Resource Management and Geography - Research Publications
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ItemWomen, pigs, god and evolution: Social and economic change among Kubo people of Papua New Guinea(Oceania Publications, 1997-09-01)ABSTRACT This paper depicts connections and interactions between several apparently disparate themes of change observed in recent years at a village in the interior lowlands of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Changes in patterns of association between men and women can be traced, in the first instance, to altered management practices necessitated by intensified pig production. That intensification, in turn, reflects the growing importance of money in the local economy, a shift which, through its predication on recognising the commensurability of differences, has ramifications far beyond the economics of pig production. An earlier emphasis on equivalence in exchanges has been replaced by a recognition of substitutability, with a consequent reification of categories at the expense of individuality. This trend has been reinforced by the influence of a new Christian cult that, in emphasising the distinction between men and women, has reified gender categories as a basis for structuring social action. The declining association between men and women which emerged as an adaptive response to changing economic realities has thus become incorporated as a structural transformation in Kubo social life.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableLand-Based livelihoods(Routledge - Taylor & Francis, 2005)African farmers and pastoralists have been meeting their everyday needs in diverse ways for many centuries. While this process has increasingly been recognized since the late colonial period, a major development since the publication of Lloyd Timberlake’s Africa in Crisis (Timberlake, 1985) has been the emergence of support to ‘livelihood security’ and the incorporation of ‘sustainable rural livelihoods’ in the rationales and thinking of government-led projects and the many international development agencies working in Africa. Researchers too have focused renewed attention on how diverse rural societies enhance their welfare and development options in many corners of the continent.
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ItemA survey of modern pollen and vegetation along an altitudinal transect in southern Georgia, Caucasus region(ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, 2004)This paper describes the pollen representation of vegetation patterns along an altitudinal transect in the South Caucasus region. Surface sediments from eight small- to medium-sized lakes and wetlands were analysed for modern pollen, and the results analysed numerically using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and dichotomised ordination (TWINSPAN). Pollen spectra from the semidesert region have a clear palynological signal characterised by an abundance of Chenopodiaceae. Differentiation of oak forest, upper tree-line and subalpine communities is more difficult: all are dominated by arboreal pollen (AP) types. The authors propose a number of indicator pollen types and pollen threshold values that may assist in detecting tree-line variations and deforestation events in Holocene pollen diagrams.
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ItemClimatic and human influences on vegetation dynamics around Tbilisi over the past 6000 years(Georgian Academy of Sciences, 2005)
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ItemSediments as archives of industrialisation: evidence of atmospheric pollution in coastal wetlands of southern Sydney, Australia(Springer, 2003)The history of heavy metal pollution in southern Sydney was reconstructed from wetland sediments using chemical analysis. Seven wetlands along the Pacific coast were examined for present day concentrations of acid-extractable Cd, Cu, Fe, Pb and Zn. Additionally, four of these sites were cored in order to assess past levels of these metal contaminants, changes in organic content and magnetic susceptibility variations. The low nutrient status and closed catchments of the study sites suggested that the pollutants were predominantly derived from atmospheric sources. Surficial sediments were enriched with Cd, Cu, Fe, Pb and Zn levels 5.0, 16.4, 22.7, 8.2 and 22.5 times baseline levels, respectively. In some cases, the concentrations of trace metals were in excess of environmentally acceptable levels. The results show a strong spatial association between sources and levels of pollutants, and the increase in metals levels in sedimentary records corresponds well to documentary historical evidence.This study demonstrates the utility of coastal wetlands in the reconstruction of atmospheric pollution histories, and their particular vulnerability to contamination from airborne pollutants in urban areas.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCoping with environmental change: the experience of Somali refugee women on a West London housing estate(DESTIN, London School of Economics, 2001)
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ItemAre the spatial patterns of weeds scale-invariant?( 2004)In previous empirical and modelling studies of rare species and weeds, evidence of fractal behaviour has been found. We propose that weeds in modern agricultural systems may be managed close to critical population dynamic thresholds, below which their rates of increase will be negative and where scale-invariance may be expected as a consequence. We collected detailed spatial data on five contrasting species over a period of three years in a primarily arable field. Counts in 20x20 cm contiguous quadrats, 225,000 in 1998 and 84,375 thereafter, could be re-structured into a wide range of larger quadrat sizes. These were analysed using three methods based on correlation sum, incidence and conditional incidence. We found non-trivial scale invariance for species occurring at low mean densities and where they were strongly aggregated. The fact that the scale-invariance was not found for widespread species occurring at higher densities suggests that the scaling in agricultural weed populations may, indeed, be related to critical phenomena.
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ItemAdapting to climate change in Pacific Island countries: the problem of uncertainty(Elsevier, 2001)This paper investigates the problem of scientific uncertainty and the way it impedes planning for climate change and accelerated sea-level rise (CC & ASLR) in Pacific Island Countries. The paper begins by discussing the problems CC & ASLR poses for Pacific Island Countries, and it explores the limitations of the dominant approach to vulnerability and adaptation. Next, the paper considers the way scientific uncertainty problematises policies aimed at adaptation to CC & ASLR. It argues that the prevailing approach, which requires anticipation of impacts, is unsuccessful, and the paper proposes a complementary strategy aimed to enhance the resilience of whole island social-ecological systems. Recent developments in the theory and practice of resilience are discussed and then applied to formulate goals for adaptation policy in Pacific Island Countries.
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ItemWaiting for the Esquimo: an historical and documentary study of the Cooch Behar enclaves of India and Bangladesh( 2002)Enclaves are defined as a fragment of one country totally surrounded by one other. A list of the world’s current enclaves and a review of the literature about them reveals a geographical bias that has left enclaves outside western Europe almost untouched. This bias is particularly noticeable in the almost complete absence of information on the Cooch Behar enclaves, along Bangladesh’s northern border with India. The Cooch Behar enclaves number almost 200. This total includes about two dozen counter-enclaves (enclaves within enclaves), and the world’s only counter-counter-enclave. Together, these enclaves represent 80% of the total number of enclaves existing in the world since the 1950s, and have been at the centre of Indo-East Pakistani and then Indo-Bangladeshi boundary disputes since Cooch Behar acceded to India in 1949. (For complete abstract open document)