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"Historical Geography- Nature"
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Back to the garden : nature and the Mediterranean world from prehistory to the present
\"The garden was the cultural foundation of the early Mediterranean peoples; they acknowledged their reliance on and kinship to the land, and they understood nature through the lens of their diversely cultivated landscape. Their image of the garden underwrote the biblical book of Genesis and the region's three major religions. In this important melding of cultural and ecological histories, James H. S. McGregor suggests that the environmental crisis the world faces today is a result of Western society's abandonment of the \"First Nature\" principle--of the harmonious interrelationship of human communities and the natural world. The author demonstrates how this relationship, which persisted for millennia, effectively came to an end in the late eighteenth century, when \"nature\" came to be equated with untamed landscape devoid of human intervention. McGregor's essential work offers a new understanding of environmental accountability while proposing that recovering the original vision of ourselves, not as antagonists of nature but as cultivators of a biological world to which we innately belong, is possible through proven techniques of the past\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Rivers, memory, and nation-building
Rivers figure prominently in a nation's historical memory, and the Volga and Mississippi have special importance in Russian and American cultures. Beginning in the pre-modern world, both rivers served as critical trade routes connecting cultures in an extensive exchange network, while also sustaining populations through their surrounding wetlands and bottomlands. In modern times, \"Mother Volga\" and the \"Father of Waters\" became integral parts of national identity, contributing to a sense of Russian and American exceptionalism. Furthermore, both rivers were drafted into service as the means to modernize the nation-state through hydropower and navigation. Despite being forced into submission for modern-day hydrological regimes, the Volga and Mississippi Rivers persist in the collective memory and continue to offer solace, recreation, and sustenance. Through their histories we derive a more nuanced view of human interaction with the environment, which adds another lens to our understanding of the past.
eBook
Stations in the field : a history of place-based animal research, 1870-1930
When we think of sites of animal research that symbolize modernity, the first places that come to mind are grand research institutes in cities and near universities that house the latest in equipment and technologies, not the surroundings of the bird's nest, the octopus's garden in the sea, or the parts of inland lakes in which freshwater plankton reside. Yet during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a group of zoologists began establishing novel, indeed modern ways of studying nature, propagating what present-day ecologists describe as place-based research.
Raf De Bont's Stations in the Field focuses on the early history of biological field stations and the role these played in the rise of zoological place-based research. Beginning in the 1870s, a growing number of biological field stations were founded—first in Europe and later elsewhere around the world—and thousands of zoologists received their training and performed their research at these sites. Through case studies, De Bont examines the material and social context in which field stations arose, the actual research that was produced in these places, the scientific claims that were developed there, and the rhetorical strategies that were deployed to convince others that these claims made sense. From the life of parasitic invertebrates in northern France and freshwater plankton in Schleswig-Holstein, to migratory birds in East Prussia and pest insects in Belgium, De Bont's book is fascinating tour through the history of studying nature in nature.
eBook
Waiting for Elijah
Waiting for Elijah is an intimate portrait of time-reckoning, syncretism, and proximity in one of the world’s most polarized landscapes, the Bosnian Field of Gacko. Centered on the shared harvest feast of Elijah’s Day, the once eagerly awaited pinnacle of the annual cycle, the book shows how the fractured postwar landscape beckoned the return of communal life that entails such waiting. This seemingly paradoxical situation—waiting to wait—becomes a starting point for a broader discussion on the complexity of time set between cosmology, nationalism, and embodied memories of proximity.
eBook
Historical biogeography of neotropical freshwater fishes
The fish faunas of continental South and Central America constitute one of the greatest concentrations of aquatic diversity on Earth, consisting of about 10 percent of all living vertebrate species. Historical Biogeography of Neotropical Freshwater Fishes explores the evolutionary origins of this unique ecosystem. The chapters address central themes in the study of tropical biodiversity: why is the Amazon basin home to so many distinct evolutionary lineages? What roles do ecological specialization, speciation, and extinction play in the formation of regional assemblages? How do dispersal barriers contribute to isolation and diversification? Focusing on whole faunas rather than individual taxonomic groups, this volume shows that the area's high regional diversity is not the result of recent diversification in lowland tropical rainforests. Rather, it is the product of species accumulating over tens of millions of years and across a continental arena.
eBook
Technonatural revolutions: the scalar politics of Franco's hydro-social dream for Spain, 1939-1975
In this paper, I seek to document and substantiate the notion of the production of socio-natures by elaborating how Spain's modernization process after the Civil War became a deeply and very specific scalar geographical project, articulated through the production of a specific technonatural hydraulic edifice. I shall focus on the momentous transformation of the hydraulic environment during the Franco period (1939-1975) and seek to reformulate Spain's socio-hydraulic reconstruction in the context of a double and partly contradictory 'scalar' politics. Two theoretically interrelated arguments guide this endeavour. On the one hand, Franco's ideological-political mission was predicated upon national territorial integration, the eradication of regionalist or autonomist aspirations, and a concerted discursive and physical process of cultural and material national(ist) homogenization and modernization. On the other, the production of the technonatural material infrastructures of this modernizing programme was predicated upon re-scaling the 'networks of interest' on which Franco's power rested from a national visionary to an internationalist geo-economic and geo-political imagination, articulated through Spain's integration in the US-led Western Alliance.
