DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin
Not a member yet
313 research outputs found
Sort by
Grèzes litées and their genesis: the site of Enscherange in the Rhenish- Ardennes Massif as a case study
Get PDFThe freeze-thaw cycles in periglacial areas during the Quaternary glacials increased frost weathering, leading to a disintegration of rock formations. Transported downslope, clasts allowed in some areas the formation of stratified slope deposits known as “grèzes litées”. This study reviews the existing theories and investigates the grèzes litées deposits of Enscherange and Rodershausen in Luxembourg. This process was reinforced by the lithostructural control of the parent material expressed by the dip of schistosity (66°) and its orientation parallel to the main slopes in the area. This gave opportunities to activate the frost-weathering process on top of the ridge where the parent material outcropped. As the stratified slope deposits have a dip of 23° and as there is no significant lateral variation in rock fragment size, slope processes that involve only gravity are excluded and transportation in solifluction lobes with significant slopewash and sorting processes is hypothesized. The Enscherange formation, the biggest known outcrop of grèzes litées in north-western Europe, shows evidence of clear layering over the whole profile depth. A palaeolandscape reconstruction shows that ridges must have been tens of metres higher than presently. The investigation of the matrix composition shows Laacher See tephra in the overlying periglacial cover bed with infiltrations of the minerals in the reworked upper layer of the grèzes litées deposit. Chronostratigraphic approaches using the underlying cryoturbation zone and Laacher See heavy minerals in the overlying topsoil place the formation of grèzes litées deposits in the Late Pleistocene
The mixing regime of Lake Ammersee
Get PDFClimate change affects the circulation of lakes and has already induced mixing regime shifts for 9 several sites. The pre-alpine Lake Ammersee, Germany, is usually dimictic, but exhibits rarely a 10 complete ice cover. Furthermore, it has potentially shown some monomictic years in the past. Based 11 on vertical profile data of water temperatures (WT) and dissolved oxygen (DO) the mixing behavior 12 of the lake is visualized and analyzed for the period of 1986 – 2014. The classification of mixing 13 depicts 22 dimictic years and eight monomictic years, which approves the assumption of of 14 occasional monomixis in the lake. No significance of a trend of shift in mixing pattern can be found. 15 By also deriving also the mixing depths from the vertical DO distribution, one year without complete 16 overturn (meromictic) is detected. The results show that no regime shift has set in for Lake 17 Ammersee until 2014. Considering the high percentage of monomictic years and the potential 18 occurrence of meromixis, it can be assumed that the lake’s mixing pattern will alter due to predicted 19 climate change in the future
Country-of-origin labelling in the globalizing agrifood industry – the example of pork ‘made in Germany’
Get PDFThe provenance of food has without any doubt become more important in recent years which is not least reflected in the commercial launch of relevant labels. Especially in the era of an increasingly globalizing agrifood sector, the emphasis on country-of-origin effects could appear as an additional selling point. This is also true for the pork industry which will be shown by using the example of pork ‘made in Germany’. Therefore, the current export success of German pork is obviously a result of positive quality features which are (subjectively) derived from the national provenance. The growing demand for ‘quality pork made in Germany’ in several East Asian markets, which are particularly important due to remarkable value-added potentials, has led pork producers to highlight the ‘benefits’ of German origin and to accordingly shape their upstream supply relations. As a result of this, pig fattening farmers who import their pigs from Denmark or the Netherlands are excluded from these production lines. The emphasis on country-of-origin effects is thus accompanied by modifications of the spatial organization of production networks
Migration in a changing climate. Towards a translocal social resilience approach
