Securing field learning using a twenty-first century Cook's Tour

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of incorporating digital video into a traditional Cook's Tour as part of a 7-day road trip around the east coast of New Zealand's North Island over a 4-year period. Student-generated video diaries summarized landscape features and processes at fieldsites, empowering students through active learning and small group collaborations. Student response was assessed via pre- and post-fieldtrip questionnaires, focus group and video diary reflection. Marks were analysed before and after the introduction of on-site student video production. Results of this research indicate the positive influence and statistically significant effects of this approach on student learning.     

Teaching industrial location — secondary data: second best?

Abstract

The study of industrial location has undergone several changes of emphasis. Neo‐classical location theories have been supplemented by studies based on the locational behaviour of individual firms. In turn, the value of these has been challenged by those of a structuralist persuasion. In order to engage in the resultant academic debates in an informed way, students need to know how specific businesses use geographic space. Ways of enhancing their knowledge by linking documentary searches with group presentations and field days are described here, both in general terms and by means of a case study.     

A spatial approach to upland vegetation change and human impact: the Aber Valley,Snowdonia

Abstract

Uplands have long been considered important ‘barometers’ for human-environment relationships. Five pollen sequences from the upper Aber Valley (Snowdonia), across an altitudinal gradient, reveal that human impacts have varied temporally on small spatial scales in the region. Woodland taxa persisted into the later Holocene at lower altitudes and sites located at higher altitude reveal a more open landscape history, possibly as a result of increased exposure limiting tree growth at high elevation. Continuous pastoral human land use is evident in the high upland (400 to >600 m AOD) landscape with evidence of clearing, burning and grazing indicators throughout the records covering the last ～6000 years, with increased activity apparent during the last 2000 years. There is no clear evidence to suggest that climate change (e.g. deteriorating climatic conditions from ～850 BC) resulted in land abandonment and it appears more likely that climatic shifts could have led to changes in human land management. The results demonstrate that pastoral land use varied at different altitudes across the Aber Valley upland, and have highlighted the value and potential of high/fine spatial sampling in providing insights into land use history and the mosaic of habitats that result.     

The spatial practice of public engagement: ‘doing’ geography in the South Wales valleys

This paper explores the spatial practices of public engagement through the consideration of an audio walk project that took place in Ebbw Vale in the summer of 2010. In the current political climate public engagement is often seen as a universal good, a way of demonstrating the productive dialogues that exist between ‘experts’ and their manifold publics. As studies in science communication have shown, however, this is a little misleading, for the term ‘public engagement’ masks a great diversity of projects and initiatives, which vary in the degree, methods and effectiveness of their engagement. In this paper, we argue that what is missing from many of these critiques is an attentiveness to the ‘placing’ and ‘spacing’ of our public engagement practices: where we work, who we work with and how we work all affect the nature, meaning and effectiveness of public engagement. Drawing on the idea of spatial practices, this paper explores the situated doing of the Ebbw Vale audio walk project.     

EU Enlargement,the New Central European Member States,and Austria

A noted Austrian-based geographer examines impacts of the EU accession of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia on these four countries as well as on the neighboring state of Austria. The paper examines broad macro-economic and regional development issues (including, more specifically, spatial disparities, cross-border relations, migration, and the political landscape) as well as attendant or projected changes in transportation infrastructure. An effort is made to discriminate between changes initiated or strengthened by accession per se versus measures introduced earlier, in anticipation of accession. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F02, J61, O11, O18. 7 figures, 60 references.     

The age of the Dalton culture: a Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon data

ABSTRACT

Since a radiocarbon chronology of the Dalton culture in the Southeast was first proposed, several new sites have been dated. I propose a new chronology based on radiocarbon dates from sites in the Dalton Heartland and its eastern periphery using Bayesian statistical models in OxCal and an analysis of the associated diagnostic projectile points. The analyses indicate that the Dalton culture probably evolved from the Clovis or Gainey phenomena about 12,680?cal?BP (ca. 10,700?BP) and lasted at least until ca. 10,400?cal?BP (ca. 9,200?BP), if not several centuries later. I propose early and late Dalton phases that follow changes in how Dalton points were made and resharpened. It appears that the people living to the east of the Heartland followed a different trajectory of projectile point evolution. There, notched points appear about 11,500?cal?BP, while in the Heartland, true notched points do not appear in large numbers until the Graham Cave point over 2,000 years later. The chronologies demonstrate that early, coeval, region-wide cultural changes may not have been the norm. They also raise interesting questions about how people in the Heartland and its eastern periphery interacted.     

