Wine trails as organizational pathway toward landscape coherence: the case of the Finger Lakes region,New York,USA

This paper explores the role of so-called wine trails as planners and managers of viticultural landscapes, using the case of the Finger Lakes region in New York, USA. Using key informant interviews, it assesses the current capacity and the future potential of these non-governmental, fee-based ‘clubs’ to mediate between global markets and the local agricultural landscape in the absence of policy frameworks designed for this purpose. Though it finds little evidence of such mediation today, the paper argues that the structure and institutional position of wine trails, organizations whose members’ livelihoods depend substantially on long-term landscape coherence, position them to play a more assertive role in doing so in the future, particularly in places marked by lax planning regimes and scarce resources.     

基于CIWLDI方法的苏州湿地景观健康评价

研制改进的基于空间最小景观单元的反距离权重景观开发强度法(CIWLDI方法 ),通过累积效应整合不同的土地利用分类,从能值的角度反映湿地生物完整性,客观有效地评价大面积湿地的景观健康。研究表明:大部分健康良好的湿地分布在苏州市郊,受到人类干扰相对较小,相反临近重点开发区域的湿地则退化严重。与其它方法相比,本方法可以有效地评价不同湿地之间的整体健康状况以及单个湿地内部的健康差异情况。在缺少现场观测数据的条件下,仅使用土地利用分类图就可以在短时间内完成对大范围湿地的健康评价。     

Effects of ozone air pollution on crop pollinators and pollination

Human driven environmental changes increase the concentrations of polluting reactive compounds in the troposphere, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. These changes lead to biodiversity losses and alter plant physiology and plant-pollinator interactions, essential for pollination services, with potential consequences for agricultural production. Here we used 133 unique sampling events from NW Europe to investigate how air pollution (ozone and nitrogen oxides) and other sources of nitrogen is related to pollinator visitation rate and their contribution to agricultural production, also considering possible interactive effects with landscape quality and pesticide input. We showed that ozone modulates the effect of pesticide exposure and temperature on crop pollinators, increasing the probability of negative impacts on crop pollination. Indeed, when ozone levels are highest, the strength of the effect of pesticide on pollinators is more than double then when ozone levels are intermediate. This indicates that air pollution should be considered in management plans and policies aiming to safeguard biodiversity and promote more sustainable food production practices.     

Diversity patterns of plant place names reveal connections with environmental and social factors

There is a strong connection between cultural and biological diversity at a global scale, especially in the linguistic domain, but less is known at regional scales. Indicators of such reciprocity are found in the linguistic expression of natural elements, and their representation in the landscape through toponymy. Here we evaluate the geographic distribution of phyto-toponyms, places named after a native local flora, in Galicia, NW Spain. We created the concept of toponymic species (topo-species) for groups of places named after a plant taxon. By using different regression models assuming global effects of the variables (Ordinary Least Squares, OLS) or non-stationarity (Geographically Weighted Regression, GWR), we explored the connection of topo-species richness and diversity with environmental (river density, altitude and natural habitats density) and social (total density of toponyms, population density) factors.Topo-species richness and diversity were significantly correlated with the studied factors. Total density of toponyms, river density, altitude and natural habitats density showed significant positive values in the models, while population density had little or no effects. GWR performed better for all variables, especially for Shannon diversity index. We conclude that place names of natural elements depict human’s interaction with the environment. They are stable, spatially-explicit elements that may be used as indicators of bio-cultural diversity. In addition, they represent an intangible cultural heritage that should also be preserved.     

Emergence of the Canadian Rockies and adjacent plains: A comparison of physiography between end-of-Laramide time and the present day

The landscape of the Canadian Rockies in southern Alberta is not a direct result of constructional processes; that is, the ridges and peaks have not been pushed into the positions in which we see them today. Tectonic activity provided original elevation but not mountains: at the end of Laramide time, what are now the front ranges and foothills of the Rockies comprised a high-elevation upland of relatively low relief. The present mountain physiography is the result of 55–60 million years of post-orogenic differential erosion, in which more resistant rocks have been left at higher elevations than less-resistant rocks.The Canadian Rockies and the foothills are developed in a thin-skinned, thrust-and-fold belt created during the Laramide Orogeny; the adjacent Interior Plains cut across foreland basin sediments derived from the mountains. The mountains currently consist of large parts of ridges of well-indurated Paleozoic and, locally, Proterozoic rock alternating with valleys developed in soft Mesozoic clastic rock. In the foothills, where the soft Mesozoic rock is at the surface, relief is subdued, but ridges of more-resistant sandstone rise above shaley lowlands. The plains are relatively flat but also contain erosional outliers of higher paleo-plains-surfaces.Numerous lines of evidence suggest that the mountains and foothills have lost several kilometers of overburden since the end of the Laramide Orogeny, while the western plains have lost at least 2 km, requiring that the local relief of the mountains and foothills that we see is erosional in origin. Local physiography is adjusted to lithology: the mountains have high relief because the exposed sub-Mesozoic rocks can hold up high, steep slopes, whereas the foothills have low relief because the underlying Cretaceous rocks cannot hold up high, steep slopes. The east-facing escarpment at the mountain front is a fault-line scarp along a low-angle thrust.Mesozoic rocks involved in the deformation originally extended all the way across the thrust and fold belt, and physiography of the belt at the end of Laramide time (60–55 Ma) depended mainly on whether Mesozoic or Paleozoic/Proterozoic rocks were exposed at the surface at that time. A reconstruction using critical-taper theory generally agrees with reconstructions from earlier stratigraphic and paleothermometry studies: what are now the front ranges at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains were mostly or perhaps entirely covered with Mesozoic rocks and despite that high elevation had a hilly, not mountainous, character. The main ranges, in the central Rocky Mountains, were in part stripped of Mesozoic cover by then and more mountainous. Treeline was higher then, and the thrust belt may have been largely or entirely vegetated. Generation of modern relief in the front ranges, including the escarpment at the mountain front, had to await stripping of Mesozoic rocks and incision of rivers into harder substrates in post-Laramide time.The Interior Plains are an erosional surface that was cut 1 to 3 km below the aggradational top of the foreland basin sediments. Although some of the present low local relief of the plains results from weakness of underlying Cretaceous/Tertiary rocks, the low relief is probably largely related to the process of denudation.     

