Flora da fazenda Nhumirim, Nhecolandia, Pantanal: relacao preliminar.

Com o objetivo de contribuir ao conhecimento da flora do Pantanal, ainda pouco conhecida, e para servir de base a estudos ecologicos fez-se a relacao preliminar da fazenda Nhumirim, considerada representativa da Nhecolandia em termos de solo (arenoso) e flora. As plantas arroladas pertencem a 606 especies, 377 generos e 116 familias. As familias mais numerosas sao: Gramineae (91 especies), Leguminosae (85), Compositae (28), Euphorbiaceae (26) e Cyperaceae (25). Os generos mais representados sao: Cassia (senso amplo), Paspalum, Panicum, Aeschynomene, Axonopus, Croton, Desmodium, Digitaria, Eleocharis, Eupatorium, Ludwigia, Polygala e Tabebuia. Cerca de 12% sao ruderais.bitstream/item/41132/1/PA05.pd

Conservation strategies to mitigate impacts from climate change in Amazonia

Protected area systems and conservation corridors can help mitigate the impacts of climate change on Amazonian biodiversity. We propose conservation design criteria that will help species survive in situ or adjust range distributions in response to increased drought. The first priority is to protect the western Amazon, identified as the ‘Core Amazon’, due to stable rainfall regimes and macro-ecological phenomena that have led to the evolution of high levels of biodiversity. Ecotones can buffer the impact from climate change because populations are genetically adapted to climate extremes, particularly seasonality, because high levels of habitat diversity are associated with edaphic variability. Future climatic tension zones should be surveyed for geomorphological features that capture rain or conserve soil moisture to identify potential refugia for humid forest species. Conservation corridors should span environmental gradients to ensure that species can shift range distributions. Riparian corridors provide protection to both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Multiple potential altitudinal corridors exist in the Andes, but natural and anthropogenic bottlenecks will constrain the ability of species to shift their ranges and adapt to climate change. Planned infrastructure investments are a serious threat to the potential to consolidate corridors over the short and medium term

Framework Report as Guidance for Case Studies

The main goal of the ENHANCE project is to develop and analyse new ways to enhance society's resilience to catastrophic natural hazard impacts. Key for achieving this goal is to analyse new multi-sector partnerships (MSPs) that aim at reduce or redistribute risk, and increase resilience. This document introduces a working definition of partnership, where MSPs are understood as: "...voluntary but enforceable commitments between partners from different sectors (public authorities, private services/enterprise and civil society), which can be temporary or long-lasting. They are founded on sharing the same goal in order to gain mutual benefit, reduce risk and increase resilience." (Rhodes, 1997) New forms of MSPs are needed, since it appears that existing partnerships are often not effective in managing risk from natural hazards. For example, the different responses to heat-waves and floods in Europe demonstrate that the roles of public, private, and civil society actors (including individuals) in preparing for and responding to catastrophic impacts are often neither clear nor effective. Moreover, actors must often base their risk management strategies on scarce, limited, or inaccurate risk information. Together, these factors can lead to the development of ineffective (prevention and mitigation) and unacceptable measures and unexpectedly large impacts of natural disasters (financial, ecological, health, and social). Moreover, in preparing for and responding to natural hazard impacts, there is also often a lack of clarity on financial responsibilities about who pays what, how much, and when. Hence, knowing the challenge of managing risks resulting from natural hazards has increased, it becomes clear that these risks cannot be handled by either private sector of the government as single actors, and strategies to increase resilience should therefore incorporate all sectors of society (including closer cooperation between sectors)

Dromion solutions of noncommutative Davey-Stewartson equations

We consider a noncommutative version of the Davey-Stewartson equations and derive two families of quasideterminant solution via Darboux and binary Darboux transformations. These solutions can be verified by direct substitution. We then calculate the dromion solutions of the equations and obtain computer plots in a noncommutative setting.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure

A checklist of the vascular plants of the lowland savannas of Belize, Central America

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Feeding the rural tourism strategy? Food and notions of place and identity

The humble rural cuisine has now been thrust at the forefront of economic development strategies. This conceptual paper is a contribution to a growing critical awareness of the operations of the food industry and helps to foster a critical understanding of how, if at all, local food and its associated culture can help sustain rural tourism particularly and rural communities generally. It is inspired by literature about the international political economy of food and the many experiences of local food development, and is aware of the contrast between the structure of the industry and the hopes associated with its practice on the ground. The paper thus argues that, beyond the glamour and hype, there are those who gain, as well as those who lose, from the current food fad. While it explains the causes of the contemporary craze with food, the paper also interrogates the naı¨ve expectations often placed in food as a motor of rural development, and as the panacea for struggling rural communities. The empirical data on which this chapter is based are drawn from 18 short chapters explaining the history of various “traditional dishes” from the islands of the broad North Atlantic that feature in a recent food publication.peer-reviewe