Assessment of the natural-cultural resources in Çanakkale for nature-based tourism

While the world is going into different tourism expectations, the tourism understanding in Turkey is defined as tourism in the sea-sand-sun triangle. However, it is possible to contribute to the income and local development of the indigenous people by developing nature-based tourism. Besides, with the sustainable use and preservation of the natural-cultural assets, the damage of the traditional tourism industry on the natural and cultural environment could be reduced. In this study, it is aimed to bring up the nature-based tourism concept in Çanakkale by evaluating the nature-based tourism industry in the general of Turkey and assessing the natural-cultural resources that Çanakkale comprehends. The most important areas that have a nature-based tourism potential in Çanakkale and the tourism activities that are most suitable for these areas have been determined.     

Spaces of flow as technical and cultural mediators between society and nature

Modern societies organize and consume their basic natural resources in great technical infrastructures of transport, supply, communication, and information. Together with these infrastructures a new culture emerged, which influences since the 19th century the perception of nature. This article reflects on technical infrastructures as spaces of flow, which mediate technically and culturally between society and nature and on the necessity to evolve a new cultural perception of them. The vital importance of technical spaces of flow for daily life will be shown in the first part. The second part reveals the history and some characteristics and environmental impacts of technical spaces of flow. Their threefold spatial structure and typical conflicts arising at each spatial segment will be described in the third part. The last part investigates the cultural perception of technical spaces of flow, the natural resources they mediate and the environmental impacts they cause. They are the technical spaces and flowing processes themselves, which lead to a false cultural perception of the modern interaction with nature and to the necessity of political, technical, esthetical, and planning measures in order to make spaces of flow and flowing processes “visible” and to evolve a new, sustainable consumption culture.     

Natural outdoor environments and mental and physical health: Relationships and mechanisms

BackgroundEvidence is growing for the beneficial impacts of natural outdoor environments on health. However, most of the evidence has focused on green spaces and little evidence is available on health benefits of blue spaces and about possible mediators and modifiers of such impacts. We investigated the association between natural outdoor environments (separately for green and blue spaces) and health (general and mental) and its possible mediators and modifiers.MethodsCross-sectional data from adults interviewed in Catalonia (Spain) between 2010 and 2012 as part of the Catalonia Health Survey were used. The collected data included sociodemographic characteristics, self-perceived general health, mental health, physical activity and social support. Indicators of surrounding greenness and access to natural outdoor environments within 300 m of the residence and degree of urbanization were derived for residential addresses. Associations were estimated using logistic regression and negative binominal models.ResultsGreen spaces were associated with better self-perceived general health and better mental health, independent of degree of urbanization. The associations were more consistent for surrounding greenness than for access to green spaces. The results were consistent for different buffers, and when stratifying for socioeconomic status. Slightly stronger associations were found for women and residents of non-densely populated areas. No association was found between green spaces and social contacts and physical activity. The results for blue spaces were not conclusive.ConclusionGreen spaces are associated with better general and mental health across strata of urbanization, socioeconomic status, and genders. Mechanisms other than physical activity or social support may explain these associations.     

资源,生存空间与扶贫战略

本文在对资源和人类生存空间的讨论中,提出了自然资源、经济资源和社会资源的概念以及人类生存空间的地理性、经济性和社会性,并从资源和人类生存空间的角度对贫困问题进行了分析,认为社会资源贫乏及社会空间狭小是贫困的主要原因,因此,如何从资源的整体性出发,开发贫困地区的社会资源、扩展生存的社会空间是制定扶贫战略的重点。     

Physical development trend and green space destruction in developing cities: a GIS approach

Green spaces considered natural remnants in urban environments play a key role in promoting environmental quality and forming a sustainable city. Nowadays, development of urban spaces has taken a hasty growth. In the meanwhile, the natural green spaces are severely damaged. The current study aims at investigating the trend of changes in green space of Tabriz City, the second large industrial city in Iran, on the basis of landscape ecology principles. In order to prepare the land-cover maps, Landsat TM and IRS LISS-III of the years 1989 and 2006 were applied. Alongside, landscape percentage metrics, the largest patch index, number of patches, patch density, edge density, total edge, class area and landscape shape index were also used to analyse the changes. Metric analysis of the landscape within the studied years revealed that a large part of the region has enjoyed a rapid growth (equivalent to 64.5 %) in constructions. As the obtained results showed, the smallest landscape percentage (3.9 %) in the study area is belonged to the municipal green space, while the largest landscape percentage (66 %) is allocated to the barren land. This shows that the constructions have not balanced with creation of new green spaces, and the lack of green space per capita continues to be felt.     

