Information technology — a challenge for the sparsely populated areas

The computer and telecommunications technology has created new opportunities for developing interaction between offices and enterprises located far away from each other. Even if the market forces favour concentration to R & D centres in the big cities and in university towns, there are expectations that the distance over‐bridging qualities of the new technology can create development opportunities for sparsely populated peripheral areas. In this paper the interplay between the new technology and other important factors in the local and regional environment are discussed with the focus on both opportunities and restrictions.     

Increasing development in the surroundings of U.S. National Park Service holdings jeopardizes park effectiveness

Protected areas are cornerstones of biodiversity conservation, but they are in danger of becoming islands in a sea of human dominated landscapes. Our question was if protected areas may even foster development in their surroundings because they provide amenities that attract development, thus causing the isolation of the ecosystems they were designed to protect. Our study analyzed historic aerial photographs and topographical maps to reconstruct road development and building growth within and around Indiana Dunes and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshores in the U.S. Great Lakes region from 1938 to 2005, and to estimate the effects of park creation in 1966 on changes in landscape patterns. Historic U.S. census housing density data were used as a baseline to compare observed changes to. Our results showed that park establishment was effective in reducing and stopping the fragmenting impact of development within park boundaries. However, increased amenity levels following park establishment led to enhanced development in the surroundings of both parks. In the extreme case of Indiana Dunes, building density outside the park increased from 45 to 200 buildings/km² and road density almost doubled from 3.6 to 6.6 km/km² from 1938 to 2005. Development rates of change were much higher than in the broader landscape, particularly after park establishment. The potential amenity effect was up to 9500 new buildings in the 3.2-km zone around Indiana Dunes between 1966 and 2005. For Pictured Rocks the absolute effect was smaller but up to 70% of the observed building growth was potentially due to amenity effects. Our findings highlight the need for conservation planning at broader scales, incorporating areas beyond the boundaries of protected areas.     

The spatial and temporal change of cropland in the Scandinavian Peninsula during 1875–1999

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) has emerged as an important issue of global change with significant influences on the geochemical cycle and regional climate change. Understanding the historical changes of land use and analyzing the environmental effects of LUCC make such reconstructions important. Based on historical statistics, this article reconstructs cropland area at the municipality level (härad/kommun) in the Scandinavian Peninsula during 1875–1999. The total acreage of cropland increased 36.84 % during 1875–1930, kept stable during 1930–1950, and decreased 14.25 % during 1950–1999. The croplands of Sweden and Norway both increased before 1950 and changed in different ways during 1950–1999 when the cropland decreased by 19.79 % in Sweden but increased by 9.63 % in Norway. The counties in the south Scandinavian Peninsula owned most of the cropland, with a cropland proportion of over 20 %, and experienced relatively obvious cropland changes. Growth centers with a rate of increase of over 5 % during 1875–1910 were found in Skåne, Stockholm, the Uppsala counties in Sweden, and the area around Oslo county in Norway. The general cropland distribution showed almost no change during this period, which mainly reflects the suitability of the natural conditions for agriculture. Multi-social factors co-impacted land use activities and induced temporal and spatial variations of the cropland. These factors included food supply, world trade, wars, agriculture policies, the economic and political environment, urbanization, and national differences. Compared with the widely used global land use dataset Historical Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), this study shows different cropland change curves before 1950. This article is a case study showing that the hindcasting model of the HYDE dataset has difficulty estimating multi-determined cropland change in the Scandinavian Peninsula, and the empirical study contributes to the improvement of the accuracy of historical land use data at the regional level.     

习惯及价值导向的购买行为

个人行为必须对环境有利,这是现代社会日益增长的需求.在这场变革中,旨在改变人们态度的信息宣传是它的必备前提.信息宣传虽然可能是必不可少的,但是它本身并不足以完成促进变革的任务.我们认为,首先,许多影响环境的日常行为,都是习惯成自然的行为.可是,几乎没有人关注这个特点,并通过信息导向来改变这些习惯行为.另外一些情况下,行为更主要是由价值导向的.不过,除了可能的环境后果之外,还有其它信息更可能吸引行为人的注意,影响其行为选择.为了研究消费者行为,我们进行了调查和实验,研究什么样的信息条件更容易影响对环境关注水平不同的人们.基于这些研究,讨论对行为改变的含义.     

