Cambial Phenology Informs Tree-Ring Analysis of Fire Seasonality in Coastal Plain Pine Savannas

© 2018, The Author(s). Understanding of historical fire seasonality should facilitate development of concepts regarding fire as an ecological and evolutionary process. In tree-ring based fire-history studies, the seasonality of fire scars can be classified based on the position of the fire scar within or between growth rings. Cambial phenology studies are needed to precisely relate a fire-scar position to months within a year because the timing of dormancy, earlywood production, and latewood production varies by species and location. We examined cambial phenology patterns of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.), slash pine (P. elliottii Engelm.), and South Florida slash pine (P. densa [Little & K.W Dorman] Silba) at sites in southern Georgia and south-central and northern Florida, USA. We developed long-term (2.5 yr to 12 yr) datasets of monthly growth and dormancy and determined when trees transitioned from producing early-wood to producing latewood each year. Most trees were dormant for a period of 1 to 2 months in the winter and transitioned from earlywood to latewood in June. Given the annual growth ring morphology of the pines that we studied and the timing of the lightning-fire season in our study area, we propose a new classification system for assigning seasonality to fire scars found in the three native upland pine species that we studied. This new system, which we name the Coastal Plain Pine System, accounts for the large proportion of latewood typical of these pines and includes a position (the transition position) that corresponds with the time of year when lightning fires occur most frequently. Our findings demonstrate how cambial phenology data can improve interpretation of fire-scar data for determining historical fire seasonality

The Map As An Object of Service Design

The rapid development of ICT has led to the transformation of maps from printed paper to virtual digital publishing and three-dimensional mapping. This allows speculation to be replaced with certainty and accuracy in maps. This also allows maps to function as participatory platforms with the capacity to collect, create, store and process data through people’s interaction with other individuals, the environment and cities. This has significantly changed the way that key stakeholders interact with each other through mapping and raised fundamental ontological and epistemological questions about the nature of maps and mapping. This paper reviews literature in critical cartography and map examples to see how recent technological developments relate to mapmaking. The current practice and thinking in cartography has been challenged, as cartography is traditionally considered the core mapmaking profession. When maps start to function as participatory platforms and become democratized, cartography seems to become obsolete. In light of this, we suggest that maps become the objects of service design. In this role, service designers consider maps as services and take a user-centred approach to facilitate the engagement of key stakeholders in complex systems. The key contribution of this paper lies in the fact that it initiates a discussion of the potential of service design in developing digital platforms, smart cities and public services through mapping. It suggests that future studies could contextualize the involvement of service design in this new territory and investigates its implications and limitations

OpenLine Newsletter, June 2005

A monthly newsletter for Civil Service employees, Volume XXIX, Number 12, June 2005.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/oln/1036/thumbnail.jp

Review: The Newsletter of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, volume 13, issue 2

Contents include: On Borders, LMDA Conference 2003 Turgs in the Hood, Reading Between the Lines, Acting Locally: The Lysistrata Project, and Regional Updates News and Info from Each LMDA Region. Issue editors: D.J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr, Liz Engelman, Madeline Oldham, Jacob Zimmer.https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/lmdareview/1027/thumbnail.jp

The iconography of the English town: maps and views 1500–1800, with special reference to the towns of East Anglia

As part of a European-wide project sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust, this dissertation examines the history and development of map-making in Europe and England to 1800, showing the various uses and interpretations of maps and views. A county by county descriptive catalogue of maps and views of towns in East Anglia is included

Regional narratives, hidden maps, and storied places: cultural cartographies of the Cariri region, Northeast Brazil

In recent years, maps and mappings have gained increasing attention in cultural-geographic studies. However, little has been written about how to employ cartographic products and processes as research methodologies in practice. In this dissertation I present four different qualitative mapping strategies that I label cultural cartographies and that aim to critically investigate the relations between geographical knowledge and representation, society and cartography, culture and maps. A region in Northeast Brazil, the Cariri in the state of Ceará, was selected as the space to test these strategies and to show how maps (both historic and contemporary and in their metaphorical sense) help construct, confirm, and even conceal identities and actively shape, define, and redefine a region whose history has been constructed upon official written records and left out less visible regional narratives, hidden maps, and storied places that I aimed to excavate through my mappings. The diversified set of cartographic tools for this study included historical maps and their social lives, mental maps as visual expressions of regional knowledge and worldviews, interviews about maps and mapmaking and the respective regional cartographic culture, and the author’s own attempts to translate words into maps and produce cartographic representations. Finally, I argue that these mappings stimulate the engagement and communication with different cartographic perspectives and open up a whole universe of possibilities and perspectives for the mapmaker, map reader, and cultural geographer that are not restricted to the academic setting, but could also be of practical use in society, taking into account that maps are not conceived only as representations, but also as translations and dialogues that help link material culture, discourse and performative ways to comprehend reality