Historical space as narrative medium: on the configuration of spatial narratives of time at historical sites

This paper examines how narratives of history are organized spatially at historical sites and memorial spaces, especially in urban settings and in places invested with a sense of collective memory. Much recent research has focused on landscape, memory, and place and how relationships of political and social power influence the representation of historical events in public spaces. Although the meaning of such sites may be hotly contested for long periods of time, we focus here on narrative theory and the related, but unexplored, issue of how such historical stories are configured on the ground at actual historical sites. We identify a number of narrative strategies which are frequently used to configure historical stories in space. Declamatory strategies using markers presenting a snapshot of an event are common, but sequential and non-sequential linear strategies are also used, as are thematic strategies that cross-cut space and time to present complex historical stories at various spatial scales. Examples are drawn from a range of historical sites in North America, Europe and Israel.     

Urban consolidation and house prices: a case study of Melbourne 1990–2004

This paper explores the links between a strategic policy, urban consolidation, and house prices by examining the changes in the mix of housing and in house price for the period 1991–2004. We contend that urban consolidation could be seen as a source of additional supply, (which might be expected to be felt in lower prices and so contribute to a local policy objective) but also as a stimulus to demand (by developers who could bid up the price of lots where it was understood more housing could be built). Analyses were carried out at the metropolitan and sub-regional scales using correlation tests. The research finds very weak statistical connections, and concludes that this policy has not been associated with price changes.     

Effects of sediment properties on surface-generated ambient noise in a shallow ocean

Surface-generalized ambient noise in a shallow ocean waveguide with a sediment layer possessing a specific class of density and sound speed distributions capable of describing a realistic seabed environment is considered in this analysis. This class of non-uniform sediment layer has the density and sound speed distributions varying with respect to depth as a generalized-exponential and an inverse-square function, respectively. The study invokes a formulation developed by Kuperman and Ingenito (Kuperman, W. A., Ingenito, F., 1980. Spatial correlation of surface-generated noise in a stratified ocean. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 67, 1988-1996.) for surface noise generation, in conjunction with the analytical solutions for the Helmholtz equation corresponding to the sediment layer, to arrive at an analytical expression convenient for numerical implementation. The intensity and spatial correlation of the noise sound field are analyzed with respect to the variation of the system parameters, including frequency, sediment layer thickness, sound speed gradient, with emphasis on the effects of sediment properties on the ambient noise field. The results have demonstrated that the intensity of the noise field is relatively sensitive to the variation of the parameters, but the spatial correlation is affected to a less extent, suggesting that the energy distribution, rather than the spatial structure, of the noise field is more susceptible to the environmental variations.     

Spatial variation of the intertidal sediments and macrozoo-benthic assemblages along Eighty-mile Beach, North-western Australia

The extensive intertidal flats along Eighty-mile Beach in North-western Australia appear to be monotonous and homogeneous and seem ideally suited to study tidal zonation in macrozoo-benthic communities and their possible correlates with characteristics of the sediment. In October 1999, we sampled benthic invertebrates and sediments at a total of 895 sampling stations distributed over six different locations, each location separated by 15 km of unsampled foreshore along Eighty-mile Beach. To test for the presence or absence of patterns of tidal zonation (distinct height-related zones of specific sediment grain sizes or zoobenthic taxonomic groups) or patchiness (distinct patches of specific sediment grain sizes or zoobenthic taxonomic groups not related to tidal height) each location was divided into three along-shore sections and each section (transect) was examined at two or three tidal heights. Zonation was observed for sediment grain sizes. Sediments were coarser at the highest intertidal level and finer towards the low water line. Benthic assemblages also differed among tidal heights, but in terms of species-composition the differences were not consistent among the locations. Each location supported a unique collection of benthic invertebrates. Therefore the hypothesis of the presence of distinct zones of specific species or zoobenthic taxonomic groups was rejected; the presence of benthic patches was confirmed. The distribution of sediments and the composition of benthic assemblages were surprisingly poorly correlated compared to those reported in 12 previous quantitative studies around the world. One possible explanation might be that super-cyclone Vance, which hit the study-area only six months before this study, contributed to this poor correlation. Alternatively, the poor correlation may indicate that biotic interactions are more important than the assumed abiotic structuring.     