Reconstructing ancient topography through erosion modelling

One of the main aims of geomorphology is to understand how geomorphic processes change topography over long time scales. Over the last decades several landscape evolution models have been developed in order to study this question. However, evaluation of such models has often been very limited due to the lack of necessary field data. In this study we present a topography based hillslope erosion and deposition model that is based on the WATEM/SEDEM model structure and works on a millennial time scale. Soil erosion, transport and deposition are calculated using slope and unit contributing area. The topography is iteratively rejuvenated by taking into account modelled erosion and deposition rates, thereby simulating topographic development backwards in time. A first attempt has been made to spatially evaluate the model, using detailed estimates for historical soil erosion and sediment deposition volumes, obtained from an augering campaign in a small catchment in the Belgian Loess Belt. The results show that the model can simulate realistic soil redistribution patterns. However, further research is necessary in order to deal with artificial flaws that cause routing problems and significantly influence results. Common problems and issues related to this type of backward modelling are also discussed.     

Danxia landform genesis of the Qiyun Mountain, Anhui Province

The Danxia landform of Qiyun Mountain is mainly developed on the red granule conglomerates named Xiaoyan Group (K2x1) of middle Cretaceous series, which is controlled mainly by three faulted zones, namely, Jingdezhen-Qimen faulted zone, Jiangwan-Jiekou compressional faulted zone and Kaihua-Chun’an folding faulted zone. During the Cretaceous period, this area firstly experienced massif subsidence to become a continental faulted basin, then having thick Cretaceous red sediments accumulated on it. In the supervened neotectonism, this area experienced an uplifting process, which made the thick Cretaceous sediments into a mountain with an altitude of 500-600 m. After undergoing the processes of vertical joint development, weathering, denudation and transportation, as well as evidently differential weathering and denudation influenced by lithology and structure between sandstone and conglomerate, the grand Danxia landscape consisting of peak forests, steep cliffs, caves, mesas, castellated peaks, natural bridges and so on formed. The three nick points located respectively at 585 m, 400 m and 150 m generally reflect the three dominated uplifting processes during the neotectonism.     

A method for the selection of relevant pattern indices for monitoring of spatial forest cover pattern at a regional scale

When signing Agenda 21, several countries agreed to monitor the status of forests to ensure their sustainable use. For reporting on the change in spatial forest cover pattern on a regional scale, pattern metrics are widely used. These indices are not often thoroughly evaluated as to their sensitivity to remote sensing data characteristics. Hence, one would not know whether the change in the metric values was due to actual landscape pattern changes or to characteristic variation of multitemporal remote sensing data.     

Late quaternary alluvial stratigraphy of a low-order tributary in central Texas, USA and its response to climate and sediment supply

A paleomegafauna site from central Amazonia with exceptional preservation of mastodons and ground sloths allows for the first time a precise age control based on ¹⁴C analysis, which, together with sedimentological and δ¹³C isotope data, provided the basis to discuss habitat evolution within the context of climate change during the past 15,000 yr. The fossil-bearing deposits, trapped within a depression in the Paleozoic basement, record three episodes of sedimentation formed on floodplains, with an intermediate unit recording a catastrophic deposition through debris flows, probably favored during fast floodings. The integrated approach presented herein supports a change in humidity in central Amazonia through the past 15,000 yr, with a shift from drier to arboreal savanna at 11,340 (±50) ¹⁴C yr B.P. and then to a dense forest like we see today at 4620 (±60) ¹⁴C yr B.P.     

云南哀牢山的梯田景观

云南哀牢山区哈尼族人创造的独具特色的热带山区梯田景观，在与自然环境的协调过程中，巧妙地解决了农耕中的关键要素水分与肥料，创造了较高的粮生产水平，并以聚落分布的适中高度，均衡建构中介，最终内化为一种独特的文化形态，自然与人文在此所形成的高度协调关系，无疑具有重要的理直学研究意义。