The Three American Wests

In the twenty-first century, there are three American Wests, which cut across cultural, political, physical, and economic boundaries. Parts of the West are booming, building homes, and adding population; others are legally off limits to such development; and much of the West has been bypassed by such development and growth. These are called here the Booming West, Protected West, and Bypassed West. Maps of climate, political boundaries, ethnic and racial identities, or presidential voting patterns do not match these three Wests. Each West has a different relationship to the others and might see them as threats or opportunities, and each West can be expected to grow in different areas at the expense of other Wests. The boundaries between the three Wests could be important locations; sharp transitions can exist between Wests, perhaps nowhere more so than where a fast growing metro area abuts a national park or forest boundary. Finally, the effects of climate change cut across the three Wests and have different implications for their future. Continued population growth will further emphasize the boundaries between each of the three Wests and raise the stakes for their control.     

Political ecology of tiger conservation in India: Adverse effects of banning customary practices in a protected area

Protected areas have had significant impacts on local communities primarily through the physical removal of people. In some instances, people continue to live within protected areas due to the inability of the state to evict them. The restrictions on livelihoods placed on people living inside protected areas lead to in situ displacement. We show how conservation enclosures in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve have produced a class of people that the state ‘lets die’ by banning customary practices such as fire use, hunting and harvesting of forest produce. Using longitudinal ethnographic, socio‐economic and ecological data, we demonstrate that conservation policy has alienated indigenous forest dwellers from their agricultural and forest‐land. The outcomes of conservation policy include dispossession through increased crop losses, reduced income from agriculture and forest produce, as well as a forest that is dominated by weeds due to fire suppression. The ban on hunting in particular has increased wildlife densities, which has enabled the state to accumulate revenues through the establishment of wildlife tourism facilities. All in all, centralized protected area governance has changed the relationships among people, forest and the state in a way that has produced adverse effects for both livelihoods and the ecosystem.     

西北贫困地区乡村类型识别与振兴途径研究

乡村振兴战略是新时期我国推进城乡融合发展的重要举措。贫困地区既是脱贫攻坚的主战场,又是乡村振兴的重点区域。如何科学识别村落类型,分类推进典型区域乡村振兴发展,对于破解农村发展不平衡不充分问题具有重要的现实意义。本文解析了乡村地域系统发展理论,阐释了城乡融合发展理论,剖析了村域空间结构格局演变和城乡要素结构功能优化重组;构建了西北干旱贫困地区乡村振兴村落类型识别体系,从乡村主体、产业发展、人居环境、资源禀赋4个子系统进行逐级分类判断,识别乡村主导类型,结合专家征询分析与村落特征,将乡村振兴村落类型识别为集聚提升类、三产融合类、城郊融合类、特色保护类、搬迁撤并类,结合不同乡村振兴模式提出了相应地发展路径,以期为乡村振兴提供理论依据与决策参考。     

Bathymetry,substrate and fishing areas of Southeast Atlantic high-seas seamounts

Most of the Southeast Atlantic Ocean is abyssal, and global bathymetries suggest that only ～3.2% of the areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ; also known as the high seas, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS]) are shallower than 2 500 m. This study mapped bathymetry and characterised substrates in selected seamount summit areas, including several that have been or may become fishing areas. The southernmost location, the Schmitt-Ott Seamount, has exposed volcanic bedrock with surrounding flats covered by thin biogenic sediments and/or coral rubble that appears ancient. At Wüst, Vema, Valdivia and Ewing seamounts the basaltic base appears to be overlain by coral caps and other coral substrates (sheets, rubble). Adjacent summit plains have biogenic sediments of varying thickness. Vema has a flat, roughly circular summit, <100 m deep, with the shallowest point being a 22-m-deep summit knoll; the upper slopes have ancient coral framework, but the summit has a mixture of coralline and volcanic rock and coarse sediments, including extensive areas with coralline algae and kelp forests. Valdivia Bank is a 230-m-deep, flat, rocky area (～11 × 5 km), protruding steeply from the extensive multi-summit Valdivia subarea of the Walvis Ridge. The distribution of past fisheries in the Convention Area of the South East Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (SEAFO) was considered in relation to the new information on bathymetry and substrate.     

Synergetic efficiency of Lidar and WorldView-2 for 3D urban cartography in Northeast Mexico

Three-dimensional urban cartography is needed for city changes’ assessment. The variety of studies using 3D calculations of urban elements grows each year. Building and vegetation volumes are necessary to assess and understand spatio-temporal urban changeable environments. However, there are technical questions as to which method can improve 3D urban cartographic accuracy. The innovative part of this current study is the creation of a six-band hybrid obtained from LIDAR and WorldView2 synergy. Two different enhancement algorithms demonstrated the most important spectral features for the urban development and vegetation classes. Results indicated an improvement in accuracy by up to 21.3%, according to the Kappa coefficient. Both infra-red band and intensity band were the most significant, according to the principal components analysis. The synergy delimited classes and polygons, as well as the direct display of information regarding heights of elements and improving the extraction of roads, buildings and vegetation classes.     