千里岩的气温变化特征及其与西北太平洋副热带高压的关系

本文根据１９６０～１９９４年千里岩和青岛月平均气温资料，分析了千里岩与青岛３５年来气温的年、季变化特征及差别，发现３５年来，千里岩和青岛的年、季平均气温均呈变暖趋势，但千里岩增温幅度较青岛小。从分析中发现，与气温变暖趋势相对应，西北太平洋副热带高压（以下简称副高）面积、强度指数的年、季变化也呈明显的增强、增大趋势。且年平均气温与冬季副高面积指数相关最显著。最后依此关系建立回归方程，并预测了１９９６年千里岩年平均气温的变化趋势。     

西太平洋暖池区气象学特征分析

本文根据ＴＯＧＡ－ＣＯＡＲＥ强化观测资料及卫星资料分析讨论了西太平洋暖池区１１－２月间海面气象要素的平均特征。分析发现海面气压平均日变化似乎同中纬度区明显不同。文中还分析讨论了在西太暖池区西风爆发、赤道浅涡、信风逆温及ＩＴＣＥ和南太平洋辐合带ＳＰＣＺ的变化特征。     

云南勐兴铅锌矿矿体空间特征及预测前景

借助ArcGIS软件的空间统计分析功能,对矿体主要参数进行分析,获得矿体空间特征。认为铅和锌品位具有明显的正相关,品位与厚度也属正相关。在此基础上对矿区找矿远景区进行初步圈定,为探矿工程的布置提供依据。     

Open source, spatial analysis, and activity-travel behaviour research: capabilities of the aspace package

This paper reports on recent experience with the development of aspace, an Open Source (OS) library for the geographic visualization and analysis of activity-travel behaviour. The paper begins with an overview of recent progress with respect to the convergence of Open Source technology, spatial analysis, and travel behaviour research. The remainder of the paper focuses on aspace; a collection of functions that, when combined with data describing the geographical location of daily activities, can be used to visualize and describe spatial properties of individual and household activity spaces. These properties include: size, orientation, shape, and the geographical dispersion of activity locations contained within the activity space. Several planar geometries are used to transform measurable spatial properties into intuitive objects for visualizing spatial patterns of activity participation. Experiments are conducted, using data from the first wave of the 2003 Toronto Travel Activity Panel Survey, to demonstrate the potential application of aspace for basic and applied policy-based research into activity-travel behaviour. The toolkit is distributed as a downloadable ‘package’ from the Open Source R Project for Statistical Computing.      

Income distribution dynamics and cross-region convergence in Europe

This paper presents a continuous version of the model of distribution dynamics to analyse the transition dynamics and implied long-run behaviour of the EU-27 NUTS-2 regions over the period 1995–2003. It departs from previous research in two respects: first, by introducing kernel estimation and three-dimensional stacked conditional density plots as well as highest density regions plots for the visualisation of the transition function, based on Hyndman et al. (J Comput Graph Stat 5(4):315–336, 1996), and second, by combining Getis’ spatial filtering view with kernel estimation to explicitly account for the spatial dimension of the growth process. The results of the analysis indicate a very slow catching-up of the poorest regions with the richer ones, a process of shifting away of a small group of very rich regions, and highlight the importance of geography in understanding regional income distribution dynamics.

Some Results on the Spatial Breakdown Point of Robust Point Estimates of the Variogram

The effect of outliers on estimates of the variogram depends on how they are distributed in space. The ‘spatial breakdown point’ is the largest proportion of observations which can be drawn from some arbitrary contaminating process without destroying a robust variogram estimator, when they are arranged in the most damaging spatial pattern. A numerical method is presented to find the spatial breakdown point for any sample array in two dimensions or more. It is shown by means of some examples that such a numerical approach is needed to determine the spatial breakdown point for two or more dimensions, even on a regular square sample grid, since previous conjectures about the spatial breakdown point in two dimensions do not hold. The ‘average spatial breakdown point’ has been used as a basis for practical guidelines on the intensity of contaminating processes that can be tolerated by robust variogram estimators. It is the largest proportion of contaminating observations in a data set such that the breakdown point of the variance estimator used to obtain point estimates of the variogram is not exceeded by the expected proportion of contaminated pairs of observations over any lag. In this paper the behaviour of the average spatial breakdown point is investigated for cases where the contaminating process is spatially dependent. It is shown that in two dimensions the average spatial breakdown point is 0.25. Finally, the ‘empirical spatial breakdown point’, a tool for the exploratory analysis of spatial data thought to contain outliers, is introduced and demonstrated using data on metal content in the soils of Sheffield, England. The empirical spatial breakdown point of a particular data set can be used to indicate whether the distribution of possible contaminants is likely to undermine a robust variogram estimator.