The Ontopolitics of Mountain Bike Trail Building: Addressing Issues of Access and Conflict in the More-than Human English Countryside

In recent years there have been calls for scholars working within sport and physical culture to recognise the (increasing) confluence of nature and culture. Situated within an emerging body of new materialist research, such accounts have shown how various activities are polluted by, fused to, and assembled with non-human entities. However, more work is needed on the political possibilities afforded by non-human agency, and by extension, the implications that such flat ontological arrangements might raise for the management and governance of physical culture. Building on research conducted with mountain bike trail builders, this article seeks to explore what it means to know, to be, and to govern a human subject in the Anthropocene. Specifically, I draw on James Ash’s (2019) post-phenomenological theory of space and David Chandler’s (2018) notion of onto-political hacking to show how the playful, contingent, and transformative practices of the mountain bike assemblage confront the linear and calculated governance of the English countryside. In doing so, mountain bike trails are positioned as objects of hope that allow for a collective re-imagining of political democracy in a more-than-human landscape.

Lithological and Topographic Impact on Soil Nutrient Distributions in Tectonic Landscapes: Implications for Pleistocene Human-Landscape Interactions in the Southern Kenya Rift

Tectonically active regions are characterized by complex landscapes comprising soils with heterogeneous physicochemical properties. Spatial variability of nutrient sources enhances landscape biodiversity and creates heterogeneous habitats potentially attractive for animals and humans. In this study, we analyze the role of geological processes in the distributions of soil nutrients in the southern Kenya Rift, a key region in the interpretation of early human-landscape interactions. Our aim is to determine how spatial variations in rock chemistry, as well as topographic gradients and localized zones of rock fracturing from tectonic faulting determine the distributions of plant-available soil nutrients in soils. We hypothesize that present-day soil nutrient levels reflect the long-term chemical and geomorphological characteristics of the landscape and underlying parent material, and that regions with high nutrient availability occur along pathways correlating with locations of hominin fossil sites. Analyses of 91 topsoil samples from the main geological units show that Calcium (Ca) deficiencies predominately occur in shallow soils developed on trachytic volcanic rocks and granitic gneisses, while high Ca levels are associated with basaltic parent material and sedimentary deposits of mixed sources. XRF analysis of rock samples confirms that CaO levels in trachyte rocks are significantly lower than those in basalts, and Ca mobilization in basalt is more effective than in trachyte. Along two toposequences in densely faulted basaltic and trachytic rocks, we observed slope dependent soil nutritional gradients and a systematic increase of the concentrations of Ca, Mg and SOC in topsoils of colluvial sediments downslope of active normal faults. Known hominin sites in the region are located either along corridors of long-term Ca availability or at short-term nutrient hotspots potentially related to active CO2 degassing along active fault zones. This implies a strategic advantage of Ca-rich regions for hominin subsistence strategies, such as provision of predictable constraints on the distribution and mobility of grazing animals in complex tectonic landscapes. Our study implies that geological processes impact nutrient distributions in the southern Kenya Rift. Results of this study have further implications for understanding the role of soils in the interpretation of hominin-landscape interactions in the early stages of human evolution.

The Photo-filmic and the Post-human: Picturesque Landscapes at the Peripheries of Global Cinema

The chapter describes a slightly paradoxical form of the picturesque tableau that has emerged in a globalized, markedly transnational cinema. The relative autonomy of such a tableau, defined by the aesthetic of high definition digital photography, foregrounds both the single photograph’s inherent connection to death and its close ties with the art of painting. As such, it also becomes a perfect form to unfold a kind of post-human landscape, a setting for eschatological narratives told in the minimalist mode, staging a clash between elemental, biological existence and powerful forces of society that threaten this existence with imminent destruction. In the international arthouse film festival circuit we see a number of films made in the context of so-called peripheral cinemas which engage in this way the in-betweenness of photography and film in an unsettling mixture of documentary realism and pictorial detachment. The chapter focuses on the photo-filmic qualities of three such films: Timbuktu directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, Test (Ispytaniye) by Alexander Kott, and Nabat, by Elchin Musaoglu (all made in 2014).

On the Landscape Composition of Traditional Village in Huizhou District–A Case Study in Qizili Village

The landscape features of traditional villages displayed in the Huizhou District were formed in a specific environment gradually. It was the result of the comprehensive effects of natural, historical, social, and cultural factors. This study took Qizili Village as an example and sorted out the composition and current situation of its natural landscape and human landscape. To refine the proper composition model of Qizili Village, we analyzed the landscape features from the perspectives of the natural environment, layout planning, traditional architecture, environmental elements, and traditional culture. Finally, we concluded the landscape connotation of Qizili Village.

Big Data Analysis Guides Landscape Architecture Method Research

In the construction of urbanization, landscape architecture is the only kind of ecological construction with life, and it has an irreplaceable role in urban development and human landscape. The construction of urban landscape gardens can not only improve the ecological environment in the city, but also achieve the functions of purifying the urban air and beautifying the appearance of the city. However, considering the current situation of garden construction, there are not only many types of problems, but also large and complex problems. At the same time, its design concept and construction plan still stay in the traditional consciousness. The development of various industries today requires the integration of big data. In the context of the era of big data, data life has gradually penetrated into people's lives. Big data is not only a product of the development of social science and technology information, but also an inevitable trend of industry development. It can not only promote the construction of urban development, but also has great significance for social progress[1]. Therefore, the construction and design research of landscape architecture needs to combine the analysis of big data, and use the advantages of big data to promote the construction of gardens to be more complete, reasonable and humane.

Comment: Sharing Our World with Wild Animals

Wild animals are falling increasingly under threat as their habitats are being disrupted by human activities and global warming. At the same time, we see wild animals such as wolves actually settling in human landscapes. This forces us to rethink how we can live together with other living beings, with whom we share one earth. The contributions in this book section can be seen as attempts to do just that. However, these developments also challenge the traditional ethical approach towards wild animals, concisely worded as “Let them be”. That falls short in the current era, in which semi-wild, contact zone, and liminal animals are recognized. Animals, whether living in natural or human landscapes, all make opportunistic use of all sorts of resources – including human ones. If circumstances change, either due to natural or human-made causes, they will enter into new interactions with their environment to survive. They are nodes in a dynamic, heterogeneous network of dependency relationships that increasingly includes humans. In this chapter a framework is proposed to indicate the presence of wild animals in the human landscape based on the species’ adaptability and their degree of dependence on humans. The framework shows that species strongly differ in their vulnerability and that a diversity of measures is required in a world in which human and animal domains increasingly merge. Recognizing that we do not have exclusive rights to the earth implies an impersonal care perspective for wild animals as fellow-earthlings. It requires the reconsideration of our ethics, philosophies, culture and politics.