Native vegetation of the southern forests : south-east highlands, Australian alps, south-west Slopes, and SE Corner bioregions

The Southern Forests study area covers an area of about six million hectares of south-eastern New South Wales, south of Oberon and Kiama and east of Albury and Boorowa (latitude 33° 02’–37 ° 06’ S; longitude 146° 56’ – 147° 06’ E). The total area of existing vegetation mapped was three million hectares (3 120 400 hectares) or about 50% of the study area. Terrestrial, wetland and estuarine vegetation of the Southern Forests region were classified into 206 vegetation groups and mapped at a scale between 1: 25 000 and 1: 100 000. The classification was based on a cluster analysis of detailed field surveys of vascular plants, as well as field knowledge in the absence of field survey data. The primary classification was based on 3740 vegetation samples with full floristics cover abundance data. Additional classifications of full floristics presence-absence and tree canopy data were carried out to guide mapping in areas with few full floristic samples. The mapping of extant vegetation was carried out by tagging vegetation polygons with vegetation codes, guided by expert knowledge, using field survey data classified into vegetation groups, remote sensing, and other environmental spatial data. The mapping of pre-1750 vegetation involved tagging of soils mapping with vegetation codes at 1: 100 000 scale, guided by spatial modelling of vegetation groups using generalised additive statistical models (GAMS), and expert knowledge. Profiles of each of the vegetation groups on the CD-ROM* provide key indicator species, descriptions, statistics and lists of informative plant species. The 206 vegetation groups cover the full range of natural vegetation, including rainforests, moist eucalypt forests, dry shrub forests, grassy forests, mallee low forests, heathlands, shrublands, grasslands and wetlands. There are 138 groups of Eucalyptus forests or woodlands, 12 rainforest groups, and 46 non-forest groups. Of the 206 groups, 193 were classified and mapped in the study area. Thirteen vegetation groups were not mapped because of their small size and lack of samples, or because they fell outside the study area. Updated regional extant and pre-1750 vegetation maps of southern New South Wales have been produced in 2005, based on those originally prepared in 2000 for the southern Regional Forest Agreement (RFA). Further validation and remapping of extant vegetation over 10% of the study area has subsequently improved the quality of the vegetation map, and removed some of the errors in the original version. The revised map provides a reasonable representation of native vegetation at a scale between 1: 25 000 and 1: 100 000 across the study area. In 2005 native vegetation covers 50% of the study area. Environmental pressures on the remaining vegetation include clearing, habitat degradation from weeds and nutrification, severe droughts, changing fire regimes, and urbanisation. Grassy woodlands and forests, temperate grasslands, and coastal and riparian vegetation have been the most reduced in areal extent. Over 90% of the grassy woodlands and temperate grasslands have been lost. Conservation of the remaining vegetation in these formations is problematic because of the small, discontinuous, and degraded nature of the remaining patches of vegetation

Where Snow is a Landmark: Route Direction Elements in Alpine Contexts

Route directions research has mostly focused on urban space so far, highlighting human concepts of street networks based on a range of recurring elements such as route segments, decision points, landmarks and actions. We explored the way route directions reflect the features of space and activity in the context of mountaineering. Alpine route directions are only rarely segmented through decision points related to reorientation; instead, segmentation is based on changing topography. Segments are described with various degrees of detail, depending on difficulty. For landmark description, direction givers refer to properties such as type of surface, dimension, colour of landscape features; terrain properties (such as snow) can also serve as landmarks. Action descriptions reflect the geometrical conceptualization of landscape features and dimensionality of space. Further, they are very rich in the semantics of manner of motion

