Securing Landscape Resilience to Tropical Cyclones in Australia's Wet Tropics under a Changing Climate: Lessons from Cyclones Larry (and Yasi)

Tropical cyclones are part of the ecosystem dynamics of rainforests in the Wet Tropics of Australia, and intact forest areas show remarkable ability to recover from cyclonic disturbance. However, forest remnants, littoral rainforests, and riparian vegetation have been shown to be particularly susceptible to cyclonic winds and post‐disturbance weed invasion with consequences for their long‐term conservation values. I evaluate the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones impacting the Wet Tropics region since records began in 1858. The recent Category 4 cyclones featured in this study, Larry and Yasi, had return intervals of about one in 70 years. I then discuss the natural resource management (NRM) lessons from Cyclone Larry and put forward practical recommendations on how authorities should deal with natural resources in the clean‐up and recovery phases. I argue that natural resources must be treated as valuable commodities by including their protection and rehabilitation in the same way that human livelihoods, infrastructure and industry are covered in disaster management planning. This requires NRM issues to be included in disaster response policy and legislation, together with ensuring that structures are in place to mitigate the effects of cyclones on natural resources. There is a general consensus that tropical cyclone intensity will increase under climate change while frequency will decrease slightly. This has profound implications for the long‐term sustainability of ecosystems in the Wet Tropics. There is a real risk of a phase shift to vegetation types dominated by disturbance species, including weeds, at the expense of cyclone intolerant species. It is therefore important that we begin to build more cyclone resilient landscapes to reduce the vulnerability of our remaining rainforest habitats and primary production systems. Securing landscape resilience requires greater NRM investment in key areas, including landscape connectivity, river repair, protecting coastal assets and cyclone resilient farms. While climate change poses a long‐term threat to the rainforests of the region, we need to focus on more immediate pressures affecting our remaining biodiversity, notably clearing of native habitat, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and biosecurity issues.     

The limited capacity of management to rescue UK defence policy: a review and a word of caution

Political and media attention in the UK is devoted to three interrelated aspects of defence: policy, the management of defence resources and military operations. This article argues that the 1998 Strategic Defence Review placed excessive reliance on anticipated improvements in the management of defence resources to render Labour's defence policies affordable. The field of attempted defence management improvements is surveyed and it is concluded that no final answers were generated on the key issues of the division of tasks among uniformed personnel, civil servants and the private sector, or on whether defence should be run largely on a capability basis or on single service lines. Given the demonstrated similarity between the government's concepts of the UK's role in the world in the Strategic Defence Review (1998) and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) (2010), there is a clear danger that the SDSR also relies too much on efficiency savings. By reference to the inherent complications of defence management and to three strands of management thought (complexity management, wicked problems and principal–agent theory), the article argues that some inefficiency will always be present. It suggests that the Clausewitzian concept of friction, accepted as pertinent to the area of military operations, might also be applied to efforts to generate military capability. It concludes that defence reviews should not be based on assumptions about efficiency savings and that students of international security and defence need to pay attention to both the volume of resources going into defence and the mechanisms by which they are managed.     

A geographic assessment of 'total' health care supply in Ontario: complementary and alternative medicine and conventional medicine

Shortages of family physicians, specialists and other personnel working within the realm of conventional medicine (CM) concern citizens in many regions and municipalities in Canada. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches (such as chiropractic, holistic, homeopathic, naturopathic, massage and acupuncture) are increasingly used in conjunction with, or in some cases as replacements for, conventional medicine. Thus, to get an idea of 'total' health care supply in a jurisdiction and to draw comparisons between locations, it is useful to understand the spatial tendencies of both CM and CAM offices. With the use of a sample that contains the location, employment and sales of 4,955 CAM and 8,709 CM offices, this study details the spatial patterns of health care supply in the Canadian province of Ontario. The analysis comprises three main parts. First, the geographic tendencies of CAM and CM office activity are revealed in per capita terms and while regional differences are detectable, the main contrast is that CAM displays a much more even distribution across the urban-rural continuum in comparison to CM. Second, through the use of location quotients and a local spatial autocorrelation analysis, it is shown that certain municipalities (especially in Ontario's southwest and south-central regions) specialize in CAM and the most outstanding spatial feature is an '81 municipality CAM cluster' that represents arguably the pinnacle of CAM activity in the province. CM specialization is rarer and is biased towards the more populated municipalities. Third, a Spearman's correlation analysis suggests that CAM and CM health care supply are associated with community well-being indictors and urban density measures.     

Geographic location and Aboriginal economic status: a census-based analysis of outstations in the Northern Territory

The demographic and economic characteristics of Aboriginal people in Australia's remotest locations are examined from 1986 Census data. There are three objectives: first to argue the case for examining Aboriginal society in spatial context: second, to demonstrate how census data can be manipulated to isolate meaningful spatial sub-categories; third to consider the extent to which extreme remote location is associated with distinct social and economic characteristics. The conclusion is that on the whole, remote location is reflected in lower economic status but not in demographic structure.