Increasing tree cover while losing diverse natural forests in tropical Hainan,China

To protect biodiversity and improve environmental conditions, China has invested billions of dollars in reforestation and payments for ecosystem service programs. Here, we examine the Sloping Land Conversion Program, the largest such program in the world and found that after 13 years of implementation at our study site, it has had negative impacts on natural tropical forests. GIS and remote sensing techniques revealed that both natural forests and natural shrub and grasslands were replaced by non-native monocultural plantations on Hainan Island, China, a key tropical biodiversity hotspot. Under current Chinese policy, these plantations are classified simply as “forests”, with the assumption that they are equivalent to natural forests. This lack of a distinction in forest quality has led to substantial deforestation and plantation expansion, including encroachment into protected areas on Hainan. Additional social and economic drivers of these changes were identified by examining the participants in this program and their actions. Without a new ecologically based definition of forests and new goals for reforestation, such programs designed to improve ecosystem services, and forest quality may actually threaten remaining natural forests and other vegetation types in Hainan and in other areas of mainland China.     

Demand of the tourists visiting protected areas in small oceanic islands: the Azores case-study (Portugal)

In general, tourism plays a significant role in the economy of archipelagos and islands. The Autonomous Region of the Azores has a great potential for tourism, offering multiple attractions, both natural and cultural, creating a big challenge for a sustainable tourism policy since little attention has been paid to the archipelagos and their special needs. This work aims to understand the profile and type of ecotourist that visits the Azores. This knowledge is of great importance for a better management and development of nature-based tourism, and products tailored to the needs and expectations of visitors. The data were collected by means of exit surveys conducted at the Airport of São Miguel Island, the larger and most populated island of the archipelago, during the high tourist season—July–September 2009. The analysis of the visitor’s profile and preferences is crucial to draw adequate strategies of management for tourism, while it helps to adequate the offer to the demand. Results showed that 41.1 % of the tourists claimed to be attracted to the islands due to their “natural values” (e.g., landscape, biodiversity, and geodiversity). The most practiced activities were whale-watching (32.4 %) and mountaineering/hiking (31.6 %), followed by diving (7 %) and other sports (5.1 %). The tourists’ profile points to a mainstream, soft, and incidental type of ecotourist. This information helps to develop and support a strategic planning and management, both at local and regional levels, for sustainable tourism policies.     

“Single-minded,compelling, and unique”: Visual Communications,Landscape, and the Calculated Aesthetic of Place Branding

Place branding strategies play a significant role in the professional composition of landscape imagery, including the depiction of “natural” landscapes. In this paper, Brand Blue Mountains, a brand currently implemented in the Blue Mountains region (Australia), is discursively analyzed. The brand sets out an all-encompassing “Vision” defining the identity, values and personality of the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains landscape, summarized in the tagline Elevate Your Senses. This “vision” is visually translated into a strictly coordinated and copyrighted suite of logos, graphic design, color, fonts and various photographic styles. Analysis reveals that the degree of control that place brand strategists seek to exert over the visual expression of landscape identity is significant. A highly selective narrative of positive nature-based sensory experience is constructed through the holistic application of contemporary visual media. The brands' communications strategy naturalizes and reinforces a particular market-friendly version of place. The framework that brands set for the representation of landscapes overall amounts to an exercise in calculated aesthetics, whereby the form and content of landscape images of various kinds is measured to achieve the greatest market differentiation and impact which technologies allow. The result of this calculated aesthetic system, with its taglines, saturated color, careful composition and magazine-format brevity, is a reduction in the complexity of landscape representations and a perpetuation of nature stereotypes.     

中国建筑遗产保护与可持续发展研究

建筑遗产是世界文化遗产的重要组成部分,具有不可复制的科技和文化艺术价值。本文从中国建筑遗产的利用、开发和保护现状中发现其存在着自然威胁、人为破坏、政府制度疏漏及民众保护意识淡薄等问题。在世界遗产保护理念、科学监管、法律法规、民众参与等方面提出相应的建议和措施,以推进世界遗产的保护与可持续发展。     

