Scenarios of climate change and natural resource development: Complexity and uncertainty in the Nechako Watershed

Climate change and resource development interact to have significant impacts on both natural and human systems within watersheds. It is, however, difficult to conceptualize and communicate these intersections, as climate change and resource development are each independently uncertain and complex. We facilitated a process whereby stakeholders created plausible future scenarios for the Nechako Watershed in British Columbia, Canada. This region is reliant upon, and has been significantly affected by, many types of resource exploitation. During a full-day workshop, 32 stakeholders created scenarios for 2050 envisioning high and low levels of both resource development and climate change. The high and low levels of climate change were based on downscaled projections from global emissions scenarios, and the resource development levels were determined at the beginning of the workshop by the participants. The exercise was educational, and motivated stakeholders to conceptualize plausible future changes and their impacts, and the outcomes should motivate stakeholders to work towards realizing a more desired future. All scenarios (even low-low) were deemed to have significant negative impacts, suggesting that the Nechako Watershed is in a vulnerable state. The complexity of the exercise suggests that more capacity building may be necessary.     

Comparing Governance and Local Engagement in the St. Marys River Area of Concern

Under the 1987 revisions to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States, Areas of Concern (AOC) were designated around the Great Lakes to target the remediation of environmental impairments. Local governments have the potential to play an important role in Great Lakes restoration and protection efforts in AOCs, though the scope of their engagement in remediation efforts is not fully understood. This case study investigates the St. Marys River AOC, which spans the border between Canada and the United States. Through the theoretical lens of the ecology of games, the case study explores the strategic choices of local governments to engage in environmental policy networks in Canada and the United States. The case illustrates the importance of intergovernmental aid and collaborative institutions for ongoing environmental remediation efforts and cross-border coordination.     

Seasonal weather sensitivity,temperature thresholds,and climate change impacts for park visitation

Historical park visitation and weather data, taken at the daily time scale from 2000 to 2009 for Pinery Provincial Park in southern Ontario (Canada), were analysed as an objective measure of the weather sensitivity, temperature thresholds, and potential impacts of projected climate change for park visitation. Three seasonal weather-visitation models were constructed using multivariable linear regression (peak, shoulder, off-season). To account for both natural and institutional seasonality, the weather-visitation models included both climatic (temperature, precipitation) and social (weekends, holidays) variables, which demonstrated equably comparable effects on visitation across the three models. Critical temperature thresholds were identified for each season using one-way analysis of variance to determine the range of temperatures within which the threshold was evident; the specific degree of temperature associated with the threshold was identified within the seasonal regression models. Temperatures over 33 °C during the peak season and over 29 °C during the shoulder season indicated critical thresholds at which point conditions that were ‘too hot’ for some caused a decline in visitation. Furthermore, temperatures below 11 °C indicated another critical threshold, where conditions were ‘too cold’ for most and therefore park visitation was less sensitive to temperature variability below this threshold. A partial sensitivity analysis for the impact of a warmer, wetter climate on park visitation was conducted, illustrating the effect of a 1 °C to 5 °C warming in maximum temperatures, coupled with a 5% to 15% increase in total precipitation. In response to projected climate change, the weather-visitation models suggested that for each additional degree of warming experienced, despite the negative effects of increasing precipitation and more frequent heat extremes, annual park visitation could increase by 3.1%, annually. The projected increase in park visitation as a result of rising temperatures was mainly associated with shoulder season visitation, with only minor increases in peak season visitation.     

浅议民族地区档案管理人员素质

随着西部大开发、国家挟持藏区发展政策的进一步落实,档案事业在促进民族地区经济和社会文化发展中的作用也日益凸显。如何提高档案人员素质,充分运用现代信息管理技术为民族地区档案事业发展服务就显得尤为重要,文章分析了当前民族地区档案管理人员的素质现状,并就如何进一步提升档案人员素质提出建议。     

‘The Company as Their Lords and the Deputy as a Great Rajah’: Imperial Expansion and the English East India Company on the West Coast of Sumatra, 1685–1730

The emergence of new historiographical approaches to the study of British imperialism over the past two decades, has begun to challenge the trade-to-empire narrative which continues to dominate the way historians understand the English East India Company's presence in Asia, anchoring the beginnings of empire there to the mid-eighteenth century. However, as this article argues, Company servants operating on the West Coast of Sumatra sought imperial expansion through political hegemony and territorial acquisitions as far back as the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Indeed, Company servants, distinct from the directors in London, formulated these imperial, expansionist policies on the West Coast in support of a private, patriarchal authority which they had developed to rule over the people they encountered there.     

