Historical changes of wet heathlands in Galicia by means of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

[Resumen] Los brezales húmedos atlánticos europeos son un hábitat de interés para la conservación, que sufren un declive histórico y son actualmente objeto de protección. En Galicia no existen estudios sobre estos cambios históricos recientes, que contemplen las peculiaridades del paisaje rural gallego como la elevada dispersión de la población o los efectos de la concentración parcelaria. En este trabajo estudiamos la cobertura del brezal húmedo de Erica mackayana en Galicia en dos momentos (1956 y 2008) y a dos escalas de trabajo. Mediante la interpretación de ortofotografía aérea y herramientas SIG (Sistema de Información Geográfica), se cuantificaron y analizaron los cambios en el uso del suelo y la cobertura y fragmentación del brezal. Los brezales pasaron de ocupar un 75% de la superficie en 1956 a un 46% en 2008. Aumentaron las manchas de frondosas autóctonas e infraestructuras, pero principalmente las repoblaciones forestales de un 1% a un 23% en el mismo periodo. Esto, unido a otros hechos como el aumento de la fragmentación del hábitat o la pérdida de diversidad, implican que la tendencia europea, de desaparición general de estos brezales, existe también en Galicia, por lo tanto es necesario establecer medidas para la conservación de estos ecosistemas, ligados a los usos tradicionales, que contrarresten los efectos negativos de los cambios socio-económicos en la conservación del hábitat.[Abstract] The European Atlantic wet heathlands are priority conservation habitats that have undergone a historical decline and currently protected by European policies. In Galicia, no studies have dealt with these historical changes and the peculiarities of the region in terms of land consolidation and population density. In this project, we have studied land use cover of the Galician wet heaths dominated by Erica mackayana in two different moments (1956 and 2008) at two scales. By means of interpreting orthophotographs and GIS tools (Geographic Information System), land use changes were quantified and fragmentation and cover of heathlands was analysed. An important loss of heathlands (from 75% to 46% of occupation) and an increase of the tree plantations (from 1% to 23%) were the main changes recorded. Alongside with other processes like the increasing of fragmentation of the habitat and the loss of diversity, suggests that the trend of the habitat decline in Europe is also taking place in Galicia. Therefore, it is necessary to establish measures for the conservation of these ecosystems related to the traditional uses, to counteract the negative effects of socio-economic changes in the conservation of the habitat.Traballo fin de grao (UDC.CIE). Bioloxía. Curso 2015/201

Fire, people and reindeer in the boreal forest : the role of fire in the historical and contemporary interactions between Sami reindeer herding and forest management in northern Sweden

In the boreal forest of northern Sweden, fire was used from around 1920 to 1970 as a forest regeneration measure, and then abandoned for some decades. Since the 1990s, fire restoration has been carried out through regeneration and conservation burning in commercial and protected forests. The same forest is also used as reindeer pasturelands by indigenous Sami herders. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the human dimensions of fire regimes in the Swedish boreal forest, with a focus on interactions between fire, Sami reindeer husbandry and forest management during the 20th century and up to the present. This goal was addressed through an interdisciplinary approach combining historical ecology and environmental anthropology. The results show that while forest managers conceive fire as a natural perturbation, Sami herders have conflicting feelings about fire, as they have had to endure the effects of imposed burning strategies on their livelihood. While burning can promote summer pasture and maintain the long-term availability of winter pasture, it destroys lichen pasture temporarily and Sami ecological knowledge shows that burning also affects the behaviour and movement patterns of the reindeer. These pitfalls already affected reindeer herding during the first half of the 20 th century, and even triggered an early form of consultation with the forestry sector. Today, while generally opposed to all external measures that affect reindeer grazing grounds, Sami herders increasingly see in burning a way to restore winter pasturelands. They use the consultation process with forest owners to negotiate for burning that serves their interests. The fire regime thus reflects a combination of technical constraints, forest management and nature conservation objectives, and conditions posed by Sami herders. However, in order for Sami herders to actually assert their interests, true fire co-management would have to be implemented

Rulership in 1st to 14th century Scandinavia

This book discusses the 3rd–11th century developments that led to the formation of the three Scandinavian kingdoms in the Viking Age. Wide-ranging studies of communication routes, regional identities, judicial territories, and royal sites and graves trace a complex trajectory of rulership in these pagan Germanic societies. In the final section, new light is shed on the pinnacle and demise of the Norwegian kingdom in the 13th–14th centuries

