Actual Landscape Research Articles

Utilizing a Photo-Analysis Software for Content Identifying Method (CIM)

Abstract Content Identifying Methodology or (CIM) was developed to measure public preferences in order to reveal the common characteristics of landscapes and aspects of underlying perceptions including the individual's reactions to content and spatial configuration, therefore, it can assist with the identification of factors that influenced preference. Regarding the analysis of landscape photographs through CIM, there are several studies utilizing image analysis software, such as Adobe Photoshop, in order to identify the physical contents in the scenes. This study attempts to evaluate public’s ‘preferences for aesthetic qualities of pedestrian bridges in urban areas through a photo-questionnaire survey, in which respondents evaluated images of pedestrian bridges in urban areas. Two groups of images were evaluated as the most and least preferred scenes that concern the highest and lowest mean scores respectively. These two groups were analyzed by CIM and also evaluated based on the respondent’s description of each group to reveal the pattern of preferences and the factors that may affect them. Digimizer Software was employed to triangulate the two approaches and to determine the role of these factors on people’s preferences. This study attempts to introduce the useful software for image analysis which can measure the physical contents and also their spatial organization in the scenes. According to the findings, it is revealed that Digimizer could be a useful tool in CIM approaches through preference studies that utilizes photographs in place of the actual landscape in order to determine the most important factors in public preferences for pedestrian bridges in urban areas.

Application of Google earth to investigate the change of flood inundation area due to flood detention dam

This paper is intended to investigate the effect of Narmab storage dam on downstream inundated area for three reservoir operation scenarios. ArcView GIS was coupled with HEC-RAS to produce a flood map for flood discharge of different return periods. Google-Earth software was applied to depict the extent of floodplain in actual landscape. The inflow hydrographs for 4 return periods (50-, 100-, 500- and 1,000-year) were routed through Puls method in order to obtain the outflow hydrographs passing through dam spillway. Results show that, through the operation of reservoir, the downstream inundated area can be reduced up to 75.1 % as a function of reservoir available storage. Furthermore, calculations showed that the reduction rate of inundated area for 50-year floods is largely more than 1,000-year floods, implies the high ability of Narmab dam on flood control especially for floods with shorter return period.

Relicts of a peat cover in the Westerkoggepolder (West Friesland, North-Holland, The Netherlands): The genesis of an eluvial clay soil

This paper presents the result of palynological research of peat relicts, found in the Westerkoggepolder (North-Holland, The Netherlands). In general, such relicts of peat in the actual landscape point to an extensive peat cover in the past that disappeared due to land reclamation and agricultural management. Improvement of the drainage in historical time resulted in shrinkage and bio-oxidation of peat. This caused a land surface lowering of at least 3m and a transformation of Histosols in original peat deposits into eluvial clay covers with Mollic Gleysols. Similar processes occur in other regions in the world were people settled in areas with histosols and reclaimed land for food production. The last relicts of the former peat cover are valuable parts of the national soil archives and deserve the status of geoheritage.

Catherine Armstrong. Landscape and Identity in North America's Southern Colonies from 1660 to 1745.

Catherine Armstrong's second monograph continues her interest in the history of books and printed materials, which she previously explored through textual representations of England's colonizing efforts in the seventeenth century in Writing North America in the Seventeenth Century (2007). Picking up at the Restoration and focusing principally on the Carolinas and Georgia, Armstrong here shifts her focus to the many ways in which the landscape of these New World colonies was interpreted in print. Defining print in the broadest possible terms, the author promises a study of all types of sources, including (but not limited to) laws, letters, diaries, promotional literature, newspapers, land records, and almanacs. Surveying this wide range of material leads Armstrong to focus on how both colonists and metropolitan commentators linked landscape and identity. She regards the early South as a landscape of struggle where indigenous people, settlers, and the mother country interacted to form specific identities. In particular, Armstrong links such efforts to the development of a unique American identity, and seeks to understand how this identity might be connected to the New World landscape from the earliest moments of southern settlement onward. Her focus is not the actual landscape, but is rather how written and pictorial representations of it provide us with clues as to how these early southerners viewed themselves within the imperial project.

