48 research outputs found
SS Grahame
No full textPhotograph - The first steamer boat to operate on the Athabasca River, Athabasca, Alberta. It operated from 1883-189
Measuring Interest Rate Expectations in Canada
No full textFinancial market expectations regarding future policy actions by the Bank of Canada are an important input into the Bank's decision-making process, and they can be measured using a variety of sources. The author develops a simple expectations-based model to focus on measuring interest rate expectations that are implied by the current level of money market yields. The explanatory power of this model increases markedly in the period following the implementation of the Bank's regime of fixed announcement dates in November 2000, and it appears to accurately describe the behaviour of short-term yields. Term premiums are estimated for the various instruments examined, and observed market yields are adjusted by those amounts. Once the market yields are adjusted, they can be used to calculate implied forward rates for a series of dates in the future. These forward rates can be interpreted as representing the market's expectations for the future level of overnight rates at a specific date.Financial markets; Interest rates
Without management interventions, endemic wet‐sclerophyll forest is transitioning to rainforest in World Heritage listed K’gari (Fraser Island), Australia
No full textWet‐sclerophyll forests are unique ecosystems that can transition to dry‐sclerophyll forests or to rainforests. Understanding of the dynamics of these forests for conser‐ vation is limited. We evaluated the long‐term succession of wet‐sclerophyll forest on World Heritage listed K'gari (Fraser Island)—the world's largest sand island. We re‐ corded the presence and growth of tree species in three 0.4 hectare plots that had been subjected to selective logging, fire, and cyclone disturbance over 65 years, from 1952 to 2017. Irrespective of disturbance regimes, which varied between plots, rain‐ forest trees recruited at much faster rates than the dominant wet‐sclerophyll forest trees, narrowly endemic species Syncarpia hillii and more common Lophostemon con‐ fertus. Syncarpia hillii did not recruit at the plot with the least disturbance and re‐ cruited only in low numbers at plots with more prominent disturbance regimes in the ≥10 cm at breast height size. Lophostemon confertus recruited at all plots but in much lower numbers than rainforest trees. Only five L. confertus were detected in the smallest size class (<10 cm diameter) in the 2017 survey. Overall, we find evidence that more pronounced disturbance regimes than those that have occurred over the past 65 years may be required to conserve this wet‐sclerophyll forest, as without in‐ tervention, transition to rainforest is a likely trajectory. Fire and other management tools should therefore be explored, in collaboration with Indigenous landowners, to ensure conservation of this wet‐sclerophyll forest
Applying reduced impact loggin to advance sustainable forest management
No full textThere is broad consensus that timber harvesting must be improved to achieve sustainable forest management. Reduced impact logging (RIL) is a key component of better forest management. Its implementation is largely contingent on satisfying economic and institutional concerns. In tropical forests, RIL has been tested and applied on a small scale for more than a decade. Various timber-producing countries in Asia and the Pacific have recognized its potential for advancing sustainable forest management. Yet many questions remain and the lack of sound and appropriate information continues to impede the widespread application of RIL. This publication helps fill that critical information gap. It includes a wealth of information that was presented during the International conference on the application of reduced impact logging to advance sustainable forest management, held from 26 February to 1 March 2001, in Kuching, Malaysia. The conference assessed past and ongoing efforts to implement RIL and considered options for future application. This publication reflects an important milestone in the efforts to improve forest management in the region. While acknowledging that considerable challenges lie ahead, it provides reason for cautious optimism concerning the wider application of RIL in the future
Tropical peatland village communities’ self-perceived attitude and behaviour changes regarding fire usage