Deep anthropogenic topsoils in Scotland: a geoarchaeological and historical investigation into distribution, character and conservation under modern land cover

The thesis includes a set of large digital appendices (Appendix 3 and Appendix 4) which are available as a CD on request from the author.Deep anthropogenic topsoils – those augmented through long-term additions of mineral bulk among fertilising agents – retain in both their physical and chemical make-up significant indicators for cultural activity. This project researched the geographical distribution and historical context of deep anthropogenic topsoils in Scotland and the Isles, and used this information to investigate the impact of current land cover upon the cultural information they retain. In so doing, the project investigated the potential for conservation of this significant cultural resource. A review of the historical information available on agricultural and manuring practices for Scotland identified several factors likely to affect deep topsoil distribution and frequency. These were: the availability of bulk manures to Scottish farmers, the significance of the seaweed resource in determining fertiliser strategies in coastal areas, and the influence of urban settlement and associated patterns of domestic and industrial waste disposal on the location of deep topsoils. Evidence for widespread deep topsoil development was limited. The primary data source used – the First Statistical Account of Scotland – was manipulated into a spatial database in ArcView GIS, to which geographical data from the Soil Survey of Scotland and national archaeological survey databases were added. This was used to devise a survey programme aiming both to investigate the potential factors affecting soil development listed above, and to locate deep topsoil sites for analysis. Three sites were identified with deep topsoils under different cover types (woodland, arable and pasture). The urban-influenced context of two of these highlighted the significance of urban settlement to the location of Scottish deep topsoils. Analysis of pH, organic matter, and total phosphorus content showed a correlation between raised organic matter and a corresponding increase in phosphorus content in soils under permanent vegetation. By contrast, soils under arable cultivation showed no such rise. This was attributed to the action of cropping in removing modern organic inputs prior to down-profile cycling. The potential for pasture and woodland cover to affect relict soil signatures was therefore observed. Thin section analysis aimed to both provide micromorphological characterisation of the three deep topsoil sites and investigate the effect of modern land cover on micromorphological indicators. Distinctive differences in micromorphological character were observed between the rural and urban deep topsoils, with the latter showing a strong focus on carbonised fuel residues and industrial wastes. All sites showed a highly individual micromorphological character, reflective of localised fertilising systems. There was no correlation between land cover type and survival of material indictors for anthropogenic activity, with soil cultural indicators surviving well, particularly those characteristic of urban-influenced topsoils. Suggestions for preservation strategies for this potentially rare and highly localised cultural resource included the incorporation of deep anthropogenic topsoil conservation into current government policy relating to care of the rural historic environment, and the improvement of data on the resource through ongoing survey and excavation.This research was funded by Historic Scotland and the University of Stirlin

Plants, food and the repurposing of urban nature: the geographies of foraging and landscape in London

An increasingly common sight in London is people seeking out and collecting the uncultivated, unattended and altogether unintended plants growing wild in the multifarious spaces of the city. “Urban foraging”, as it has been termed and observed in other geographies, can be read as a reflection of various concerns. It may be an expression of hipster gentrification, a radical reclamation of communal space, a re-finding of lost flavours and traditions, a reflection of a city diverse with cultural plant uses, or a shared desire to reconnect with nature, both spiritual and material. This research uses the figuration of “urban foraging” to plot a path through the uneven social and material landscapes of food, nature and the city. In so doing, it examines what foraging might tell us about the material affordances of the city, how we do or might differently feed ourselves, how urban space is designed and governed, and the alternatives politics, performance and possibilities of urban nature. Drawing upon a year of mixed-method field work in London, including participant observation with urban pickers and foragers, interviews with a range of actors, archival and visual resources, and autoethnographic walking and learning, it offers a qualitative account of the activities in question and the city more broadly. The research builds on existing work concerned with urban gathering practices in North American cities, and nascent research from other geographies, applying some of this insight to the situated histories, ecologies and knowledges at work in London. While political ecologies, and urban political ecologies, provide a valuable theoretical basis for addressing issues of access to nature, the status of the urban forest, and different epistemic traditions, urban foraging reveals a more complex picture. Looking towards “relational materialist” thinking, it helps reimagine food as a contingent event—a becoming— replete with ontological uncertainty. At the same time, it undermines stable readings of the food system by re-inscribing moments of human-plant encounter with affective meaning, bearing implications for efforts to recalibrate urban foodscapes and food-ways. The thesis attends to the various facets and ‘affordances’ of urban foraging in London, including the praxis of walking and mobility, botanical encounter and knowledge, culture and memory, the history and (re)emergence of the urban commons, and the importance of how language and etymology intertwine themselves in all of these. Fundamentally, the research offers an interpretation of urban foraging as a form of figurative and literal “poaching”— to borrow the term from De Certeau—and means through which to make sense of the city, which unsettles the increasingly numerous representations of London as an ecologically coherent entity. In so doing, it also reveals a performative element that invokes varying visions of rurality connecting the city, at least symbolically, with temporally and geographically distant spaces. Rather than the revival of culturally or historically ‘authentic’ practices, urban foraging—through the enactment of varied ethnobotanical knowledge and skill—is contributing to the emergence of novel cultures of urban nature. As such, these plant collection practices bear implications for how the city’s green spaces are conceived and managed

