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.     

The new killer drones: understanding the strategic implications of next‐generation unmanned combat aerial vehicles

The expansive use of armed unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), or ‘drones’, by the United States over the past decade has occurred within a particular strategic context characterized by irregular warfare operations in permissive environments. Ongoing strategic, ethical and moral debates regarding specific uses of drones may well be overtaken by a new generation of armed combat drones able to survive and operate in contested airspace with design elements such as stealth and greater levels of machine autonomy. These design parameters, and the likely strategic context within which second generation UCAVs will be deployed, suggest a fundamentally different set of missions from those performed by the current generation of drones. The most beneficial characteristic of current unmanned systems has been the ability to combine persistent surveillance with the delivery of small precision‐guided munitions. With a shift to more contested environments, this type of armed surveillance mission may become less practical and second generation UCAVs will instead focus on high intensity warfare operations. These new systems may have significant implications for deterrence, force doctrine and the conduct of warfare.     

A test for geographers: the geography of educational achievement in Toronto and Hamilton, 1997

The recent introduction of standardised achievement tests in several provinces has created an opportunity for Canadian geographers to contribute to public and theoretical debates. Geographers are well‐equipped to comprehend and analyse the effects that neighbourhoods have upon pupil achievement. Independent of family background and school funding, such effects may be stronger in education than in other fields, such as voting behaviour and health research, but they have been ignored in recent public debates. They should be considered if informed judgements are to be made about whether specific teachers, schools, and boards are doing an adequate job. Analysis of the Ontario Grade 3 test results for 1997 in public schools in the City of Toronto and in Hamilton‐Wentworth indicate that social class had a greater effect on pupil achievement than language background. Differences in the determinants of achievement between these two urban centres may be attributable to local variations in occupational structure and residential patterns. L'introduction récente en éducation des tests de compêtences standardisés, dans plusieurs provinces, offre aux géographes canadiens l'occasion de contribuer aux débats publics et théoriques. Les géographes sont bien placés pour comprendre et analyser les effets de quartier sur le rendement scolaire des élèves. Indépendamment du milieu socioculturel et du financement scolaire, ces effets ont peut être plus d'impact en éducation que dans les domaines tels que le comportement électoral et la recherche dans le milieu de la santé, cependant, ils demeurent à l'écart des débats publics. Ces éléments doivent être considérés si l'on prétend juger en connaissance de cause l'efficacité et le rendement des écoles, le corps enseignant et les conseils scolaires. L'analyse des résultats d'examens de l'Ontario en 1997, pour les élèves des écoles publiques de la troisième année des villes de Toronto et Hamilton‐Wentworth, démontre que la réussite scolaire est plus liée au niveau socio‐économique qu'à l'origine linguistique. La divergence des facteurs de réussites des deux centres urbains est peut‐être attribuable aux variations des structures d'occupation locales et résidentielles.     

Climate security,risk assessment and military planning

Climate and environmental changes pose emerging and unique challenges to international security—as the global community experiences issues of food insecurity, severe droughts and floods—and have cascading impacts on energy supplies and infrastructure. Environmental hazards may shift abruptly, posing new risks to vulnerable systems and critical nodes in ways that diverge from historical experience. Effective risk assessments and planning will require understanding of how climate change will affect natural disasters and disaster response, and how hazards may be more extreme or unique from past experiences. This article discusses the role of climate change in affecting security planning from a military perspective, and how integration of scientific data and intelligence methods can foster assessment and effective response.     

Flogging Parsons? Australian Anglican Clergymen,the Magistracy,and Convicts, 1788–1850

In colonial Australian history the entanglement of clergymen, colony, and empire has made the Anglican clergyman one of the colonies' more controversial figures. Historical and popular understanding of this encounter has been overshadowed by the “flogging parson” and “moral policeman” traditions in Australian historiography. Centring on prominent parson‐magistrates such as the Reverend Samuel Marsden, prevailing interpretations have emphasized individual clergymen's efforts to inculcate convict discipline and deference. Examined collectively, however, a less negative and impressionistic picture of colonial clergymen emerges. In contrast with established views, this article demonstrates that parson‐magistrates consistently provided pastoral care and advocacy at the parish level, while as writers and activists they worked for the structural reform and eventual abolition of the convict system itself. Their collective efforts are the focus of this article, which in turn offers a fresh assessment of the encounter between clergymen and convicts in Australia before 1850.     

Water,Wind, Wood,and Trees: Interactions,Spatial Variations,Temporal Dynamics,and their Potential Role in River Rehabilitation

Recent Australian research has quantified the role of large wood (wood of any origin and length with a diameter greater than 0.1 m) in dissipating stream energy, forming pool habitats by local bed scour, protecting river banks from erosion, and damming rivers with long rafts causing avulsions. Large wood in Australian streams is sourced by a range of processes from the nearby riparian zone which has usually been degraded by post‐European settlement vegetation clearing. Large wood loadings within the bankfull channel are dependent not only on the type and quality of the riparian plant community but also on bankfull specific stream power, channel width, and the processes of large wood delivery to the stream. While bank erosion and floodplain stripping by catastrophic floods are obvious and important delivery mechanisms, treefall and trunk and branch breakage by strong winds during tropical cyclones and severe storms are also significant in the tropics. Furthermore, wood decay and downstream transport produce temporally dynamic large wood distributions. The longevity of natural large wood structures in rivers, such as rafts, debris dams, and log steps, requires determination. River rehabilitation programs need to not only include the reintroduction of large wood, but also carefully plan the spatial distribution of that wood, the most appropriate type and range of large wood structures, and, most importantly, the revegetation of the riparian zone to ensure a natural long‐term source of large wood. Exotic species management is an essential part of river rehabilitation.     

The United Nations: past and present

The UN is approaching its seventieth birthday in 2015. Kofi Annan, its seventh secretary general, and the only incumbent not to have come from a national government, has written the most honest and insightful memoir of any occupant of the thirty‐eighth floor, Interventions. Despite terrible setbacks in Bosnia and Rwanda, the United Nations remains the most representative and successful international organization in history. As Mark Mazower points out in his Governing the world, an acutely penetrating history of international governance, the successes of the UN are more than the founders of the ill‐fated League of Nations could have dreamt of. Mazower's tour de force combines a history of the intellectual ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their eventual realization in the League of Nations and the UN. While his conclusions question whether faith in international institutions has been lost, the reality of universal membership of the UN and establishment of an International Criminal Court might suggest otherwise.