Migration and speciation transformation mechanisms of mercury in undercurrent zones of the Tongguan gold mining area,Shaanxi Loess Plateau and impact on the environment

In order to study the migration and transformation mechanism of Hg content and occurrence form in subsurface flow zone of gold mining area in Loess Plateau and its influence on water environment, the field in-situ infiltration test and laboratory test were carried out in three typical sections of river-side loess, alluvial and proluvial strata in Tongguan gold mining area of Shaanxi Province, and the following results were obtained: (1) The source of Hg in subsurface flow zone is mainly caused by mineral processing activities; (2) the subsurface flow zone in the study area is in alkaline environment, and the residual state, iron and manganese oxidation state, strong organic state and humic acid state of mercury in loess are equally divided in dry and oxidizing environment; mercury in river alluvial or diluvial strata is mainly concentrated in silt, tailings and clayey silt soil layer, and mercury has certain stability, and the form of mercury in loess is easier to transform than the other two media; (3) under the flooding condition, most of mercury is trapped in the silt layer in the undercurrent zone where the sand and silt layers alternate with each other and the river water and groundwater are disjointed, and the migration capacity of mercury is far less than that of loess layer and alluvial layer with close hydraulic connection; (4) infiltration at the flood level accelerates the migration of pollutants to the ground; (5) the soil in the undercurrent zone is overloaded and has seriously exceeded the standard. Although the groundwater monitoring results are safe this time, relevant enterprises or departments should continue to pay attention to improving the gold extraction process, especially vigorously rectify the small workshops for illegal gold extraction and the substandard discharge of the three wastes, and intensify efforts to solve the geological environmental problems of mines left over from history. At present, the occurrence form of mercury in the undercurrent zone is relatively stable, but the water and soil layers have been polluted. The risk of disjointed groundwater pollution can not be ignored while giving priority to the treatment of loess and river alluvial landform areas with close hydraulic links. The research results will provide a scientific basis for water conservancy departments to groundwater prevention and control in water-deficient areas of the Loess Plateau.     

中国西北半干旱区土地景观变化成因--以榆林市为例

1 Introduction Landscape change is a result of the complex interactions between physical, biological, political, economic and social driving forces (Moody and Woodcock 1995; Apan et al., 2002). Landscape in arid and semi-arid China is extremely vulnerabl…     

大兴安岭火烧迹地土壤动物生态地理分析

不同恢复年份森林火烧迹地的土壤动物群落特征明显不同。火烧过后的前1³年,大型土壤动物的种类和数量很少,特别是常见类群中的线蚓所占的比例很小,但运动能力较强的蜈蚣、蜘蛛等所占比例较高。火烧3⁵年后,土壤中线蚓数量才逐渐增多并趋于稳定。中小型土壤动物中的原尾虫只出现在16年迹地和对比样地中,表明原尾虫确是稳定生境的指示动物。火烧过后,土壤环境中最先侵入的是运动能力较强的大型土壤动物,之后中小型土壤动物才逐渐得到恢复。火烧后6⁷年是中小型土壤动物发展的盛期,随后土壤动物种类和数量开始减少并趋于稳定。火烧的强度对土壤动物群落的恢复有一定的影响,轻度火烧影响地区的土壤动物恢复较快,经过6⁷年,土壤动物种类和数量能超过未受火烧影响的地区;而中、重度火烧地区,土壤动物恢复到正常水平则需要超过16年的更长的时间。     

批判实在论在城市空间研究中的应用

批判实在论是一种有关社会科学的哲学理论,它从浅显易懂的本体论出发,抨击了传统科学研究中背离客观实在的种种理想主义倾向,如对“规律性”的迷信、对计量分析方法的过分依赖等。在上世纪80年代批判实在论被引入到西方城市空间研究中、发展为一种新的研究范式,该范式在对传统空间分析研究的批判基础上强调对空间现象的因果机制的阐释,提出了有关因果机制的概念框架,认为只有透过错综复杂的因果关系去把握决定事物的深层结构和机制,才能避免传统研究中常出现的“混乱归因”现象,为此发展了具体研究和抽象研究、深入研究和广泛研究相结合的研究方法,并将其应用于城市空间研究实践中。本研究对批判实在论范式的产生背景和哲学基础等进行了分析,介绍了其理论脉络、方法论和研究实践,并对该范式进行了评价。     

中国西南喀斯特地区石漠化成因及防治初探

喀斯特地区石漠化,是我国西南地区生态环境最突出的问题。首先探讨我国西南地区喀斯特石漠化成因,主要有自然因素和人为因素两方面的原因,指出喀斯特石漠化引起的干旱缺水、土壤贫瘠、地质灾害等严重威胁当地人民的生产和生活;据此,提出防治喀斯特石漠化的基本措施,即缓解人口压力、加快生态建设、调整产业结构与布局等。