Proteomics and circadian rhythms: It's all about signaling!

Proteomic technologies using MS offer new perspectives in circadian biology, in particular the possibility to study PTMs. To date, only very few studies have been carried out to decipher the rhythmicity of protein expression in mammals with large-scale proteomics. Although signaling has been shown to be of high relevance, comprehensive characterization studies of PTMs are even more rare. This review aims at describing the actual landscape of circadian proteomics and the opportunities and challenges appearing on the horizon. Emphasis was given to signaling processes for their role in metabolic health as regulated by circadian clocks and environmental factors. Those signaling processes are expected to be better and more deeply characterized in the coming years with proteomics.

Understanding and saving big predators The Carnivore Way Coexisting with and Conserving North America's Predators Cristina Eisenberg Island Press, 2014. 325 pp.

Understanding and saving big predators <b>The Carnivore Way</b> Coexisting with and Conserving North America's Predators <i>Cristina Eisenberg</i> Island Press, 2014. 325 pp.

Differences in “Satochi-Satyama” image between the photographs and actual field landscapes

Differences in “Satochi-Satyama” image between the photographs and actual field landscapes

An agent‐based movement model to assess the impact of landscape fragmentation on disease transmission

Landscape changes can result in habitat fragmentation and reduced landscape connectivity, limiting the ability of animals to move across space and altering infectious disease dynamics in wildlife. In this study, we develop and implement an agent‐based model to assess the impacts of animal movement behavior and landscape structure on disease dynamics. We model a susceptible/infective disease state system applicable to the transmission of feline immunodeficiency virus in bobcats in the urbanized landscape of coastal southern California. Our agent‐based model incorporates animal movement behavior, pathogen prevalence, transmission probability, and habitat fragmentation to evaluate how these variables influence disease spread in urbanizing landscapes. We performed a sensitivity analysis by simulating the system under 4200 different combinations of model parameters and evaluating disease transmission outcomes. Our model reveals that host movement behavior and response to landscape features play a pivotal role in determining how habitat fragmentation influences disease dynamics. Importantly, interactions among habitat fragmentation and movement had non‐linear and counter‐intuitive effects on disease transmission. For example, the model predicts that an intermediate level of non‐habitat permeability and directionality will result in the highest rates of between‐patch disease transmission. Agent‐based models serve as computational laboratories that provide a powerful approach for quantitatively and visually exploring the role of animal behavior and anthropogenic landscape change on contacts among agents and the spread of disease. Such questions are challenging to study empirically given that it is difficult or impossible to experimentally manipulate actual landscapes and the animals and pathogens that move through them. Modeling the relationship between habitat fragmentation, animal movement behavior, and disease spread will improve understanding of the spread of potentially destructive pathogens through wildlife populations, as well as domestic animals and humans.

On the geology, mineralogy and geochemistry of the bauxite-bearing regolith in the lower Amazon basin: Evidence of genetic relationships

The wide distribution of Cenozoic world-class bauxite deposits in the Amazon shows that this region was the scene of intense lateritization. The Juruti bauxites, currently being mined in the lower Amazon, are one of these deposits, where the bauxite-bearing profile is covered by thick yellow clay (Belterra Clay). The laterite profile sequence consists of a mottled horizon at the base, a massive to cavernous bauxite, an aluminous iron crust with ferruginous nodules and bauxitic nodules in contact with yellow clay on the top. Cryptocrystalline to microcrystalline gibbsite is the main mineral of bauxite; hematite, goethite, kaolinite and anatase are accessories. The same minerals constitute the upper horizons, but in distinct concentrations. The relict structures, minerals (zircon) and chemical composition suggest an affiliation to sedimentary rocks of the Paleo-Mesozoic Amazon basin (Alter do Chão formation). The mineralogy, geochemical associations and Ti mass balance show a continuous evolution from the mottled horizon to the aluminous iron crust and even to the ferruginous nodules. Kaolinite, hematite, goethite and anatase are the early minerals and gibbsite is the late mineral. Hematite, zircon and anatase are the potential carriers of trace elements. The dissolution of hematite and goethite and the reprecipitation of iron as Al-free goethite reached the bauxite horizon and strongly fixed the mobile elements (Ba, Ag, As, Bi, Hg, Mo, Se, V, Pb, Sb, Se and Zn). The increasing upward content of zircon, anatase and residual trace elements (HFSE, Sc, Ga, Sn, U, W and Y and REE) throughout the regolith, an inheritance of the bauxite-bearing laterites, enhances the affinities between the two units. The laterite was developed during the Eocene, and its cover may be a product of deep plant root activity (tropical soil forming) on the top of the profile, which formed kaolinite and Al-goethite that was transported by wash flooding during the Miocene. The bauxitic nodules may represent an incomplete second bauxitic event, as erosion had already established the actual plateau landscape during the Pliocene.

