Interaction of ENSO-driven Flood Variability and Anthropogenic Changes in Driving Channel Evolution: Corryong/ Nariel Creek, Australia

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Australian Geographer on 03/09/2015, available online: 10.1080/00049182.2015.1048595Understanding the relative contributions of climatic and anthropogenic drivers of channel change are important to inform river management, especially in the context of environmental change. This global debate is especially pertinent in Australia as catchments have been severely altered since recent European settlement, and there is also strong evidence of cyclical climate variability controlling environmental systems. Corryong/Nariel Creek is an ideal setting to further study the interaction between climate and anthropogenic changes on channel evolution as it has experienced both significant periods of flood and drought, controlled by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and extensive anthropogenic changes. Since European settlement the floodplain has been completely cleared, the riparian zone almost entirely invaded by willows, and every reach of the channel has experienced some form of direct channel modification. Through the combined analysis of channel evolution, climate changes and anthropogenic history of the river it was found that both the ENSO-driven climate and anthropogenic drivers are significant, although at different scales of channel change. Significant straightening in response to land clearing in the early twentieth century occurred before any records of direct channel modifications. Following this, most river management works were in response to instabilities created in the clearing period, or to instabilities created by flooding triggering a new phase of instability in reaches which had already undergone stabilisation works. Overall, human activities triggered channel instability via land clearing, and management works since then generally exacerbated erosion during high flows that are driven by climate fluctuations. This research raises the interesting question of whether rivers in Australia have become more responsive to the ENSO cycle since the clearing of catchment and riparian vegetation, or whether the past response to climate variability was different

Complex circular subsidence structures in tephra deposited on large blocks of ice: Varða tuff cone, Öræfajökull, Iceland

Several broadly circular structures up to 16 m in diameter, into which higher strata have sagged and locally collapsed, are present in a tephra outcrop on southwest Öræfajökull, southern Iceland. The tephra was sourced in a nearby basaltic tuff cone at Varða. The structures have not previously been described in tuff cones, and they probably formed by the melting out of large buried blocks of ice emplaced during a preceding jökulhlaup that may have been triggered by a subglacial eruption within the Öræfajökull ice cap. They are named ice-melt subsidence structures, and they are analogous to kettle holes that are commonly found in proglacial sandurs and some lahars sourced in ice-clad volcanoes. The internal structure is better exposed in the Varða examples because of an absence of fluvial infilling and reworking, and erosion of the outcrop to reveal the deeper geometry. The ice-melt subsidence structures at Varða are a proxy for buried ice. They are the only known evidence for a subglacial eruption and associated jökulhlaup that created the ice blocks. The recognition of such structures elsewhere will be useful in reconstructing more complete regional volcanic histories as well as for identifying ice-proximal settings during palaeoenvironmental investigations

Exploiting the archive: and the animals came in two by two, 16mm, CD-ROM and BetaSp

This a post-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Area. Copyright © 1999 Wiley Blackwell. The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.comUsing an account of the construction and subsequent exploitation of the film archive at the BBC's Natural History Unit, this paper explores the ways in which animals are embedded in the different cultures of care, control and commodification in the zoo and the wildlife film-making unit. Network analysis is used to account for the similarities and tensions between these forms of animal exhibition, as revealed in the electronic zoo at Wildscreen World

Hybridization and hybrid speciation under global change

An unintended consequence of global change is an increase in opportunities for hybridization among previously isolated lineages. Here we illustrate how global change can facilitate the breakdown of reproductive barriers and the formation of hybrids, drawing on the flora of the British Isles for insight. Although global change may ameliorate some of the barriers preventing hybrid establishment, for example by providing new ecological niches for hybrids, it will have limited effects on environment-independent post-zygotic barriers. For example, genic incompatibilities and differences in chromosome numbers and structure within hybrid genomes are unlikely to be affected by global change. We thus speculate that global change will have a larger effect on eroding pre-zygotic barriers (eco-geographical isolation and phenology) than post-zygotic barriers, shifting the relative importance of these two classes of reproductive barriers from what is usually seen in naturally produced hybrids where pre-zygotic barriers are the largest contributors to reproductive isolation. Although the long-term fate of neo-hybrids is still to be determined, the massive impact of global change on the dynamics and distribution of biodiversity generates an unprecedented opportunity to study large numbers of unpredicted, and often replicated, hybridization ‘experiments’, allowing us to peer into the birth and death of evolutionary lineages

Gordon Valentine Manley and his contribution to the study of climate change: a review of his life and work

British climatologist and geographer, Gordon Manley (1902–1980), is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on climate variability in the UK, for establishing the Central England Temperature series and, for his pivotal role in demonstrating the powerful relationship between climate, weather, and culture in post-World War II Britain. Yet Manley made many contributions, both professional and popular, to climate change debates in the twentieth century, where climate change is broadly understood to be changes over a range of temporal and spatial scales rather than anthropogenic warming per se. This review first establishes how Manley's work, including that on snow and ice, was influenced by key figures in debates over climatic amelioration around the North Atlantic between 1920s and 1950s. His research exploring historical climate variability in the UK using documentary sources is then discussed. His perspectives on the relationship between climate changes and cultural history are reviewed, paying particular attention to his interpretation of this relationship as it played out in the UK. Throughout, the review aims to show Manley to be a fieldworker and an empiricist and reveals how he remained committed to rigorous scientific investigation despite changing trends within his academic discipline

Modelling of the effect of ELMs on fuel retention at the bulk W divertor of JET

Effect of ELMs on fuel retention at the bulk W target of JET ITER-Like Wall was studied with multi-scale calculations. Plasma input parameters were taken from ELMy H-mode plasma experiment. The energetic intra-ELM fuel particles get implanted and create near-surface defects up to depths of few tens of nm, which act as the main fuel trapping sites during ELMs. Clustering of implantation-induced vacancies were found to take place. The incoming flux of inter-ELM plasma particles increases the different filling levels of trapped fuel in defects. The temperature increase of the W target during the pulse increases the fuel detrapping rate. The inter-ELM fuel particle flux refills the partially emptied trapping sites and fills new sites. This leads to a competing effect on the retention and release rates of the implanted particles. At high temperatures the main retention appeared in larger vacancy clusters due to increased clustering rate