No full textIndonesia has the world’s second largest national extent of tropical peat deposits, after Brazil. Forest and land fires cause serious disturbance to these peatlands. Whereas more than two million hectares of peatlands burned during 2015, there was an overall decrease in the incidence of fires between 2016 and 2019. This raises the question of whether the decline was due to a change in the behaviour of human communities with regard to their use of fire. This study investigated self-perceived attitudes and behaviour changes amongst communities living in peatlands. Two villages in each of three districts (Pulang Pisau, Kapuas, OKI) within two provinces (Central Kalimantan, South Sumatra) were included. In-depth semi-structured interviews based on a questionnaire were conducted with 90 respondents (15 people per village). The results showed the perception that nearly all fires were caused by people using fire on small-to-medium pieces of land. Post-2015, social conditions were influenced by the creation of new regulations prohibiting burning, innovations in technology, and developing knowledge of the negative effects of fires on the economy. Thus, communities had been made more aware of the importance of preventing fires. This led to reduced interest in burning land and a willingness to start applying modern technology to the preparation of land for various uses. Most community members had actively participated in fire prevention activities. People felt that community landowners carry the greatest share of responsibility for managing their land. The dominant perception was that the ban on burning, socialised at village level, was one of the main reasons for the reduced incidence of fires. The existence of village fire control teams (MPAs), which provide fire-fighting equipment and knowledge, was perceived to strongly support changes in community attitudes to reducing fires. We emphasise that this study presents self-perceived changes in community attitudes and behaviour in using fire
Manufacturing urbanism: an architectural practice for unfinished cities
No full textThis PhD is a reflection upon an architectural practice developed over twelve years, incorporating architectural design, teaching and writing. The practice consists of a variety of projects ranging from full-scale architectural interventions to speculative urban proposals, and includes individually authored work alongside collaborations with an international network of practitioners and academics. Addressing this constellation of projects and approaches, the reflective process of this PhD served to identify two primary conceptual domains and drivers of the work: contemporary industrial manufacturing and urban transformation. The culmination of the research models a vehicle for future practice situated between these domains, predicated strongly on methods of prototyping and strategic incentivisation in the urban realm. A core agenda of the work is a predilection for, and prioritisation of, incompleteness in architectural design, structures of professional practice and urbanism. The research, presented through a written document and exhibition, is structured in five parts:1. Staging Practices: case studies in how experimental design practices inform and redefine professional ones.2. Industrial Practices: experiments with materials and methods of manufacturing in architectural work.3. Urban Practices: documenting qualities of urbanism between phases of industrial or economic change.4. Networked Practices: architectural experiments between manufacturing and urbanism.5. Modelling a Future Practice: a platform for collaborative architectural practice at the intersection of urban/economic and industrial/material concerns
Australian Individual Tree Biomass Library- v4
No full textBiomass sampling: Various methods were used. But all involved harvesting individual trees or shrubs and measuring the fresh weight of the above-ground biomass. Sub-sampling was used to determine moisture content. Then dry weight of the above-ground biomass was calculated.<p><b>Credit</b><br/>We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.