Place attachment and community activism at the coast: The case of Ngunguru,Northland

The politics of place precipitated by a development proposal for a privately owned sandspit in Ngunguru, Northland, is examined in this article. It centres on residents' place attachment and the ways in which this helped to inform community resistance to development. A framing analysis of 23 stakeholder interviews conducted in 2008–2009 was carried out by the authors. Place attachment was centred on holistic appreciation of the sandspit's special values. A widespread view that exercise of private property rights over the site was deeply problematic was informed by this appreciation. Community ties were enhanced by shared perceptions of a threat to the sandspit.     

A laboratory model of Saturn’s North Polar Hexagon

A hexagonal structure has been observed at ∼76°N on Saturn since the 1980s (Godfrey, D.A. [1988]. Icarus 76, 335-356). Recent images by Cassini (Baines, K., Momary, T., Roos-Serote, M., Atreya, S., Brown, R., Buratti, B., Clark, R., Nicholson, P. [2007]. Geophys. Res. Abstr. 9, 02109; Baines, K., Momary, T., Fletcher, L., Kim, J., Showman, A., Atreya, S., Brown, R., Buratti, B., Clark, R., Nicholson, P. [2009]. Geophys. Res. Abstr. 11, 3375) have shown that the feature is still visible and largely unchanged. Its long lifespan and geometry has puzzled the planetary physics community for many years and its origin remains unclear. The measured rotation rate of the hexagon may be very close to that of the interior of the planet (Godfrey, D.A. [1990]. Science 247, 1206-1208; Caldwell, J., Hua, X., Turgeon, B., Westphal, J.A., Barnet, C.D. [1993]. Science 206, 326-329; Sánchez-Lavega, A., Lecacheux, J., Colas, F., Laques, P. [1993]. Science 260, 329-332), leading to earlier interpretations of the pattern as a stationary planetary wave, continuously forced by a nearby vortex (Allison, M., Godfrey, D.A., Beebe, R.F. [1990]. Science 247, 1061-1063). Here we present an alternative explanation, based on an analysis of both spacecraft observations of Saturn and observations from laboratory experiments where the instability of quasi-geostrophic barotropic (vertically uniform) jets and shear layers is studied. We also present results from a barotropic linear instability analysis of the saturnian zonal wind profile, which are consistent with the presence of the hexagon in the North Pole and absence of its counter-part in the South Pole. We propose that Saturn’s long-lived polygonal structures correspond to wavemodes caused by the nonlinear equilibration of barotropically unstable zonal jets.     

Hominin variability,climatic instability and population demography in Middle Pleistocene Europe

We propose a population model for Middle Pleistocene Europe that is based on demographic “sources” and “sinks”. The former were a small number of “core” or populations in glacial refugia in southern Europe from which hominins expanded northwards in interstadial and interglacial periods; occupation outside glacial refugia would have been restricted to warm or temperate periods, and populations at the northern limit of the Middle Pleistocene range would have been “sink” populations in that they depended upon recruitment from source populations further south. Southwest Asia would also have been a likely source of immigrant, source populations. We argue as an alternative to an “ebb and flow” model in which groups retreated to refugia when conditions worsened that local extinction outside refugia would have been frequent. In extreme situations, Europe may have been a population “sink” (i.e. unpopulated) that was replenished from source populations in Southwest Asia. We suggest that this pattern of repeated colonisation and extinction may help explain the morphological variability of European Middle Pleistocene hominins, particularly Homo heidelbergensis and its apparent non-lineal evolution towards Homo neanderthalensis.     

A bootstrap calculation of confidence regions for proportions of sediment contributed by different source areas in a ‘fingerprinting’ model

When ‘fingerprinting’ is used to identify what proportions P_s (s = 1, …, g) of suspended sediment come from g different source areas, measures of the uncertainties in estimates of the P_s are also required. These uncertainties are influenced by two kinds of correlation whose effects are rarely recognized in the literature. These are (i) correlation between the estimated P_s because they must add to 1 and (ii) correlation between the geochemical tracers measured in sediment samples. This paper uses bootstrap procedures to identify joint confidence regions for the estimated proportions [responding to correlation of type (i)] and to explore alternatives to the ‘standard’ least‐squares criterion used to estimate the proportions when tracer measurements are correlated [correlation of type (ii)]. Using a limited dataset with three sediment source areas for illustration (g = 3), results were obtained from 5000 bootstrap samples, using two criteria (standard and generalized least squares, GLS) with two inequality constraints: (a) 0 ≤ P_s ≤ 1, where P_s is the fraction of suspended sediment contributed by the s‐th source area (s = 1, 2, 3) and (b) 0 < P_s < 1, which, the paper argues, better represents reality. Approximate 95% confidence regions for the P_s, given by the two criteria and two inequality constraints, were compared. Using inequality constraint (a), the confidence region given by the GLS criterion was slightly smaller than that given by the standard; using constraint (b), the two confidence regions' boundaries were almost identical, suggesting that the effects of correlations between tracers were not large for the dataset used. For both criteria, the scatter amongst estimated proportions P_s obtained by bootstrapping was large, raising issues concerning the efficiency of sampling and the allocation of sampling effort, both in source areas and in transported suspended sediment. The results suggest that apparently small differences in the constraints applied to the proportions P_s can give quite different numerical results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hindcast of oil-spill pollution during the Lebanon crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean, July-August 2006