An interdisciplinary approach to mapping soil carbon

At the global scale, soils are the primary terrestrial reservoir of carbon and therefore have a major influence on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Soil organic carbon stocks are estimated to have decreased by an average of fifty two percent in temperate regions since 1850. Land use change and management practices are the primary drivers of this decrease. Temperate upland regions have been identified as important for climate regulation, both in terms of current stocks of soil carbon and future sequestration potential. Therefore, appropriate on-farm management of soil carbon stocks in these regions has the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation goals. This thesis is a contribution to ongoing efforts to improve on–farm soil carbon management. It does so through the development of mapping practices that incorporate both ecological and social data. The ecological aspect of the research identified a role for existing farm survey data in accurately predicting soil carbon distribution without the need for time and labour-intensive field work. The engagement with social science methods acknowledges a societal bias towards scientific ways of representing soil carbon and the marginalisation of alternative, often experiential, knowledge. The research demonstrated a way for different knowledges to be incorporated into soil carbon mapping practices and identified a role for under-utilised scientific and non-scientific knowledge of soil carbon for improving spatially-explicit management plans. The mapping methods were developed around three case study farms in the Lake District National Park in Cumbria. This region is an upland landscape which has been identified as an important space for carbon management in the UK. The research offers a distinct and timely approach to assessing the potential of interdisciplinary mapping to improve the management of soil carbon at the farm scale and has wider implications for the management of ecological systems

Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations

This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans

Deep anthropogenic topsoils in Scotland : a geoarchaeological and historical investigation into distribution, character and conservation under modern land cover

Deep anthropogenic topsoils – those augmented through long-term additions of mineral bulk among fertilising agents – retain in both their physical and chemical make-up significant indicators for cultural activity. This project researched the geographical distribution and historical context of deep anthropogenic topsoils in Scotland and the Isles, and used this information to investigate the impact of current land cover upon the cultural information they retain. In so doing, the project investigated the potential for conservation of this significant cultural resource. A review of the historical information available on agricultural and manuring practices for Scotland identified several factors likely to affect deep topsoil distribution and frequency. These were: the availability of bulk manures to Scottish farmers, the significance of the seaweed resource in determining fertiliser strategies in coastal areas, and the influence of urban settlement and associated patterns of domestic and industrial waste disposal on the location of deep topsoils. Evidence for widespread deep topsoil development was limited. The primary data source used – the First Statistical Account of Scotland – was manipulated into a spatial database in ArcView GIS, to which geographical data from the Soil Survey of Scotland and national archaeological survey databases were added. This was used to devise a survey programme aiming both to investigate the potential factors affecting soil development listed above, and to locate deep topsoil sites for analysis. Three sites were identified with deep topsoils under different cover types (woodland, arable and pasture). The urban-influenced context of two of these highlighted the significance of urban settlement to the location of Scottish deep topsoils. Analysis of pH, organic matter, and total phosphorus content showed a correlation between raised organic matter and a corresponding increase in phosphorus content in soils under permanent vegetation. By contrast, soils under arable cultivation showed no such rise. This was attributed to the action of cropping in removing modern organic inputs prior to down-profile cycling. The potential for pasture and woodland cover to affect relict soil signatures was therefore observed. Thin section analysis aimed to both provide micromorphological characterisation of the three deep topsoil sites and investigate the effect of modern land cover on micromorphological indicators. Distinctive differences in micromorphological character were observed between the rural and urban deep topsoils, with the latter showing a strong focus on carbonised fuel residues and industrial wastes. All sites showed a highly individual micromorphological character, reflective of localised fertilising systems. There was no correlation between land cover type and survival of material indictors for anthropogenic activity, with soil cultural indicators surviving well, particularly those characteristic of urban-influenced topsoils. Suggestions for preservation strategies for this potentially rare and highly localised cultural resource included the incorporation of deep anthropogenic topsoil conservation into current government policy relating to care of the rural historic environment, and the improvement of data on the resource through ongoing survey and excavation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceHistoric Scotland : University of StirlingGBUnited Kingdo