Modeling the impact of climate and landscape on the efficacy of white tailed deer vaccination for cattle tick control in northeastern Mexico.

Cattle ticks are distributed worldwide and affect animal health and livestock production. White tailed deer (WTD) sustain and spread cattle tick populations. The aim of this study was to model the efficacy of anti-tick vaccination of WTD to control tick infestations in the absence of cattle vaccination in a territory where both host species coexist and sustain cattle tick populations. Agent-based models that included land cover/landscape properties (patch size, distances to patches) and climatic conditions were built in a GIS environment to simulate WTD vaccine effectiveness under conditions where unvaccinated cattle shared the landscape. Published and validated information on tick life cycle was used to build models describing tick mortality and developmental rates. Data from simulations were applied to a large territory in northeastern Mexico where cattle ticks are endemic and WTD and cattle share substantial portions of the habitat. WTD movements were simulated together with tick population dynamics considering the actual landscape and climatic features. The size of the vegetation patches and the distance between patches were critical for the successful control of tick infestations after WTD vaccination. The presence of well-connected, large vegetation patches proved essential for tick control, since the tick could persist in areas of highly fragmented habitat. The continued application of one yearly vaccination on days 1-70 for three years reduced tick abundance/animal/patch by a factor of 40 and 60 for R. annulatus and R. microplus, respectively when compared to non-vaccinated controls. The study showed that vaccination of WTD alone during three consecutive years could result in the reduction of cattle tick populations in northeastern Mexico. Furthermore, the results of the simulations suggested the possibility of using vaccines to prevent the spread and thus the re-introduction of cattle ticks into tick-free areas.

JENNIFER MUNROE, Gender and the Garden in Early Modern English Literature

ACCORDING to the accompanying dust jacket, Gender and the Garden in Early Modern English Literature attempts to ‘consider not only published literary representations of gardens, but also actual garden landscapes and unpublished evidence of everyday practice’. As such, it is focused on developing larger theories regarding the space of the garden of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and how it may elucidate our understanding of contemporary socio-political engagements, in particular between the genders. ‘[E]arly modern gardens,’ writes the author Jennifer Munroe, ‘both actual and imagined, provide a window into how early modern space … was shaped and reshaped by people as they made and remade the places they inhabited’ (1). The underlying assumption is evident—the garden, both real and imaginary, is a manifestation not only of those who tend it, but also their ideas about possession, place, and even identity. This assumption leads Munroe to consider the role of the garden in a number of spheres of social relation. After an introduction wittily titled ‘Laying the Groundwork’, Munroe distinguishes her study from previous examinations of Renaissance gardens and gardening practices such as Andrew MacRae’s God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrairian England, 1500–1660 (1996) and Rebecca Bushnell’s Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (2003). ‘Gender and the Garden,’ writes the author, ‘focuses on how the developing discourse both McRae and Bushnell examine was specifically gendered’ (13). Turning away from the overtly Marxist interpretations of its forebears, this volume founds itself upon a feminist approach, emphasizing horticulture’s role in relations between the genders. However, as with McRae and Bushnell, Munroe is also concerned more broadly with the function of horticultural practice in the establishment and exercise of social power. Thus, Munroe writes ‘[t]hroughout this book, I emphasize how women, like men, made gardens, and in doing so, they were also co-producers of early modern social space’ (14).

Karl Ristikivi Vahemere-ruum

Karl Ristikivi (1912–1977) was a well-travelled Estonian writer whose imaginative spatial images are based equally on landscapes he actually experienced and on journeys he perhaps traced on a map with his finger and followed in his imagination. After 1956, Mediterranean countries became his most frequent travel destinations and the most significant settings of his works, starting with the first of his historical novels, The Burning Flag (1961), the landscapes of which were based more or less on his personal experiences. This article focuses on the Mediterranean landscapes of Ristikivi’s life and works in order to discover the links between his personal and his literary journeys; the interlacing – even clashing – of actual and imagined landscape experiences; as well as the writer’s fictionalized intellectual epiphanies. I focus first on the Greek and Italian landscape, particularly the islands (Capri, Sicily, Corfu, Rhodes, Crete and Mallorca), and thereafter on people and characters – friends made on trips and Greeks portrayed in his novels. Third, I briefly touch on Ristikivi’s Arcadia motif, both mythical and actual. Comparing literary and autobiographical experiences documented in journals and letters reveals how the spatial interconnections that Ristikivi actually experienced and then echoed in his literature are intertwined perceptively in a unified Mediterranean space: autobiographical experiences become part of literary journeys, mental maps supplement actual geography, and images are backed by physically experienced spaces. This could also be interpreted as the writer’s imaginary self-centred world, a literary mindscape, which is based on actual perceived physical environments and geographical landscapes, but which is not identical to firsthand reality but rather its personal interpretation; a conscious and selective version of physical surroundings. In addition to making landscape connections, Ristikivi creatively meshes actual people (Greek friends) and fictional stereotypes (secondary characters in his novels) in this self-centred world that unites autobiographical and creative spaces. In his novels, Ristikivi introduces environments and details infused with intimate significance, and records precisely those landscapes, journeys and characters that meant something to him and his spirituality. The carefully constructed interweaving of landscapes based on Ristikivi’s autobiographical circumstances are a sign that the writer envisaged the Mediterranean countries as a unified space. In particular the Greek and Italian landscape-related, emotional, temporal and perceived experiences enable readers to view in Ristikivi’s Mediterranean space the writer’s Umwelt, his literary mindscape that is embodied in his work, as an analogy of the real landscape.

Measuring habitat fragmentation: An evaluation of landscape pattern metrics

Summary Landscape patterns influence a range of ecological processes at multiple spatial scales. Landscape pattern metrics are often used to study the patterns that result from the linear and nonlinear interactions between spatial aggregation and abundance of habitat. However, many class‐level pattern metrics are highly correlated with habitat abundance, making their use as a measure of habitat fragmentation problematic. We argue that a class‐level pattern metric should be (1) able to differentiate landscapes across a range of spatial aggregations, and (2) independent of habitat abundance, if it is to be used to distinguish between effects of habitat amount and fragmentation. Based on these criteria and using both simulated and actual landscapes, we evaluated 64 class‐level pattern metrics. These metrics were reclassified into four groups based on their correlation with aggregation and abundance. Among all these metrics, nine were considered robust for fragmentation measurements, which cover most of the characteristics that define pattern, including core area, shape, proximity / isolation, contrast, and contagion / interspersion. Optimal metrics for individual studies will depend on both biological rationales and statistically robust metrics that are appropriate for achieving each study objectives.

