scholarly journals Combining quantitative field and modelling approaches towards understanding landscape dynamics: an evolution of ideas spanning Jef Vandenberghe's research career

2012 ◽  
Vol 91 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 233-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Verstraeten

AbstractGeomorphology as a scientific discipline has underwent major developments since the mid 20th century. From its original descriptive nature aiming to understand landscape evolution, it developed towards a more process-based oriented discipline. To a large extent this evolution followed a quantitative approach whereby modelling becomes more and more important. A schism between applied or engineering geomorphology and system-based geomorphology aiming at understanding landscape change emerges in the 1950-1960's. Only at the end of the 20th century – early 21st century, integration of quantitative field-based approaches on longer term issues of landscape evolution with numerical modelling emerges. This is particularly true for the Holocene for which the importance of human impact on geomorphic processes and landforms became acknowledged. With respect to landscape evolution on much longer timescales, the development of tectonic geomorphology becomes apparent. In this paper, some evolution of ideas and trends within geomorphology with respect to understanding landscape dynamics are summarised and put into the career perspective of Jef Vandenberghe.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Bellón ◽  
Julien Blanco ◽  
Alta De Vos ◽  
Fabio de O. Roque ◽  
Olivier Pays ◽  
...  

Remote sensing tools have been long used to monitor landscape dynamics inside and around protected areas. Hereto, scientists have largely relied on land use and land cover (LULC) data to derive indicators for monitoring these dynamics, but these metrics do not capture changes in the state of vegetation surfaces that may compromise the ecological integrity of conservation areas’ landscapes. Here, we introduce a methodology that combines LULC change estimates with three Normalized Difference Vegetation Index-based proxy indicators of vegetation productivity, phenology, and structural change. We illustrate the utility of this methodology through a regional and local analysis of the landscape dynamics in the Cerrado Biome in Brazil in 2001 and 2016. Despite relatively little natural vegetation loss inside core protected areas and their legal buffer zones, the different indicators revealed significant LULC conversions from natural vegetation to farming land, general productivity loss, homogenization of natural forests, significant agricultural expansion, and a general increase in productivity. These results suggest an overall degradation of habitats and intensification of land use in the studied conservation area network, highlighting serious conservation inefficiencies in this region and stressing the importance of integrated landscape change analyses to provide complementary indicators of ecologically-relevant dynamics in these key conservation areas.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen ◽  
Robert Law

<p><strong>Evolution of the Tibetan Plateau is important for understanding continental tectonics because of its exceptional elevation (~5 km above sea level) and crustal thickness (~70 km). Patterns of long-term landscape evolution can constrain tectonic processes, but have been hard to quantify, in contrast to established datasets for strain, exhumation and paleo-elevation. This study analyses the relief of the bases and tops of 17 Cenozoic lava fields on the central and northern Tibetan Plateau. Analyzed fields have typical lateral dimensions of 10s of km, and so have an appropriate scale for interpreting tectonic geomorphology. Fourteen of the fields have not been deformed since eruption. One field is cut by normal faults; two others are gently folded with limb dips <6<sup>o</sup></strong><strong>. </strong><strong>Relief of the bases and tops of the fields is comparable to modern, internally-drained, parts of the plateau, and distinctly lower than externally-drained regions. The lavas preserve a record of underlying low relief bedrock landscapes at the time they were erupted, which have undergone little change since. There is an overlap in each area between younger published low-temperature thermochronology ages and the oldest eruption in each area, here interpreted as the transition </strong><strong>between the end of significant (>3 km) exhumation and plateau landscape development. </strong><strong>This diachronous process took place between ~32.5<sup>o</sup> - ~36.5<sup>o</sup> N between ~40 and ~10 Ma, advancing northwards at a long-term rate of ~15 km/Myr. Results are consistent with incremental northwards growth of the plateau, rather than a stepwise evolution or synchronous uplift.</strong></p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Barbara Markowska

The purport of the article is a reflection on the operating conditions of the philosophy of politics, beginning with its crisis, as described by Leo Strauss in the early 20th century and continuing up to the latest proposals, which emerged at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. First, the author poses a question regarding the essence of this crisis; was it related to the scientific paradigm of the philosophy of politics applied hitherto or, rather, to the very subject matter of this scholarly pursuit, which is to say, to politics itself. A scientific discipline must be able to delineate its subject matter and if the latter undergoes an unexpected modification, the former suffers a crisis. Was this what happened to politics itself? What was the decisive factor which caused it to escape a theoretical consideration that ceased to be a systematic reflection, in short, ceased to be science, only to become philosophy again, whereby the author understands ‘philosophy’ as a level of reflection such as to allow itself to posit subliminal questions purely in order to set up the determinants for further thinking as to what science is, what politics is and what makes politics different from non-politics.