<br/>We thank the Australian Government's Department of the Environment for funding this work. Assistance with data collation was also provided by Coral Allan, Grant Allan, John Bartle, Jason Barnetson, Rick Bennett, Coline Bourru, Mark Brammar, Steven Bray, Mila Bristow, Don Butler, Rob Chambers, Vanessa Chewings, Robin Cromer, Mike Cully, Eve Damm, Micah Davies, Alex Drew, Robert Eager, Tom Fairman, Ben Finn, David Freudenberger, Sean Gleason, Bob Hingston, Mark Hunt, Bruce Hogg, Laura Kmoch, Rob Law, Hamish Luck, Tracey May, Rick Giles, Gordon McLachlan, Geoff Minchin, Simon Murphy, Matt Nicholson, Jaymie Norris, Len Norris, Craig Neumann, Anthony O'Connell, David Osborne, Dailiang Peng, John Raison, Sandra Roberts, Harry Roberts, Ben Rose, Katelyn Ryan, Tim Smith, Adam Smith, Scott Swift, Mervyn Tucker, Brendan Vollemaere, Paul Warburton, Peter Walsh, Ray Wilson, Stephanie Wilson, Alex Winter, Ralph Woodford, Fabinao Ximenes, and Byron Yeo. We also thank the property owners and managers who allowed us to sample their trees for above-ground biomass. In addition to the organisations of the contributing authors, we also acknowledge Oil Mallee Association of Australia Inc, Carbon Neutral, Northern Agricultural Catchments Council, Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting, RIRDC, University of New England, Queensland Forestry Department, and WA Plantation Resources. Older datasets of D. Ashton, J. Lewis, W. Forrest, J. Dargavel, W. Westman, R. Rogers, P. Baldwin, H. Stewart, F. Hingston, M. Lambert, R. Cromer are acknowledged. See sources below. Forrest WG (1969) Variations in the accumulation, distribution and movement of mineral nutrients in radiata pine plantations. Ph.D. Thesis. Australian National University, Canberra. Dargavel JB (1970) Provisional tree weight tables for radiata pine. Australian Forestry, 34: 131-140. Forrest W, Ovington J (1970) Organic Matter Changes in an Age Series of Pinus radiata Plantations. Journal of Applied Ecology, 7, 177-186. Ashton D (1976) Phosphorus in Forest Ecosystems at Beenak, Victoria. Journal of Ecology, 64, 171-186. Westman, WE, Rogers RW (1977) Biomass and structure of a subtropical eucalypt forest, north Stradbroke Island. Australian Journal of Botany, 25, 171-191. Lewis JW (1978) Ecological studies of coastal forests and its regeneration after mining. PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane. Lambert MJ (1979) Sulphur relationships of native and exotic species. MSc(Hons) thesis, Macquarie Uni. 170pp. Cromer R, Williams E (1982) Biomass and Nutrient Accumulation in a Planted E. globulus (Labill.) Fertilizer Trial. Australian Journal of Botany, 30, 265-278. Baldwin PJ, Stewart HTL (1987) Distribution, length and weight of roots in young plantations of Eucalyptus grandis W. Hill ex. Maiden irrigated with recycled water. Plant Soil, 97, 243-252 Cromer RN, Cameron DM, Rance SJ, Ryan PA, Brown M (1993). Response to nutrients in Eucalyptus grandis. 1. Biomass accumulation. Forest Ecology and Management, 62, 211-230. Hingston F, Galbraith J (1998) Application of the process-based model BIOMASS to Eucalyptus globulus ssp. globulus plantations on ex-farmland in south western Australia. Forest Ecology and Management, 106, 157-168. Hingston F, Galabraith J, Jones M (1990) Dimensional data for trees at several sites in northern Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest. DFFP Division of Forestry and Forestry Products User Series. No. 11.<b>Purpose</b><br/>The data on individual tree or shrub biomass were derived from numerous projects over the last five decades. Support was given to collate these datasets under the Complex Woody Systems Project (MDP-CWS) funded by the Australian Department of the Environment's Methodology Development Program and CSIRO. The objective of the MDP-CWS project was to develop tools and information to underpin increased land manager participation in the domestic carbon market; the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF). However, the intention is that this database will be expanded over time and have broader use beyond supporting carbon accounting methodologies.Progress Code: completedMaintenance and Update Frequency: notPlannedThis data set is a compilation of individual tree and shrub above-ground biomass (dry weight), stem diameter, height, and associated auxiliary information about the sites from which the trees or shrubs were sampled. The data were derived from numerous different projects over the last 5 decades. However, the project under which support was given to collate these datasets was Australia's Department of the Environments Methodology Development Program's Complex Wood System Project (MDP-CWS). The objective of the MDP-CWS project was to develop tools and information to underpin increased land manager participation in the domestic carbon market; the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF). However, the intention is that this database will be expanded over time and have much greater use than just supporting carbon accounting methodologies.
