Patterns and Determinants of Historical Woodland Clearing in Central‐Western New South Wales,Australia

We consider the history of woodland clearing in central western New South Wales, Australia, which has led to the present highly cleared and fragmented landscape. A combined approach is used examining available historical land‐use data and using regression analysis to relate the pattern of cleared and wooded areas in the recent landscape to environmental variables, taking into account the contagious nature of clearing. We also ask whether it would be possible to apply a simple simulation modelling approach to reconstruct a credible historical sequence of clearing in the study area. The historical data indicate that annual clearing rates have varied substantially in the study area and selective tree removal (ringbarking and thinning) has been common. These findings make it unlikely that a simple simulation approach would replicate the spatial and temporal sequence of woodland loss. Our regression results show that clearing patterns can be related to environmental variables, particularly annual rainfall and estimated pre‐European vegetation type, but that patterns are dominated by contagion.     

Legislating nature for biodiversity offsets in New South Wales,Australia

In the contemporary environmental management landscape, legislation is a principal means through which sustainable outcomes are negotiated. Yet the relations between legislation (as a social practice), nature and justice have been subjected to limited scrutiny. This paper explores these relations through consideration of a system of biodiversity offsets currently being implemented in New South Wales, Australia, following the enactment of the Threatened Species Conservation Amendment (Biodiversity Banking) Act 2006 (NSW). In this paper we investigate the work this legislation does in enacting the materiality of nature in order to explore the interrelations of materiality, law and concerns for environmental and ecological justice. We argue that the act of ‘legislating nature’ is simultaneously a ‘mode of matter-ing’ (Law 2004) that in the case of biodiversity banking (BioBanking), resituates biodiversity within new meanings, spatialities, human–nature relations, and which accounts for biodiversity at a state, rather than local, scale. Utilising the work of Latour, we examine the processes of ‘translation’ required to generate abstracted ‘biodiversity values’ that can be traded and moved between locations. Examination of these processes leads to a consideration of the broad requirements of environmental and ecological justice as a theoretical and political response to BioBanking.     

Hypolithic Plants from Carruthers Peak,Snowy Mountains,New South Wales,Australia

Hypolithic plants, plants growing under rocks, have been found from a number of climatically extreme, mostly arid sites from the poles to the equator, but there are limited reports from temperate zones. A brief survey in the Kosciuszko Alpine Area of New South Wales, Australia, revealed four species of moss and one liverwort growing beneath diaphanous quartz pebbles in feldmark vegetation communities. The probable restricted nature of this phenomenon and the likely impact of global warming, tourists and recreation management activities raise concerns for its conservation.     

Recent Storm Boulder Deposits on the Beecroft Peninsula,New South Wales,Australia

This paper documents the deposition of large boulders on the Beecroft Peninsula, New South Wales, during a one in four‐year swell event in October 1999. The size of the boulders in relation to the magnitude of the swell suggests that the boulder field at Whale Point on the Beecroft Peninsula is explicable in terms of storm swells alone.     

Progressive and reactionary rhetoric in the municipal reform debate in New South Wales,Australia

Albert Hirschman's rhetoric of reaction is a potentially powerful typology of the arguments made by both proponents and opponents of reform (1991. The rhetoric of reaction: Perversity, futility, jeopardy. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). However, scholars have identified a number of gaps in the typology, in particular that it has struggled to explain the lines of rhetoric associated with disputed empirical evidence. This paper reviews Hirschman's typology before applying it to the contentious municipal amalgamation debates currently unfolding in New South Wales, Australia. We then examine the lines of attack open to progressives and reactionaries on the basis of empirical data. We conclude that the use of empirical data opens new lines of rhetoric for both ‘progressives’ and ‘reactionaries’ generally, but that both information costs and complexity significantly affect the timing and penetration of the arguments.     

The Old Kinchega Homestead: Doing Household Archaeology in Outback New South Wales, Australia

The Kinchega Pastoral Station in western New South Wales, Australia, was one of the earliest and largest in the area. A study of one of the station's homestead is demonstrating how the integration and negotiation of material and documentary evidence produces information on domestic behavior in rural Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and highlights the activities of women and children in an environment whose history has been dominated by the exploits of men.     

Algae from Early and Middle Devonian limestones,tamworth belt,New South Wales,Australia

Eighteen genera of cosmopolitan marine algae are reported from Emsian and Eifelian limestones of New South Wales. Couvinianella, Paralitanaia, Perrierella, Pseudopalaeoporella and Renalcis are the most abundant taxa. Three distinctive floras are recognized: a prolific dasycladale-coccoid assemblage; a diverse udoteacean assemblage; and an undiversified udoteacean assemblage. None of these floras has a precise stratigraphic significance, although they indicate a latest Silurian-Middle Devonian age. Maslovina australense sp. nov. is described.     