低纬与高纬地区的山地生物多样性格局

本文从不同的时间尺度、空间尺度以及功能上对山地的生物多样性进行了讨论.尽管物种丰富度通常是自然保护所关注的主要内容,物种的遗传多样性也同样重要.热带安第斯山脉中像Calceolaria和Bartsia等物种的小面积分布同在一些高纬度山区(如斯堪的斯[Scandes]山脉)物种的分布情况形成强烈的反差,在高纬度山地中物种分布较广且很多为环极地的.近年来对高山植物进行分子层面的研究表明,种内的遗传多样性随纬度的升高有增加的趋势,这可能是由于冰川历史上物种分布的反复扩展与收缩所造成的.在热带山区,物种的分布在地理上狭窄得多,而这也常常是相对较晚时期物种发生局地分化的结果.因而从赤道到极地地区,尽管物种丰富度在不断减少,而遗传多样性却呈现出增加的趋势.最后,我们对低纬度山区和高纬度山区(热带安第斯山脉和斯堪的斯山脉)的生态系统多样性所做的对比研究表明,两者景观在树线过渡带、雪盖分布和气候条件等方面有着很大的差异,同时全球变化对两者所造成的影响也千差万别.     

Environmental history: A piece in the puzzle for establishing plans for environmental management

Establishment of plans for environmental planning and management requires that a number of natural and societal factors must be taken into consideration. Insights into the inherent dynamics of nature as well as the role that past human activities have played for establishing the current condition of the landscape and the natural environment in general are essential. Many natural and man-made changes occur over time scales of decades or centuries, and these are difficult to comprehend without a historical perspective. Such a perspective can be obtained using palaeoecological studies, i.e. by geochemical and biological analyses of lake sediment and peat deposits. To illustrate the long-term dynamics of nature and particularly the role of man, we present here five case studies from Sweden concerning pollution, lake acidification, lake eutrophication, biodiversity, and landscape dynamics and conservation – topics of broad interests – and discuss benefits of including a longer time perspective in environmental management.     

UV-radiation versus grazing pressure: long-term floating of kelp rafts (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Macrocystis pyrifera</Emphasis>) is facilitated by efficient photoacclimation but undermined by grazing losses

Large quantities of floating macroalgae are traveling in coastal waters of the SE Pacific and in other temperate climate zones. While afloat, these algae are potentially exposed to full solar radiation, including UVA and UVB, which can have profound effects on their physiological and growth performance. Latitudinal variations in UV-radiation (UVR) are hypothesized to affect floating algae differently with higher impacts at low latitudes than at high latitudes. In addition, UVR together with grazing might accelerate the demise of floating kelps. This hypothesis was tested with outdoor laboratory experiments in which sporophytes of the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera (L.) C. Agardh were exposed to a combination of different UVR regimes (PAR only, PAR + UV) and grazing at three sites along the Chilean coast (20°S, 30°S, and 40°S). A latitudinal trend in irradiance was detected with increasing values from 40°S to 20°S. Surprisingly, floating M. pyrifera responded with a high acclimation potential within this latitudinal UVR gradient. At 20°S, floating kelps were slightly sensitive to UVR, which was reflected in reduced blade growth. At 30°S, physiological responses were hardly affected by the prevailing irradiance but sporophyte growth and thus persistence mainly depended on the presence or absence of amphipod grazers. At high latitudes, grazing had only minor impacts on algal biomass and blade growth, and kelps thrived well under all tested environmental conditions. Overall, our results reveal that floating M. pyrifera was only slightly affected by UVR and that sporophytes can efficiently acclimate over a latitudinal UVR gradient that spans from 20°S to 40°S. Given this high acclimation potential, we suggest that these (and possibly other) positively buoyant algae are important dispersal agents over a wide range of temperate latitude conditions.