Journal Article
Contrasting land use legacy effects on forest landscape dynamics in the Italian Alps and the Apennines
ContextLand use legacies of human activities and recent post-abandonment forest expansion have extensively modified numerous forest landscapes throughout the European mountain ranges. Drivers of forest expansion and the effects of changes on ecosystem services are currently debated.Objectives(i) To compare landscape transition patterns of the Alps and the Apennines (Italy), (ii) to quantify the dominant landscape transitions, and (iii) to measure the influence of climatic, topographic and anthropogenic driving factors.MethodsLand cover changes and landscape pattern modifications were investigated at the regional (over 28 years, Alps and Apennines, Corine Land Cover dataset) and landscape scale (over 58 years, 8 Alpine and 8 Apennine sites, aerial images). The main driving factors of post-abandonment forest landscape dynamics were assessed with a statistical modeling approach.ResultsForest expansion was the dominant landscape transition at both Italian mountain ranges, with an annual overall rate of 0.6%. Forest expansion was more extensive at lower elevations in the Apennines where climate is less limiting and extensive abandoned croplands and pastures were available throughout the study period. Distance from pre-existing forest edges in the Alps and elevation in the Apennines emerged as the most important predictors.ConclusionsForest expansion is most rapid where areas of recent agricultural abandonment coincide with favorable climatic conditions. Thus the prediction of forest landscape dynamics, in these mountain forests with a long history of cultural use, requires knowledge of how the magnitude and timing of land use changes intersect spatially and temporally with suitable conditions for tree establishment and growth.
Journal Article
A century of transformation: fire regime transitions from 1919 to 2019 in southeastern British Columbia, Canada
ContextIn fire-excluded forests across western North America, recent intense wildfire seasons starkly contrast with fire regimes of the past. The last 100 years mark a transition between pre-colonial and modern era fire regimes, providing crucial context for understanding future wildfire behavior.ObjectivesUsing the greatest time depth of digitized fire events in Canada, we identify distinct phases of wildfire regimes from 1919 to 2019 by evaluating changes in mapped fire perimeters (> 20-ha) across the East Kootenay region (including the southern Rocky Mountain Trench), British Columbia.MethodsWe detect transitions in annual number of fires, burned area, and fire size; explore the role of lightning- and human-caused fires in driving these transitions; and quantify departures from historical fire frequency at the regional level.ResultsRelative to historical fire frequency, fire exclusion has created a significant fire deficit in active fire regimes, with a minimum of 1–10 fires missed across 46.4-percent of the landscape. Fire was active from 1919 to 1939 with frequent and large fire events, but the regime was already altered by a century of colonization. Fire activity decreased in 1940, coinciding with effective fire suppression influenced by a mild climatic period. In 2003, the combined effects of fire exclusion and accelerated climate change fueled a shift in fire regimes of various forest types, with increases in area burned and mean fire size driven by lightning.ConclusionsThe extent of fire regime disruption warrants significant management and policy attention to alter the current trajectory and facilitate better co-existence with wildfire throughout this century.
Journal Article
Assessing spatial temporal patterns of ecosystem services in Switzerland
ContextDespite the importance of understanding the historical dynamics of ecosystem services (ES), little research has focused on a historical, spatially explicit, assessment of ES supply.ObjectivesThis research is aimed at understanding the spatial patterns and potential drivers of temporal variations of ES supply. It has assessed associations of ES temporal variations, delineated ES bundles from changes in ES supply over time, and identified potential drivers of ES bundles. Finally, we discuss the potential implications for spatial planning.MethodsWe reconstructed the spatio-temporal patterns of 11 ES supply in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, between 1979 and 2014. We used Spearman’s rank coefficient, k-means clustering and redundancy analysis to understand the spatial patterns and potential drivers of temporal variations of ES supply.ResultsMunicipalities were grouped into four clusters based on ES supply changes over four decades. Food production showed the most negative associations with other ES. Regulating ES were not always synergetic and were less related to increases in population density than cultural ES, which were found in low population density municipalities. In general, synergetic ES may not respond to the same potential drivers. Municipalities were able to supply ES at different levels but none showed an increase in all ES.ConclusionsES can be synergetic in one bundle, but antagonistic in another. Different processes can cause a change in the same ES depending on their supply location. It seems unrealistic to require each municipality to have a multifunctional territory in the current political context.
Journal Article
War upon the Land
In this first book-length environmental history of the American Civil War, Lisa M. Brady argues that ideas about nature and the environment were central to the development and success of Union military strategy. From the start of the war, both sides had to contend with forces of nature, even as they battled one another. Northern soldiers encountered unfamiliar landscapes in the South that suggested, to them, an uncivilized society's failure to control nature. Under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan, the Union army increasingly targeted southern environments as the war dragged on. Whether digging canals, shooting livestock, or dramatically attempting to divert the Mississippi River, the Union aimed to assert mastery over nature by attacking the most potent aspect of southern identity and power-agriculture. Brady focuses on the siege of Vicksburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, marches through Georgia and the Carolinas, and events along the Mississippi River to examine this strategy and its devastating physical and psychological impact. Before the war, many Americans believed in the idea that nature must be conquered and subdued. Brady shows how this perception changed during the war, leading to a wider acceptance of wilderness. Connecting environmental trauma with the onset of American preservation, Brady pays particular attention to how these new ideas of wilderness can be seen in the creation of national battlefield memorial parks as unaltered spaces. Deftly combining environmental and military history with cultural studies, War upon the Land elucidates an intriguing, largely unexplored side of the nation's greatest conflict.
eBook