Transalpine transport policies: towards a shared approach

In recent years crossing the Alps has become a central issue in European transport policy. The increase in global transport flow has contributed to bringing two themes to the centre of attention : making transalpine transportation easier and reducing the negative impact of this on the Alpine environment. The resulting debate has shown that there are conflicting transport policy proposals. The main reasons behind such differences are not so much the different evaluations of the trends in transalpine transport, and not only the diverging local and national interests, but rather the implicit reference to three alternative policy paradigms: ‘competition’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘de-growth’. The aim of this paper is twofold : 1) to identify the links between policy paradigms and the transalpine transport policy framework ; 2) to propose a multilevel and multi-criteria approach to transalpine transport policy. The explicit consideration of policy paradigms and the structured participation of citizens and stakeholders are at the heart of such a new and more widely shared approach.Alps; Transport Policy; Participated multi-criteria; Policy paradigms

The (re)production of climbing space: bodies, gestures, texts

According to Lefebvre, space is not an absolute given, an empty and presumed starting point, but space is produced through human action. Further, he contends, there is a material basis to the production of space – the “practical and fleshy body”. The body must be conceived as both active in the production of space, as well as produced by space, and thereby subject to the determinants of that space. This paper demonstrates the crucial role of the body in Lefebvre’s trialectic as it interrogates the embodied mobile practice of rock climbing, specifically sport climbing. First, it begins with an examination of the role of climbing bodies in the production of climbing space; put into practice by the perceived space of the rock, bodies shape and are shaped by this interaction. Second, it investigates the mechanisms that continue the production of climbing space off the rock face, as climbers communicate with practice-specific gestures and jargon. Third, it approaches climbing landscapes as texts, focusing on the production of representations of space as routes are inscribed on rock faces, transcribed into guidebooks and websites, and circulated among climbing media. Finally, considering landscape as a way of seeing forces the investigation to return, full-circle, to situate the ways bodies enact landscapes in relation to textual representations of space. As such, this paper explores the relationality of individual climbing bodies, rock climbing communities, and climbing media in the (re)production of climbing space to demonstrate the complementarity of landscape-body and landscape-as-text perspectives in the social production of space

Mont Blanc in British Literary Culture 1786 – 1826

This thesis makes an original contribution to the field of Romantic literary studies by adopting a geocritical framework alongside more conventional literary analysis to consider the relationship between Mont Blanc and British literature in the Romantic period, with a primary focus on the years 1786-1826. Essential to this approach is a methodology that focusses on the relationship between texts and both material place and the associations of material place in the mind. The geo-centred research presented in this thesis has deployed a range of strategies that has involved mapping texts, experiencing and examining material place in detail, and contextualising Mont Blanc writings within a broader understanding of mountain activity and the realities of mountain environments. Pictorial evidence has been used to support these methodologies and textual analyses. An original contribution is made towards understanding a number of major canonical and lesser-known British writings of the Romantic period, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Chamouny; The Hour Before Sunrise. A Hymn’ (1802) and ‘Kubla Khan’ (1816), William Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1805), Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’ (1817), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826), and Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto III (1816) and Manfred (1817). While a number of previously unrecognised connections between selected Mont Blanc-oriented writings over a forty year period have been revealed, the thesis also presents an experiment that has tested the potentialities of a geocritical methodology

