Climatic Crisis Research Articles

Evaluación de la producción científica de sustentabilidad ambiental en un centro público de investigación (cpi) del Conacyt (1982-2012)

A hydrological, climatic and biodiversity crisis is recognized by several major international organizations. Although they are strategic in the development of public policy addressing such environmental issues, Conacyt's Public Research Institutions (pri) lack a systematic method for addressing their own performance when it comes to environmental justice. To contribute in this objective, we evaluated the environmental sustainability scientific production (essp) and its social and academic impact in one pri between the years of 1982 and 2012. We conclude that priorities at the federal level continue to prioritize other lines of research which are oriented towards the support of productivity in the private sector. At the same time while the environment continues to be recognized as part of a research agenda, it is of little interest to the public and private sectors.

Paleobiogeographical significance of the Late Jurassic continental fauna from western Gondwana

The break-up of the western Gondwana paleocontinent during the earliest Late Jurassic in the southern hemisphere triggered several geological events associated with the opening of a seaway between the South American and African plates and this had long-term effects on regional biogeographic distribution. The pre-rift tectonic history of the northeastern Brazilian basins has proven crucial for understanding the faunal occurrences of the fossil remains scattered across South America, affecting the earlier paleobiogeographic aspects through vicariance and dispersal. The climatic crisis during the later Jurassic had an impact on the faunal distribution in western Gondwana. Consequently, the recent finds in some Brazilian localities and outcrops in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile have revealed close latitudinal similarities in their composition of continental fossil communities. The integration of two correlative environmental conditions associated with progressive early rift propagation potentially regulated the paleofaunal distribution. In the northeastern Brazil, the formation of mixed fluvial-aeolian borderlands with associated lakes indicates the presence of prevailing dry climates, whereas in the central to southern Brazil and northern Chile there are vast deposits of aeolian-dominated sandstone (Botucatu Formation) across a wide longitudinal range; this sequence is paleontologically documented solely by reptilian and mammalian fossil tracks. Such paleogeographic and paleoclimatic features are essential tools for understanding the circumstances of how fauna responded to prevailing harsh conditions and help explain the strong correlation between taxa in South America and Africa before the opening of the Atlantic Ocean.

Philosophy of sufficiency economy for community-based adaptation to climate change: Lessons learned from Thai case studies

Major components within the philosophy of a sufficiency economy include moderation, prudence, and self-immunity together with knowledge and morality. These components were proposed to safeguard local communities from adverse changes and crises. Climatic crises due to global warming can impact upon local agricultural production and consumption systems. Yet, it is still questionable whether communities following the sufficiency economy philosophy can cope with climate change. The objective of this research was to study the coping and adaptive capacity to climate change of local agricultural communities following the sufficiency economy philosophy and to analyze the success factors of adaptation to climate change. The research found five adaptive strategies leading to a resilient livelihood: (1) self-evaluation, (2) diversity dependency, (3) storage and reserve, (4) cooperation, and (5) mobility over space and time. These strategies help to reduce exposure and sensitivity, while increasing adaptive capacity to climate change with the aims of sustainability and adaptation for survival, and protecting natural resource bases for food and settlement security. Moderation, prudence, and self-immunity are critical success factors of adaptation measures, whereas local ecological knowledge with morality is a core enabling factor for adapting to climate change. These factors can be applied in community-based climate change adaptation in the National Adaptation Plan.

Editorial

Welcome to the final edition of Children Australia for 2016. For this edition, I am pleased to be guest co-editor along with regular editors Jennifer Lehmann and Rachael Sanders. Living in rural and remote Australia can bring a high level of satisfaction and many rewards, including a strong caring community, rich, longstanding social relationships, outdoor lifestyle, happy childhood memories and psychological, cultural, spiritual and economic connections to country. Rural living and working can also bring unique challenges including harsh climatic conditions and crises, a tyranny of distance, isolation, family hardships, limited services and infrastructure, reduced education and employment opportunities; and increased risk of mental health issues, family violence and child safety concerns. The demands of providing remote area health, welfare and other professional services include high visibility and trying to ‘fit in’, managing confidentiality, and dual and inter-relationships. These and other geographical and environmental challenges lead to low workforce retention rates that, in turn, leave significant gaps in service provision for children, families and communities, including Aboriginal communities (Jervis-Tracey et al., 2016; Lehmann, 2015; Robinson, Mares, & Arney, 2016).

