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  • 1
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    Climatology in support of climate risk management: A progress report (2015)
    Sage
    Details
    Publication Date: 2015-08-08
    Description: Climate risk management has emerged over the last decade as a distinct area of activity within the wider field of climatology. Its focus is on integrating climate and non-climate information in order to enhance the decision-making process in a wide range of climate-sensitive sectors of society, the economy and the environment. Given the burgeoning pure and applied climate science literature that addresses a range of climate risks, the purpose of this progress report is to provide an overview of recent developments in the field of climatology that may contribute to the risk assessment component of climate risk management. Data rescue and climate database construction, hurricanes and droughts as examples of extreme climate events and seasonal climate forecasting are focused on in this report and are privileged over other topics because of either their fundamental importance for establishing event probability or scale of societal impact. The review of the literature finds that historical data rescue, climate reconstruction and the compilation of climate data bases has assisted immensely in understanding past climate events and increasing the information base for managing climate risk. Advances in the scientific understanding of the causes and the characterization of hurricanes and droughts stand to benefit the management of these two extreme events while work focused on unravelling the nature of ocean–atmosphere interactions and associated climate anomalies at the seasonal timescale has provided the basis for the possible seasonal forecasting of a range of climate events. The report also acknowledges that despite the potential of climate information to assist with managing climate risk, its uptake by decision makers should not be automatically assumed by the climatological community.
    Print ISSN: 0309-1333
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0296
    Topics: Geography
    Published by Sage
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  • 2
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    Rural geography I: Changing expectations and contradictions in the rural (2013)
    Sage
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    Publication Date: 2013-09-12
    Description: Rural areas are increasingly thought of in terms of opportunity, as engines of growth in a world of economic uncertainty, they are being challenged in terms of their role in providing safe and secure food supplies, and they are being lauded and criticized in terms of climate change and mitigation. The multiple scales of these discussions, and the intensity and increased volume of rural debate that has emerged, see rural geographers occupy an interesting space in terms of conceptualizations, engagement and understanding of rural livelihoods and rural sustainability. Through the lens of agriculture and related spheres, the principal issues pertaining to agriculture as a sectoral activity and an instrument of rural and regional development, this report explores rural geographers’ critique of agriculture and small-scale farming in sustainable rural futures and the changing expectations and contradictions that currently abound.
    Print ISSN: 0309-1325
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0288
    Topics: Geography
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  • 3
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    Seasonality in the early Holocene: Extending fossil-based estimates with a forest ecosystem process model (2011)
    Sage
    In: Holocene
    Details
    Publication Date: 2011-05-26
    Description: Past seasonality changes are often poorly represented by Quaternary proxies because one season, or one factor, dominates the reconstructed signal. During the early Holocene in New Zealand, mean annual temperatures were at least 1.5°C warmer than present. However, treelines were lower, suggesting summers were cooler. Here we use a forest ecosystem process model, LINKNZ, to explore past precipitation and temperature seasonality changes in an intermontane basin of the Southern Alps, New Zealand. Pollen and macrofossils from the basin show that during an early-Holocene warm event (11 500 to 9500 cal. yr BP) podocarp and broadleaved species dominated. In exploratory modelling runs, mean annual temperatures were increased by up to 2°C, precipitation was reduced by 20—30%, and temperature seasonality reduced. When mean annual temperature was increased by 1.0—2.0°C, LINKNZ reconstructed wet forest associations, very different to those in the early-Holocene fossil assemblages. Acceptable matches were made with the early-Holocene vegetation using elevated temperature scenarios with up to 30% lower annual precipitation and decreased temperature seasonality. Longer growing seasons apparently compensate for cooler summer temperatures. We suggest that during the early Holocene in this area, westerly wind flow over the Southern Alps to the west of the basin was less, reducing spill-over rainfall and vapour pressure deficits. Warm oceans generated milder, cloudier climates reducing seasonal contrasts. Inverse modelling is recommended as a tool for exploring past climate scenarios when proxies fail to reconstruct important climate variables.
    Print ISSN: 0959-6836
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0911
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences
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  • 4
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    Rural geography II: Discourses of food and sustainable rural futures (2015)
    Sage
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    Publication Date: 2015-01-10
    Description: A dominant discourse in contemporary rural debate relates to food. Deliberated in multiple and complex ways, the conversation vacillates between issues of food sustainability, security, type and provenance, to those of food scarcity, access and safety. Further compounding this complexity, food is equally central to discourses of energy, climate change, biofuels, production patterns, land use and a ‘21st-century land rush’. The use and management of rural resources consequently finds itself near the top of current political, social, economic and environmental agendas. However, while there have been limited contributions by rural geographers on food-related issues, there is no doubting that the oft-declared challenge of providing safe and secure food supplies, and feeding a growing world population, has witnessed increased vigour of engagement. This report explores this engagement, deliberating on the promotion of a ‘new productivism’, the endorsement of the role of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in securing food supplies, the escalation of global land grabs, and the subsequent impacts on sustainable rural futures.
    Print ISSN: 0309-1325
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0288
    Topics: Geography
    Published by Sage
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  • 5
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    Rural geography III: Do we really have a choice? The bioeconomy and future rural pathways (2015)
    Sage
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    Publication Date: 2015-09-29
    Description: Expectations and contradictions in the rural, played out through small-scale farming, the pervasive nature of globalization, discourses of food security, new productivism and escalation in global land grabs have been shown in previous reports to impact greatly on sustainable rural futures. The analysis continues here by exploring another often contradictory pathway, that of sustainable intensification. The bioeconomy and its nascent popularity in rural policy discourse is discussed before questions are posed about the ‘logic’ of sustainable intensification, its increasingly dominant positioning as a guiding principle, and its conceivable use as a rural policy instrument.
