Configurations of community in flood risk management

ABSTRACT

Despite a notable increase in the literature on community resilience, the notion of ‘community’ remains underproblematised. This is evident within flood risk management (FRM) literature, in which the understanding and roles of communities may be acknowledged but seldom discussed in any detail. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how community networks are configured by different actors, whose roles and responsibilities span spatial scales within the context of FRM. Accordingly, the authors analyse findings from semi-structured interviews, policy documents, and household surveys from two flood prone areas in Finnish Lapland. The analysis reveals that the ways in which authorities, civil society, and informal actors take on multiple roles are intertwined and form different types of networks. By implication, the configuration of community is fuzzy, elusive and situated, and not confined to a fixed spatiality. The authors discuss the implications of the complex nature of community for FRM specifically, and for community resilience more broadly. They conclude that an analysis of different actors across scales contributes to an understanding of the configuration of community, including community resilience, and how the meaning of community takes shape according to the differing aims of FRM in combination with differing geographical settings.     

Geomorphological evidence of paleoseismicity: Surficial and underground structures of Pasmajärvi postglacial fault

The cyclic nature of glaciations and related postglacial faulting represents a risk for the deep geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel in areas likely to be affected by future glaciations. Seismic history was therefore studied by means of detecting geomorphological structures on airborne laser scanning digital elevation models and underground by excavating in an esker and trenching across a postglacial fault located in northern Fennoscandia. OLS dating and assessing the geomorphological structures was used for timing of the seismic history. The results suggest that the faulting of different segments in the Pasmajärvi complex is due to at least two late Weichselian events, which probably occurred both subglacially and postglacially. The most reliable input for the moment magnitude estimates was vertical slip profiles, and therefore these estimates (M_W ≈ 6.4–6.9) are suggested. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Precipitation effects of hail suppression in Serbia

Summary Daily precipitation amounts ofconvective days, for some 20 May–September seasons (covering periods both before and after activation of the hail suppression), were analysed for 3 stations in the protected and 4 in the unprotected area. A tentative conclusions derived from this study is that precipitation at the protected stations in the period of suppression changed from the preceding period in a way which cannot be explained by similar changes at the unprotected stations. This change is attributed to the inadvertent hail suppression effect. The point estimate of the change is an increase of 23% (on convective days). At the 95% confidence level the estimate shows an increase in the interval (8%, 40%). A rough estimate of theseasonal increase for the protected area is about 30 mm.

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Zusammenfassung Die Tagesniederschlagsmengenkonvektiver Tage wurden über einen Zeitraum von etwa 20 Jahren (jeweils Mai bis September), wobei dies sowohl die Zeit vor als auch nach Einführung der Hagelabwehr beinhaltet, an drei Stationen im Abwehrgebiet und an vier außerhalb gelegenen analysiert. Das vorläufige Ergebnis der Studie zeigt Veränderungen der Niederschläge in geschützten Gebieten im Vergleich zur vorhergehenden Periode, die an den Vergleichsstationen nicht aufzufinden sind.Diese Veränderungen werden unbeabsichtigten Nebenwirkungen der Hagelunterdrückung zugeschrieben. Punktuelle Schätzungen ergaben eine Niederschlagszunahme von 23% (an Konvektivtagen). Im 95% Konfidenzintervall zeigten sie einen Anstieg im Bereich zwischen 8% bis 40%. Eine ungefähre Schätzung derjahreszeitlichen Niederschlagsmengen ergibt einen Zuwachs von etwa 30 mm.

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With 6 Figures     

Diversity of murtoos and murtoo-related subglacial landforms in the Finnish area of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet

Murtoos are recently discovered triangular-shaped subglacial landforms that form under warm-based ice and in association with significant subglacial meltwater flow. They appear in distinct fields and commonly occur in the area that was covered by the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet during glacial periods. Murtoos potentially represent a transition form from non-channelized to channelized subglacial drainage networks. In the present study, we analyse and classify murtoos and murtoo-related landforms in the Finnish area of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet based on their characteristics and appearance in LiDAR-based digital elevations models. Combined with morphometric analyses, the observations suggest that five types of murtoos and murtoo-related landforms are common and widespread in Finland: (i) triangle-type murtoos (TTMs), (ii) chevron-type murtoos (CTMs), (iii) lobate-type murtoos (LTMs), (iv) murtoo-related ridges and escarpments (MREs), and (v) other murtoo-related polymorphous landforms (PMRs) that look like small mounds and ridges. The morphometric characteristics of the different types are described here in detail, and it is shown that they are spatially and geomorphologically related. In addition, we provide examples of murtoos other than the TTMs to demonstrate that different murtoo types and murtoo-related landforms are composed of similar sediments and architectural characteristics. The diversity of murtoo landforms and the transition between distinct murtoo types indicate rapid and complicated variations in the configuration of subglacial hydrology at different spatial and temporal scales. This study emphasizes the essential role of subglacial meltwater in the shaping of glacial landscapes and the redistribution of large volumes of sediments during the deglaciation of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet.