scholarly journals Lacustrine Records of Climatic Change and Human Activities in the Catchmentof Erhai Lake? Yunnan Province Since the Past 1800 Years

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZHANG Zhenke ◽  
◽  
WU Ruijin ◽  
SHEN Ji ◽  
WU Yanhong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climatic Change ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Erhai Lake ◽  
The Past

A review of the mid-Holocene elm decline in the British Isles

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Parker ◽  
A. S. Goudie ◽  
D. E. Anderson ◽  
M. A. Robinson ◽  
C. Bonsall
Keyword(s):  
Standard Deviation ◽  
Probability Distribution ◽  
Climatic Change ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
The Past ◽  
Northwest Europe ◽  
Pollen Diagrams

Over the past 50 years the most enigmatic feature of pollen diagrams from northwest Europe has been the mid-Holocene ‘elm decline’, and there has been much speculation as to the origin(s) and cause(s) of this event. A total of 150 radiocarbon dates from 139 sites spanning the elm decline in Britain and Ireland have been collated and scrutinized. Statistical analyses on 138 dates show that the event has a mean date of 5036 14C yr BP with a standard deviation of ± 247. Calibration of the dates and combining the sum probabilities yielded a range spanning 6347-5281 cal yr BP (1s), covering 1066 years. The start of the elm decline event lies between 6343 and 6307 cal yr BP (1s), a period of 36 years, indicating that the onset was rapid. The end of the event lies between 5290 and 5420 cal yr BP (1s), a period of 130 years. The probability distribution indicates that the elm decline was a uniform phased event across the British Isles. It appears that the elm decline can be explained to a large extent by the outbreak of disease. However, recent research on palaeoclimatic change and the nature of the transition from the Mesolithic to Neolithic in the British Isles suggests that both climatic change and human activities were implicated. It was probably the interplay between these factors, rather than any in isolation, that catalyzed the widespread, catastrophic decline of elm populations during the mid-Holocene.

Climatic variations recorded by the sediments from Erhai Lake, Yunnan Province, southwest China during the past 8000 a

2001 ◽  
Vol 46 (S1) ◽  
pp. 80-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenke Zhang ◽  
Xiangdong Yang ◽  
Ji Shen ◽  
Shengfeng Li ◽  
Yuxin Zhu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Southwest China ◽  
Erhai Lake ◽  
Climatic Variations ◽  
The Past

scholarly journals TOC and Black Carbon records in sediment of Lake Yangzong, Yunnan Province under the influence of human activities during the past century

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 1018-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
LIU Yilan ◽  
◽  
ZHANG Enlou ◽  
LIU Enfeng ◽  
WANG Rong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Black Carbon ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past

Spatiotemporal Changes of Riverbed and Surrounding Environment in Yongding River (Beijing section) in the Past 40 Years

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 40407-1-40407-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ran Pang ◽  
He Huang ◽  
Tri Dev Acharya
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Water Conservation ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Water Volume ◽  
Cropland Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Spatiotemporal Changes ◽  
Yongding River

Abstract Yongding River is one of the five major river systems in Beijing. It is located to the west of Beijing. It has influenced culture along its basin. The river supports both rural and urban areas. Furthermore, it influences economic development, water conservation, and the natural environment. However, during the past few decades, due to the combined effect of increasing population and economic activities, a series of changes have led to problems such as the reduction in water volume and the exposure of the riverbed. In this study, remote sensing images were used to derive land cover maps and compare spatiotemporal changes during the past 40 years. As a result, the following data were found: forest changed least; cropland area increased to a large extent; bareland area was reduced by a maximum of 63%; surface water area in the study area was lower from 1989 to 1999 because of the excessive use of water in human activities, but it increased by 92% from 2010 to 2018 as awareness about protecting the environment arose; there was a small increase in the built-up area, but this was more planned. These results reveal that water conservancy construction, agroforestry activities, and increasing urbanization have a great impact on the surrounding environment of the Yongding River (Beijing section). This study discusses in detail how the current situation can be attributed to of human activities, policies, economic development, and ecological conservation Furthermore, it suggests improvement by strengthening the governance of the riverbed and the riverside. These results and discussion can be a reference and provide decision support for the management of southwest Beijing or similar river basins in peri-urban areas.

The Future of the Planetary Trust in a Kaleidoscopic World

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Edith Brown Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Resource Degradation ◽  
Shared Goal

Today, it is evident that we are part of a planetary trust. Conserving our planet represents a public good, global as well as local. The threats to future generations resulting from human activities make applying the normative framework of a planetary trust even more urgent than in the past decades. Initially, the planetary trust focused primarily on threats to the natural system of our human environment such as pollution and natural resource degradation, and on threats to cultural heritage. Now, we face a higher threat of nuclear war, cyber wars, and threats from gene drivers that can cause inheritable changes to genes, potential threats from other new technologies such as artificial intelligence, and possible pandemics. In this context, it is proposed that in the kaleidoscopic world, we must engage all the actors to cooperate with the shared goal of caring for and maintaining planet Earth in trust for present and future generations.

Introductory remarks

1977 ◽  
Vol 280 (972) ◽  
pp. 105-105
Keyword(s):  
Climatic Change ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Climatic Fluctuations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Different Sources

In the last year or two there has been a remarkable increase in the interest, both popular and scientific, in the subject of climatic change. This stems from a recognition that even a highly technological society is vulnerable to the effects of climatic fluctuations and indeed may become more so, as margins of surplus food production are reduced, and nations become more interdependent for their food supply. In this respect our concern is with quite small changes - a degree (Celsius) or less in temperature and 10 % or so in rainfall. Probably we may discount some of the more alarmist suggestions of an imminent and rapid change towards near glacial conditions as these are based on very sketchy evidence. However, whatever the time-scale of climatic fluctuations with which we are concerned, we may hope to learn a great deal which is relevant to the factors which will control our future climate from the study of its more extreme vagaries in the past. Information relevant to the weather in such extreme periods is coming forward in increasing detail and volume from a wide range of disciplines. The variety of the evidence, its lack of precision as a strict measure of climate, and the number of different sources all make it difficult for an individual to build up a clear picture of past climates. However such a picture is needed, if explanations and interpretation are to be possible. Ideally one would need a synchronous picture of the climate of the whole world at selected epochs in the past. Various international programmes are directed to forming such pictures.

scholarly journals Revitalising Naxi dongba as a ‘pictographic’ vernacular script

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Duncan Poupard
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Standard Chinese

A script can be a window into a language and all the culture contained within it. China’s minority peoples have a multitude of scripts, but many are in danger of falling out of use, a decline spurred by the adoption and promotion of standard Chinese across the country. Nevertheless, efforts are being made to preserve minority writing systems. This article reveals how the primarily logographic Naxi dongba script (often labelled the world’s ‘last living pictographs’), used in China’s southwestern Yunnan province to record the Naxi language, can be practically used as a modern writing system alongside its more widely known traditional role as a means of recording religious rites, and what exactly separates these two styles of writing. The efforts that have been made to achieve the goal of modernisation over the past decades are reviewed, including the longstanding attempts at Unicode encoding. I make some suggestions for the future development of the script, and employ plenty of examples from recent publications, alongside phonetic renderings and English translations. It is hoped that overall awareness of this unique script can be raised, and that it can develop into a vernacular script with everyday applications.

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