Time to talk knowledge

As part of the secondary school qualification repackaging, the Ministry of Education has requested the geography education community define what constitutes their “critical body of knowledge.” In this article, I discuss three knowledge‐oriented themes focused on: (a) recent assessment trends in geography; (b) the predictive value of NCEA Level 3 geography with 100‐level success and (c) the nature of knowledge as expressed by the New Zealand Curriculum and assessment. Taken together, these themes suggest a need for a serious conversation about knowledge in school geography, as a pre‐cursor to the re‐design of the geography standards matrix.     

Deep-water sediment transport patterns and basin floor topography in early rift basins: Plio-Pleistocene syn-rift of the Corinth Rift,Greece

Our current understanding on sedimentary deep-water environments is mainly built of information obtained from tectonic settings such as passive margins and foreland basins. More observations from extensional settings are particularly needed in order to better constrain the role of active tectonics in controlling sediment pathways, depositional style and stratigraphic stacking patterns. This study focuses on the evolution of a Plio-Pleistocene deep-water sedimentary system (Rethi-Dendro Formation) and its relation to structural activity in the Amphithea fault block in the Corinth Rift, Greece. The Corinth Rift is an active extensional basin in the early stages of rift evolution, providing perfect opportunities for the study of early deep-water syn-rift deposits that are usually eroded from the rift shoulders due to erosion in mature basins like the Red Sea, North Sea and the Atlantic rifted margin. The depocentre is located at the exit of a structurally controlled sediment fairway, approximately 15 km from its main sediment source and 12 km basinwards from the basin margin coastline. Fieldwork, augmented by digital outcrop techniques (LiDAR and photogrammetry) and clast-count compositional analysis allowed identification of 16 stratigraphic units that are grouped into six types of depositional elements: A—mudstone-dominated sheets, B—conglomerate-dominated lobes, C—conglomerate channel belts and sandstone sheets, D—sandstone channel belts, E—sandstone-dominated broad shallow lobes, F—sandstone-dominated sheets with broad shallow channels. The formation represents an axial system sourced by a hinterland-fed Mavro delta, with minor contributions from a transverse system of conglomerate-dominated lobes sourced from intrabasinal highs. The results of clast compositional analysis enable precise attribution for the different sediment sources to the deep-water system and their link to other stratigraphic units in the area. Structures in the Amphithea fault block played a major role in controlling the location and orientation of sedimentary systems by modifying basin-floor gradients due to a combination of hangingwall tilt, displacement of faults internal to the depocentre and folding on top of blind growing faults. Fault activity also promoted large-scale subaqueous landslides and eventual uplift of the whole fault block.     

‘Telling a different tale’: literary, historical and meteorological readings of a Norfolk heatwave

Articulated initially by physical scientists, the idea of anthropogenic global climate change has been subject to increasingly diverse examinations in recent years. The idea has been appropriated by economists, worked with by engineers and, more recently, scrutinised by social scientists and humanities scholars. Underlying these examinations are different, yet rarely exposed, presumptions about what kind of ??thing?? climate is: a physical abstraction, a statistical construct, an imaginative idea. If the ontological status of climate is rarely made explicit it becomes difficult to know whether the different epistemologies used to reveal climates ?? and their changing properties ?? are appropriate. This study offers one way in which the different worlds inhabited by the idea of climate may be revealed. It does so by examining a heatwave: a powerful meteorological phenomenon one would think and one which scientific accounts of climate change tell us will become more frequent in the future. The heatwave in question occurred in July 1900 in the county of Norfolk, England. This heatwave inhabits three very different worlds: the imaginative world of L P Hartley in his novel The Go Between; the historical world of late Victorian Norfolk; and the digital world of the climate sciences. The traces of the heatwave left in these different worlds are varied and access to them is uneven. Constructing an adequate interpretation of this singular climatic event and its meaning is challenging. The study suggests that grasping the idea of climate may be harder than we think. Climates may be ineffable. Yet the approach to the study of climate illustrated here opens up new ways of thinking about the meaning and significance of climate change.     

Simulation of scree‐slope dynamics: investigating the distribution of debris avalanche events in an idealized two‐dimensional model

We present a two‐dimensional model of the development of scree slopes using the discrete‐element method. We concentrate on the dynamics of the accumulating debris at the cliff foot rather than on the failure modes of the cliff‐face or shape of the underlying rock surface. The evolution of this unconsolidated material is intermittent and systematically changing over time, with an early high disturbance regime, dominated by a characteristic event size (where 65% of particles in the debris are in motion to some extent), replaced at later times by many shallow slides interspersed with infrequent large events that involve motion through almost the full scree depth. These large slides lead to a stratigraphy in which the layers of material are stretched almost horizontal near the base of the slope. The scree surface thus shows a gradient in age with most recent rock‐fall close to the cliff and the oldest rock‐fall debris outcropping at the foot. The final surface slope tends to show little curvature, and the final mean slope is well correlated with the angle of internal friction of the particles, although the change is very small over a wide range of friction angles [final slope (in degrees relative to horizontal) ~ 0.043 × internal friction angle + 17.49, with a correlation coefficient of 0.89, p‐value 0.0001]. Some weak size‐segregation of the debris is found, but this seems to have little to do with individual particles bounding down the slope. The shape of the rock core agrees largely with the analytic forms given by Fisher–Lehmann and Bakker–Le Heux expressions, but the original simple Fisher quadratic can give the best fit. Overall the evolution shows a remarkable insensitivity to the model parameters, suggesting that the controls on dry scree‐slope evolution are primarily geometric in character. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