Get PDFClimate change and migration are drawing increasing interest from researchers and policy makers as well as from the general public. While in the beginning a simplistic and geo-deterministic comprehension of the environmental impact on human mobility had dominated the discussion, the framing of the relationship has recently become more differentiated. Vast empirical evidence derived from rural livelihoods research clearly shows that migration is an important strategy of households when dealing with multiple risks, including environmental stress. This has led to the growing acknowledgement of the idea of “migration as adaptation” in migration-environment research. We consider this conceptual development an important step for a better understanding of this nexus. Nonetheless, migration as adaptation has several shortcomings. Firstly, it is narrowly focused on migration as an adaptive response to environmental risks and neglects the significant impact of other forms of migration. Secondly, it does not cover other dimensions of how people, communities and societies deal with environmental change: a blind eye is all too often turned to processes of resilience building. Thirdly, migration as adaptation has been found to be interpreted in a way which justifies migration policies with neo-liberal tendencies. In order to overcome such drawbacks, we propose an approach that integrates translocality and social resilience. In this paper we thus introduce the concept of translocal social resilience and reflect on its conceptual implications. We will thereby show how this approach can improve the understanding of the migration-environment nexus, and how it can also shape the concept of migration as adaptation, allowing for nuanced and critical views on the dynamics in the migration-environment context
What do you mean when you say "urban"? Divergence between everyday language and Northern analytical vocabularies in South African Cities
No full textThe everyday meanings of key words about urban topics in South Africa differ markedly from their received definitions in much of the international geographic literature. Terms such as urban, city, rural, modern, and developed are used in everyday settings to represent concepts that are sometimes subtly and in other cases markedly in contrast with Global North norms, and embody problematic racialized values and histories. This article briefly describes the authors’ experiences of the everyday meanings of these key terms through engagement with South African students and research participants. We suggest research tactics that may enable better understandings of implicit urban concepts used in South Africa and (potentially) elsewhere in the Global South. This is particularly important for understanding urban participants’ reactions to and narratives about rapidly evolving patterns of development in postcolonial contexts
A novel approach in monitoring land-cover change in the tropics: oil palm cultivation in the Niger Delta, Nigeria
Get PDFThe increasing demand for palm oil and bioenergy has promoted the expansion of tropical farmland covered with oil palms (Elaeis guineensis), resulting in increased competition with food production as well as environmental degradation. Moreover, oil palm cultivation may have increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through deforestation. The overall impact estimation of oil palm related land-use change requires spatiotemporal land-use maps. So far, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has not established guidelines on how to measure and evaluate oil palm related land-cover change. While remote sensing methods are suitable in general, the use of Landsat images in the tropics for the monitoring and modeling of land-cover changes has been restricted due to the influence of cloud cover. This study presents a novel approach for mapping tropical land-cover change using the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud-based platform and the System for Automated Geoscientific Analysis (SAGA) GIS. Spatiotemporal land-use and land-cover changes in relation to oil palm cultivation are assessed using a median pixel composite mosaic of Landsat 5, 7 and 8 image scenes for the time periods 1999-2005 and 2009-2015. The proposed approach yields an overall accuracy and kappa coefficient of 70.33 % and 0.62 for the first image composite period, and 84.5 % and 0.80 for the second image composite period respectivel
Internationalisation of grocery retailing in the Global South: general conditions, formats and spatial expansion patterns of selected MNEs
Get PDFGrocery retail internationalisation in developing economies is a dynamic process that began just a decade ago. It was initially dominated by a North-South expansion of large retail MNE from Western Europe and North America. Hereby, only a limited number of grocery retail chains expanded to these markets, typically with formats such as hyper-/supermarkets. Super-/hypermarketisation is, however, no longer only a peculiarity and a dominant pattern of a North-South expansion, increasingly retail grocers from the Global South are both setting up similar types of stores in their home markets and gaining a foothold in neighbouring countries at the same time, leading to a new pattern of South-South expansion. Elaborating upon the crucial conditions for grocery retail internationalisation in general, the article analyses rationales, formats and selected companies that piloted this process, followed by a closer look upon the characteristics of spatial patterns in the expansion process. The latter were heavily influenced by spatial and socio-cultural proximity in the early days, whereas currently regionally and culturally more distant markets are penetrated