Co-existing along the coast Nesodden coastal trail case study

The green movement strives to tackle the consequences of climate change, urban sprawl, ocean sprawl, sea rise, and more. The Oslo fjord is struggling to maintain and guard its current ecological state. Using the semi-urban- case study of Nesodden, I wish to explore the local coastal land use, its current ecological state, as well as proposing a design outcome. The thesis aims to answer the research question: To which degree can landscape architecture facilitate a multi-specie design approach along the coast of Nesodden? The coastal trails of Nesodden are deeply-rooted in culture and identity, and also offer recreational value for walking. The trails connect the many coastal recreational nodes such as beaches, cafés, marinas, piers and community saunas. Using the trail as a base for exploring these recreational areas I wish to identify key issues and possibilities to preserve and enhance the trail. How can landscape architects design for a more-than human client? Through the path of the research, the fascinating sea bird The Common Guillemot /Murre (Uria Algae) and their critical relationships with their environment became a focus. The Norwegian government developed a holistic action plan for the Oslo fjord in March 2021. Considering this action plan, Nesodden, with its proximity to Oslo and plenty of coastline on both the east and west sides, is an ideal candidate for the case study. With its proximity to the urban hub of Oslo, Nesodden offers forests and coastlines, which are valuable assets. Historically, the municipality has a rich creative culture. The population has increased in the last few years, and the pressures of urbanization are relevant to investigate. I have chosen to limit my investigation to the eastern part of the Nesodden coastal trail, and focused on the intertidal zones. The research aims to include both creative knowledge productions as well as scientific based theory knowledge.The green movement strives to tackle the consequences of climate change, urban sprawl, ocean sprawl, sea rise, and more. The Oslo fjord is struggling to maintain and guard its current ecological state. Using the semi-urban- case study of Nesodden, I wish to explore the local coastal land use, its current ecological state, as well as proposing a design outcome. The thesis aims to answer the research question: To which degree can landscape architecture facilitate a multi-specie design approach along the coast of Nesodden? The coastal trails of Nesodden are deeply-rooted in culture and identity, and also offer recreational value for walking. The trails connect the many coastal recreational nodes such as beaches, cafés, marinas, piers and community saunas. Using the trail as a base for exploring these recreational areas I wish to identify key issues and possibilities to preserve and enhance the trail. How can landscape architects design for a more-than human client? Through the path of the research, the fascinating sea bird The Common Guillemot /Murre (Uria Algae) and their critical relationships with their environment became a focus. The Norwegian government developed a holistic action plan for the Oslo fjord in March 2021. Considering this action plan, Nesodden, with its proximity to Oslo and plenty of coastline on both the east and west sides, is an ideal candidate for the case study. With its proximity to the urban hub of Oslo, Nesodden offers forests and coastlines, which are valuable assets. Historically, the municipality has a rich creative culture. The population has increased in the last few years, and the pressures of urbanization are relevant to investigate. I have chosen to limit my investigation to the eastern part of the Nesodden coastal trail, and focused on the intertidal zones. The research aims to include both creative knowledge productions as well as scientific based theory knowledge

Performing geochronology in the anthropocene: multiple temporalities of North Atlantic foreshores

