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Books > Earth & environment > Geography
This book systematically discusses the vegetation dynamics in
northern China since the LGM, with a focus on three dominant tree
species (Pinus, Quercus and Betula). By integrating methods of
palaeoecology, phylogeography and species distribution model, it
reconstructs the glacial refugia in northern China, demonstrating
that the species were located further north than previously assumed
during the LGM. The postglacial dynamics of forest distribution
included not only long-distance north-south migration but also
local spread from LGM micro-refugia in northern China. On the
regional scale, the book shows the altitudinal migration pattern of
the three dominant tree genera and the role of topographical
factors in the migration of the forest-steppe border. On the
catchment scale, it analyzes Huangqihai Lake, located in the
forest-steppe ecotone in northern China, to indentify the local
forest dynamics response to the Holocene climatic change. It shows
that local forests have various modes of response to the climate
drying, including shrubland expansion, savannification and
replacement of steppe. In brief, these studies at different
space-time scales illustrate the effects of climate, topography and
other factors on forest migration.
This book examines "New Localism' - exploring how communities have
turned towards more local concerns: my street, my town, my state,
as an expression of dissatisfaction with globalization. It details
the ideas that have created a political force that academics have
often misunderstood and provides a template for further
investigation with a strong focus on how to harness the motivations
behind such changes for the benefit of individuals, communities and
the more-than-human environment. The book discusses human progress,
both individual and collective, in terms of the interactions of the
local and the global, the specific and the universal, and the
concrete and the abstract. It also considers how forms of social
progress can be understood and reconfigured in the context of the
rejection of certain aspects of liberal intelligentsia orthodoxy
over recent years. Developing his arguments with specific reference
to the evolving, political landscape, the author helps readers to
understand major events such as the Trump presidency and the
British vote to leave the EU from a fully semiotic perspective. He
also explains how educational processes can use and respond to such
events in ways that are locally grounded but nevertheless not at
odds with more abstract formulations of progress such as
sustainability and social justice.
An annual collection of studies of individuals who have made major
contributions to the development of geography and geographical
thought. Subjects are drawn from all periods and from all parts of
the world, and include famous names as well as those less well
known: explorers, independent thinkers and scholars. Each paper
describes the geographer's education, life and work and discusses
their influence and spread of academic ideas. Each study includes a
select bibliography and brief chronology. The work includes a
general index and a cumulative index of geographers listed in
volumes published to date.
In this sequel to Kingston, Jamaica: Urban Development and Social
Change, 1692 to 1962 (1975) Colin Clarke investigates the role of
class, colour, race, and culture in the changing social
stratification and spatial patterning of Kingston, Jamaica since
independence in 1962. He also assesses the strains - created by the
doubling of the population - on labour and housing markets, which
are themselves important ingredients in urban social
stratification. Special attention is also given to colour, class,
and race segregation, to the formation of the Kingston ghetto, to
the role of politics in the creation of zones of violence and drug
trading in downtown Kingston, and to the contribution of the arts
to the evolution of national culture. A special feature is the
inclusion of multiple maps produced and compiled using GIS
(geographical information systems). The book concludes with a
comparison with the post-colonial urban problems of South Africa
and Brazil, and an evalution of the de-colonization of Kingston.
This book highlights what are likely to be the future megatrends in
the water sector and why and how they should be incorporated to
improve water governance in the coming decades. In this first ever
book on megatrends for the water sector, 22 leading world experts
from different disciplines representing academia, business,
government, national and international organisations discuss what
the major megatrends of the future are and how they will radically
change water governance in the coming decades.
The Red Hills region of south Georgia and north Florida contains
one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in North America,
with longleaf pine trees that are up to four hundred years old and
an understory of unparalleled plant life. At first glance, the
longleaf woodlands at plantations like Greenwood, outside
Thomasville, Georgia, seem undisturbed by market economics and
human activity, but Albert G. Way contends that this environment
was socially produced and that its story adds nuance to the broader
narrative of American conservation.
The Red Hills woodlands were thought of primarily as a healthful
refuge for northern industrialists in the early twentieth century.