MOON (Mediterranean Operational Oceanography Network http://www.moon-oceanforecasting.eu) provides near-real-time information on oil-spill detection (ocean color and SAR) and predictions [ocean forecasts (MFS and CYCOFOS) and oil-spill predictions (MEDSLIK)]. We employ this system to study the Lebanese oil-pollution crisis in summer 2006 and thus to assist regional and local decision makers in Europe, regionally and locally. The MEDSLIK oil-spill predictions obtained using CYCOFOS high-resolution ocean fields are compared with those obtained using lower-resolution MFS hydrodynamics, and both are validated against satellite observations. The predicted beached oil distributions along the Lebanese and Syrian coasts are compared with in situ observations.The oil-spill predictions are able to simulate the northward movement of the oil spill, with the CYCOFOS predictions being in better agreement with satellite observations. Among the free MEDSLIK parameters tested in the sensitivity experiments, the drift factor appears to be the most relevant to improve the quality of the results.     

Developing carbon budgets for UK agriculture, land-use, land-use change and forestry out to 2022

This paper derives a notional future carbon budget for UK agriculture, land use, land use change and forestry sectors (ALULUCF). The budget is based on a bottom-up marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) derived for a range of mitigation measures for specified adoption scenarios for the years 2012, 2017 and 2022. The results indicate that in 2022 around 6.36 MtCO₂e could be abated at negative or zero cost. Furthermore, in the same year, over 17% of agricultural GHG emissions (7.85 MtCO₂e) could be abated at a cost of less than the 2022 Shadow Price of Carbon (£34 (tCO₂e)^???1). The development of robust MACCs faces a range of methodological hurdles that complicate cost-effectiveness appraisal in ALULUCF relative to other sectors. Nevertheless, the current analysis provides an initial route map of efficient measures for mitigation in UK agriculture.     

Entropy,complexity, and spatial information

We pose the central problem of defining a measure of complexity, specifically for spatial systems in general, city systems in particular. The measures we adopt are based on Shannon’s (in Bell Syst Tech J 27:379–423, 623–656, 1948) definition of information. We introduce this measure and argue that increasing information is equivalent to increasing complexity, and we show that for spatial distributions, this involves a trade-off between the density of the distribution and the number of events that characterize it; as cities get bigger and are characterized by more events—more places or locations, information increases, all other things being equal. But sometimes the distribution changes at a faster rate than the number of events and thus information can decrease even if a city grows. We develop these ideas using various information measures. We first demonstrate their applicability to various distributions of population in London over the last 100 years, then to a wider region of London which is divided into bands of zones at increasing distances from the core, and finally to the evolution of the street system that characterizes the built-up area of London from 1786 to the present day. We conclude by arguing that we need to relate these measures to other measures of complexity, to choose a wider array of examples, and to extend the analysis to two-dimensional spatial systems.     

Selling a natural community: Exploring the role of representations in promoting a new urban development

We explore the rhetoric and symbolism deployed in the course of selling residential properties at Hobsonville Point, a new development in Auckland. Specifically, we ask what understanding of community is promoted in this development, and how this understanding is represented in promotional material. Our study is informed by analysis of newspaper articles, promotional material and planning/legal documents as well as field observation (2011–2012). We conclude that appealing to a contemporary yearning for nature and social cohesion at an urban coastal location has generated a situation in which community is being ‘sold’ at Hobsonville Point, yet paradoxically is yet to be found.     

Uncertainty in modeled upper ocean heat content change

This paper examines the uncertainty in the change in the heat content in the ocean component of a general circulation model. We describe the design and implementation of our statistical methodology. Using an ensemble of model runs and an emulator, we produce an estimate of the full probability distribution function (PDF) for the change in upper ocean heat in an Atmosphere/Ocean General Circulation Model, the Community Climate System Model v. 3, across a multi-dimensional input space. We show how the emulator of the GCM’s heat content change and hence, the PDF, can be validated and how implausible outcomes from the emulator can be identified when compared to observational estimates of the metric. In addition, the paper describes how the emulator outcomes and related uncertainty information might inform estimates of the same metric from a multi-model Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 ensemble. We illustrate how to (1) construct an ensemble based on experiment design methods, (2) construct and evaluate an emulator for a particular metric of a complex model, (3) validate the emulator using observational estimates and explore the input space with respect to implausible outcomes and (4) contribute to the understanding of uncertainties within a multi-model ensemble. Finally, we estimate the most likely value for heat content change and its uncertainty for the model, with respect to both observations and the uncertainty in the value for the input parameters.