On the equations of landscape formation

This paper starts by establishing a list of the main physical and empirical laws that have been proposed for modeling landscape evolution. Then it proposes a detailed mathematical discussion of several classic landscape evolution models. This discussion permits to distinguish a priori laws from a posteriori laws governing landscape evolution. While the first kind of law relies on physical principles, the second kind stems from the observation of actual stable landscapes. It emerges from the analysis of several models that the a posteriori laws are often used to create hybrid models combining fundamental physical laws with empirical modeling. Such models can be valid near equilibrium. Nevertheless, this situation is not satisfactory from a mathematical standpoint. One would like to be able to deduce the a posteriori laws from a mathematical analysis, or at the very least to observe them from numerical simulations using only a priori physical laws. Such a mathematical and numerical research programme is sketched here. We propose a minimal landscape model coping with the main features of all models. This model singles out three spatially distributed scalar state variables, namely the landscape elevation, the water elevation, and the sediment concentration in water. These state variables are linked by three partial differential equations coping with the three main features identified in the literature as the main phenomena shaping a landscape: erosion , sedimentation and creep , and respecting conservation laws for water and sediment. Based on these equations, the first numerical simulations confirm that valley formation and drainage network formation can be simulated on virgin artificial landscapes. A first surprising result seems to emerge from these simulations: the valley spacing depends not only on a relation between the creep and erosion parameters, but is also strongly influenced by the sedimentation rate and by the rainfall intensity. The conjectured mathematical instability and non-uniqueness of landscape evolution is illustrated numerically. On the other hand numerical stability of real landscape topographies under realistic values for their evolution is also observed. The overall modeling and numerical tests suggest that existence and partial regularity results might be obtained under minimal assumptions (such as a positive rain density or a positive creep model).

Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870–1900 by Bill Hardwig (review)

Reviewed by: Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870–1900 by Bill Hardwig Mark Noonan Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870–1900. By Bill Hardwig. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013. 192 pp. $49.50, $24.50. In the last twenty years, several scholarly books redirected the study of American literary regionalism. Richard Brodhead’s Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (1993) argued that the aim of regional writing was not so much to document the characteristics of any particular region or to “mourn lost cultures,” but to narrate a unified vision of modern nationhood. Stephanie Foote’s Regional Fictions: Culture and Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2001) asserted that regionalism offered a robust alternative to nationalism, helping the nation absorb and accept colorful local differences and markers of foreignness. Judith Fetterley’s and Majorie Pryse’s Writing Out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture (2003) claimed that the geographic determinism of the term regionalism had distracted readers from recognizing the form as “a location for critique and resistance,” often a uniquely feminist one. Another seminal work was Brad Evans’s Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865–1920 (2005), which emphasized the distinction between region and regionalism, the latter being a commodity that circulated, often in periodicals, and sought to glamorize ethnographic alterity and subcultures in new, “chic” ways. Adding to this list of groundbreaking works on regionalism, and building on its connection with periodicals, is Bill Hardwig’s Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870–1900. The first aim of Hardwig’s book is to dismantle simplistic categories and canonical divisions that all too often limit our understanding of the actual literary landscape of a particular era and region. Focusing on the writings of George Washington Cable, Charles Chesnutt, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Lafcadio Hearn, Mary Noailles Murfee, and Thomas Nelson Page, Hardwig seeks to re-imagine regionalism as a highly porous genre whose meanings are linked closely with the editorial aims of the magazines in which they were originally published, as well as their intended audiences. These authors were often published in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and the Century, alongside William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James, at a time when the canon had not yet sorted writers as major or minor. Also significant was the inclusion of writings on the South in northern magazines for mostly upper-class readers. As Hardwig posits, local color writing was similar to travel writing about the South, in that readers of both genres sought the thrill of the exotic and the “authentic.” Yet what constituted authenticity proved difficult to discern. For example, Mary Noailles Murfee published her stories under the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock, depicting the rough and tumble world of Appalachian life. Murfee’s [End Page 100] stories were a sensation, but when the author came to the offices of the Atlantic Monthly, editors were stunned to find a “pleasant young lady” instead of a brawny, rough-necked male. When the author’s gender became known to the critical establishment, attention shifted from the verisimilitude of the tales to analyses of how a woman could write like a man. The confusion caused by Murfee’s charade came at a time of growing anxiety over changing definitions of race, gender, class, and culture. The unveiling of Charles Chesnutt’s race caused a similar commotion. Initially, his conjure stories had appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and were assumed to have been penned by a white writer in a realist vein. But when his race was revealed in the Bookman, he became a black writer whose anger suggested that he was not a realist writer at all but a propagandist, performing the role of spokesperson for his race. Chesnutt’s and Murfee’s writings were disruptive indeed, especially for elites who did not like their expectations being thwarted. By pairing Murfee and Chesnutt for analysis, Hardwig calls attention to the tendency in literary studies to overemphasize race and gender at the expense of other dynamic tensions latent in local color writing. In a similar vein, his work strives to resist traditional studies of...