    Print ISSN: 0309-1325
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0288
    Topics: Geography
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  • 6
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    Consumer Response to Product-Integrated Energy Feedback: Behavior, Goal Level Shifts, and Energy Conservation (2011)
    Sage
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    Publication Date: 2011-05-21
    Description: Results of recent experiments suggest that interactive control panels of individual appliances can be used to stimulate energy saving behavior by offering the means for consumers to set a goal and receive immediate energy use feedback. The underlying source of the behavioral response, however, remains unclear. The present study compares the effects of a foot-in-the-door intervention, designed to activate a general conservation goal, and a specific task-related goal-setting procedure on the basis of feedback intervention theory (FIT). FIT predicts that any intervention that results in activating a goal at any other hierarchical level of specificity than that needed to perform a task in an energy-saving way will distract attention from the conservation action and attenuate performance. Results lend support to this interpretation. The roles of attention, goal parameters, and goal prioritization are discussed in terms of the present and future research.
    Print ISSN: 0013-9165
    Electronic ISSN: 1552-390X
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Psychology
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  • 7
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    Nutrient cycling in the palaeorecord: Fluxes from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems (2013)
    Sage
    In: Holocene
    Details
    Publication Date: 2013-10-15
    Description: Transfer of nutrients from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems is a natural process with climatic, biotic, and geologic controls. Recently, increasing concern about human manipulation of global nutrient cycles has required a long-term approach to assessing the nutrient status of aquatic systems. Data available in palaeorecords can assess current trophic status, baseline conditions, and long-term processes controlling nutrient fluxes on decadal to millennial timescales. Here, we review three palaeolimnological methods used to reconstruct nutrient cycling: (1) chemical compounds preserved in lacustrine sediment, (2) aquatic biotic indicators (often using a quantitative transfer function), and (3) quantitative empirical sediment flux estimates. The millennial-scale regulation of nutrient cycling by climate and catchment geochemistry leads to a gradual trajectory of dystrophication over the Holocene in many temperate lakes. In many systems, the magnitude of recent anthropogenic changes to nutrient cycling is large compared with natural fluctuations, but this perspective could also be due to the selection of study sites that are currently experiencing eutrophication. Increased nutrient loading to aquatic systems is not always accompanied by decreased ecosystem function. The powerful temporal perspective from palaeolimnology can be complemented with modern mechanistic approaches to lead to increased understanding of the rates, patterns, and mechanisms of nutrient fluxes.
    Print ISSN: 0959-6836
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0911
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences
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  • 8
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    Book Review: Tree Rings and Natural Hazards - A State of the Art (2011)
    Sage
    In: Holocene
    Details
    Publication Date: 2011-09-29
    Print ISSN: 0959-6836
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0911
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences
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  • 9
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    Simulating fluvial fluxes in the Danube watershed: The 'Little Ice Age' versus modern day (2011)
    Sage
    In: Holocene
    Details
    Publication Date: 2011-12-23
    Description: Climate change and human activities in Europe have altered erosion and riverine sediment transport for thousands of years. The Danube River basin, the second largest watershed in Europe, provides a unique study area to examine these impacts on fluvial discharge through available reconstructed climate data during the ‘Little Ice Age’ cold interval, as well as documented timing of deforestation and large dam emplacement. Suspended sediment flux of the Danube watershed and its variability in response to both climatic adjustments and human influences is analyzed at the sub-basin scale using a numerical modeling approach ( HydroTrend 3.0 ). The system is examined over three time periods under conditions corresponding to: (1) modern day, (2) pre-dam and (3) the ‘Little Ice Age’. Modeled results indicate that modern-day suspended sediment flux is approximately 60% and 80% lower than that simulated under pre-dam and ‘Little Ice Age’ conditions, respectively. Disregarding the effects of modern-day dams, sediment flux has decreased 46% since the ‘Little Ice Age’, largely due to declining rates of deforestation since the mid to late twentieth century. High-resolution (decadal) analyses based solely on climate change, i.e. assuming no human impact, suggest that suspended sediment flux should be approximately 5% higher today than during the ‘Little Ice Age’, despite a 10% decrease in water discharge.This supports the view that human influence is the dominant forcing agent in modifying, and even reversing, natural processes on the Earth’s surface. Results also suggest that a 4°C increase in average European annual temperatures, as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the end of this century, could result in increased sediment flux by 16–63% in individual basins.
    Print ISSN: 0959-6836
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0911
    Topics: Geography , Geosciences
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  • 10
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    Human biometeorology (2012)
    Sage
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    Publication Date: 2012-01-20
    Description: Human biometeorology is experiencing resurgence because of concerns about the impact of weather and climate on living organisms and the effects of human activities on the atmospheric environment. The purpose of this progress report is to review recent research in three strongly emergent areas of human biometeorology, namely human thermal comfort assessment, ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and climate and vector borne disease. Within the field of human thermal comfort assessment there is evidence of a shift away from empirical two-variable to numerically solved human heat budget based indices for assessing human thermal comfort, although the former are still applied widely. Recent research activity concerning UVR has focused on the evaluation of measurement error, the examination of controlling factors, the reconstruction of long-term records using a variety of methods for the analysis of UVR trends and variability and climate change related projections of future UVR levels. While for some regions clear evidence has emerged of an association between climate and vector borne disease, for other regions the situation is unclear or complex. This poses a challenge for developing climate-based early warning systems for diseases such as malaria and dengue and making projections of the potential impacts of climate change on the geographic range and magnitude of VBD. From the material reviewed in this progress report it is clear that human biometeorology fits comfortably within physical geography as it addresses many of the issues aligned with the human-environment, spatial and earth science traditions of physical geography.
    Print ISSN: 0309-1333
    Electronic ISSN: 1477-0296
    Topics: Geography
    Published by Sage
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