BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Marine Resources of Kuwait: Their Role in the Development of Non-oil Resources . Fatimah H. Y. al -Abdul -Razzak Recollections of a Revolution: Geography as Spatial Science . Mark Billinge , Derek Gregory and Ron Martin Entre l'Eden et l'Utopie . Luc Bureau Developments in Political Geography . M. A. Busteed The Elements of Graphing Data . William S. Cleveland Rural Resource Management . Paul J. Cloke and Chris C. Park Third World Atlas . Ben Crow and Alan Thomas Exploitation, Conservation, Preservation: A Geographic Perspective on Natural Resource Use . Susan L. Cutter , Hilary Lambert Renwick, and William H. Renwick . Wine Regions of the Southern Hemisphere . Harm Jan de Blij Regional Development: Problems and Policies in Eastern and Western Europe . George Demko The Geographer at Work . Peter R. Gould Change in the Amazon Basin . John Hemming Geography Since the Second World War . R. J. Johnston and P. Claval Urbanization in China: Town and Countryside in a Developing Economy 1949–2000 A.D. , R. J. R. Kirkby Transport and Communications for Pacific Microstates: Issues in Organisation and Management . Christopher C. Kissling Fluvial Forms and Processes . David Knighton The Urban Millennium . Josef W. Konvitz Technological Transition in Cartography . Mark Stephen Monmonier Field Guide to Soils and the Environment: Applications of Soil Surveys . Gerald W. Olson Northern Australia: The Arenas of Life and Ecosystems on Half a Continent . Don Parkes A Killing Rain: The Global Threat of Acid Rain . Thomas Pawlick From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850–1931 . Donald J. Pisani Hybrid Maize Diffusion in Kenya . Franz -Michael Rundquist Warning and Response to the Mount St. Helens Eruption . Thomas F. Saarinen and James L. Sell Coastal Geomorphology in Australia . B. G. Thom Tropical Rain Forests of the Far East , 2nd ed . T. C. Whitmore The Dark Side of the Earth . Robert Muir Wood Categorical Data Analysis for Geographers and Environmental Scientists , Neil Wrigley     

Hadley环流强度与我国中东部气温的相关分析

利用NCEP／NCAR再分析月平均风场资料和国家气候中心提供的中国160个气象站的月平均气温资料,用质量流函数计算方法描述平均经圈环流,用环流中心值大小表征其强度,分析Hadley环流强度1951--2010年的趋势变化及其与我国中东部气温的关系。结果表明：1）质量流函数能很好地表征平均经圈环流的特征,且环流中心值大小能形象地反映环流强度。2）近60a来,冬季北半球Hadley环流强度呈线性增强的趋势;夏季南半球Hadley环流在20世纪80年代初发生了由减弱趋势转变为显著增强趋势的年代际转折。3）我国中东部大部分地区气温的年代际变化能很好地被Hadley环流强度变化所解释,二者基本呈正相关关系,但显著相关区域随季节变化有所不同。     

Trends in graded precipitation in China from 1961 to 2000

Daily precipitation rates observed at 576 stations in China from 1961 to 2000 were classified into six grades of intensity, including trace （no amount）, slight （≤ 1 mm d^-1）, small, large, heavy, and very heavy. The last four grades together constitute the so called effective precipitation （〉 1 mm d^-1）. The spatial distribution and temporal trend of the graded precipitation days are examined. A decreasing trend in trace precipitation days is observed for the whole of China, except at several sites in the south of the middle section of the Yangtze River, while a decreasing trend in slight precipitation days only appears in eastern China. The decreasing trend and interannual variability of trace precipitation days is consistent with the warming trend and corresponding temperature variability in China for the same period, indicating a possible role played by increased surface air temperature in cloud formation processes. For the effective precipitation days, a decreasing trend is observed along the Yellow River valley and for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and Southwest China, while an increasing trend is found for Xinjiang, the eastern Tibetan Plateau, Northeast China and Southeast China. The decreasing trend of effective precipitation days for the middle- lower Yellow River valley and the increasing trend for the lower Yangtze River valley are most likely linked to anomalous monsoon circulation in East China. The most important contributor to the trend in effective precipitation depends upon the region concerned.     

A new insight on the decreasing sea level trend over the Ionian basin in the last decades

Altimetry measurements over the Ionian region and tide gauge records along the southern Italian coasts have been combined to analyse the negative sea level trend over the Ionian basin in the last decades. The apparent decreasing trend should be better understood as an abrupt sea level drop in 1998 probably linked to changes in the surface circulation in the Ionian basin induced by the Eastern Mediterranean Transient, which changed from anticyclonic to cyclonic about March 1998. From then onwards, a rising rate of 7.9 ± 0.9 mm/year is observed over the basin.     