As a branch of geomorphology, geochronology determines the ages of sediment, fossils, and rocks, thereby assembling a geologic planetary history. As a geochronological dénouement, the proposed geological epoch of the Anthropocene may indicate the figural moment in geologic time when human activity inscribed itself into sediment across the planet. This dissertation offers an artist’s account of practice-as-research investigating how to perform geochronology in the Anthropocene along North Atlantic foreshores. As sites prone to the geologic acts of deposition, erosion, and intrusion, foreshores provide an impermanent surface on which to interrogate the deep time, hidden knowledges, and climate crisis affiliated with the Anthropocene’s inaugural narrative. Geochronologists partly comprising a working group to give the Anthropocene its formal designation note that “[t]he expression of the Anthropocene in the environmentally sensitive coastal systems [including beaches, tidal flats, and deltas]… represents a diverse patchwork of deposits and lacunae that reflect local interplays of natural and anthropogenic forces” (Zalasiewicz, Williams, and Waters 2014). Climate change also places foreshores as central players impacted by storminess, glacial melt, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification. Produced as the book Sound of Mull, the artist’s performance scores were developed through artistic practice-as-research and offer strategies for experiential knowledge acquisition through direct or imagined engagement with the multiple temporalities and more-than-human co-constituents of North Atlantic foreshores. Participatory, experiential engagement may sensitize people to the hidden geochronologies of everyday life. This dissertation is situated within an interdisciplinary practice-as-research methodology integral to geopoetics praxis, interweaving research from performance studies, geology, human geography, and archaeology. Detailing foreshore performances enacted in Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden between 2015 and 2019, the dissertation argues for interdependence and circulation as necessary components defining geopoetics. The account expounds the importance of both interdisciplinary scholarship and artistic practice-as-research methodology in the exploration of geopoetics as transformative action. Research was undertaken through PhD study at the University of Glasgow from 2015 to 2019, supported by the Lord Kelvin / Adam Smith Scholarship

Population Ecology of Colonially Breeding Seabirds: How Intrinsic Processes, Mediating Influences, and Individual Heterogeneity Affect Population Vital Rates

Seabirds have great potential to serve as marine indicators. However, before we can interpret seabird trends with confidence, we need a better understanding of the role of intrinsic processes, mediating influences, and lifetime experience in modulating relationships between prey availability and seabird population dynamics. Intrinsic processes, mediating influences, and seabird productivity. I assessed productivity (chicks per breeding attempt) at Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) colonies in Prince William Sound, AK and managed Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) colonies in the Gulf of Maine. Both systems showed evidence of intrinsic control; factors mediating access to prey were also important. Mediating influences, individual heterogeneity, and seabird productivity. Productivity integrates events over successive reproductive stages, so events at one stage can modulate the effects of events at other stages. I investigated the effects of individual age and multiple stressors on kittiwake reproduction in Alaska. I found older birds enjoyed greater success across the board, but different external influences drove success at different stages. These results highlight the need to account for both individual heterogeneity and potential interactions among extrinsic processes in interpreting seabird productivity. Individual heterogeneity and reproductive costs. Reproduction can incur short-term costs in the form of reduced parental survival or breeding activity in the following season. I found evidence of long-term costs in kittiwakes that underwent 0-4 forced nest failures in the early 1990s. Individuals that were forced to fail more were less likely to skip breeding over the following decade, presumably due to associated cost savings. The lack of an observed survival effect suggests that survival is well-buffered in long-lived species, with costs instead borne by parameters less important to lifetime reproductive success. Intrinsic processes, individual heterogeneity, and seabird survival and recruitment. I investigated the role of colony size in survival, recruitment, and post-recruitment survival of kittiwakes from an Alaskan colony. I found declines in apparent survival associated with increased colony size, likely resulting from increased dispersal of individuals as the colony grew. Recruitment was age-dependent. These results highlight the need to consider intrinsic processes when relating marine bird population dynamics to prey availability and changes in marine ecosystems

The design of a new opera house for central, Port Elizabeth

Urban decentralization and inner city decay is a ubiquitous phenomenon of social and economic circumstance. The rise of sub-urban sprawl around new centres has encouraged urban degeneration and produced unsustainable cities, particularly in South Africa. Consequently, the loss of cultural assets in decaying historic centres, specifi cally in Port Elizabeth, reveals issues pertinent to loss of place and heritage. In combatting urban degeneration, the utilization of culture and the arts has proven to be a powerful rejuvenation strategy. The vision of the Mandela Bay Development Agency, and similar successful global precedents, suggest that a cultural precinct could effectively tackle urban decay in the historic core. This premise guides the proposal.The principal aim of this treatise is the design of a new Opera House acting as a catalyst for the proposed cultural district, based on the inner-city rejuvenation of Central. This aim is achieved by several objectives, which are explored in an effort to unveil potential and appropriate design responses: An investigation of the Opera House typology, which uncovers its dignity, vitality and signifi cance within past and present cities; An exploration of context, which reveals the opportunities to transform identity and urban cultural practise; Research into technical, spatial and physical demands of the program provide depth and root the design responses in reality. As a result, the Opera House sits as a gateway building into the precinct, as well as a cultural and physical landmark within the city. A duality of expression presents both a contrast and self-similarity in the historic context, simultaneously rooting the building in place while conveying a unique character

