The effect of a top predator on kangaroo abundance in arid Australia and its implications for archaeological faunal assemblages

The dingo has received considerable attention in the Australian archaeological literature as an agent of bone fragmentation and accumulation. Dingoes have also been studied with respect to their commensal relationship with Aboriginal people. Study has not been directed, however, to the meta-role of dingoes as prey regulators that suppress kangaroo abundance, and the subsequent impact on human subsistence that direct competition between dingoes and humans over the same animal resources could have produced. This study presents data gathered in two adjacent cultural landscapes defined by human land use, one with dingoes and one without dingoes – to illustrate the archaeological effect that dingoes may have had on human economic systems by suppressing kangaroo abundance. Live kangaroos and kangaroo skeletal remains were on average 14-fold and 32-fold more abundant in the absence of dingoes, and contemporary commercial kangaroo harvesting and sheep grazing were restricted to areas where dingoes were absent. Given the marked effects that dingoes have on contemporary kangaroo abundance and the human economy, we argue that dingoes likely shaped the human economy in the past through human–dingo competition for the same limited resources. Evidence for competition between humans and dingoes could be investigated in the archaeological record by comparing the relative frequency of prey of different body sizes, as well as the degree of fragmentation of kangaroo skeletal elements, before and after the arrival of dingoes.     

关于加快青海生态畜牧业发展的思考

在实现科学发展,建设生态文明的大背景下,如何实现畜牧业可持续发展与草地生态保护相协调,既减轻草场压力又提高畜牧业经济效益,最终实现牧民增收与生态保护的双赢,是摆在我们面前需要解决的一项紧迫任务。本文从分析青海省草地畜牧业发展现状及存在问题入手,指出当前制约畜牧业发展根源在于落后的生产经营方式,并结合正在开展的生态畜牧业建设试点工作,提出了青海省发展生态畜牧业的思路和政策措施。     

A Late Holocene vertebrate food web from southern Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia)

This study presents isotopic data (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N from bone collagen) for 104 samples representing 29 vertebrate taxa from late pre-contact through to contact era (ca. 2000 – 100 BP) Haida Gwaii (British Columbia, Canada) from a wide variety of mostly marine organisms. The results demonstrate the considerable isotopic variability that characterizes potential prey items in coastal contexts and underscores the need for baseline faunal data to interpret human subsistence practices. Based on these data, a detailed marine food web was constructed, which provides insight into local ecological conditions. We present a simple method for quantifying the trophic level of ancient fauna using δ¹⁵N of bone collagen. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study for the reconstruction of human diet.     

关于设立国家生态安全保障基金的建议——以青海三江源地区为例

保障生态安全既是中国国家核心利益之一,也是维护国家安全的重大战略之一。作者以青海三江源地区为例,提出设立国家生态安全保障基金,列支中央财政支出项目,对国家重大生态安全进行长远投资的建议。作者认为,这是一个"激励相容"的多赢机制,具有可行性。     

Beyond ‘the toad beneath the harrow’: geographies of ecological science, 1959–1965

This paper traces the distinctive shifts in ecology and conservation in Britain during the late 1950s and 1960s. These were the last six years of the Nature Conservancy, the state research council responsible for ecological research, the conservation of nature, and for providing expert advice. Drawing on work in science studies and the geography of science, the paper addresses the changing spatialities of official ecological knowledge and the ordering of nature in this period of British modernity. The paper examines the Conservancy's construction of the form and relationship of research to practice: the connections between local spaces of research – the laboratory and the nature reserve – to the ‘right’ government of land and management of resources more universally. This putative ‘single great mission’ is traced through examination of the politics and practices of doing ecological research at the time, including the creation of a new Experimental Station, the growth of ecology as public discourse, and, importantly, government reviews of science. The paper concludes by considering how this mission was tempered and reconfigured by institutional change.     