Thermal erosion of cratonic lithosphere as a potential trigger for mass-extinction.

The temporal coincidence between large igneous provinces (LIPs) and mass extinctions has led many to pose a causal relationship between the two. However, there is still no consensus on a mechanistic model that explains how magmatism leads to the turnover of terrestrial and marine plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. Here we present a synthesis of ammonite biostratigraphy, isotopic data and high precision U-Pb zircon dates from the Triassic-Jurassic (T-J) and Pliensbachian-Toarcian (Pl-To) boundaries demonstrating that these biotic crises are both associated with rapid change from an initial cool period to greenhouse conditions. We explain these transitions as a result of changing gas species emitted during the progressive thermal erosion of cratonic lithosphere by plume activity or internal heating of the lithosphere. Our petrological model for LIP magmatism argues that initial gas emission was dominated by sulfur liberated from sulfide-bearing cratonic lithosphere before CO2 became the dominant gas. This model offers an explanation of why LIPs erupted through oceanic lithosphere are not associated with climatic and biotic crises comparable to LIPs emitted through cratonic lithosphere.

Climatic Hazards and Social Crisis: A Quick Mitigation Approach to Accelerate Sustainable Development

Climate change and its negative consequences frequently impede to social development through mal-structural function of socioeconomic status but prospective mitigation approach may accelerate to social sustainability. This paper investigates to existing climatic hazards along with functional damage in a society that, how climatic hazards make vulnerable to the social people and evolve a new mitigation pathway to rescue from food insecurities in the community. Depending on observational status, it has been drawn an overall thematic citation and outline regarding with the respondents perception. In the study area, maximum number of people were found to be highly affected owing to long term climatic shocks which is appeared as a social disaster in the aspects of poor socioeconomic status and livelihood crisis. To get sustainability, it is very important to reduce the degree of climatic risk through evolving new technique or technological advancement as to operational feature. As an operational tools, sustainable social clustering technique would be very much effective to search out the more climatic vulnerable people from the communities. Its suggestive policy could be helpful to take the initiatives for the special caring regarding with the need basis insecure people. In addition, better understanding and outstanding results would be effective to cope with climatic shocks and social crisis.

The Human Occupation of Southwestern Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum

The history of the hominin settlement of Europe has always been marked by range expansion and contraction in the face of interglacial-glacial cycles. The last major contraction occurred during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and was manifested culturally in western Europe by the Solutrean technocomplex, during which the surviving human population was especially concentrated in favored areas of a refugium corresponding to southwestern and southeastern France and the Iberian Peninsula. This period was marked by significant developments in technology (especially weaponry), social networking, and artistic expression. This paper reviews the current state of knowledge of the Solutrean phenomenon with special emphasis on settlement-subsistence systems and regional similarities and differences in material culture and responses to the climatic crisis of the LGM.

Climate Change and TESOL: Language, Literacies, and the Creation of Eco-Ethical Consciousness

This article calls on the field of TESOL to respond to the planet's growing climatic and ecological crisis, conceptualizing climate change beyond just standards-based language and content curriculum. Climate change is also cultural and religious, and thus warrants broader consideration in TESOL. Drawing on theories of value creation and creative coexistence, the author considers climate change socioculturally, epistemologically, and ontologically toward the development of a value-creative eco-ethical consciousness. The author concludes with a critical instrumental case study that used ethnographic and discourse analytic methods to examine the effects of a standards-based climate change unit among adolescent religious refugee English language learners (ELLs) from the former Soviet Union (FSU). Findings suggest these ELLs’ curricular engagement developed their language, literacies, and content knowledge relative to climate science. It also fostered transformed perspectives and value creation toward an eco-ethical consciousness consonant with their cultural religious identity expression. Intersecting multiple subareas of TESOL, including FSU learners, digital literacies, religion and spirituality, and standards-based approaches, the case study findings have potentially broader transferability implications beyond climate change and language learning and instruction.