Estimates of Historical Tree Densities in the North Lachlan River Catchment,New South Wales,Australia

Vegetation structure and composition during the pre‐ and early‐European period in Australia is often proposed as a benchmark against which to measure the effects of modern landscape management practices. However, little quantifiable information exists for that historical period. One potential source of information is the land survey record, used in this study to provide estimates of tree densities that existed during the period 1870 to 1900 in part of central New South Wales. Estimates were obtained for 23 parishes in the north Lachlan River valley, between the towns of Condobolin and Tottenham. Densities were calculated from portion corner to nearest tree data obtained from historical survey plans, using the plotless, closest individual method. Densities ranged from 6.0 to 31.4 trees per hectare for parishes with enough data points for reliable calculation. These figures would account for trees of a diameter large enough to be blazed with a survey mark. Any smaller trees would be additional and, although no quantitative data existed for this, qualitative evidence suggested that the figures obtained were more likely to be underestimates due to the presence of such small trees. The study area was predominantly covered by woodlands which varied in density across the landscape, in comparison to the modern landscape where much of the native vegetation has been cleared for agriculture. Although the tree density figures should be considered to be indicative rather than precise, they provide quantifiable historical figures for past conditions in an area where the historical record is otherwise sparse. Such information is valuable for interpreting ecological changes brought about by modern land management.     

Justice in River Management: Community Perceptions from the Hunter Valley,New South Wales,Australia

Dealing with differing and sometimes conflicting criteria for priority‐setting is an essential part of sustainable natural resource management. However, all too often, these ethical and political considerations are neglected within a planning regime based upon apparently ‘objective’ biophysical assessment techniques. Input into associated decision‐making processes is also frequently restricted to a narrow range of ‘stakes’ based upon historical and geographic circumstances. This paper reports on the findings of interviews and discussion groups in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, which aimed to canvass the diversity of perceptions of distributive and procedural justice in river rehabilitation. A range of biophysical and social criteria for setting priorities in rehabilitation work was identified. Participants also had differing ideas on the composition of decision‐making bodies and on decision‐making processes. The key implications of these findings are that sustainable river management policy needs to openly address differing conceptions of justice and that rehabilitation practice should be holistic, transdisciplinary and concerned with both outcome and process.     

Broom (Cytisus scoparius) at Barrington Tops,New South Wales

Broom was introduced to the northern part of the Barrington Tops plateau in the 1840s Particularly since 1969, when cattle grazing and associated burning ceased in the area, Broom has spread over c 10,000 hectares, mostly in the State Forest and National Park In eucalypt-dominated vegetation, Broom invasion is shown to cause substantial reduction in species richness and foliage projective cover of native understorey vegetation, including number of eucalypt seedlings Reasons for Brooms success, and possible outcomes, are discussed Control measures to date have been ineffective; biological control appears to offer the best future prospects.     

Bodies that sweat: the affective responses of young women in Wollongong,New South Wales,Australia

I argue that people's bodily sensations of sweat – smell, touch and sight – can provide insights to the relations between subjectivity and space. I draw on feminist ideas of the body as a physiological, psychological and sociological assemblage out of which spatially situated knowledge, ethics, subjectivities and social relations are forged. Empirical evidence is drawn from self-reflexive accounts of 21 young women living in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Their narratives convey how sweat and sweatiness are integral to negotiating everyday life. First, participants' narratives illustrate the way the sweaty body-as-seen is bound up with gendered identities and self-disgust. Second, visceral experiences of the materialities of sweat and sweatiness often give rise to a heightened sense of bodily awareness, self and spatial marginalisation in the course of everyday lives. Third, participants' narratives highlight the tensions of spatial experience of sweat and sweatiness that simultaneously attract and repel bodies. Visceral experiences of sweat and sweatiness are central to better understanding of the spatiality of subjectivity.     

Palaeoecology and palaeoenvironment of the Jurassic Talbragar Fossil Fish Bed,Gulgong, New South Wales,Australia

BEATTIE, R.G. & AVERY, S., December 2012. Palaeoecology and palaeoenvironment of the Jurassic Talbragar Fossil Fish Bed, Gulgong, New South Wales, Australia. Alcheringa 36, 451–465. ISSN 0311-5518.

The Talbragar Fossil Fish Bed has produced a significant number and variety of insect fossils, including the orders Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Orthoptera, Plecoptera, Odonata, Neuroptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera and Mecoptera. Hemiptera are the most common insects. Coleoptera are both common and diverse. Both orders include terrestrial and aquatic species. The other insect orders represented are less common. Many of the insect fossils discovered were previously unknown in the Australian region during the Jurassic, and the new records extend their palaeogeographic range into southeastern Gondwana. A recent collection of insects, fish, coprolites, gastropods, bivalves, bark, leaves, fruiting bodies, burrows and other ichnofossils supports a model of a shallow-water-lake palaeoenvironment at the northern end of the deposit, grading to a shoreline palaeoenvironment towards the southern end of the deposit. The existence of a productive lake supporting a large population of fish and a diverse, aquatic/shoreline and terrestrial woodland fringe palaeoecosystem, dominated by insects and woody plants, is demonstrated. There is no evidence of tetrapods. The Talbragar Fossil Fish Bed has similarities to Type A and B Mesozoic lake deposits reported from Transbaikalia. Culicimorph pupae are numerous and may have filled a significant niche near the base of the aquatic palaeoecosystem. Other immature aquatic insects are rare. The generally articulated nature of the fossil insects is interpreted to have resulted from a sudden but low-energy burial event.     