River flood seasonality in the Northeast United States: Characterization and trends

The New England and Mid‐Atlantic regions of the Northeast United States have experienced climate‐induced increases in both the magnitude and frequency of floods. However, a detailed understanding of flood seasonality across these regions, and how flood seasonality may have changed over the instrumental record, has not been established. The annual timing of river floods reflects the flood‐generating mechanisms operating in a basin, and many aquatic and riparian organisms are adapted to flood seasonality, as are human uses of river channels and flood plains. Changes in flood seasonality may indicate changes in flood‐generating mechanisms, and their interactions, with important implications for habitats, flood plain infrastructure, and human communities. I applied a probabilistic method for identifying flood seasons at a monthly resolution for 90 Northeast U.S. watersheds with natural, or near‐natural, flood‐generating conditions. Historical trends in flood seasonality were also investigated. Analyses were based on peaks‐over‐threshold flood records that have, on average, 85 years of data and three peaks per year—thus providing more information about flood seasonality than annual maximums. The results show rich detail about annual flood timing across the region with each site having a unique pattern of monthly flood occurrence. However, a much smaller number of dominant seasonal patterns emerged when contiguous flood‐rich months were classified into commonly recognized seasons (e.g., Mar–May, spring). The dominant seasonal patterns identified by manual classification were corroborated by unsupervised classification methods (i.e., cluster analyses). Trend analyses indicated that the annual timing of flood‐rich seasons has generally not shifted over the period of record, but 65 sites with data from 1941 to 2013 revealed increased numbers of June–October floods—a trend driving previously documented increases in Northeast U.S. flood counts per year. These months have been historically flood‐poor at the sites examined, so warm‐season flood potential has increased with possible implications for aquatic and riparian organisms.     

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.     

关于地理空间元数据技术发展趋势的理论探讨

随着“数字地球”、“数字中国”等的实施,地理空间元数据作为促进海量空间信息管理和共享的有力工具,其应用有了较快的发展。本文在分析我国地理空间元数据应用现状的基础上,结合地理空间元数据的应用特点,分析了地理空间元数据的标准化、互操作、自动生成等趋势是地理空间元数据发展的必然,并论述了与这些发展趋势相关的实施方法和技术,以及这些趋势之间的辩证关系。     

Comparison of trends in stream water quality

A method is described for assessing the strength of evidence for differences in the trends in chemical concentrations in stream water between catchments. A smoothing spline technique is used to model changes in water quality as a result of changes in flow rates, seasonal effects and an underlying trend. The method involves fitting the model twice, once with the underlying trends constrained to be identical for each river and once with the trends unconstrained. Statistical properties are assessed by simulation methods that allow for the autocorrelation in the residuals from the unconstrained fit. The method is applied to data from two streams in the Balquhidder catchments in the Highlands of Scotland and to data from the Dee, Don and Ythan rivers in the north‐east of Scotland. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of recent hydro-climatic changes in four tributaries of the Niger River Basin (West Africa)

West Africa experienced severe drought during the 1970s and 1980s, posing a threat to water resources. A wetter climate more recently suggests recovery from the drought. The Mann-Kendall trend and Theil-Sen’s slope estimator were applied to detect probable trends in weather elements in four sub-basins of the Niger River Basin between 1970 and 2010. The cross-entropy method was used to detect breakpoints in rainfall and runoff, Spearman’s rank test for correlation between the two, and cross-correlation analysis for possible lags. Results showed an overall increase in rainfall and runoff and a decrease in sunshine duration. Spearman’s coefficients suggest significant (5%) moderate to strong rainfall–runoff correlation for three sub-basins. A significant lower runoff was observed around 1979, with a rainfall break around 1992, indicating possible cessation of the drought. Temperatures increased significantly, at 0.02–0.05°C year^-1, with a negative wind speed trend for most stations. Half of the stations exhibited an increase in potential evapotranspiration.

EDITOR M.C. Acreman

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Not assigned     

黄河流域气候与农业种植面积变化对径流的影响

根据黄河流域1960—2005年5个水文站逐日流量、77个气象站1959—2013年逐日降水数据,结合流域内主要农作物种植面积及大型水库资料,全面探讨气候与农业面积变化及人类活动对黄河流域径流变化的影响.研究表明:黄河流域所有流量分位数总体呈下降趋势,并于1980s中后期到1990s中期发生突变.降水变化是黄河流域径流变化的主要影响因素.在考虑不同流量分位数情况下,农作物种植面积变化对不同分位数径流变化的影响也有差异性.花园口站农作物种植面积变化对径流量量级和可变性均有显著影响;其余4站各项气候变化与农作物种植指标参数较大,虽均未达到10%的显著性水平,但仍会对径流的量级变化产生影响.对唐乃亥站,农作物耕作面积的下降减少了灌溉用水,在0.5流量分位数时有高达60%增加径流量的间接作用.对于头道拐站,农作物耕作面积的增加使得流域总蒸发量增加,灌溉用水增加,在0.3流量分位数时有高达40%减少径流量的间接作用.该研究为气候变化与人类活动影响下黄河流域水资源优化配置提供重要理论依据.