Why this revolution? Explaining the major technical shift in Southwestern Europe during the 7th millennium cal. BC

During the course of the 7th millennium cal. BC, a major change occurred in stone-working techniques and tool types among the lithic industries of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in North Africa and Western Europe. These mutations not only affected the function and shape of certain tools, but also modified volume management and the techniques used for blade removal. This article proposes a new exploration of this shift, which is the most important during the Mesolithic in Europe, based on the interrogation of a database of 570 sites, using very strict ordering criteria. The examination of the first occurrences of these industries region by region reveals a diffusionist process that seems to begin in North Africa (Tunisia) at the end of the 8th or the very beginning of the 7th millennium cal. BC, before spreading progressively towards the Atlantic Ocean. The data are not yet reliable enough to understand the process beyond the north of the Loire River (Northern France). It then underwent a regional stylistic diversification everywhere. This technical mutation has not been recorded for bone tools or personal ornaments. It was not accompanied by a transformation in social organization, such as for cemeteries during the Early Mesolithic. An analysis of the available data also calls into question all the economic changes sometimes evoked for these periods. Climatic change does not have a direct impact on this phenomenon. Apart from Portugal, which is on the geographic fringe of this shift, the 6200 cal. BC climatic crisis clearly occurred after this diffusion and had no direct effect on its development. On the other hand, the geographic modifications induced by the Holocene warming clearly affected the extension of this phenomenon to Western Europe, with the marine transgression

Amelioration of marine environments at the Smithian–Spathian boundary, Early Triassic

Abstract. The protracted recovery of marine ecosystems following the Permian–Triassic mass extinction may have been caused, in part, by episodic environmental and climatic crises during the Early Triassic, among which the Smithian–Spathian boundary (SSB) event is conspicuous. Here, we investigate the SSB event in the Shitouzhai section, Guizhou Province, South China, using a combination of carbonate carbon (δ13Ccarb) and carbonate-associated sulfate sulfur isotopes (δ34SCAS), rare earth elements, and elemental paleoredox and paleoproductivity proxies. The SSB at Shitouzhai is characterized by a +4‰ shift in δ13Ccarb and a −10 to −15‰ shift in δ34SCAS, recording negative covariation that diverges from the positive δ13Ccarb−δ34SCAS covariation that characterizes most of the Early Triassic. This pattern is inferred to reflect an increase in organic carbon burial (e.g., due to elevated marine productivity) concurrently with the oxidation of isotopically light H2S, as the result of enhanced vertical advection of nutrient- and sulfide-rich deep waters to the ocean-surface layer. Enhanced upwelling was likely a response to climatic cooling and the reinvigoration of global-ocean overturning circulation at the SSB. Coeval decreases in chemical weathering intensity and detrital sediment flux at Shitouzhai are also consistent with climatic cooling. A decline in marine biodiversity was probably associated with the late Smithian thermal maximum (LSTM) rather than with the SSB per se. The SSB thus marked the termination of the extreme hothouse conditions of the Griesbachian–Smithian substages of the Early Triassic and is significant as a record of accompanying climatic, environmental, and biotic changes. The ultimate cause of the SSB event is uncertain but may have been related to a reduction in intrusive magmatic activity in the Siberian Traps large igneous province.

Early Triassic Marine Biotic Recovery: The Predators' Perspective

Examining the geological past of our planet allows us to study periods of severe climatic and biological crises and recoveries, biotic and abiotic ecosystem fluctuations, and faunal and floral turnovers through time. Furthermore, the recovery dynamics of large predators provide a key for evaluation of the pattern and tempo of ecosystem recovery because predators are interpreted to react most sensitively to environmental turbulences. The end-Permian mass extinction was the most severe crisis experienced by life on Earth, and the common paradigm persists that the biotic recovery from the extinction event was unusually slow and occurred in a step-wise manner, lasting up to eight to nine million years well into the early Middle Triassic (Anisian) in the oceans, and even longer in the terrestrial realm. Here we survey the global distribution and size spectra of Early Triassic and Anisian marine predatory vertebrates (fishes, amphibians and reptiles) to elucidate the height of trophic pyramids in the aftermath of the end-Permian event. The survey of body size was done by compiling maximum standard lengths for the bony fishes and some cartilaginous fishes, and total size (estimates) for the tetrapods. The distribution and size spectra of the latter are difficult to assess because of preservation artifacts and are thus mostly discussed qualitatively. The data nevertheless demonstrate that no significant size increase of predators is observable from the Early Triassic to the Anisian, as would be expected from the prolonged and stepwise trophic recovery model. The data further indicate that marine ecosystems characterized by multiple trophic levels existed from the earliest Early Triassic onwards. However, a major change in the taxonomic composition of predatory guilds occurred less than two million years after the end-Permian extinction event, in which a transition from fish/amphibian to fish/reptile-dominated higher trophic levels within ecosystems became apparent.

