scholarly journals Ecological history of Lachlan Nature Reserve, Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia: a palaeoecological approach to conservation

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
REBECCA HAMILTON ◽  
DAN PENNY
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Nature Reserve ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Melaleuca Quinquenervia ◽  
Ecological History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conservation Values ◽  
Normative Basis ◽  
Colonial Settlement

SUMMARYReconstructing the environmental history of protected areas permits an empirically-based assessment of the conservation values ascribed to these sites. Ideally, this long-term view can contribute to evidence-based management policy that is both ecologically ‘realistic’ and pragmatically feasible. Lachlan Nature Reserve, a protected wetland in Centennial Park, Sydney, is claimed to be the final remnant of early and pre-European swamplands that were once extensive in the area, and the site is thus considered to have indigenous cultural and natural conservation significance. This study uses palynological techniques to reconstruct vegetation communities at the Reserve from the late Holocene to the present in order to assess whether these values adequately reflect the history, character and development of the site. The findings indicate that the modern site flora is a modified Melaleuca quinquenervia low forest assemblage formed in response to aggregated anthropogenic disturbance since colonial settlement. This assemblage replaces an Epacris-dominated heath-swampland community that was extirpated in the mid-20th century. These results emphasize the value of long-term studies in contributing to a realistic management policy that explicitly reflects the normative basis of conservation, and values the influence of past land-uses on contemporary protected ecosystems.

Archaeology of a Piece of Gondwanaland

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Sand
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Human Settlement ◽  
European Contact ◽  
Cultural Complex ◽  
Geological Diversity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Settlement

New Caledonia is the southern-most archipelago of Melanesia. Its unique geological diversity, as part of the old Gondwana plate, has led to specific pedological and floral environments that have, since first human settlement, influenced the ways Pacific Islanders have occupied and used the landscape. This essay presents some of the key periods of the nearly 3,000 years of pre-colonial human settlement. After having presented a short history of archaeological research in New Caledonia, the essay focuses first on the Lapita foundation, which raises questions of long-term contacts and cultural change. The second part details the unique specificities developed during the “Traditional Kanak Cultural Complex,” during the millennium predating first European contact, as well as highlighting the massive changes brought by the introduction of new diseases, in the decades before the colonial settlement era. This leads to questions about archaeological history and the role of archaeology in the present decolonizing context.

Degraded or Just Dusty? Examining Ecological Change in Arid Lands

BioScience ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (7) ◽  
pp. 508-522
Author(s):  
Jennifer L Silcock ◽  
Rod J Fensham
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
Rangeland Management ◽  
Rare Plant ◽  
Ecological Change ◽  
Remote Areas ◽  
Comprehensive Management ◽  
Ecological History ◽  
Abrupt Changes ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe ecological history of rangelands is often presented as a tale of devastation, where fragile drylands are irreversibly degraded through inappropriate land use. However, there is confusion about how to recognize and measure degradation, especially in low-productivity environments characterized by extreme natural variability and where abrupt and comprehensive management upheavals preclude benchmarks. These issues have important consequences for rangeland management programs, which are typically founded on presumptions of substantial and ongoing degradation from former “natural” states. We explore complementary approaches to critically assess degradation: the historical record, long-term grazing exclosures, surveys for potentially rare and sensitive plant species, and assessment of water-remote areas in relation to rare plant occurrence. Employing these approaches in inland Australia, we show that prevailing paradigms have become entrenched despite being inconsistent with empirical evidence. Our methodology can be applied to drylands with abrupt changes in management and contentious ecological narratives.

From war zone to biosphere reserve: the Korean DMZ as a Scientific Landscape

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Brady
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Nature Reserve ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Border Regions ◽  
War Zone ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Use Policies ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Scientific Value

The Korean DMZ—at once a war zone, a historical landscape and a living laboratory—offers a compelling example of how scientific fieldwork can alter the definition of place. This article explores how scientists introduced new layers of meaning to the region, thereby contributing to shifts in perspective about the border area and to changes in land-use policies there. As early as the mid 1960s, scientists described the DMZ as a scientifically unique and valuable place and argued for setting it aside as a nature reserve; by the late 1990s, the vision of the DMZ as a scientific landscape gained currency both within Korea and internationally and has become central to discussions about the zone's future. This article draws from published and unpublished scientific reports whose authors directly argue for assigning official conservation status to all or part of the DMZ and its border regions; it aims to demonstrate the important role scientists have played in redefining the DMZ through highlighting its environmental and scientific value. The article places these developments within the larger environmental history of Korea, suggesting links between changing emphases in environmental activism and policy-making and evolving ideas about the value and purpose of the DMZ.

scholarly journals Late-Quaternary Vegetational and Climatic History of the Yellowstone/Grand Teton Region

1988 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 189-192
Author(s):  
Cathy Barnosky
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Late Quaternary ◽  
Sediment Cores ◽  
Sediment Accumulation ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Sediment Chemistry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Climatic History