Planted Forest and Diverse Cultures in Ecological Village Planning: A Case Study in Tarama Island, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

Traditional village landscapes that were planned with a combination of local traditional beliefs and the Feng Shui concepts of ‘ho:go’, featured in remaining patches of flourishing planted forest on Ryukyu Islands, were estimated to have been built about 300 years ago. This study sought to clarify the actual landscape composition and map the layout and distribution of landscape elements, with a focus on understanding the dimension of the widespread Feng Shui woods. The cultural landscape combines shapes of patches of greening, corridors of planted forest belts and intersecting roads, scattered areas of water and clustered human settlements. On the relatively flat islands, a forest belt about 15 m wide was planted to curve in front of the village and be connected with the preserved natural forest on the low hills behind the settlements to shape a green protective circle with a radius of about 400 m. The grounds of each house were surrounded by one row of trees. Thousands of big Fukugi trees were found surrounding the settlements and sacred sites. These forest belts are almost completely connected and shape green corridors providing habitat for flora and fauna. Inside the village, roads have been designed to meander, and thus function to mitigate damage from strong winds. In Okinawa, utaki (sacred places dedicated to a guardian deity of hamlets) and the remains of old springs also consist of important landscape units. Such a traditional aesthetic village landscape embodies the harmony of man and nature, or ‘people living in the forests’. A cultural landscape with ecological context needs to be reevaluated as a rural planning style in island topography, and promoted as a tourist attraction in order to better conserve it.

Hands by Moya Cannon (review)

Reviewed by: Handsby Moya Cannon Christine Cusick Handsby Moya Cannon, pp. 64. Oxford: Carcanet, 2011. Distributed by Independent Publishers Group, Chicago. $19.95. A reading of Moya Cannon's poetry always brings us to an encounter with the unexpected. Her work in The Parchment Boat(1997) , Oar(2000), and Carrying the Songs(2008) has been acclaimed for its subtle yet profound encounters with the material world, its sense of the present moment situated against the grandeur of its past, and its engagement with the elemental forces that compel time. Cannon's Handscontinues these distinctive contributions to her provocative oeuvre. And yet, Handsrepresents a subtly more intimate collection of poetry, one that brings questions of personal relationship and family loss to Cannon's textured and dense poetry. Handsoffers the lyric meeting of the nonhuman natural world with acuity and precision. In poems like "All This Green Day" the lines unfold with detailed attention to color and context: "Here and there, in the green cloud of birch and hazel / above the hermitage of Santa Eulalia, / a wild cherry tree sings russet / and the mountain tops around us are furred with trees"—only to open further into the seeming invincibility of the scene: "The bare peaks far to the east / have captured a first fall of snow; / the trees and mountains carry on / as though nature [End Page 150]had not been conquered." With the slight turn of phrase, "as though," the poem takes on another layer of meaning, highlighting the vulnerability of the land, moving from scene to significance. Yet the final lines call the reader back to the always central materiality of place: "the grass depends towards evening / and the little scalloped slates shine in the dusk." Similarly, in "The Fertile Rock," as Cannon's lines attentively sketch a tidal scene, they simultaneously embed human life and history into the ocean's depth: "In May evening light / an exhausted silver ocean collapses./ It has carried so much to this island, / blue rope and teak beams, / dolphin skulls and fish boxes, / and once, a metal tank on wheels, / containing one cold passenger." In honoring the intertwined lives of dolphin, water, and human passenger, the poem eludes the false binaries of human and nonhuman life and then moves skillfully on to physicality of movement across the limestone strand: "It rises and collapses at the rim / rises and collapses again— / a mile of white, salt lace." The limestone and the cairns of Ireland's West echo and linger throughout this volume, but the poetry of Handsalso honors international terrain, tracking the "decanted" sunlight upon "a single maple tree" in "Driving Back Over the Blue Ridge," the late morning sunrise in the high Pyrenees in "October," the "wild cherry trees on the hillside" near "the hermitage of Santa Eulalia" in "Farrera Light," or the "hulks of the Bauges" in "Night Road in the Mountains." And yet, though the actual landscapes of the poetry's imaginative impulse extend beyond Irish borders, the imaginative perception is not far removed from Cannon's historical place, as in "Harmonic Vases," in which a scene shifts from the acoustic design of the Collegiale Saint Martin to a cultural tradition in the cottages in County Clare where "an iron pot / was buried under the hearthstone / to give resonance to a dancer's step." The sustained thread throughout the volume is Cannon's penchant to use perceptions of light as a tool of inquiry and discovery. Whether it is in the form of a moonbeam in "Hedgehog," the stove's fire in "Apple and Fire," or the sunset that turns the tree into a "red lamp" in "The Red Tree," Cannon's mindfulness to the presence of light is a connective refrain that propels the volume forward. And so, when she writes "I thought / only love could do it, / give us moments so complete / there is nothing behind us or before— / . . . but, sometimes, light can do it too," the reader is assured that she can trust the directives of luminosity in this poetry. This attention to light does not merely create a visual effect. Rather, in poems like "The Washing," it is the force that connects...

