Awkward geographies: Spatializing academic responsibility, encountering Sri Lanka

This paper responds to recent postcolonial geographical scholarship that sets forth transformative agendas in order to create more cosmopolitan theoretical projects within the discipline. For many geographers the challenges they face are located within not only their own disciplinary parameters, but also those of other specific research communities within which their work situates them. By bringing geography and area studies into productive conversation, this paper explores the tensions between negotiating one's academic voice, position and responsibility within geography as well as within a specific area studies community. More specifically, as a UK-based geographer I reflect on some of my own fairly unremarkable, yet extremely awkward, encounters during the course of scholarly praxis in Sri Lanka in order to raise questions over the spatialities of responsibility and political engagement in such academic praxis. I seek to theorize the chasms that open in such awkward encounters between notionally situated 'local' and 'foreign' scholars respectively and, in particular, develop ways of engaging and reorienting those chasms in ways that might enable the production of theoretically rich, yet richly contextualized postcolonial knowledges committed to the site of one's scholarly praxis – not just to the advancement of a more cosmopolitan theoretical project within geography.     

Collaborating in the field, working for change: Reflecting on partnerships between academics, development organizations and rural communities in Africa

Academics and development organizations approach fieldwork with somewhat different motivations, constraints and challenges. In many instances, fieldwork might be improved if greater collaboration occurred between these two parties. Rural communities are also important yet frequently taken for granted partners in the research process that deserve greater respect. This paper explores and describes the real and imagined impediments to greater collaboration between academics, development organizations and rural communities. The findings are based on 18 years of working with rural communities in Africa, both as a development practitioner and academic researcher. This reflection makes three contributions to the broader literature on fieldwork. First, it explicitly links two ongoing discussions, one on relationships with institutional partners, the other on interactions with rural communities. Second, it articulates the concerns of development organizations in their partnerships with academic researchers, a perspective rarely heard in a literature dominated by academic voices. Third, while feminist scholarship on fieldwork methods often wrestles with issues of positionality and engagement at the scale of the individual researcher, this reflection is aimed at the broader scale of the professional (academic and practitioner) communities involved in development praxis and scholarship.     

Capturing critical behaviour in soil moisture spatio-temporal dynamics

A physical system is subject to a phase transition process when it shows a discontinuous change of a macroscopic feature of the system under a continuous change of a system’s state variable.     

洞庭湖区第四纪气候变化的初步探讨

探讨了洞庭湖区第四纪以来的气候变化，初步得出以下规律：更新世气候变化剧烈，气候组合暖湿（温湿）与冷干；全新世气候转为温凉，主要气候组合为温湿与凉干；历史时期气候主要仍温湿与凉干交替，但15 世纪以来出现短暂的温干与凉温期；15世纪以来，气候波动频繁，有愈来愈不稳定的趋向，进入20世纪，旱涝灾害更加。在全球变暖的背景下，预计该区未来气候趋向于暖湿，但不排除暖干的可能性。     

环洞庭湖区城镇体系发展研究

通过对环洞庭湖区城镇体系发展的历史背景以及现状特征分析，指出其发展过程存在着城市空间格局发展不平衡，产业结构重复严重等问题，在此基础上，提出了相应的对策与发展措施，确保环湖区内城镇体系的持续，快速发展，并最终实现带动区域经济发展的目的。     

历史时期(1803～1958年)西藏水灾分析

分析了现有灾异史料所覆盖时段（1803－1958年）西藏水灾的时空变化特征。研究指出：①1803－1958年，西藏水灾发生（县）次数波动比较大；19世纪40－80年代为西藏的水灾多发期；1924、1954年为严重水灾发生年；②西藏水灾空间分布差异显著，主要分布在“一江两河”地区。其中，日喀则、山南地区的水灾（县）次最多，其次为拉萨市、林芝地区，昌都、阿里、那曲地区则水灾发生相对较少；③高强度的持续降水为西藏水灾发生的关键诱导因子，河流暴涨、漫溢、改道为重要媒体，山崩、雪崩、山洪及泥石流等要素为特定地貌条件下的主要致灾因子，雹灾、地水上涌等也是不容忽视的致灾因子；④19世纪40－80年代西藏气候湿润。     

The Character of Shear-wave Splitting in Marble in the Critical State of Rupture

This paper mainly observed and analyzed the character of shear-wave splitting in rock specimens while they were in the critical state of rupture. The rock specimens for study are made of Laizhou marble from Shandong, China. A series of records were obtained from two rock specimens when they were in the critical state of rupture. The result shows that, in the critical state just before rock rupture, there may be the phenomenon of rise and fall in the time delay of shear-wave splitting, even though the load was kept constant. That is to say, the time delay of shear-wave splitting may have a falling process before rock rupture.     

The Upper Permian Sedimentary Facies and Its Role in the Dajing Cu-Sn Deposit, Linxi County, Inner Mongolia, China

Abstract: Exhaustive investigations were launched for confirming the upper Permian host rocks of the Dajing Cu-Sn Deposit, probing into the possibility that Dajing is a Sedex type deposit during cosedimentation, complementing the deficiency of previous researches and going further into substantiating the role of the upper Permian strata in the control of ore distribution. After more than two years work, we reclassified the sedimentary facies in the Dajing area and its periphery as shallow fresh water lake and delta. Indicative sedimentary structures, such as ripple marks, rain marks, and mud cracks combined with contemporary fossils, were revealed. Having measured the flow directions, performed chemical comparison, and analyzed various sediments from sourceland in the Dajing area by XRF, we consequently redivided the strata into four sedimentary members, among which P₂l₁ and P₂l₂ were concluded as significant ore-hosted strata. The upper Permian basin was a lateral rift basin. The water and sediments in the basin are much deeper and thicker in the north than those in the south.
The indicators of special sedimentary facies, such as gravity flow, brine pool and synchronogenic stratiform structure of the ore cannot be found in the Dajing area. There was no growth fault, assemblage of sulfide and sulfate, and no zonation as well.
On the basis of study in this area, taking into account the paleosedimentary environment as capriciously flowing shallow lake, which approximated the state of oxidation, we figured that the paleogeography made it prohibitively difficult to form stratiform sulfide deposits which are prone to form in deoxidized environment. It can be ruled out the possibility that the Dajing deposit is a syngenetic deposit during sedimentation.     

Gottmann's Geographic Glossa

At a time when human geography–in its search for general and systemic laws–was often seduced by different kinds of determinism, Jean Gottmann developed his theoretical model in order to explain the political partitioning of geographical space. This model, shaped by the study of the classics in political philosophy, makes explicit reference to human psychology, and is based on a few fundamental concepts: cloisonnement (partitioning), circulation (movement), carrefour (crossroad) and iconographie (iconography). This paper presents the above mentioned concepts through a chronological analysis of their formulation in different chapters of Gottmann's bibliography, in order to reconstruct the genesis and evolution of his model. In the conclusions a few questions are presented, that suggest how Gottmann's model could still be usefully applied to contemporary human and political geography.     

用航摄像对制作全息地形立体图的新技术

全息地形立体图是将传统的光学机械立体投影术与全息术相结合，用航摄像对合成为一张具有一定焦深的近像面全息图。它既具有像面全息图衍射效率高，可以用扩展的白光光源再现的优点，也具有体全息图一定的波长和角度选择性。本文介绍了拍摄这种立体图的装置和方法，并从理论上对实验结果进行了一些分析，最后指出了它的应用前景。