When notable wildlife biologist Herbert Stoddard arrived in 1924,
he began to recognize the area's ecological value. Stoddard was
with the federal government, but he drew on local knowledge to
craft his land management practices, to the point where a
distinctly southern, agrarian form of ecological conservation
emerged. This set of practices was in many respects progressive,
particularly in its approach to fire management and species
diversity, and much of it remains in effect today.
Using Stoddard as a window into this unique conservation
landscape, "Conserving Southern Longleaf" positions the Red Hills
as a valuable center for research into and understanding of
wildlife biology, fire ecology, and the environmental appreciation
of a region once dubbed simply the "pine barrens."
This book examines the 1583 voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to North
America. This was England's first attempt at colonization beyond
the British Isles, yet it has not been subject to thorough
scholarly analysis for more than 70 years. An exhaustive
examination of the voyage reveals the complexity and preparedness
of this and similar early modern colonizing expeditions. Prominent
Elizabethans assisted Gilbert by researching and investing in his
expedition: the Printing Revolution was critical to their plans, as
Gilbert's supporters traveled throughout England with promotional
literature proving England's claim to North America. Gilbert's
experts used maps and charts to publicize and navigate, while his
pilots experimented with new navigating tools and practices. Though
he failed to establish a settlement, Gilbert created a blueprint
for later Stuart colonizers who achieved his vision of a British
Empire in the Western Hemisphere. This book clarifies the role of
cartography, natural science, and promotional literature in
Elizabethan colonization and elucidates the preparation stages of
early modern colonizing voyages.
This book discusses the question of how a regional economy can
develop under the influence of an ageing and declining population,
and how regional development policies can help make labor markets
more resilient and more inclusive. As the greatest impacts of
demographic change and policy and fiscal challenges can be observed
at the local level, examples from European, North American and
Asian regions are combined to present a comprehensive, global range
of strategic solutions from different policy contexts. The book
shows how institutions, organizations and communities can enhance
their pathways for sustainable development through the intelligent
management of their demographic transition, and offers a synthesis
of valuable lessons and strategies.
This book celebrates the Arctic, exploring the natural history that
has so inspired generations. Early travellers to the Arctic brought
back tales of amazing creatures and of the endurance required of
visitors, the Arctic becoming a land of inspiration and
imagination. Adventurers test themselves against it. Its wildlife
still amazes - when film and television show Earth's natural
wonders it is always the polar regions that draw the biggest
audiences. But today the Arctic is in retreat. Humanity's
relentless exploitation of the Earth's resources in the pursuit of
progress has, it seems, altered the climate and threatens the ice
and ice-living organisms. It is a cliche that the loss of a species
diminishes us, but it is true nonetheless. Even to people who have
never seen a Polar Bear its loss will be immeasurable as the bear
is iconic, both defining and reflecting the Arctic. This
Traveller's Guide is designed to give visitors a handy
identification guide to the wildlife they might see as they travel
around, including stunning photography and detailed descriptions of
each species.
This edited book examines names and naming policies, trends and
practices in a variety of multicultural contexts across America,
Europe, Africa and Asia. In the first part of the book, the authors
take theoretical and practical approaches to the study of names and
naming in these settings, exploring legal, societal, political and
other factors. In the second part of the book, the authors explore
ways in which names mirror and contribute to the construction of
identity in areas defined by multiculturalism. The book takes an
interdisciplinary approach to onomastics, and it will be of
interest to scholars working across a number of fields, including
linguistics, sociology, anthropology, politics, geography, history,
religion and cultural studies.
'Mountains have given structure to my adult life. I suppose they
have also given me purpose, though I still can't guess what that
purpose might be. And although I have glimpsed the view from the
mountaintop and I still have some memory of what direction life is
meant to be going in, I usually lose sight of the wood for the
trees. In other words, I, like most of us, have lived a life of
structured chaos.' Structured Chaos is Victor Saunders'
award-winning follow-up to Elusive Summits (winner of the Boardman
Tasker Prize in 1990), No Place to Fall and Himalaya: The
Tribulations of Vic & Mick. He reflects on his early childhood
in Malaya and his first experiences of climbing as a student, and
describes his progression from scaling canal-side walls in Camden
to expeditions in the Himalaya and Karakoram. Following climbs on
K2 and Nanga Parbat, he leaves his career as an architect and moves
to Chamonix to become a mountain guide. He later makes the first
ascent of Chamshen in the Saser Kangri massif, and reunites with
old friend Mick Fowler to climb the north face of Sersank. This is
not just a tale of mountaineering triumphs, but also an account of
rescues, tragedies and failures. Telling his story with humour and
warmth, Saunders spans the decades from youthful awkwardness to
concerns about age-related forgetfulness, ranging from 'Where did I
put my keys?' to 'Is this the right mountain?' Structured Chaos is
a testament to the value of friendship and the things that really
matter in life: being in the right place at the right time with the
right people, and making the most of the view.