利用AutoPrep技术抑制型电导离子色谱法检测土壤中碘

利用AutoPrep自动样品前处理技术，对土壤燃烧吸收液进行在线预浓缩，抑制型电导进行检测，建立了一种全新思路的检测土壤样品中碘的方法。选择亲水性非常强的氢氧化物选择性IonPac AS16阴离子交换色谱柱，淋洗液发生装置在线产生KOH进行等梯度淋洗，抑制型电导检测。结果表明，对于土壤燃烧吸收液中碘离子的测定，方法检出限（S／N=3）可达1．2μg/L，线性相关系数为0．9998，方法精密度（RSD，n=7）为1．161％～4．566％，回收率在90．6％～100．8％。采用AutoPrep电导检测和脉冲安培检测离子色谱法测定不同土壤样品中的碘，两种方法的检测结果基本一致。方法在提供了稳定的系统空白的同时，还具备自动化程度高、操作简单、重现性好、灵敏度高、系统稳定、节约时间、成本低廉和对环境友好等多方面特点，适合于大批量土壤普查中碘的分析。     

Participatory diagramming: deploying qualitative methods through an action research epistemology

Summary In the context of a pilot study on the role that gender relations play in the transmission of HIV in Zimbabwe, this paper explores participatory diagramming, an exciting qualitative research technique largely under-utilized by geographers. It argues for a deployment of the technique within an action research epistemology in order that it might facilitate the reflection and action of participants in praxis, not simply the production of nuanced multiple truths in text Such an approach offers geographers embedded in an audit-oriented academy one means to political engagement while at the same time generating rigorous, 'publishable outputs'.     

Equilibrium erosion of soft rock shores with a shallow or absent beach under increased sea level rise

A process-based numerical model was used to explore the response of soft rock shores with low volume beaches to variable rates of sea level rise. Equilibrium recession rates were simulated for ranges of wave height and period, tidal amplitude, rock strength, beach volume and rate of sea level rise. Equilibrium shore profiles were found to be steeper with higher rates of sea level rise. Beaches were represented as protective surfaces yet were found to cause no significant reduction in equilibrium recession rate when their volumes were below a critical threshold. Reduced equilibrium recession rates were found with beaches that extended sufficiently far below low tide level. The model results imply that, given several constraints, a very simple relationship exists between increased rates of sea level rise and the response of eroding composite soft rock/low volume beach shores.     

First record of the Australian ascidian Eudistoma elongatum in northern New Zealand

A colonial ascidian was first reported by marine farmers in Houhora Harbour, Northland, New Zealand in early 2005 and subsequently found on oyster racks in Parengarenga Harbour and the Bay of Islands. The Northland ascidian was identified with a combination of morphological characters and DNA cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) sequence data, as Eudistoma elongatum, a species native to Australia, where it is found from northern New South Wales to Northern Queensland, and distinguished from Eudistoma circumvallatum, the only reported species in this genus from New Zealand. Ascidian larvae are weak dispersers and long distance dispersal of E. elongatum is likely to be enhanced by vectors such as oyster barges and/or movement of cultured oysters. In its native range, E. elongatum is restricted to areas with a minimum winter sea temperature of 16°C. Assuming similar biological limitations apply in New Zealand, the spread of E. elongatum might be restricted to northern New Zealand (north of latitude 37°S).     

The targets of management rules for marine mammal populations require justification: A reply to

The management of anthropogenic impacts on marine mammal populations involves the setting of targets that are built on assumptions and choices. Scientific methods can be used to investigate the implications of management actions, but the choice of overall objectives and priorities lies outside science. A recent paper (Potential biological removal and other currently used management rules for marine mammal populations: A comparison in Marine Policy), summarised the characteristics of the main approaches currently used to set conservation management targets for marine mammal populations in order to provide a basis for discussion of the targets they contain. Cooke et al. (Management rules for marine mammal populations: A response to Lonergan in Marine Policy) responded, giving some important additional information about these management rules. However most of that paper's criticisms were incorrect or misplaced. Specifically, it erroneously treated an example of how PBR could be reworked, to make its abundance explicit, as a proposal to ignore uncertainty in managing populations. This paper addresses Cooke's main criticisms, and suggests that explicit justifications should be an important part of the process of setting targets for the management of marine mammal populations.