The research underway has focused on two different aspects of the environmental history of the Yellowstone/Grand Teton region. One objective has been to examine the long-term vegetational and climatic history of Jackson Hole, the Pinyon Peak Highlands, and Yellowstone Park since the end of late Pinedale glaciation, about 14,000 years ago. Fossil pollen in sediment cores from lakes in the region is being analyzed to clarify the nature and composition of ice-age refugia, the rate and direction of plant migrations in the initial stages of reforestation, and the long-term stability of postglacial communities. Sedimentary charcoal also is being examined to reconstruct fire frequency during different climatic regions and different vegetation types in the past. This information is necessary to assess the sensitivity of plant communities to environmental change and to understand postglacial landscapes of the northern rocky Mountains. The second objective has been a multidisciplinary investigation of the relationship of climate to sedimentation rates in lakes and ponds in Yellowstone, undertaken with Drs. Wright, D.R. Engstrom and S.C. Fritz of the University of Minnesota. This facet of the research examines the relative importance of climate, fire, hillslope erosion induced by overgrazing, and nutrient enrichment in the last 150 years, as recorded in selected lakes in the northern range of Yellowstone. Populations of elk and bison are known to have fluctuated greatly during this interval, and slight climatic changes are suggested from other lines of research. In this study pollen, diatoms, charcoal, sediment chemistry, and sediment accumulation rates are analyzed in short cores from small lakes.

The Interplay of American Political Culture and Public Policy: The Sacramento River as a Case Study

1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
American Political Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Life

Historians of the United States have learned much in the past twenty years about the history of what is now called its political culture, and about its environmental history.1 These two dimensions of national life, however, are rarely, if ever, looked at together. The result is that we little understand how powerfully environmental policy is influenced not simply by everyday politics—of that we know abundantly—but by the long-term political mentalities of the Democrats and the Republicans, mentalities which originate not in abstract theorizing, but which grow up naturally within the cultural worlds to be found among the distinctive groups of peoples who line up within one party or the other and remain there, generation after generation. What I propose here is to put political culture and natural resource management history together and see what happens.

South Asia’s Coastal Frontiers

2018 ◽  
pp. 210-228
Author(s):  
Sunil Amrith
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Environmental Footprint ◽  
Environmental Consciousness ◽  
Coastal Fisheries ◽  
Ecological History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Longue Duree

This chapter explores the environmental history of coastal South Asia. The coast has been a liminal zone—ecologically, culturally, and economically. This chapter argues that the social and ecological history of coastal South Asia, over the longue durée, allows us to reintegrate histories of oceanic commerce, with terrestrial histories of the state’s expanding power over nature. The chapter explores two intertwined strands of coastal environmental history under colonial rule: the history of coastal fisheries, and the expanding environmental footprint of coastal India in an age of imperial globalization. The chapter concludes by examining the acceleration of coastal transformation from the 1970s, accompanied by rising environmental consciousness.

scholarly journals Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security

2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret C. Nelson ◽  
Scott E. Ingram ◽  
Andrew J. Dugmore ◽  
Richard Streeter ◽  
Matthew A. Peeples ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Disaster Management ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Us Southwest ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This paper identifies rare climate challenges in the long-term history of seven areas, three in the subpolar North Atlantic Islands and four in the arid-to-semiarid deserts of the US Southwest. For each case, the vulnerability to food shortage before the climate challenge is quantified based on eight variables encompassing both environmental and social domains. These data are used to evaluate the relationship between the “weight” of vulnerability before a climate challenge and the nature of social change and food security following a challenge. The outcome of this work is directly applicable to debates about disaster management policy.

scholarly journals Multidisciplinary perspectives on the history of human interactions with life in the ocean

2016 ◽  
Vol 73 (5) ◽  
pp. 1382-1385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison MacDiarmid ◽  
Brian MacKenzie ◽  
Henn Ojaveer
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Marine Ecosystem ◽  
Ecological Impact ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marine Historical Ecology ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

Abstract There is an essentially circular interaction between the human social system and the marine ecosystem. The Oceans Past V Conference “Multidisciplinary perspectives on the history of human interactions with life in the ocean” held in Tallinn, Estonia, in May 2015 was an opportunity for the presentation and discussion of papers on a diverse array of topics that examined this socio-ecological system from a historical perspective. Here we provide background to the disciplines participating in the conference and to the conference itself. We summarize the conference papers that appear in this special volume of the ICES JMS and highlight issues which arose during general discussion. We make two conclusions. First, to have greater impact and ensure more efficient use of knowledge gained from marine historical ecology (MHE) and marine environmental history (MEH) in ecosystem-based management and related policy development, practitioners need to work more routinely with population and ecological modellers and statisticians. This will allow greater processing of the available historical data to derive ecologically meaningful properties that can then be used to assess the ecological impact of long-term changes of affected species and define appropriate and realistic management targets. Second, increased multi- and trans-disciplinary effort is required to better understand the relative importance of different human demographic, technological, economic, and cultural drivers on the patterns, intensities and trajectories of human activities affecting marine ecosystems.

American Tropics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Raby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
American Tropics

Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

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