Changes in hedgerows in Britain between 1984 and 1990

1. This report summarises the results of work on changes in hedgerows which was commissioned by the Directorate of Rural Affairs, DOE, as part of the analysis of data collected during 'Countryside Survey 1990'. 2. The primary purpose of the report is to present data on change, and to provide descriptions of the methods used to obtain them. Discussion of results, and especially their relevance to countryside policy matters, is minimal although a short comment section is included to cover research and methodological aspects

Renewable energy in remote communities

This article is the result of a competitively tendered University-funded project, this brings together two major Government Policy areas: sustainable communities and use of carbon fuels, and is aimed at influencing the policy debate on the difficulties of linking remote communities to renewable energy production because of poor distribution networks. Linkage with the Sustainable Communities agenda is an essential ingredient, as the proposal is that the renewable energy technologies will be installed and maintained by the communities themselves

Diasporas and transitional justice : transnational activism from local to global levels of engagement

Scholarship on transitional justice, transnational social movements, and transnational diaspora mobilization has offered little understanding about how memorialization initiatives with substantial diaspora involvement emerge transnationally and are embedded and sustained in different contexts. We argue that diasporas play a galvanizing role in transnational interest-based and symbolic politics, expanding claim-making from the local to national, supranational, and global levels of engagement. Using initiatives to memorialize atrocities committed at the former Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we identify a four-stage mobilization process. First, initiatives emerged and diffused across transnational networks after a local political opportunity opened in the homeland. Second, attempts at coordination of activities took place transnationally through an NGO. Third, initiatives were contextualized on the nation-state level in different host-states, depending on the political opportunities and constraints available there. Fourth, memorialization claims were eventually shifted from the national to the supranational and global levels. The article concludes by demonstrating the potential to apply the analysis to similar global movements in which diasporas are directly involved

Vegetation change from 1979 to 2008 at Chillingham Park in relation to the conservation of the Chillingham Wild Cattle

Parks where the botanical interest of the sward has been retained are relatively unusual in the British Isles. Chillingham Park, northern England, has been managed primarily to conserve its native cattle breed and the sward has been of only secondary importance in conservation terms. A liming programme was in operation from 1980 to 2004 in order to secure the nutrition of the cattle herd. The relatively species-rich vegetation was surveyed in 1979; in 2008 plant species richness of sampled quadrats was found to have declined by 23%. Species characteristic of higher soil pH and fertility, increased light and decreased wetness had been favoured, with a decline in stress-tolerating species. Possible causes of these changes include liming and inputs of fixed atmospheric nitrogen. Few if any plant species have been completely lost, and grassland diversity is now the subject of conservation management

Agricultural Abandonment in the North Eastern Iberian Peninsula: The Use of Basic Landscape Metrics to Support Planning

Land abandonment is an important cause of changes in landscape patterns in the Mediterranean area. There is a need to monitor land use and land cover changes in order to provide quantitative evidence of the relationship between land abandonment and the formation of new landscape patterns. Appropriate management policies to encourage sustainable development can then be developed. This paper describes how to monitor landscape dynamics using different temporal land use and land cover data generated from field survey and airborne information. The results showed that the abandonment of agricultural land generally results in an increase of vegetation biomass. This process leads to homogenization of the landscape. In addition, abandonment promotes fragmentation of agricultural land. Based on these results, the paper discusses the implications for rural management policies concerning the abandonment of agricultural land and suggests recommendations for the development of such policies.