This book introduces readers to the background, general framework,
main operators, and other basic characteristics of
biogeography-based optimization (BBO), which is an emerging branch
of bio-inspired computation. In particular, the book presents the
authors' recent work on improved variants of BBO, hybridization of
BBO with other algorithms, and the application of BBO to a variety
of domains including transportation, image processing, and neural
network learning. The content will help to advance research into
and application of not only BBO but also the whole field of
bio-inspired computation. The algorithms and applications are
organized in a step-by-step manner and clearly described with the
help of pseudo-codes and flowcharts. The readers will learn not
only the basic concepts of BBO but also how to apply and adapt the
algorithms to the engineering optimization problems they actually
encounter.
This book explores the tension between analogue and digital as part
of an evolving research programme and focuses on the sequencing of
methods within it. The book will be an invaluable reference for
scholars who routinely engage in critical sociological analysis of
the digital workplace and find it easier to treat the digital as an
object of study. It describes how the transformations taking place
in the 10-year arc of a career spent doing fieldwork in the IT
sector led the author to progressively embrace new forms of data
and methods. In a time where sociological imagination takes the
shape of whatever new phenomenon can be studied by transactional
data and machine learning methods, it is a reminder that
longstanding engagement with a particular field of practice is the
basis of empirical social science expertise. 'This short book by
Gian Marco Campagnolo is remarkably wide-ranging. It draws on
theoretical perspectives as varied as Harold Garfinkel's
ethnomethodology and Andrew Abbott's 'linked ecologies' to discuss
topics as diverse as the adoption of packaged enterprise software
in the public sector in Italy and the careers of often influential
industry analysts. Campagnolo's methods are primarily qualitative
and ethnographic, but he shows a proper appreciation for
quantitative methods such as text mining and sequence analysis. The
book ends with a discussion of the famously difficult issue of
achieving 'explainability' in machine learning. Campagnolo
tantalisingly suggests the usefulness here of how
ethnomethodologists view 'accountability': as a practical
accomplishment that is hampered, rather than fostered, by efforts
to give full explanations.' -Donald MacKenzie, Professor of
Sociology, Edinburgh University, Scotland 'The author adopts a
'processual' perspective on social data science as means of
exploring and reflecting on the emergence of an academic career
within this new domain of interdisciplinary inquiry. This is
certainly a novel and interesting approach given the fact that
'data science' is work in progress and is characterized by a number
of competing occupational groups that are struggling to define this
emerging field.' -William Housley, Professor, University of
Cardiff, UK 'Having myself written about the relationships between
ethnography and computer science, I see this book as a timely
contribution in that it extends the existing debate to data
science. Data science is an emerging discipline that is gaining
central stage in industry and in the public discourse. The aim of
this book to indicate the importance of interdisciplinarity in this
field is commendable.' -Giolo Fele, Professor, University of
Trento, Italy 'This book provides two entwined accounts: a
reflective personal journey across different projects and methods
and a grounded, genealogically sound analysis of the approaches and
contributions of social science to understanding the digital
society. These dual accounts are adroitly communicated. Their bold
combination yields a unique and invaluable contribution to
fundamental discussions in the social sciences, as well as an
exemplar for how to combine ethnographic and data-driven analysis
in a theoretically and epistemologically informed manner. With this
book, Campagnolo brings us close to the methods and opens up an
inspiring and challenging agenda for combining old and new forms of
inquiry into sociological problems.' -Anne Beaulieu, Director Data
Research Centre, University of Groningen, Netherlands
This contributed volume collects cutting-edge research in
Geographic Information Science & Technologies, Location
Modeling, and Spatial Analysis of Urban and Regional Systems. The
contributions emphasize methodological innovations or substantive
breakthroughs on many facets of the socio-economic and
environmental reality of urban and regional contexts.