Deconstructing and Reconstructing Local Identities in the Physical Landscape: The role(s) of Roman remains in the social changes of the sixth and seventh centuries in the former province of Britain

This thesis examines the evidence for engagement with and avoidance of Roman remains in the landscape of two regions within the former province of Britain, Sussex and the eastern part of the northern military frontier. This information is used to consider the attitudes that localised societies held towards the remain of the past, and how this engagement related to the social changes of the period. Chapter 1 introduces the research context and the aims, setting out research questions. Chapter 2 presents the state of current knowledge and prior approaches to studies of the landscape and the early medieval period, and places the study within the wider theoretical and methodological contexts of landscape studies, the use of GIS, and the consideration of ‘the past in the past’. It then examines attitudes towards the Roman past as evidence in other forms of cultural expression, ranging from modes of displaying identity and authority to the recycling of Roman metalwork, considering the degree of consistency in attitudes towards the past. This is followed in chapter 3 by an explanation of the methodology adopted. The following chapters look at engagement with Roman remains, in post-Roman Sussex in chapter 4, and the north-east military frontier, from southern Northumberland south to the North York Moors, in chapter 5. The evidence is contextualised against the distribution of activity in the physical landscape and the presence of prehistoric remains. Chapter 6 pulls together these threads together with previous regional studies, with a focus on identifying regional and chronological similarities and contrasts, and the reasons underlying these patterns. Finally, chapter 7 considers the strengths and weaknesses of the study, and areas for future work

Environmental and territorial modelling for planning and design

Between 5th and 8th September 2018 the tenth edition of the INPUT conference took place in Viterbo, guests of the beautiful setting of the University of Tuscia and its DAFNE Department. INPUT is managed by an informal group of Italian academic researchers working in many fields related to the exploitation of informatics in planning. This Tenth Edition pursed multiple objectives with a holistic, boundary-less character, to face the complexity of today socio-ecological systems following a systemic approach aimed to problem solving. In particular, the Conference will aim to present the state of art of modeling approaches employed in urban and territorial planning in national and international contexts. Moreover, the conference has hosted a Geodesign workshop, by Carl Steinitz (Harvard Graduate School of Design) and Hrishi Ballal (on skype), Tess Canfield, Michele Campagna. Finally, on the last day of the conference, took place the QGIS hackfest, in which over 20 free software developers from all over Italy discussed the latest news and updates from the QGIS network. The acronym INPUT was born as INformatics for Urban and Regional Planning. In the transition to graphics, unintentionally, the first term was transformed into “Innovation”, with a fine example of serendipity, in which a small mistake turns into something new and intriguing. The opportunity is taken to propose to the organizers and the scientific committee of the next appointment to formalize this change of the acronym. This 10th edition was focused on Environmental and Territorial Modeling for planning and design. It has been considered a fundamental theme, especially in relation to the issue of environmental sustainability, which requires a rigorous and in-depth analysis of processes, a theme which can be satisfied by the territorial information systems and, above all, by modeling simulation of processes. In this topic, models are useful with the managerial approach, to highlight the many aspects of complex city and landscape systems. In consequence, their use must be deeply critical, not for rigid forecasts, but as an aid to the management decisions of complex systems