环境史的转折点

千百年来,环境史并不总是沿着同一条直线发展的,而是有许多变化并且有多个转折点存在。为了创造一个新版本的历史,环境史学家应该研究这些转折点而不是把自己局限在一个小的专业范围内。但是怎么来识别这些转折点呢?什么是决定性的点呢?在这里作者认为为了重建漫长的历史演化进程中人类与自然之间的关系,历史学家应该抛弃那些深深根植于西方社会与中国古代社会的人性化自然的传统观念。人类是自然界的一部分,他们与外部世界的联系以及与人类本性的联系是紧密相关的。通过这种研究,环境史将占据历史研究中的很大比重,而不是仅仅处于其边缘地位。在这种理念的基础上,作者认为重建环境史的转折点是有可能的。首先他提出了人类早期历史的四个转折点即渔猎活动的产生,农耕文化的起源,人工灌溉农业的开端以及游牧业的兴起。在各种情形下,新的环境管理方式总是与人性化自然的新形式相联系的。在过去的500年中,这一重建工作变得更加困难了。鉴于这个时期的历史特征,作者提出并讨论了以下的六个转折点(1)流行病,吸毒成瘾,糖与殖民化(16世纪)。(2)公有制的结束以及计划性可持续发展的产生(约1800年)。(3)自然保护的发现以及现代神经病和社会卫生学(约1900年)。(4)沙尘暴,土壤保护以及水利工程的兴起(20世纪30年代以后)。(5)世界范围的美国生活方式的繁殖(20世纪50年代以后)。(6)生态革命是否为幸福的终结(1970年以后)。     

环境与经济关系研究的历史回顾

在回顾环境问题的基础上,本文简述了环境经济系统研究中的几个主要阶段及其特点,特别指出生态学在本类研究中的作用。最后,简述了现阶段环境经济研究的主要内容和常用研究方法,以及由于经济发展而引起的环境问题的潜在危险。     

论城市现代化进程中的人文关怀

从世界现代化进程看,城市现代化作为现代化的一个载体,本质上是一种历史文化现象。从这一视角考察城市现代化问题,文化生态是城市现代化的一个重要内涵。南京作为历史文化名城,其文化生态主要包括六朝文化、明文化和民国文化三个方面。在城市现代化的进程中,应当充分发挥文化生态的功能,展示出人文关怀的独特魅力。     

“Hungry for Knowledge”: Towards a Meso‐History of the Environmental Sciences

In recent years, cultural studies and cultural theory have experienced a new wave of ecological thought. Despite the engagement with the Anthropocene the history of ecology and the environmental sciences has remained somewhat of a puzzle. This goes especially for the 20^th century, a period when the sciences of the environment came to matter on a broader scale. Why do we actually know so little about the environmental sciences in the 20^th century? And what could a history of the environmental sciences in that period look like? This article answers these questions with two interrelated arguments. First, by reflecting on different approaches to write the history of ecology since the 1970s, it uncovers crucial entanglements between the history of science and ecological thought that created blind spots regarding the environmental sciences in the 20^th century. Second, it argues for a shift in scales of analysis—towards meso‐scales. With a more regional approach historians can engage with the often‐neglected aspects of the political and economic history of the environmental sciences in the 20th century and thereby also reveal their fundamental infrastructural dimension. Because at its core, the article claims, the environmental sciences were and are essentially infrastructural sciences.     

Managing the risk of climatic variability in late prehistoric northern Chile

The concept of risk management encompasses the diverse strategies employed in preventing and mitigating losses associated with social and environmental calamities. Building on the growing literature on risk, we use archaeological data from the Tarapacá Valley, located in northern Chile, to document the risk-reduction tactics mobilized by the valley’s inhabitants to navigate the increasingly volatile environmental and social conditions of the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450). With the onset of exceptionally unpredictable environmental conditions after AD 1100, residents of the Tarapacá Valley chose strategies such as increased trade and agricultural diversification and extensification to minimize shortages in staple resources. Threats of raiding and intra-community strife exacerbated the risks associated with subsistence shortfalls. Valley communities elected a number of strategies to curtail conflict-induced risk, including movement of settlements and field systems to defensible locations, construction of walls and other defensive features, and the introduction of plazas. Rock art data suggest that trade was increasingly embedded in ritually sanctioned events involving groups from different ecological zones. While studies of risk have focused disproportionately on environmental hazards, subsistence-related crises are often compounded by social hazards that require their own risk-mitigating strategies, further constraining options for coping with subsistence stress.