Late Quaternary landscapes in Central Australia: sedimentary history and palaeoecology of Puritjarra rock shelter

Puritjarra rock shelter provides a long record of late Quaternary vegetation in the Australian arid zone. Analysis of the sedimentary history of this rock shelter is combined with reanalysis of charcoal and phytolith records to provide a first‐order picture of changing landscapes in western Central Australia. These show a landscape responding to increasing aridity from 45 ka with deflation of clay‐rich red palaeosols (<45 ka) and sharp declines in grassland and other vegetation at 40–36 ka, and at the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (24 ka). Vegetation in the catchment of the rock shelter recovered after 15 ka with expansion of both acacia woodland and spinifex grasslands, registering stronger summer rainfall in the interior of the continent. By 8.3 ka re‐vegetation of local palaeosols and dunes had choked off sediment supply to the rock shelter and the character of the sediments changed abruptly. Poaceae values peaked at 5.8 ka, suggesting the early–mid Holocene climatic optimum in Central Australia is bracketed between 8.3 and 5.8 ka. Local vegetation was disrupted in the late Holocene with a sharp decline in Poaceae at 3.8 ka, coinciding with an abrupt intensification of ENSO. Local grasslands recovered over the next two millennia and by 1.5 ka the modern vegetation appears to have become established. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Late Quaternary vegetation changes around Lake Rutundu,Mount Kenya,East Africa: evidence from grass cuticles,pollen and stable carbon isotopes

Woody, subalpine shrubs and grasses currently surround Lake Rutundu, Mount Kenya. Multiple proxies, including carbon isotopes, pollen and grass cuticles, from a 755‐cm‐long core were used to reconstruct the vegetation over the past 38 300 calendar years. Stable carbon‐isotope ratios of total organic carbon and terrestrial biomarkers from the lake sediments imply that the proportion of terrestrial plants using the C₄ photosynthetic pathway was greater during the Late Pleistocene than in the Holocene. Pollen data show that grasses were a major constituent of the vegetation throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The proportion of grass pollen relative to the pollen from other plants was greatest at the last glacial maximum (LGM). Grass cuticles confirm evidence that C₄ grass taxa were present at the LGM and that the majority followed the cold‐tolerant NADP‐MEC₄ subpathway. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Geophysiology and Parahistology of the Interactions of Organisms with the Environment*

Abstract. Ecology and Global Ecology (GE) are terms by which the relations between the organism (or living matter as a whole) and the environment (or Earth as a whole) have been treated for almost a century. Geophysiology and Parahistology (PH) are terms slowly replacing older scientific thoughts jointly with an increasing number of modifications and alterations of the Darwinian Evolution (DE) concept. Somehow Geophysiology and Parahistology seem to describe evolution in a non-Darwinian domain. According to V.I. Vernadsky (1929,1930,1988) - the great Russian naturalist and biogeochemist - the biogeochemical processes on Earth are controlled by the force of living matter rather than by species associations developing in and with individual ecosystems as expressed by darwinian evolutionary terms. He also claimed that Goethe was incorrectly regarded as a predecessor of DE by some authors (including Darwin) and that “Natur” (nature) and “Lebendige Natur” (the totality of creatures) are two very different things for Goethe. Detailed analyses of microbial mat systems in the German Wadden Sea and in artificial hypersaline WInogradsky columns have shown that the totality of creatures and matter around them i.e., the “lebendige Natur”sensu Goethe or “living matter”sensu Vernadsky of such environments control to a considerable extent the structure, stability. and (geo-)morphology of sediments and thereby the geological structure of the living Earth. These structures do not follow the rules of sedimentation formulated by the laws of Stokes They represent growth structures (Aufwuchs), whose physics and dynamics are controlled by complex fractal systems. The factors controlling the ultimate shape and stabilisation potential of the eventually resulting rocks and fossils are comparable to tissue development in macroorganisms. Also, certain microbial associations in the sub-recent and in the fossil record may be compared to metazoan tissues. Chemical gradients in the sedimentary column, regulated by the interplay of living matter and sluggish (slow-reactive to non-reactive) compounds, combine to create a pattern of porosity and structure of the resulting deposits that clearly indicates microbial influences and especially those of extracellular polymeric substances on the morphology and texture. The combined effects of microbiota or living matter on the sedimentary record are described as parahistology of sediments in analogy of the histology of tissue on a geological scale. This conceptual living tissue made up of microbially generated rocks and ore deposits cycled through metabolic processes and forced into tissue-like structures by microbial biofilms and mats may extend down to the upper mantle of Earth and far up into the stratosphere when Earth is regarded as a living entity over geological periods. We may have to conceive Earth as a living specimen, which is breathing at a frequency of thousands of years instead of the normal physiological breathing rate of man or an insect. Macroorganisms in all terrestrial systems represent the transport and logistic media, which, however, utterly depend on myriads of intra-, inter-, and extracellular microbial symbiotic partners.     

青岛文昌鱼的生活史──年龄、生长和死亡研究

于１９８９年８月－１９９０年７月对青岛文昌鱼的生活史进行研究。结果表明：（１）青岛文昌鱼种群由４个齿组组成，它至少生产４ａ以上，甚至可达６ａ左右。（２）在Ⅰ、Ⅱ齿时生长较快，平均年生长１３－１５ｍｍ，Ⅲ龄后生长速度减慢，即使同一年龄组的文晶鱼，在不同季节其生长速度也不同。（３）在冬春采集的文昌鱼中Ⅲ龄组的峰值较小。（４）繁殖季节过后，老龄文昌鱼因衰老而死亡。     

Withered Geography

This commentary is a response to an article by Jay R. Harman in the November 2003 issue of The Professional Geographer. I argue that Harman's claim that scholarly disciplines offer social “returns” in a competitive “market” obscures the fundamentally political nature of how social resources are allocated and how social needs are defined. Harman would have us subordinate scholarly research to agendas set elsewhere, by politicians and other powerful interests, but I argue that such a vision would turn geographers into mere technicians. A healthier role for the discipline is for geographers to seek ways of asserting intellectual leadership and of shaping social agendas along more humane and socially just lines.     

'Trees, forests and communities': some historiographical approaches to environmental history on Africa

Focusing on the contested issue of trees and forests, this paper looks at various ways in which historians have explored environmental change and human agency in Africa. It looks in particular at the colonial period and positions the case of the Cape Colony (South Africa) in a broader historiographical context. Colonial silviculture involved both the appropriation of the natural forests and the creation of exotic plantations. These policies generated a mixture of reactions from African communities and had varying effects on the environment. Colonial science and the projects it gave rise to have since been critiqued, contributing to the promotion of community-based forestry schemes that try to incorporate indigenous knowledge and ideas about land use.     

大型双槽渡槽地震反应分析

为了得到比较精确的大型双槽渡槽结构的地震反应，根据渡槽结构复杂、影响动力因素较多等特点，采用8结点空间块体单元对渡槽槽身和槽墩进行有限元离散，分别用耦合自由度和多个弹簧单元分别模拟渡槽槽身横向拉杆、加劲肋和盆式橡胶支座，建立了大型双槽渡槽结构地层反应分析的有限元模型，计算了南水北调水利工程中的双洎河大型双槽渡槽的振动特性，并分别用反应谱法和时程分析法对该渡槽进行了地震反应分析，计算结果可为该渡槽的抗震设计提供参考。     

超积累植物与找矿

本文介绍了超积累植物的概念和它在地质找矿中的意义,回顾了国外超积累植物的研究历史,并对应用超积累植物进行找矿的发展方向进行了讨论。