人工园林大面积种植区植被净初级生产力时空变化研究

云南西南地区自然资源丰富,近年来,随着社会经济的快速发展,橡胶、茶园和桉树等人工园林大规模种植主要占用了天然林和耕地,土地利用结构和空间布局发生了很大变化。为了探讨土地利用/覆被变化对植被净初级生产力（NPP）的影响,以人工园林大面积种植区西盟县为研究区,运用综合模型、CASA模型和MODIS产品（BIOME-BGC模型）,对西盟县2000年、2005年、2010年和2015年各地类NPP的时间变化和空间分布特征进行分析。结果表明：（1）2000~2015年,CASA模型模拟的西盟县NPP呈先减少后增加的趋势,MODIS模型模拟的NPP值变化趋势与CASA模型一致,综合模型则呈现逐年增加的趋势;（2）西盟县NPP的空间分布形态从西至东均呈“低值-高值-低值-高值-低值”（“M”）变化,与西盟县水热资源的分布特征和土地利用/覆被变化有关,西盟县NPP空间变化主要集中于人工园林种植区;（3）3种模型中,CASA模型和MODIS产品（BIOME-BGC模型）比综合模型更适用于地形气候复杂多样的山区NPP的模拟计算,其中CASA模型空间精度更高。     

Methods for control of indoor air quality

This report presents results of a review of available methods for control of environmental hazards applied to indoor air pollutants. Indoor air pollution originates from transport of ambient outdoor air contaminants into occupied spaces by natural infiltration ventilation, or by mechanical ventilation using outdoor makeup air, plus contributions from indoor emission sources. When air exchange with the external ambient environment is reduced to conserve energy, contributions from indoor emission sources may dominate indoor air pollutant levels. This paper identifies alternative methods available to control indoor air pollutant exposures. The performance characteristics of ventilation systems and of air cleaning devices used in mixed modes for ventilation of occupied spaces are described. Models for predicting effectiveness of several alternative modes are reviewed, with field trial validation results cited where available. Results of previous confined-space studies are briefly reviewed as points of departure for consideration of necessary air quality, ventilation, and air cleaning. Understanding of indoor air contaminant generation and controls is aided by examination of earlier studies of indoor air quality, using modern perspectives on occupational environmental health and hygiene.     

Linking health and ecology in the medical curriculum

Human health vulnerabilities to ecosystem degradation are well documented. Destabilization of natural ecosystems and the biosphere have posed an entirely new set of risks to human health and preclude any simple extrapolations from the past. Newly emerging diseases, increasing prevalence of many vector borne diseases, increased exposure to harmful UV radiation and a number of other transformations in the natural environment, have decidedly negative implications for the sustainability of human health. Curricula in medical schools are responding to these new realities by exposing the connections between health and ecology. The program in Ecosystem Health at the University of Western Ontario serves as one model for connecting these disciplines. This program has resulted in a perceptible shift in values and professional responsibilities of emerging physicians.     

Radionuclide content of building materials and associated gamma dose rates in Egyptian dwellings

Studies have been carried out to determine the natural radioactivity in some building materials (bricks, tiles, marble and ceramics) and their associated radiation hazard. The radioactivity concentrations of ²²⁶Ra ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K were measured using a gamma spectrometer with a Hp–Ge detector. The activities of ²³⁸U and ²³⁴U were measured using an alpha-spectrometer with a surface barrier detector after applying a radiochemical procedure. The ²³⁴U/²³⁸U isotopic ratios were calculated. The radium equivalent activities and the radiation hazard index associated with the natural radionuclides were calculated. A computer program was developed and applied to calculate the dose rate a person will receive from the walls of a room constructed from the studied building materials.     

资源型旅游地增长极限的理论模型

在经济发展中,国内诸多地区都将旅游业发展作为支柱产业,但对其长期有效性却缺少理论和实证的探讨。一些落后地区虽然靠旅游发展获得第一桶金。走的是资源经济之路。但带动效益有限。本研究运用最新的发展理论,在对典型资源型旅游地作分析的基础上,建立了资源型旅游目的地发展的一般结构模型,并指出导致资源型旅游地发展的内部限制性因素。本研究希望更多的研究人员关注这一问题,从理论和实证上丰富和验证本文提出的理论假设。     

The South Australian lobster fishery management model

Modelling the rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii) fishery in South Australia was the focus of a three-year data gathering program. In collaboration with fishers, a tool for assisting in the sustainable management of the resource was developed. The goal was to test management policies to allow increases in reproductive output while enhancing economic yield. The model's user interface was developed to an ease of use comparable to commercial software for use by fishers in comanagement of the resource. This paper describes the modelling framework, user interface, and results for management strategies under consideration. The framework is comprised of five principle submodels: catch, effort, growth, economics, and population reproduction, with the lobster population divided into 8 mm length classes by sex and spatial cell. The mortality of lobsters occurs by commercial harvest, natural mortality, incidental release mortality, predation inside pots before retrieval, illegal harvesting, and recreational catch. Five categories of management control scenario were simulated: catch quota, effort regulation (as total pot retrievals), size regulations (allowing minimum, maximum, and mid-range slice length protection), and seasonal and area closures. Model outputs imply that size strategies have limited potential compared with effort limitations and quota.     