Experimental Study about Modified Fly Ash of Treating Phosphorus Wastewater

The research examines the phosphorus removal efficiency of modified fly ash on landscape water and its influencing factors, and also study the actual eutrophication landscape water . Results show that when the solution pH is controlled in the range of 5 ~ 9, agitation speed is 150r. min -1and the additive amount modified fly ash is 1.2 g·L-1, the oscillation adsorption time and adsorption temperature are respectively 60 min and at room temperature, for the raw water whose initial concentration of total phosphorus is 10.0 mg·L-1 , the adsorption rate is 98.4%,which has a good adsorption effect. The test about Real urban landscape water shows total phosphorus is 0.35 mg·L-1 , when the additive quantity of modified fly ash is 200 mg·L-1, the concentration of the water reduce to the level of 0.01 mg·L-1 ,which is up to the first class of landscape water quality standard (GB18921-2002)

The value of indicator species for landscape characterization

Given that different types of landscape are affected by different environmental factors, is it possible to identify plant species indicative of these landscape types? An analysis of indicator species was made using 140 vegetation samples distributed over five landscape types. A total of 30 indicator species were identified, displaying varying indicator value. The variation disclosed the existence of a gradient between landscape types in terms of the prevailing ecological conditions. The analysis of the results also led to a reflection on the hierarchical level of which species are indicative (landscape vs. ecosystem). Further 20 samples were taken to check the validity of the indicator species. The identification of the indicator species present in these samples enabled each sample to be assigned to one of the landscape types; that assignment was subsequently checked against the actual landscape from which samples were taken. Seventy-five percent of the 20 validation samples were correctly assigned; the misassignment of the remaining 25% was due largely to the heterogeneous nature of the landscapes. On the basis of these results, we concluded that it is possible to characterize landscapes on the basis of indicative plant species, although characterization becomes more incomplete as the internally heterogeneous nature of the landscape increases.

Embracing Vergil’s ‘Arcadia’: Constructions and representations of a literary topos in the poetry of the Augustans

The Arcadian landscape was originally developed in Vergil to transcend an actual landscape and identify with an idealized setting temptingly abstract in order to serve as a metaphor for the redesigned pastoral genre as promoted in the Eclogues. Vergil’s Arcadia as described in Eclogue 4, for the first time in Latin literature, was a construction, a literary topos and a symbol of innovative poetics, but also of Roman history and contemporary politics interfused. Vergil’s Arcadia was an imaginary landscape. This utopia becomes — in full awareness of Vergil’s literary contemporaries and the poets following after them — an appropriate setting for the staging of imaginary literary dialogues between shepherds-poets, and the changing poetics is reflected on the changes of the archetypal landscape of the original Arcadia topography. These changes appear first in Tibullus (in selected passages from 1. 1, 1. 3, 1. 5, 1. 7, 1. 10, 2. 1, 2. 3 and 2. 5) and recur in new forms in Propertius, Horace and Ovid. The progress of transformation evidences Arcadia’s ability to observe the rules of different generic environments and anticipates the propagation of the particularly literary topos across the centuries, as a multi-leveled symbol of poetics, aesthetics and politics.