The Rush–Bagot Agreement: Canada–US Relations in Transition

In 1817, Great Britain and the United States concluded the Rush–Bagot Agreement to prevent a naval arms race on the Great Lakes. Despite frequent transgressions to the agreement, by the 1920s, the agreement was heralded internationally as a model to emulate. The predominant scholarly focus on the agreement in the nineteenth century fails to explain why a broken agreement in one century was praiseworthy in the next. This article argues that the twentieth-century narrative of the agreement is of critical important to explaining the agreement’s impact on Canada–US relations. Through the lens of three stages of Canadian political leadership, this article demonstrates that the Rush-Bagot Agreement shifted from a rigid compact to a symbolic agreement that not only reflected but aided the transition toward one of the most unique security relationships. The article concludes that this extant agreement reinforces the prevalent notion of the “undefended border” in Canada–US relations.     

The Power-Transition Crisis of the 240s BCE and the Creation of the Parthian State

This article combines historical analysis with international-relations theory to contend that geopolitical developments around the Eastern Mediterranean in the middle third century BCE were indirectly responsible for the emergence of the Parthian state and a new international system of states in the ancient East. Since the death of Alexander the Great, the Seleucid Empire had ruled over much of the East; however, disastrous military conflicts at home and abroad in the West caused a sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 240s–230s BCE. The troubles of the Seleucid state caused what political scientists call a power-transition crisis that damaged Seleucid hegemony over the East when the Seleucid satraps of Parthia and Bactria declared their independence. Moreover, the deleterious civil wars between Seleucid dynasts in the West and the rebellions of eastern satraps encouraged the nomadic Parni tribe from the Central Asian steppe (later known as the Parthians), who had been seeking a new homeland for decades, to invade northeastern Iran and establish a new kingdom. With the Parni's successful conquest of Parthia and its immediate consequences, a new interstate system of tripolarity between the Seleucid Empire, Bactrian Kingdom, and the newly formed Parthian state emerged in the ancient East.     

Mud box—filled with stone: the wreck of the scow schooner Dan Hayes

Scow Schooners are an important yet largely unstudied vessel type that operated on the North American Great Lakes. At their zenith in the later 19th century scow schooners worked between the many small harbours and the larger nexus ports such as Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee. These vessels are virtually undocumented either historically or archaeologically. A project by East Carolina University's Maritime Studies Program and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 2001 documented the wrecked scow schooner Dan Hayes , revealing much information concerning this vessel class and the limestone industry in which it was employed. Although an ordinary scow schooner, its construction techniques are surprising, showing evidence of prefabrication. The bottom of the ship was apparently built inverted and flipped over before sides and bow were added, the first evidence that inverted construction could be accomplished with such large vessels.     

Wild Globalization: The Biopolitics of Climate Change and Global Capitalism on Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast

Abstract: This article explores the value of Deleuzoguattarian approaches for understanding the entangled relationships between globalization, climate change, capitalism and indigenous peoples. Drawing on Brett Neilson's concept of wild globalization, it analyzes the biopolitics of climate change and capitalism as they are experienced on Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. A focus on the heterogeneous economies and ecologies of the Miskito Keys and their destruction by Hurricane Felix reveals the destabilizing forces immanent to capitalism itself. Thinking about climate change not as a transcendent teleological megahazard, but as a Body without Organs, might enable us to be schizophrenic rather than paranoid about climate change.     

REMOTE SENSING OF ATMOSPHERE-CRYOSPHERE INTERACTIONS IN THE POLAR BASIN

The Royal Society of Canada coordinates the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (Global Change) in Canada. Currently, a research agenda that will extend beyond the next decade is being developed. It includes the use of remote sensing and geographical information systems in support of Global Change research, and the study of issues related to change and variability in the Canadian Arctic.
This paper reviews the use of remotely sensed data to study the nature of atmosphere-cryosphere interactions in the Polar Basin and how they contribute to an understanding of climate change and variability. A conceptual framework for aspects of atmosphere-cryosphere interaction is presented through a discussion of feedback scenarios. The role of remote sensing in understanding these scenarios is explored through an examination of the several studies over the past 15 years. Finally, the remote sensing capabilities for crysophere monitoring proposed for the satellite systems of the mid-1990s will be discussed.     