Blurred Borderlands: Sustainability and the Urban/Nature Divide at the Frick Environmental Center

ABSTRACT

Sustainable development is rhetorically framed as exhibiting natural processes, reflected both symbolically and materially. Taking the Frick Environmental Center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a rhetorical artifact, I argue that spaces where sustainable human-made structures and human-cultivated landscapes meet, reflect blurred borderlands of a culturally constructed urban/nature divide. Considering the Frick Environmental Center as an experiential landscape, my mixed methodology of textual analysis and rhetorical field work identifies how naturalized framing of sustainability bridges the urban/nature divide, inviting restoration, preservation, and construction efforts that are more environmentally engaged.     

The Green Economy: Reconceptualizing the Natural Commons as Natural Capital

The green economy is an emergent approach to sustainable development launched at Rio+20. Herein environmental decision-making is increasingly achieved through economistic processes and logic. The natural commons are quantified and managed as natural capital. This paper summarizes the trajectory of the project and its ideological framework. It examines various conceptualizations of economic approaches to the environment and considers philosophical, methodological, and political problems associated with the green economy project. In the face of very different definitions of what constitutes a green economy, environmental communicators face a situation characterized by discursive confusion as the complexity of natural capital accounting processes conceal new political configurations. Counter movements argue that the green economy program is performing ideological work that uses language of environmentalism to obscure an intensified agenda of neoliberal governance and capital accumulation. The concept now has contradictory meanings. Environmental communicators have an important role to play in exposing the contested nature of the project and in helping to define the emerging green economy.     

公众参与自然资源管理的实践模式——基于国内外典型案例的对比研究

在自然资源管理过程中引入公众参与是为了满足公众自身利益,提高决策的科学性,最终达到自然资源效率提升和可持续利用的双重目标。选取发达国家和发展中国家具有代表性的典型案例,进行对比分析;侧重于主导发起主体的不同,归纳出三种参与模式,进而对模式特点、模式间比较以及模式的整体演变过程进行阐析;以发展中国家中国为例,提出在中国实施公众参与自然资源的措施建议和路径导向。结论如下:①发达国家公众参与自然资源管理模式呈现出参与行为的法律化、参与主导的非政府化、参与意识的增强化和参与主体的广泛化特点,而发展中国家的参与模式则呈现出参与主导的政府化、参与意识的淡薄化和参与途径的单一化特点;②依据发起主体不同,公众参与自然资源管理的模式分为政府主导发起型参与、非政府主导发起型参与和公众自觉发起型参与,并按照参与认知水平的提升而不断演进;③在中国实施公众参与自然资源过程中,要提升公众参与认知水平,强化法律保障建设,转变主导发起者角色,拓宽参与途径,从而实现自然资源的可持续利用。     

均衡和效率双重视角下武汉市主城区公园绿地空间布局优化研究

公园绿地是城市公共服务设施的重要组成部分,其空间布局与城市居民生活息息相关。根据布局现状,以2020年为优化时间结点,兼顾布局效率和布局均衡,首先以居民出行成本最小化为效率性目标,构建选址模型以对新增公园绿地进行选址;再以可达性差异最小化为均衡性目标,构建面积优化模型以确定公园绿地的合适规模。两种模型共同实现了公园绿地的布局优化。研究表明:(1)现状条件下,公园绿地布局不能满足居民的基本游憩需求,空间效率性和均衡性较低;(2)要实现本文的优化目标,需新增全市性公园绿地28座,共计1 100 hm2;需新增区域性公园绿地34座,共计868. 01 hm2;(3)区位选址模型显著降低了居民到达公园绿地的出行成本,人均出行成本由1 311. 24 m降低到了915. 93 m;(4)区位选址和规模优化模型能够显著提高公园绿地布局的均衡性,使得公园绿地布局与居民人口比配达到均衡,居民至整体公园绿地可达性差异系数由0. 71降低到了0. 54。     

经济发达地区土地可持续利用主要矛盾及其成因分析

本文从阐述土地利用的主要矛盾特征入手，分析了经济发达地区土地利用矛盾的自然成因及战略偏差、结构偏差及利益偏差等深层实质，提出了解决我国尤其是经济发达地区日益尖锐的土地利用矛盾以及实现土地资源可持续利用的根本途径。