compute cross‐correlations and cross‐spectra with the probable driving forces of wind and river discharge. The effect of the tides is examined using harmonic analysis.

Periods of high river discharge lead to decreases in the average salinity for each section, and peaks in the magnitude of the maximum salinity gradient. The correlation of the plume characteristics (average salinity, maximum salinity gradient) on the southern section with the along‐strait component of the wind is consistent with advection by the wind. No obvious correlation is found between the plume characteristics on the northern section and the wind, except during isolated events. Linear combinations of the wind and the discharge variations reproduce the general trend of the average salinities but cannot explain the level of variability. A shift to a non‐linear combination of wind and discharge improves this comparison. The phases of parameter fluctuations at tidal frequencies on the southern section agree with the expected effects of tidal currents and the modulation of the river discharge. The agreement is not as apparent for the northern section.