Climate change during the Iron Age in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin,southern Africa

Recent research refines previous interpretations about the role of climatic factors in the development of Mapungubwe. First, the Medieval Warm Epoch started at about AD 1000, rather than 900. At about AD 900, Zhizo people moved into the Shashe-Limpopo Basin, most likely to hunt elephants for the East Coast trade. Secondly, a dry period at about AD 1200–1250 affected farming societies over a wide area. In the Basin, multiple rainmaking episodes occurred at this time. A similar situation took place around Makapansgat and at Great Zimbabwe. Thirdly, Mapungubwe was probably abandoned in AD 1300 because of cooler and drier conditions. At this time, it would have been impossible to maintain floodplain agriculture at the intensity necessary to support the large population. Agricultural failures probably undermined political authority, contributing to Mapungubwe's abandonment and shift in power to Great Zimbabwe. This detailed sequence challenges the re-calibrated climatic series from Makapansgat.     

Palestinian Water: Resources,Use, Conservation,Climate Change,and Land Use

This article addresses the future of freshwater resources in the Palestinian West Bank through a discussion of contemporary issues that each plays a vital role in determining the long‐term sustainability of freshwater reserves, such as water resource availability, trans‐boundary water issues, water reuse and conservation, changes in land use, and the potential impact of climate change on long‐term water management. Climate change and changing land use patterns are already altering this region's water resources. Future predictions regarding the long‐term effects of these changes are complex and therefore inherently uncertain. However, the consensus among most studies on this subject indicates that currently water‐poor regions such as the Middle East will experience even greater water stress in the future. Nearly all of the freshwater consumed in the West Bank is obtained from local groundwater supplies that are suffering overdraft as well as decreasing water quality. Climate change will exacerbate water stress by increasing overall temperatures, decreasing and fluctuating precipitation, and reducing overall aquifer replenishment. Expanding urbanization will continue to strain freshwater supplies by negatively impacting the quality and quantity of available freshwater. Water management in the West Bank is further complicated by total Israeli control over water resources, which often causes water delivery to Palestinians in this region to be marginalized. This article finds that Palestinian and Israeli water managers must plan for future water crises, which will likely be a result of the combined effects of increasing urbanization and climate change coupled with exponential population growth.     

Network Location and Policy‐Oriented Behavior: An Analysis of Two‐Mode Networks of Coauthored Documents Concerning Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region*,†

This study explores how a scientist's location in science‐based policy networks can affect her policy‐oriented behaviors. In particular, we hypothesize that those scientists who fill structural holes in their networks will be more likely than others to engage in policy‐oriented behaviors. The network data are defined by scientists' coauthorship on policy documents regarding climate change in the Great Lakes. We employ a two‐mode network analysis to identify clusters of scientists who coauthored similar documents, and relative to those clusters, we identify those who fill structural holes by bridging between clusters. We find that those scientists who bridged between clusters were more likely to engage in policy‐oriented behaviors of policy advocacy and advising than were others in the network. This is an example of a link between network location and policy‐oriented behavior indicative of the broader phenomenon of how individuals exert agency, given structural constraints.     

Geopolitics and the Northern Sea Route

Experimental transit voyages along the Northern Sea Route to the north of Russia are breaking new ground each year and the route is already significant for the export of raw materials from Russian ports. National and corporate interests are now driving Russia's Arctic policy, rather than, as formerly, an exclusive focus on security, and the Russian government has ambitious plans for the development of the route. Future regular transit of the Northern Sea Route between Europe and Asia, at present facing serious obstacles, could be accelerated not only by climate change, but by overload on, or interruptions to, the existing route through the Suez Canal, which passes through some of the world's most volatile regions. Despite the formidable impediments to regular year round transit of the Northern Sea Route, governments of the non‐Arctic states with most at stake, particularly Germany and China, appear to be taking no chances, and to be jockeying for influence in the Arctic region. The interests of the non‐Arctic trading states, and of the European Union, more inclined to view the Arctic Ocean as part of the ‘common heritage of mankind’, are however potentially different from those of Russia, and indeed of Canada in respect of the North East passage, both determined to maintain their exclusive national jurisdiction over emerging sea lanes through their territorial waters. Great issues are at stake here. The emergence of new sea lanes has historically impacted heavily on the international balance of power. Where the merchant fleets go, navies will shortly follow.     

Developments in Russian Gas Production Since 1998: Russia's Evolving Gas Supply Strategy

An American geographer and prominent authority on the oil and natural gas industries and resources of Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union reports on overall trends in Russia's natural gas production in the years following the country's ruble devaluation and financial crisis. The account—based on systematic in-country observations, discussions/interviews with industry executives, and a review of industry sources—focuses on factors affecting domestic supply and demand as well as export capacity (will Russia have enough gas to meet rising domestic demand while fulfilling its export obligations?), regional patterns of production (and performance of Gazprom regional production enterprises), obstacles to the use of associated gas derived from crude oil extraction, and major pipeline construction projects in West Siberia and the Russian Far East. The paper concludes by outlining CERA's forecast for Russian gas production to 2020, also disaggregated by region. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 7 figures, 8 tables, 51 references.     