Finisterra ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (72) ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Brum Ferreira

EVOLUTION OF THE MONTADO LANDSCAPE IN THE INNER ALENTEJO DURING THE 20TH CENTURY. DYNAMICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES – This paper presents the general context within which the montado landscape changed in the inner Alentejo during the 20th century as well as some of the environmental consequences, such as soil degradation and modification of the local climate. In large areas nowadays abandoned, the landscape dynamics depends more on environmental limitations created by soil degradation that on purely socio-economical factors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
Damir Peličić

Nursery has existed throughout history and it dates back to the very beginning of humankind. It was mentioned in church books and other written texts but not as a skill or science, but as an occupation reserved for the members of monastic orders, and also for women, that is, mothers, and nuns. First, nursing was an occupation, then a skill, but at the end of the 20th century, it became a scientific discipline. Florence Nightingale is certainly one of the most significant women in the history of nursing, medicine, and society in general because she is the pioneer of the nursing profession that has continuity up to nowadays. She was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy and died on August 13, 1910, in London. Florence Nightingale worked as a nurse, organizer, researcher, statistician, reformer, writer and a teacher. She reformed nursery and public health. In 1860, she established the school for nurses within St. Thomas' Hospital and she took care of every protégé. In spite of all obstacles, which she was faced with, and the unenviable position of women in the 19th century, she made a huge move that changed the context of this profession forever. She had a huge influence on the Swiss philanthropist Henry Dunant (1828-1910), who was the founder of the Red Cross. In 1867, the International Council of Nurses proclaimed that her birthday would be the International Nurses Day. She was the first woman who was awarded the Medal of virtues. In 1908, she was conferred the Order of Merit by King Edward. She wrote more than 200 books and the Pledge.


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 732-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Butler

In 1925, then-Captain AW Stevens of the US Army Air Corps took low-angle, oblique aerial photographs of the spectacular landscape of Glacier National Park, Montana (USA). Two of those photographs, of astonishing clarity, were used in a US Geological Survey Professional Paper published in 1959, but were subsequently assigned to the US National Archives and never utilized again. This paper advocates the usefulness of Stevens’ photographs for documenting landscape change from the early 20th century to the present. Stevens’ photographs illustrate the “state” of numerous Park glaciers in 1925, and are the first known aerial photographs of the Park glaciers. These photographs can be used in comparison to modern photographs to illustrate the extent of glacial recession that has occurred in the Park since 1925.


2011 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivar Berthling ◽  
Bernd Etzelmüller

AbstractRecent accounts suggest that periglacial processes are unimportant for large-scale landscape evolution and that true large-scale periglacial landscapes are rare or non-existent. The lack of a large-scale topographical fingerprint due to periglacial processes may be considered of little relevance, as linear process–landscape development relationships rarely can be substantiated. Instead, periglacial landscapes may be classified in terms of specific landform associations. We propose “cryo-conditioning”, defined as the interaction of cryotic surface and subsurface thermal regimes and geomorphic processes, as an overarching concept linking landform and landscape evolution in cold regions. By focusing on the controls on processes, this concept circumvents scaling problems in interpreting long-term landscape evolution derived from short-term processes. It also contributes to an unambiguous conceptualization of periglacial geomorphology. We propose that the development of several key elements in the Norwegian geomorphic landscape can be explained in terms of cryo-conditioning.


2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 594-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Van Dyke

Critical physical geography (CPG) proposes to bridge the lingering gap between human and physical geographers. To rejuvenate conversations among different corners of the discipline about the possibility of trans-disciplinary collaboration, CPG must provide unique epistemological, methodological, and conceptual frameworks that human and physical geographers alike will find appealing, relevant, and timely. These should help them perceptively characterize, narrate, and anticipate changes in socio-biophysical landscapes. This paper outlines a conceptual framework that can be harnessed in future CPG studies and reflects on what it means to be a critical geographer. To solve the epistemological dilemmas confronting CPG, this paper demonstrates that state-and-transition models (STMs) can provide a unifying framework to address questions about socio-biophysical landscape evolution. Originally developed to account for nonlinear dynamics in rangeland ecosystems, STMs have been used to analyze a variety of ecological, geomorphic, and hydrological transitions in complex biophysical landscapes. STMs have epistemological commonalities with explanatory frameworks pioneered by political ecologists, and while thus far they have been used to account for complex biophysical dynamics, they can be expanded to accommodate critical investigations of the social dynamics underpinning landscape change. By foregrounding the transitional dynamics of socio-biophysical landscape – a theme that has interested physical and critical human geographers – STMs establish a conceptual space in which to holistically interpret the interacting drivers that underwrite socio-biophysical landscape change.


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