Monkfish Mysteries. A Narrative Analysis of Place-making and Knowledge Production among North Norwegian Fishermen

Abstract

In this article, major focus is on creative production of knowledge needed to outsmart the monkfish at deep seafloor locations. This production is examined through narrative analysis. Narratives link individual human actions, events and experiences into interrelated aspects of an understandable composite. This is a cumulative process that shows some of the complexity and contextuality of everyday meaning-making. One recurrent question is, how do fish think? How fishermen construct narratives about the behavior of marine animals and their preferred underwater habitats is presented and analyzed. Some narratives are contested but all the same influence human–animal interaction. Narrative work further establishes and confirms common ideas, informed by marine biological science, fishermen's experiences, creative imagination and hopes. These narratives address topics also related to overfishing and resilience.     

Palaeoecology and Archaeology of the Village of Uukuniemi,Eastern Finland

Abstract

In the present article, pollen analytical results from Lake Kirkkolampi are presented and compared with results provided by archaeological material. Pollen analysis is connected with the archaeological research project at Papinniemi in Uukuniemi. Papinniemi is one of the numerous Greek Orthodox settlements that existed in Karelia in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Archaeological evidence of settlement preceding this period is very scarce, and in this respect Uukuniemi represents a typical area in eastern Finland. There is no archaeological evidence of permanent settlement in Uukuniemi from the Early Metal Period (c. 1800 bc–ad 400), the Middle Iron Age (c. ad 400–800) or from the Late Iron Age (c. ad 800–1300). Pollen analysis demonstrated the onset of cultivation c. cal ad 300. Marked intensification of agricultural activities and cultivation in permanent fields took place around cal ad 800. A shift in land-use practises, including a declining use of fire, is visible at cal ad 1520–1600. The discrepancy between archaeological and palaeoecological records raises several questions, and the problems of Early Metal Period and Iron Age populations, as well as settlement continuity, are discussed.     

DYNAMIC RESPONSE OF SKEW HIGHWAY BRIDGES

A simplified bridge model suitable for use in a parametric study of short-span skew highway bridges and bridges with stiffness eccentricity is presented. The proposed model is simple, yet it captures all essential features that affect the dynamic response of these bridges. Using this simplified model, formulas for computing earthquake response of the bridges are developed and parameters that significantly influence the dynamic response of the bridges are identified. The study indicates that the response of a given skew bridge depends not only on its deck aspect ratio, the stiffness eccentricity ratio, the skew angles, its natural frequencies, but also on the frequency ratio. In particular, the rotational to translational frequency ratio has a pronounced influence on the dynamic response of the bridge. It is found that skew bridges with high rotational to translational frequency ratios often exhibit less dependence on such parameters as deck aspect ratios, stiffness eccentricity ratios and skew angles.     

COMPLEX MODE SUPERPOSITION ALGORITHM FOR SEISMIC RESPONSES OF NON-CLASSICALLY DAMPED LINEAR MDOF SYSTEM

This paper deals with a complex mode superposition method for the seismic responses of general multiple degrees of freedom (MDOF) discrete system with complex eigenvectors and eigenvalues. A delicate general solution, completely in real value form, for calculat-ing seismic time history response of the MDOF system which cannot be uncoupled by normal modes, is deduced based on the algorithms of the complex superposition method. This solution comprises of two parts which are in relation to the Duhamel integration to sine and cosine function respectively. The related term of the Duhamel integration to sine function is actually the displacement response of the oscillator with corresponding modal frequency and the damping ratio. The other can be transferred into a combina-tion of the displacement and velocity responses of the same oscillator. In order to meet the practical needs of seismic design based on code design spectra for various kinds of structures equipped by viscous dampers, the complex complete quadratic combination (CCQC) method is deduced following similar procedures such as the well-known CQC method, in which a new modal velocity correlation coefficient, together with a new modal displacement-velocity correlation coefficient are involved besides the modal displacement correlation coefficient in normal CQC formula. The new algorithm of CCQC is not only as concise as that of the normal CQC but also has explicit physical meaning. The results obtained from complex mode superposition approaches are discussed and verified in some examples through step by step integration computation under a prescribed earth-quake motion input. From these examplary analyses, it may be pointed that the CCQC algorithm normally yields conservative outcome and that the forced mode uncoupling approach has good approximation even the discussed examplary structures are strongly non-proportional.