New Holistic Approach of Bioeconomics and Ecoeconomics Theories, Practical Bridging from the Green Economy to Blue Economy, Trough New Integrated and Innovative Paradigm about “Bio-eco-geo-economy”

The authors present a new practical approach through the bridges between green economy and blue economy, with practical examples about the rural eco-bio-economy, for the agrifood green power, innovative eco-biotechnologies, the management of complex systems etc. Within the globalized context of the agrifood and climatic crisis, with a major social impact, the authors exemplify the numerical dynamics of the multiple disparities regarding poverty and famine all over the world, including the “hidden hunger” through the food insecurity caused by pollution. Finally, the authors of this paper, based on their professional activity in wide trans-disciplinary and biodiversity comparative collectives in ecosanogenesis, suggest a series of projects necessary for the social welfare and viable solutions for a good guvernance, based on a innovative bio-eco-geo-economy through complexity sciences and the integration of the complex socio-ecological systems, including the knowledge of the chaordic systems principles for a smart shaping of the globalized green world and innovative reshaping for a blue bioeconomy, that will

Methodology for Evaluating Climate Change Adaptive Capacities when Using Decentralized Renewable Energies

Extreme climatic events have already happened in different regions of our world affecting the economic resources of poor and even rich countries. As an example we can mention the recent destructive hurricanes, Katrina (2005) in New Orleans and Sandy (2012) in New York, or floods in Pakistan in 2010. Therefore, there is an increasing need for evaluating the adaptive capacities of communities, regions or even whole countries to events caused by climatic changes. In this work we address different methodologies for this purpose and give reasons for adopting the adaptive capacities wheel developed by Gupta et al. [1] as the basic way for this evaluation. We add an additional dimension to those already developed by Gupta for determining the capacity of a community for having basic services (health, communications, safety, etc.) in a situation of crisis caused by climatic changes. A climatic crisis generally affects the conventional energy infra-structure and therefore decentralized renewable energies would reduce vulnerability of the community in question. At the end we discuss the evaluation made under these assumptions for a selected community in Mexico.

Migration i førromersk jernalder

Migration i førromersk jernalder

Climatic Crisis: Place, Taste and Race in Hardy Wilson’s Dawn of a New Civilization (1929)

In 1929, the Australian architect and author William Hardy Wilson (1881–1950) identified architectural practice within Australia as degenerate and in decline. He attributed this regression not to changing tastes or styles but to the increasing number of native-born architects and their long-term exposure to a subtropical or tropical climate. Wilson believed that Australia’s warmer climates negatively affected the nation’s future capacity for innovation and invention and the development of national style. Central to Wilson’s thesis was the proposition that climate was the primary determinant of artistic agency. The importance of this idea was twofold. First, it enabled Wilson to develop a critique of the White Australia policies which were introduced in 1901 and which grew in influence in the early decades of twentieth-century Australia. Second, it helped Wilson to locate Australian architectural practice within a global theory of civilisation. In documenting the crisis that Wilson saw within the architecture of Australia, the paper considers this aspect of his work in detail for the first time.

The rodents from the late middle Pleistocene hominid-bearing site of J'bel Irhoud, Morocco, and their chronological and paleoenvironmental implications

The rodents from the late middle Pleistocene hominin-bearing locality of J'bel Irhoud include the following species: Meriones shawii, Gerbillus grandis, Dipodillus campestris, Paraethomys ras, Lemniscomys barbarus, Mus cf. spretus, and Eliomys sp. We consider M. shawii, a living species, as identical with the middle Pleistocene Meriones maghrebianus. The mouse differs from the domestic Mus musculus but does not clearly fit into Mus spretus, either. The rare G. grandis looks identical with the form from the middle Pleistocene of Thomas quarries, which may suggest a rather early age for Irhoud. This is in agreement with the occurrence of Paraethomys, a genus unknown in the upper Pleistocene of Morocco, but the absence of the arvicolid Ellobius suggests that the site is younger than other middle Pleistocene sites, Doukkala II, Sidi Abderrahmane D2, and Irhoud-Derbala-Virage. Paleoecological indicators, such as the taxonomic habitat spectrum, or the relative abundances of Gerbillinae and Murinae, suggest a less xeric environment than in many earlier and later sites. Diversity indices, comparable to those of other middle Pleistocene sites, point to similarly favorable conditions before the major climatic crisis close to the middle/upper Pleistocene boundary that drastically reduced rodent diversity in North Africa.