The movement of research animals across the divides that have
separated scientist investigators and research animals as Baconian
dominators and research equipment respectively might well give us
cause to reflect about what we think we know about scientists and
animals and how they relate to and with one another within the
scientific coordinates of the modern research laboratory.
Scientists are often assumed to inhabit the ontotheological domain
that the union of science and technology has produced; to master
'nature' through its ontological transformation. Instrumental
reason is here understood to produce a split between animal and
human being, becoming inextricably intertwined with human
self-preservation. But science itself is beginning to take us back
to nature; science itself is located in the thick of posthuman
biopolitics and is concerned with making more than claims about
human being, and is seeking to arrive at understandings of being as
such. It is no longer relevant to assume that instrumental reason
continues to hold a death grip on science, nor that it is immune
from the concerns in which it is deeply embedded. And, it is no
longer possible to assume that animal human relationships in the
lab continue along the fault line of the Great Divide. This book
raises critical questions about what kinship means, or might mean,
for science, for humanimal relations, and for anthropology, which
has always maintained a sure grip on kinship but has not yet
accounted for how it might be validly claimed to exist between
humanimals in new and emerging contexts of relatedness. It raises
equally important questions about the position of science at the
forefront of new kinships between humans and animals, and questions
our assumptions about how scientific knowing is produced and
reflected upon from within the thick of lab work, and what counts
as 'good science'. Much of it is concerned with the quality of
humanimal relatedness and relationship. For the Love of Lab Rats
will be of great interest to scientists, laboratory workers,
anthropologists, animal studies scholars, posthumanists,
phenomenologists, and all those with an interest in human-animal
relations.
This book explores the hybridity of urban identities in multiple
dimensions and at multiple scales, how they form as catalysts and
mechanisms for urban transitions, and how they develop as city
branding strategies and urban regeneration methods. Due to rapid
globalisation, the notion of identity has become scarcer, more
fragile, and inarguably more important. Given the significance of
place and displacement for contemporary everyday life, and the
continuous advancement of technologies, identifying relations and
values that define humans and their environments in various ways
has become crucial. Divided into seven chapters, this book provides
extensive coverage of 'urban identity', an often-overlooked topic
in the fields of urbanism, urban geography, and urban design. It
approaches the topic from a novel dual perspective, by exploring
cities with tangible commonalities and shared strategies for
refining their identities, and by highlighting cities and urban
environments characterised by multiple identities. Based on a
decade of research in this field, the book provides a
multi-disciplinary perspective on urban identity. In addition to
comprehensive information for students, it offers a key reference
guide for urbanists, urban designers and geographers, architectural
and urban practitioners, decision-makers, and governing bodies
involved in urban development strategies.
An annual collection of studies of individuals who have made major
contributions to the development of geography and geographical
thought. Subjects are drawn from all periods and from all parts of
the world, and include famous names as well as those less well
known: explorers, independent thinkers and scholars. Each paper
describes the geographer's education, life and work and discusses
their influence and spread of academic ideas. Each study includes a
select bibliography and brief chronology. The work includes a
general index and a cumulative index of geographers listed in
volumes published to date.
Global Garbage examines the ways in which garbage, in its diverse
forms, is being produced, managed, experienced, imagined,
circulated, concealed, and aestheticized in contemporary urban
environments and across different creative and cultural practices.
The book explores the increasingly complex relationship between
globalization and garbage in locations such as Beirut, Detroit,
Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Naples, Paris, Rio de
Janeiro and Tehran. In particular, the book examines how, and under
what conditions, contemporary imaginaries of excess, waste, and
abandonment perpetuate - but also sometimes counter - the
imbalances of power that are frequently associated with the global
metropolitan condition. This interdisciplinary collection will
appeal to the fields of anthropology, architecture, film and media
studies, geography, urban studies, sociology, and cultural
analysis.
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