See publication for details: "Keryn I. Paul, John Larmour, Alison Specht, Ayalsew Zerihun, Peter Ritson, Stephen H. Roxburgh, Stan Sochacki, Tom Lewis, Craig V.M. Barton, Jacqueline R. England, Michael Battaglia, Anthony O'Grady, Elizabeth Pinkard, Grahame Applegate, Justin Jonson, Kim Brooksbank, Rob Sudmeyer, Dan Wildy, Kelvin D. Montagu, Matt Bradford, Don Butler, Trevor Hobbs, Testing the generality of below-ground biomass allometry across plant functional types, Forest Ecology and Management. 432: 102-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.08.043.
Paul, K.I., Larmour, J., Specht, A., Zerihun, A., Ritson, P., Roxburgh, S.H., Sochacki, S., Lewis, T., Barton, C.V.M., England, J.R., Battaglia, M., O’Grady, A., Pinkard, E., Applegate, G., Jonson, J., Brooksbank, K., Sudmeyer, R., Wildy, D., Montagu, K.D., Bradford, M., Butler, D., Hobbs, T., 2019. Testing the generality of below-ground biomass allometry across plant functional types. Forest Ecology and Management 432, 102–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.08.04
A Field Study of Tropical Peat Fire Behaviour and Associated Carbon Emissions
No full textTropical peatlands store vast volumes of carbon belowground. Human land uses have led to their degradation, reducing their carbon storage services. Clearing and drainage make peatlands susceptible to surface and belowground fires. Satellites do not readily detect smouldering peat fires, which release globally significant quantities of aerosols and climate-influencing gases. Despite national and international desire to improve management of these fires, few published results exist for in situ tropical peat fire behaviour and associated carbon emissions. We present new field methodology for calculating rates of fire spread within degraded peat (average spread rates, vertical 0.8 cm h−1, horizontal 2.7 cm h−1) and associated peat volume losses (102 m3 ha−1 in August, 754 m3 ha−1 in September) measured at six peat fire sites in Kalimantan, Indonesia, in 2015. Utilizing locally collected bulk density and emission factors, total August and September gas emissions of 27.2 t ha−1 (8.1 tC ha−1) and 200.7 t ha−1 (60.2 tC ha−1) were estimated. We provide much needed, but currently lacking, IPCC Tier 3-level data to improve GHG estimates from tropical peat fires. We demonstrate how calculations of total emission estimates can vary greatly in magnitude (+798% to −26%) depending on environmental conditions, season, peat burn depth methodology, bulk density and emission factors data sources, and assumed versus observed combustion factors. This illustrates the importance of in situ measurements and the need for more refined methods to improve accuracies of GHG estimates from tropical peat fires
The active presence of absent things: a study in social documentary photography and the philosophical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005).
No full text“Phenomenology is the place where hermeneutics originates,
phenomenology is also the place it has left behind.”(Ricoeur )1
In this thesis I shall examine possibilities for bringing into dialogue the practice of social
documentary photography and the conceptual resources of the post-Structural and critical
philosophical hermeneutics of text and action developed by Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005)
from the 1970’s onwards. Ricoeur called this an ‘amplifying’ hermeneutics of language,
defined as ‘the art of deciphering indirect meaning’ (ibid).
Social documentary photography is an intentional activity concerned with the visual
interpretation, ethics and representation of life, the otherness of others, and through them
something about ourselves. The narratives form social histories of encounters with others.
They raise challenging questions of meaning and interpretation in understanding the
relations of their subjective agency to an objective reality. Traditionally the meaning of
such work is propositional. It consists in the truth conditions of bearing witness to the
direct experience of the world and the verifiability of what the photography says, or
appears to say about it. To understand the meaning of the photography is to know what
would make it true or false. This theory has proven useful and durable, although it has not
gone unchallenged. The power it has is remarkable and new documentary narratives
continue to be formed in this perspective, adapting to changing technologies, and
reverberate with us today.