Mapping Ultima Thule

The book addresses the relationship between the literary representations of North Greenland and the Inughuit people in Knud Rasmussen’s expedition accounts The New People and My Travel Diary and the historical process of Danish colonization of North Greenland. The aim of reading both works is to demonstrate the ambivalence in representing North Greenland and the Inughuit, and, through this, to prove the existence of common mechanisms and cultural practices connected to mapping of the Other in a situation of asymmetric power relations. Applying a textual approach founded on colonial discourse analysis, the reading proves that literary mappings of geography and identity can never be stable, as they are in the state of constant transformation, perpetually recontextualized and reinvented

The Future of Coral Reefs

This volume contains a series of papers prepared for presentation at the 14th International Coral Reef Symposium, originally planned for July 2020 in Bremen, Germany, but postponed until 2021 (online) and 2022 (in person) because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It contains a series of papers illustrating the breadth of modern studies on coral reefs and the response of the reef science community to the threats that coral reefs now face, above all from climate change. The first group of papers focus on the biology of a selection of reef organisms, ranging from sea fans to coral dwelling crabs. The next group describe studies of coral communities and ecological interactions in regions as diverse as Florida, Kenya, Colombia, and Norway. Further papers describe investigations into the effects of global warming (in the Maldives and in Timor-Leste) and of other impacts (UV blockers, ocean acidification). The final two papers describe the latest applications of satellite and camera technology to the challenge of mapping and monitoring reefs

Touching Impermanence: Experiential Embodied Engagements with Materiality in Contemporary Art Practice

Touching impermanence describes the experiential moment in an art encounter when one senses the enchanted reality of one’s interconnections within the sentient matterflow of existence. All matter in existence is constantly vibrating, changing, assembling and evolving into forms and organisms, cycling through decay and disintegration, then reforming again with diversity and difference; this is the impermanence of sentient matter-flow. Humans are just one form of these reciprocal assemblages; we are within and part of sentient matter-flow. We also co-create with sentient matter-flow, changing these cycles on micro and macro levels, just as they change us. On a macro level human actions have impacted and changed the Earth’s biosphere, altering and polluting sentient matter-flows to the extent that our present time period is becoming known as the Anthropocene, the human age of destruction and disconnection. There are many efforts to readdress our anthropocentric feelings of apathetic disconnection from the Earth; one is found in the arts and correlates with my practice-led research. This doctoral study of sensate experiences of materiality and haptic thinking, which provide both maker and audience with direct palpable experience of time, forms a specific understanding of touching impermanence. My art processes involve working with tactile materials such as beeswax; tree branches, stumps and bark; paper; ash; rocks; ice; snow; charcoal; light and fungi. Engaging with these materials cocreatively involves a methodology of touch, multisensorily following materialities’ sentient matter-flow. Acting with the material, I am present to the material’s own sense of time, interactions, agency, histories, layers of interbeing and interconnections with surrounding matter. This requires being open to the mysteriousness of materials, inviting moments of enchantment within art encounters and the realisation of touching impermanence. This thesis investigates my studio practice and works produced, alongside related practices of Australian and international artists, by drawing on the intersections between New Materialism discourses and Buddhist philosophy to address aspects of phenomenology and eco-philosophy in the complexities of these art practices and artwork encounters