The Little Revolution in New South Wales, 1808

In this article, ‘Development’ and developmentist ideas, two increasingly fashionable areas of historical inquiry, are explored in the context of relations between the United States and Brazil through the middle decades of the twentieth century, with three arguments made along the way. First, and in contrast to much academic and extra-academic received wisdom (as well as the official pronouncements of US diplomats), the United States government offered no singular or consistent approach to ‘development’ in its dealings with Brazil. Second, an unofficial vision of development (here termed ‘market developmentalism’) that has so far eluded the attention of historians of developmentalist ideas emerged earlier than the official developmentalisms that have been the main object of historiographic interest to date. Third, this unofficial, largely private, consumption-oriented developmentalism is shown to have enjoyed an outsized influence in Brazil, dwarfing the influence enjoyed by those inconsistent varieties of developmentalism espoused by US diplomats between the 1940s and the 1960s.     

A probable ankylosaurian (Dinosauria,Thyreophora) from the Early Cretaceous of New South Wales,Australia

Bell, P.R., Burns, M.E. & Smith, E.T. October 2017. A probable ankylosaurian (Dinosauria, Thyreophora) from the Early Cretaceous of New South Wales, Australia. Alcheringa 42, 120–124. ISSN 0311-5518.

We describe an isolated osteoderm from the Albian Griman Creek Formation where it is exposed near the town of Lightning Ridge in central-northern New South Wales, Australia. Several lines of evidence allow referral of this element to the Ankylosauria—a group that epitomises body armour and ubiquitous osteodermal coverage among dinosaurs. Despite the abundant record of fossil vertebrates from this interval, ankylosaurians have not been previously reported, although, they have been described from penecontemporaneous deposits in western Queensland and Victoria. This discovery, therefore, provides an important link between the northerly faunas (including the Griman Creek Formation) that flourished at the edge of the epeiric Eromanga Sea, with those from the sub-polar rift-valley system of Victoria during the mid-Cretaceous.

Phil R. Bell [pbell23@une.edu.au], School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale 2351, NSW, Australia; Michael E. Burns [mburns3@jsu.edu], Department of Biology, Jacksonville State University, 700 Pelham Rd N., Jacksonville, AL 36265-2138, USA; Elizabeth T. Smith [elizabethtsmith@exemail.com.au], Australian Opal Centre, Lightning Ridge 2834, NSW, Australia.     

Early Silurian (Llandovery) trilobites from the Cotton Formation,near Forbes,New South Wales,Australia

A trilobite fauna from the upper part of the Cotton Formation (late Llandovery, Spirograptus turriculatus Zone) in central west New South Wales includes the new species Raphiophorus sandfordi, Odontopleura (Sinespinaspis) markhami and Aulacopleura pogsoni. Species of Odontopleura and Aulacopleura have not previously been documented in Australasia. The association of these genera is observed in offshore biofacies in the Llandovery/Wenlock on several palaeocontinents. Affinities of the species are with congeners from Bohemia and northwestern Canada (Odontopleura, Aulacopleura) and Tarim and South China (Aulacopleura, Raphiophorus).     

An Initial Analysis of River Discharge and Rainfall in Coastal New South Wales,Australia Using Wavelet Transforms

In many coastal catchments of south eastern New South Wales, Australia, changes in river morphology are a response to human impact superimposed on spatial and temporal patterns of variability in precipitation and discharge. Understanding, and preferably quantifying, spatial and temporal patterns of hydrologic variability are essential to understanding natural changes, and to separate these from artificial changes in river systems. Prediction and management of water resources are also dependent upon this understanding. We assess the variability in precipitation and discharge using the wavelet transform which projects the time series of data into a three dimensional surface of frequency, amplitude and time. The analysis reveals that changes across time often reflect changes in individual seasons and may be linked to changes in particular seasonal atmospheric circulation systems. Strong perturbations in the analysis of one catchment are consistent with documented, geomorphically‐effective, flooding sequences. The characteristics of the series in the transformed data reveal interesting differences at certain times and scales which may be a reflection of changes in larger scale atmospheric processes.     

Changes in stream channel morphology at tributary junctions,Lower Hunter Valley,New South Wales

Many empirically derived models of downstream changes in channel form are based on the concept of hydraulic geometry, whereby changes in channel morphological variables are related by a continuous power function to increasing discharge or its surrogate. However, changes in discharge throughout a drainage basin are normally concentrated at the junctions of stream channels. At junctions, the relationship between discharge and channel morphology is discontinuous. Some Lower Hunter Valley stream channels were surveyed upstream and downstream of tributary junctions. While significant regional downstream relationships were established, consistent trends at tributary junctions were not apparent from the data. It is possible that considerable scatter evident in ratios of change on either side of each junction was due to local within-site variability. In addition, the relative timing of discharge inputs and the nature of introduced sediment loads could be important in determining the magnitude and direction of channel change at tributary junctions. Interrelated changes in cross-sectional, profile and planform variables may be expected below junctions. The resultant channel morphology, in terms of these variables, might not be wholly determinate.