Application of Landsat satellite imagery to monitor land‐cover changes at the Athabasca Oil Sands,Alberta, Canada

A major advantage of satellite remote sensing is that the imagery acquired provides a synoptic view of the landscape. Thus, repeat coverage by the satellite on a regular basis permits the detection of changes in land‐cover over time. This study demonstrates the application of remote sensing technology to the monitoring of mining activities at the Athabasca Oil Sands region of Alberta, Canada. First, we describe the techniques used to match a time sequence of Landsat imagery, both spatially and spectrally, to ensure that the spectral changes through time are due to land‐cover variations. A series of spectral trajectories were then extracted to assess changes in land‐cover through time. Secondly, a land‐cover classification was produced from the baseline 1984 imagery and, using historic and future mine extents, the classification was analyzed to determine the proportion of each land‐cover type affected through development. Results of the analysis indicate that since 1984 there has been a larger reduction in mixedwood dense and broadleaf vegetation classes than mixedwood sparse or dense conifer stands in the area. Based on the delineations of mine‐site activity, the area of woodland and wetland habitat subject to development has increased from approximately 2,520 hectare (ha) in 1984 to 32,930 ha in 2005.     

Voluntary Approaches to Environmental Problems: Exploring the Rise of Nontraditional Public Policy

Government reliance on voluntary programs represents a significant shift in public policy: moving from command and control regulations to market based mechanisms. This article explores the determinants of Voluntary Remediation Programs (VRPs) in the American States. During the 1980s and 1990s, 44 states adopted VRPs to facilitate remediation of existing hazardous waste sites. Relying on diffusion of innovation theory, I develop a model of state policy adoption that explores the influence of internal state political and economic factors, as well as testing the influence of regional and top‐down diffusion forces. I utilize a discrete‐time event history approach to test this model. The results indicate that state policymaking is responsive to interest group pressure and the pace of cleanup at hazardous waste sites. Additionally, state policymaking is consistently influenced by the actions of surrounding state governments; the probability of adopting a voluntary program increases if surrounding states have already developed these policies.     

From Paper to Celluloid and Back Again: Finance and Form in Jorge Délano’s Films

This essay argues that our current understanding of the cinematic work by the pioneering Chilean film director Jorge Délano obscures a sophisticated interaction between politics, art and economics, one that reveals unexamined aspects of how the film industry developed in Chile. Most notably, it argues that Délano’s illustrated political satire magazine Topaze was central to the development of early sound cinema in the country. Following Rielle Navitski, the essay utilizes and examines tensions between models drawn from periodical studies and the concepts of remediation and intermediality in film studies. Examining illustrations from the first three years of Topaze’s production (1931–1933) in the context of the country’s economic situation, the essay argues that Délano remediated cinema in Topaze as a strategy of capital accumulation. This analysis also makes it possible to see how one of his sound films, Escándalo (1940), similarly remediated the illustrated paper periodical as he pursued financing for the production of cinematic commodities for export. The essay ends by examining the relationship between these issues and the political situation in early Cold War Chile.     

Transdisciplinarity in Practice: The Emergence and Resolution of Dissonances in Collaborative Research on Brownfield Regeneration

Abstract

The restoration of areas contaminated by industrial or mining activities has been a major issue in environmental research in many European countries since the 1980s, and it also constitutes a major area of research at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research — UFZ. Within this research environment, a consortium consisting of natural and social scientists has developed an EU-funded research project aimed at providing problem- oriented, tailored approaches and technologies for the revitalization of contaminated areas. The approach taken by the project is one that seeks to integrate scientific and non-scientific knowledge. In this paper we show how the idea of joint knowledge production between scientists and non-scientists is pursued in the context of the project. We explore how the rather fuzzy presentation of the transdisciplinary approach in the project proposal opens the door to interpretation and appropriation by scientists and practitioners alike. We describe a number of ad hoc solutions that were deployed to overcome specific dissonances during the collaborative production of knowledge (e.g. substituting common group learning for the single-handed elaboration of concepts by one project partner, or substituting the consultation of external experts for the mere gathering of information). Finally, we show how the interdisciplinary research environment at UFZ enhances the ability of the project team to resolve dissonances, improves collaboration between partners, and increases the innovative potential of project outputs.     

Remediating the Editor

Abstract

Writing and editing interfaces have profound implications for the subjectivity of human writers and editors, and hence the conditions of digital scholarly knowledge production. The extent to which the cultural inflections of such interfaces reflect the social, political, and technical contexts of their production emerges from a consideration of Author/Editor, the first software program dedicated to editing Standard Generalized Markup Language, and its provenance in Canadian literature, publishing, and cultural nationalism. The design of editing environments to negotiate tensions endemic to socialized and networked scholarship is increasingly crucial as reading and consumption merge with writing and production.