Geochronological arguments for a close relationship between surficial formation profiles and environmental crisis (c. 3000–2000 BP) in Gabon (Central Africa)

We present new 14C data on charcoal fragments recovered from the lower (coarse-grained Stone Line) and upper (fine-grained Cover Horizon) portions of surficial formation profiles in Gabon. These data and others compiled from the literature enable a reconstruction of the Upper Holocene geological regional history of Gabon. The connection between the geological events recorded in the surficial formations and the Upper Holocene environmental crisis is discussed and a scenario connecting geological events with climatic and environmental changes is proposed. Such a scenario suggests that following the climatic crisis, the reconstitution of soils by aeolian sedimentation could have been an important factor of Bantu expansion.

Lithic technology variability and human ecodynamics during the Early Gravettian of Southern Iberian Peninsula

Traditionally the expansion of Gravettian industries in Southwestern Iberian Peninsula ∼32 ka cal BP has been seen as a uniform process, characterized by minor regional differences and no diachronic technological changes. In the last decade, however, new research has increasingly shown that this idea is probably unlikely due to new lithic techno-typological data. This paper examines lithic technological organization and variability during the Early Gravettian in Southern Iberian Peninsula drawing evidences from two case studies: the sites of Vale Boi (Portugal) and Cendres (Spain). Using Chi-Square (χ2) and Principal Components Analysis (PCA), the results show the presence of significant technological and tool design variability from both diachronic and regional perspectives.The observed lithic technological variability is likely related to local and regional ecological human adaptations. We argue that the H3 climatic crisis was responsible for the human expansion and the new ecological adaptations during the Early Gravettian in South–Southwestern Iberia, reflected in new geographic and diachronic lithic technology, organization and variability. When applied to archaeology, ecology models have shown that climatic oscillations had major impact on hunter–gatherer population ecodynamics, reflected on demographic, technological and therefore cultural variability and organization during the Upper Paleolithic.

Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Climatic Extremes in the Mountainous Regions of Iran

Eighteen climate indices were computed and utilized to demonstrate the spatial and temporal variations of climatic crisis, including amount, frequency, and intensity of various climatic events over the mountainous region in Iran. The variation of daily temperature and precipitation were investigated to identify significant changes during 1976-2007. Temperature extremes showed consistent warming patterns over most of the study region with which a large proportion of weather stations have presented statistically significant trends for all temperature indices. The comparison between hot and cold extremes showed that in most stations daily minimum temperature increases as daily maximum temperature increases. The variation of precipitation patterns also exhibited noticeable changes as altitude increases in the northwest of Iran during the study period. Although most of the weather stations, including Ardebil (ARD), Oroomiye (OR), Tabriz (TA), and Zanjan (ZA) showed that amount, frequency, and intensity of precipitation have consistently declined over time, such trends in Doshan (DO) and Mehrabad (ME) stations showed reverse, which is increasing. Since major water resources in this region are highly dominated by the amount of precipitation, further investigation on weather extreme is critical to manage water systems during uncertain hydrologic events, such as flood and drought. The results imply that water shortage in the northwest of Iran is likely to occur and chances of flood driven by weather extremes are even more likely, perhaps due to climate change.

Cabrera's Vole Microtus cabrerae Thomas, 1906 and the subgenus Iberomys during the Quaternary: Evolutionary implications and conservation

The corological evolution of the species of the subgenus Iberomys and, specifically, of Microtus cabrerae, are described. Iberomys appeared in the Iberian Peninsula during the Lower Pleistocene and then reached southern France and Italy during the Middle Pleistocene. M. cabrerae established itself as an Iberian endemic during the final glacial period and subsequently occupied South-Eastern France. This latter population and those found along the Mediterranean coast survived until the Subatlantic period. Thus, it is concluded that Iberomys is endemic to the European sector of the western Mediterranean Basin, but once was found over much more of the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and France. The Iberian Peninsula is, nevertheless, fundamental in its life history as its evolutionary centre and the origin of expansions into other areas. On the other hand, it is possible to locate the centre of origin of the subgenus Iberomys at a regional scale (the Iberian Peninsula) and adapt its evolutionary cycle to a Symmetrical Model. The contraction of the range of M. cabrerae during the Holocene is not related to the Subboreal climatic crisis; rather, it took place during the Subatlantic and could be related to the expansion of agriculture, which probably destroyed many of its habitats. Thus, this reduction in its range is anthropic in origin and could be corrected by means of appropriate management and conservation policies.