Spatial pattern of rural settlements in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River

A quantitative analysis of the spatial pattern of rural settlements in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River was made with the major data sources being the relevant ETM image and the national geographical database of China (including contour line, river and road) at the scale of 1:250 000, and using image interpretation and field investigation to obtain spatial information on rural settlements. The results of the spatial analysis technique of GIS and correlation analysis showed that most settlements (78.2 %) were located in the mountain area at 1500 ∼ 2700 m altitude, and almost half in the arid valley area. More than 80.0 % of settlements had their slopes above 15°. Most settlements had good access to water resources, roads and communications, and tended to cluster close to the road network rather than the river. About half of the rural settlements in the study area were relatively concentrated, while the others were decentralized. Those with higher altitude usually had land with steep slope, inconvenient water and road accesses, and were located far apart from each other. In view of such a situation, further research should be done to make reasonable countermeasures on these settlements for better living conditions and ecosystem stability.     

Risk, rescue and emergency services: The changing spatialities of Mountain Rescue Teams in England and Wales

This paper considers the role of the emergency services in society and, in particular, their role in controlling, mitigating and resolving risk. Using a network approach, Mountain Rescue Teams are studied in order to examine how people, agencies, animals, technology and knowledge are deployed to resolve emergencies. The paper traces the changing nature of risk in rural places and the impact of state regulation on the deployment, spatialities and practices of the emergency services. In doing so, it argues that greater attention should be paid to the emergency services by geographers.     

Developing local adaptation strategies for climate change in agriculture: A priority-setting approach with application to Latin America

Even with substantially increased attention to climate adaptation in developing countries in recent years, there are a number of important remaining research needs: better incorporating stakeholder input; using replicable methodologies to provide comparability across different settings; assuring that stakeholder input reflects the results of climate science, not simply perceptions; and effectively linking stakeholder input with the regional and national levels at which policy changes are made. This study reports the results of a methodology for identifying and prioritizing local, stakeholder-driven response options to climate change in agriculture. The approach is based on multi-criteria scoring methods previously applied to research planning and priority-setting in agricultural and natural resource management research, public health, and other areas. The methodology is a sequential approach built around needs assessments by local stakeholders; the incorporation of climate science results; the sharing of these results and climate adaption response options with stakeholders at a series of workshops; stakeholder priority-setting exercises using multi-criteria scoring; and validation with policymakers. The application is to three diverse agroecosystems in Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. Among the many findings is that, notwithstanding the wide diversity of agro-ecosystems, there are numerous similarities in the agricultural adaptation responses prioritized by local stakeholders.     

安徽省池州市农村土地整治与美好乡村建设耦合联动研究

在安徽省提出推进美好乡村建设的背景下,界定了农村土地整治与美好乡村建设耦合联动的内涵、实质和系统,探讨了安徽省池州市农村土地整治与美好乡村建设耦合联动内容,探索了农村土地整治与美好乡村建设耦合联动保障机制。研究表明,农村土地整治是推进美好乡村建设的有力抓手,而建设美好乡村则是实施农村土地整治的重要目标,且二者通过农地整治系统、农村建设用地整治系统和农村土地生态环境整治系统耦合联动。二者耦合联动的内容包括：推进农地整治工程,建设生产发展的美好乡村;推进农村建设用地整治工程,建设生活宜居的美好乡村;推进农村土地生态环境整治工程,建设生态文明的美好乡村。要实现农村土地整治与美好乡村建设耦合联动需要通过构建以下机制：规划协调保障机制、创新融资保障机制、农民权益保障机制、技术支撑保障机制和制度创新保障机制。     

苍山县农村宅基地管理中存在的问题及对策

农村宅基地管理工作中,非法占地、非法转让土地、超面积占地、一户多宅、擅自改变宅基地用途和划新不丢旧等各种违法行为层出不穷,造成了农村宅基地管理混乱的局面。因此,必须加强宣传,做好规划、编制,完善相关法律、法规及执法监察等工作。     

The political geography of religion: historical state-church relations in Europe and recent challenges

Historical processes of state formation and nation building are crucial for an understanding of the geography of religions and churches in Europe. Each country has developed its own model of state-church relations, giving rise to a ‘bewildering variety’ as Grace Davie aptly remarks. The aim of this paper is to bring some order to this variety by developing a framework for the comparative study of church-state relations based on Stein Rokkan’s famous conceptual map and recent extensions of it to Central and Eastern Europe by John Madeley. According to that framework Europe has been divided into three mono-confessional (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox) blocs and two multi-confessional culture belts from Northwest to Southeast, and from Northeast to Southeast. This historical pattern has been challenged by secularisation, which started with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (Western Europe) and the Russian Revolution (Eastern Europe until the velvet revolutions of 1989/1991) and then became widespread after the ‘cultural revolutions’ of the 1960s. A second challenge has to do with globalisation and its consequences, such as massive immigration and the rise of immigrant religions, and in general deterritorialisation, which means the disembeddedness of religion from its national territory. A third challenge concerns reterritorialisation at other (supranational, regional, transnational, and local) scales, of which the new territorial order of the European Union seems to be the most important. Finally, this paper serves as an introduction to the case studies on church-state relations in this special issue.     

Everyday work: A survey of the 2014 Applied Geography Conference

A selection of application papers presented at the 2014 Applied Geography Conference in Atlanta, Georgia are included in this special issue of Applied Geography. The wide-ranging topics of the papers reflect the many directions Geography is applied to solve practical issues in our society.     

Addressing Scottish rural fuel poverty through a regional industrial symbiosis strategy for the Scottish forest industries sector

Tackling fuel poverty is central to the delivery of the Scottish Executive’s commitment to social justice. Many Scottish rural households are not linked into the mains gas network and rely on expensive alternatives, despite being surrounded by plentiful supplies of low-cost renewable wood biomass. A regional study was undertaken to establish the potential market for pelletised wood fuel, available as a low-value by-product from the rapidly expanding Scottish forest industry sector. The wider implications of the research findings are analysed by extending the principles of industrial symbiosis from a site-specific to a regional scale. Promoting an indigenous pellet-based wood fuel market for rural Scotland would fulfil important Scottish Executive economic, social and environmental sustainability objectives. Adding off-site social symbiotic elements increases the potential for on-site technical symbiosis in nascent Scottish forest industry clusters. At present, market failure is preventing the realisation of these benefits, and the paper concludes by identifying ways in which market intermediation, through wood fuel energy service companies, might overcome the current barriers to exploiting such symbiosis.     

论工业变化的综合研究：以澳大利亚制造业为例

80年代以来,国际工业地理学界采取不同的方法途径对工业变化进行研究。本文在分析这些方法的基础上,提出将工业组织变化与工业区域变化、工业结构变化加以结合,以弥补在工业区域和结构变化研究中忽视组织决策因素,在工业组织变化研究中忽视把区域作为一个整体。基于大量统计数据和本人实地调查资料,本文应用这种综合方法研究了70年代以来澳大利亚的工业变化。     

Living with the Anthropocene blues

In this short discussion, we consider societal responses to the (impending) ‘death of nature’ associated with the epoch now dubbed the Anthropocene. We forward the case for a geographical perspective that engages with psychological and psychoanalytic analyses to better understand responses and coping mechanisms, such as societal death anxiety.