Health prospects of older persons in Thailand: the role of education

ABSTRACT

Thailand’s population is aging rapidly and the number of older adults suffering from health limitations is expected to increase. Making use of several rounds of the Survey of Older Persons, we look at the education-specific prevalences of three health indicators over time and find a positive education gradient for difficulties with ADLs and poor self-rated health, but not for functional limitations. Combining these age-, sex- and education-specific prevalences for each indicator with population projections up to 2050, we see a lower projected number of persons with difficulties with ADLs or bad health as compared to an approach when we only account for differences by age and sex. Still, irrespective of the approach taken, we project a significant increase in the number of persons 50+ that have at least one ADL difficulty, at least one functional limitation or suffer from poor health. Our results provide estimates for future care needs and illustrate the possibly preventive effect of education.     

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE REGIONAL IMPACTS AND OPPORTUNITIES FROM CLIMATE CHANGE IN CANADA

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative assessment of the regional impacts and opportunities from climate change in Canada. The discussion draws extensively from a recently completed assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation in Canada, led by Environment Canada. The paper addresses impacts from three regional perspectives: expansion and northern shifts, impacts and opportunities in major regions, and ubiquitous impacts and opportunities. While some broad policy issues are evident, given the complexity of Canada's natural and human landscapes and the projected regional impacts, further research is needed before developing more targeted policy.
Cet article propose une évaluation comparative des effets des changements climatiques dans diverses régions du Canada - et des bénéfices qui pourront en résulter. L'étude se penche sur une évaluation récente d'Environnement Canada des bénéfices des changements climatiques et de l'adaptation à ces changements au Canada initiés par Environnement Canada. Nous divisons l'étude en trois parties: l'expansion et le déplacement vers le nord; les effets des changements climatiques et leurs bénéfices dans les principales régions du pays; les effets et les bénéfices des changements climatiques partout dans le pays. Bien que la nécessité de certaines politiques générales soit évidente, étant donné la complexité de la géographie humaine et naturelle du pays et les différents effets projetés dans les diverses régions du pays, il faudra faire des études approfondies avant de proposer des politiques plus spécifiques pour chaque région.     

宁夏明长城资源调查中三则新发现

明代中期以后为防御蒙古套部扰掠,在今宁夏南北分设固原、宁夏两镇,所谓“九边重镇”独占其二。同时先后修筑了包括“河东墙”及“沿河边墙”、“深沟高垒”与“横城大边”、“旧北长城”与“北长城”“西长城”“固原内边”以及“徐斌水新边”等数条备边工事。本文拟就长城资源调查中新发现与确认的明代对固原镇城附近战国秦长城的修缮利用、“徐斌水新边”长城以及“河东壕堑”三则新发现及相关情况略作介绍论述。     

Cultural Geography and the Upper Great Lakes Region

The Upper Great Lakes region often is interpreted as a cultural mosaic of ethnic groups identified with marginal farming, forestry and mining settlements. Despite its early history of a large, foreign-horn population, many of the region's pioneer settlers can be identified with an international source region, neither truly American nor truly Canadian, the upper St. Lawrence Valley. Forest-fringe agriculture, seasonal work for cash wages and employment in large-scale resource extraction were part of the way of life brought from the St. Lawrence district to the northern portions of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The southern limit of the so-called “Cutover” region coincides with a transition toward a preponderance of settlers from western New York, who brought traditions of wheat and dairy farming, compact settlements and democratic institutions to the upper Middle West.     

A Note on the Role of Dogs in Anglo‐Saxon Society: Evidence from East Anglia

This paper examines the roles that dogs played in Anglo‐Saxon (420–1066 CE) society in East Anglia, drawing on data from the Late Roman site of Icklingham and the Anglo‐Saxon sites of West Stow, Brandon and Ipswich in Suffolk, England. The archaeological context of these dog finds is described, along with zooarchaeological data on dog sizes, ages at death and paleopathology. The data indicate that Early and Middle Anglo‐Saxon dogs are less varied than Late Roman dogs. Ageing and paleopathological data indicate that the West Stow dogs, in particular, had hard lives. Early and Middle Saxon dogs from East Anglia were relatively large, with an estimated withers height of about 60 cm. They may have served as guard dogs and herding dogs. The West Stow dogs may also have been involved in hunting and fighting. Late Saxon dogs from Ipswich reveal an increasing morphological diversity, suggesting that they played multiple roles in Late Anglo‐Saxon urban sites. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.