PUMAS Voyage: A Participatory Approach towards Healthy School Travel

Schooltravel plays an important role in the development of citizens’ mobility. For students, school travel is the first way of commuting, for parents it is often the first context in which they take responsibility for traffic conditions motivated by the care for their children. Consequently, the reflection on school travel is part of the general curriculum in some countries (e.g., in Germany, cf. KMK, 2012). At the same time, school travel is an important field for participation in general. By involving in school travel planning, children and parents can in an ideal case experience a child friendly city that takes into consideration the competencies and needs of children. This larger view on the relationship between cities and children gained attention through the Child Friendly City (CFC) programme of the United Nations Children’s Fund (IRC, 2004). It aims at a high commitment to children’s rights in the development of cities, including among others, the rights of children to express their opinion for changing their city, increased participation of children in social life, better road safety, less pollution, and green spaces in the city. Given the fact that school travel is a big step for children in taking responsibility for their mobility in the city, it should be considered as an important field of action for a city that wants to become a CFC in the above sense. In Italy, the CFC has a long history. In 1998, the Ministry for Environment initiated the Sustainable Cities for Boys and Gils (CSDBB) initiative (cf. CORSI, 2002). Consequently, Italian CFCinitiatives among others focussed on “reduction of air pollution, […] enhancing green spaces, […] promoting mobility, [… and ] participation.” (ibid, pp. 170f.) A fundamental factor for a child friendly city is the “direct involvement of children in the initiatives proposed.” (ibid.). In the following years, the encouragement of free movement has become an integral part of the Italian CFC initiatives (IRC, 2005, p. 37f.). It also became clear that this topic has to involve not only children but also their parents, teachers, and city planners.The authors of the report already observed that opening up the process leads to a higher level of complexity (ibid., p. 41). Within the European project PUMAS that investigates sustainable urban mobility planning in the Alpine space, one pilot activity coordinated by the City of Venice focused on a multi-stakeholder process for the participatory planning of healthy and safe school travel in the sense outlined above. The goal of the pilot was manifold: Children and parents should reach an increased awareness on healthy and safe school travel, all stakeholders (children, parents, teachers, planners, and politicians) should engage in a process for identifying challenges in local school travel and envisioning new ideas for a healthier and safer school travel, and finally, low-cost measures should be implemented and other measures planned in order to raise the perceived empowerment and responsibility of the stakeholders for their city. The initiative was planned as a technology-supported participative process. A mobile participation software, PUMAS Voyage, developed at the FernUniversität in Hagen, enabled situated communication and participation of different stakeholders. Within this paper, we first summarize existing approaches for participation and empowerment in the context of school travelplanning and identify reasons why such activities are needed and why they contribute to a child friendly city. While the current state of the art provides valuable examples for school travel planning, we assume that new technologies can be an additional way for reaching the goal of a participative initiative towards a child friendly city. We present and describe an integrated process for school travel planning that can be applied in primary schools and outline the various stages in which awareness on traffic behaviour is established and communication takes place. It makes use of the PUMAS Voyage applicationto reflect on current school travel behaviour and envision new solutions. The process and the technology have been applied in six primary schools in Venice. We report on experiences with the process and the technology involving a large number of students and parents and show how the participating students, parents, teachers, and planners developed a vision for a safer and healthier home-school journey. Finally, we provide an outlook on how these insights of the process will lead to concrete measures in the updated mobility plan of Venice

New South Wales Vegetation classification and Assessment: Part 3, plant communities of the NSW Brigalow Belt South, Nandewar and west New England Bioregions and update of NSW Western Plains and South-western Slopes plant communities, Version 3 of the NSWVCA database