A more subtle way of thinking about this is given by a pragmatic theory of meaning. This
is what I am proposing. The focus here is upon use and what documentary photography
does and says. A praxis that I refer to by the act of photographing: a discourse of
locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary utterances in whose thoughtful and informed
making are unified theories of visual texts within the theories of action and history. The
key is the capacity to produce visual narratives made with intention and purpose that in
their performative poetics and their semantic innovations attest to the realities of
1 Ricoeur, P. 1991: From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. trans. Kathleen Blamey and
John B. Thompson. 2nd Edition 2007: with new Forward by Richard Kearney. Evanston.
NorthWestern University Press.
experience and sedimented historical conditions witnessed, and communicate those to
others within a dialectic of historical consciousness and understanding.
The narrative visualisations disclose a world, a context in which the drama of our own life
and the lives of others makes sense. In their interpretations of an empiric reality can be
found ethical concerns and extensions of meaning beyond the original reference that
survive the absence of the original subject matter and the original author of the
photography whose inferences our imaginations and later acquired knowledge can
meditate upon and re-interpret. Thus in the hermeneutic view, the documentary
photographic narrative is a form of text that comes to occupy an autonomy from, a) the
author’s original intentions, b) the reference of the original photographic context, and
c) their reception, assimilation and understanding by unknown readers-viewers.
Ricoeur argues that hermeneutic interpretation discloses the reader as ‘a second order
reference standing in front of the text’, whose necessary presence solicits a series of
multiple and often conflicting readings and interpretations. Consequently Ricoeur’s
critical, philosophical hermeneutics brings us from epistemology to a kind of ‘truncated’
ontology that is only provisional, a place where interpretation is always something begun
but never completed. Interpretation according to Ricoeur engages us within a hermeneutic
circle of explanation and understanding whose dialectic is mediated in history and time.
For Ricoeur this implies that to be able to interpret meaning and make sense of the world
beyond us is to arrive in a conversation that has already begun. His hermeneutic wager is,
moreover, that our self-understandings will be enriched by the encounter. In short, the
more we understand others and what is meaningful for them the better we will be able to
understand ourselves and our sense of inner meaning. The central thesis of his
hermeneutics is that interpretation is an ongoing process that is never completed,
belonging to meaning in and through distance, that can make actively present to the
imagination what is objectively absent and whose discourse is undertood as the act of
“someone saying something about something to someone” (Ricoeur 1995: Intellectual
Autobiography).
Continuing Fragmentation of a Widespread Species by Geographical Barriers as Initial Step in a Land Snail Radiation on Crete
No full textSauer J, Oldeland J, Hausdorf B. Continuing Fragmentation of a Widespread Species by Geographical Barriers as Initial Step in a Land Snail Radiation on Crete. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(5): e62569.The phylogeographic structure of the land snail Xerocrassa mesostena on Crete inferred from AFLP markers and mitochondrial cox1 sequences can be explained by three mechanisms: gene flow restriction, population expansion and leptokurtic dispersal. Gene flow restriction by geographic barriers caused subdivision of the gene pool into distinct clusters. Population expansion was probably facilitated by deforestation of Crete in the postglacial. Newly available areas were colonized by leptokurtic dispersal, i.e. slow active expansion resulting in isolation by distance within the clusters and occasional long distance dispersal events that resulted in departures from the isolation by distance model. Less than one percent of the AFLP markers show correlations with environmental variables. Random phylogeographic breaks in the distribution of the mitochondrial haplotype groups indicate that single locus markers, especially mitochondrial DNA, might result in a misleading picture of the phylogeographic structure of a species. Restriction of gene flow between metapopulations caused by geographical barriers can interact with sexual selection resulting in the differentiation of these metapopulations into separate species without noticeable ecological differentiation. Evidence for gene flow between parapatrically distributed evolutionary units representing different stages of the speciation process suggests that the ongoing process of fragmentation of the X. mesostena complex might be an example for parapatric speciation. The lack of ecological differentiation between these units confirms theoretical predictions that divergent selection for local adaptation is not required for rapid speciation