This fourth paper in the NSW Vegetation Classification and Assessment series covers the Brigalow Belt South-/1(BBS) and Nandewar (NAN) Bioregions and the western half of the New England Bioregion (NET), an area of 9.3 million hectares being 11.6% of NSW. It completes the NSWVCA coverage for the Border Rivers-Gwydir and Namoi CMA areas and records plant communities in the Central West and Hunter–Central Rivers CMA areas. In total, 585 plant communities are now classified in the NSWVCA covering 11.5 of the 18 Bioregions in NSW (78% of the State). Of these 226 communities are in the NSW Western Plains and 416 are in the NSW Western Slopes. 315 plant communities are classified in the BBS, NAN and west-NET Bioregions including 267 new descriptions since Version 2 was published in 2008. Descriptions of the 315 communities are provided in a 919 page report on the DVD accompanying this paper along with updated reports on other inland NSW bioregions and nine Catchment Management Authority areas fully or partly classified in the NSWVCA to date. A read-only version of Version 3 of the NSWVCA database is on the DVD for use on personal computers. A feature of the BBS and NAN Bioregions is the array of ironbark and bloodwood Eucalyptusdominated shrubby woodlands on sandstone and acid volcanic substrates extending from Dubbo to Queensland. This includes iconic natural areas such as Warrumbungle and Mount Kaputar National Parks and the 500,000 ha Pilliga Scrub forests. Large expanses of basalt-derived soils support grassy box woodland and native grasslands including those on the Liverpool Plains; near Moree; and around Inverell, most of which are cleared and threatened. Wetlands occur on sodic soils near Yetman and in large clay gilgais in the Pilliga region. Sedgelands are rare but occupy impeded creeks. Aeolian lunettes occur at Narran Lake and near Gilgandra. Areas of deep sand contain Allocasuarina, eucalypt mallee and Melaleuca uncinata heath. Tall grassy or ferny open forests occur on mountain ranges above 1000m elevation in the New England Bioregion and on the Liverpool Range while grassy box woodlands occupy lower elevations with lower rainfall and higher temperatures. The vegetation classification and assessment is based on over 100 published and unpublished vegetation surveys and map unit descriptions, expert advice, extra plot sampling and data analysis and over 25 000 km of road traverse with field checking at 805 sites. Key sources of data included floristic analyses produced in western regional forest assessments in the BBS and NAN Bioregions, floristic analyses in over 60 surveys of conservation reserves and analysis of plot data in the western NET Bioregion and covering parts of the Namoi and Border Rivers- Gwydir CMA areas. Approximately 60% of the woody native vegetation in the study area has been cleared resulting in large areas of “derived” native grasslands. As of June 2010, 7% of the area was in 136 protected areas and 127 of the 315 plant communities were assessed to be adequately protected in reserves. Using the NSWVCA database threat criteria, 15 plant communities were assessed as being Critically Endangered, 59 Endangered, 60 Vulnerable, 99 Near Threatened and 82 Least Concern. 61 of these communities are assessed as part of NSW or Commonwealth-listed Threatened Ecological Communities. Current threats include expanding dryland and irrigated cropping on alluvial plains, floodplains and gently undulating topography at lower elevations; over-grazing of steep hills; altered water tables and flooding regimes; localized mining; and the spread of exotic species, notably Coolatai Grass (Hyparrhenia hirta)

D.1.4 Mapping & Impact Assessment Report

Definitions of Lighthouse and Follower cities, and pertinent characteristics of replication use cases are presented in this deliverable, together with various earlier European efforts for smart and clean mobility and impact assessment, including Tide, Flow, Trilater and SHOW impact assessment approaches. The CIVITAS initiative has provided a fundamental framework for the RECIPROCITY project, and it has been adopted as the source of the guiding principles for impact assessment. The report presents a summary of the preliminary work on simulation-based assessment of the environmental impact and passenger transport effectiveness performed on two mobility use-cases: ‘’32. Intelligent BRT’’ (Istanbul, TR) and ‘’6. SOftly MObile Tourism Mobility’’ (Alpine Pearls/Werfenweng, AT). The PTV Vissim tool1 was used for simulation. Specifically, CO2 emission and passenger experience parameters of two lines (Avcılar – Zincirlikuyu, Zincirlikuyu – Söğütlüçeşme) of the Istanbul Metropolitan BRT system and three lines of the Werfenweng W3 Shuttle (Werfenweng-Pfarrwerfen-Bischofshofen, Werfenweng-Pfarrwerfen-Werfen and Tenneck-Werfen) were evaluated under various scenarios. For the Intelligent BRT use-case, it is shown that autonomous platooning significantly enhances transport effectiveness, decreasing passenger delays while reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by up to 21%. For the SOftly Mobile Tourism Mobility use case, it is shown that e-cars and e-bikes improve passenger experience, in terms of reduced waiting times, while also significantly reducing local emissions. An important issue, however, is that indirect emissions from e-vehicles, that is greenhouse gases generated in energy production plants, can reach significant levels, even though not local

Recreation, tourism and nature in a changing world : proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 2010

Proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 201