Invasion Of Land Research Articles

Abiotic factors that prompt major ecological transitions: Are fish on land to escape an intolerable aquatic environment?

Abstract Colonisation of novel habitats are important events in evolution, but the factors that initially prompt such ecological transitions are often unknown. The invasion of land by fish is an extreme habitat transition that offers an opportunity to empirically investigate the causes of major ecological transitions. The intertidal ecotone—and rock pools in particular—have been an important staging ground for transitions onto land. Classic hypotheses focus on the adverse abiotic conditions of rock pools at low tide as the instigator of fish voluntarily stranding themselves out of water, which can then lead to the evolution of an amphibious lifestyle. To test these hypotheses, we studied the abiotic conditions of 54 rock pools on the island of Guam where there are various species of aquatic, amphibious and terrestrial blenny fishes. We found little support for the expected deterioration of abiotic conditions in standing pools at low tide (salinity, pH and oxygen), and fish were not seen to be excluded from those pools that were found to exhibit poor abiotic conditions (temperature, salinity and pH). Hypoxia was the only factor that might account for the absence of blennies from certain rock pools. Next, we experimentally measured oxygen depletion by an aquatic, mildly amphibious and highly amphibious species of blenny found on Guam in a simulated rockpool to infer the proportion of rock pools at low tide outside the tolerable range of blennies. Rock pools were found to have oxygen levels within the requirements of most blennies and those of other marine fishes reported in the literature. We conclude that the abiotic environment of rock pools alone was unlikely to have instigated the evolution of amphibious behaviour in blennies, at least on Guam. Instead, the broad range of abiotic conditions experienced in rock pools suggests these conditions could have primed amphibious blennies to better endure the novel conditions on land. Any ecotone typified by fluctuations or gradients in abiotic conditions is likely a key transitional environment for the invasion of novel habitats and, as such, are an important location for adaptive evolution and species diversification. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Exploring land acquisition and restructuring policy in Addis Ababa

This study examines the political economy underlying the design and implementation of land acquisition and restructuring, a territorial policy aimed at reducing affluence disparity. It focuses on the city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where major land invasions occurred between September 2015 and March 2022 in response to prolonged and acute inequality. Local authorities solicited and even coordinated the arriving land speculators. Moreover, land invasion has been empirically fueled not only by land concentration but also by increasing land prices. To better understand this relationship, a regression analysis was conducted on 154 incidents of land attained throughout the silk-lafto sub-cities of Addis Ababa. The study examined various indicators including the concentration of land ownership, market competition, land invaded per capita, literacy rate, land expropriated and reassigned per capita, and unemployment rate. The results show that Ethiopia's land leasing policy, driven by high speculative prices, intensified land inequality and influenced land invasions throughout the city. This has led to a surge in land prices and worsened the problem of land inequality. The findings provide evidence of political struggles regarding the issue of land ownership inequality and show that socio-political pressures exist in both the planning and implementation phases of land-based policies.

Integrated Supervised Classification of LULC in Identifying Musang King Durian Illegal Farming Location

Musang King Durian (MKD) is in high demand due to its unique taste and aroma; hence, some opportunistic farmers grow it on a large scale. The issue arises when some MKD is planted on encroached land in remote places, making it impossible for local authorities to locate them. This study proposes to examine the changes in land use land cover (LULC) within the Benom Permanent Forest Reserved area that were reported to have land invasion activities caused by illegal MKD plantations between 2019 and 2022 using Sentinel imagery. The objectives were to investigate the location of illicit MKD farming at Mount Benom based on the interpretation of LULC changes and Normalized Different Vegetation Index (NDVI) analysis. ArcGIS and eCognition Developer software were used for data processing and analysis to identify water bodies, bare land, green areas, forests, and potential illegal MKD plantings (PIDP) areas. Between the years 2019 and 2022, it was found that there has been a significant rise in water bodies (36%), green areas (34%), and forests (19%). However, the potential illegal MKD plantation area fell by 59%, while bare land declined by 35%. These downsizing changes might occur due to illegal MKD destroyed operations executed in 2019 by the forestry department in Raub, Pahang. Keywords: illegal farming, image classification, land use land cover, supervised classification

Ghost roads and the destruction of Asia-Pacific tropical forests.

Roads are expanding at the fastest pace in human history. This is the case especially in biodiversity-rich tropical nations, where roads can result in forest loss and fragmentation, wildfires, illicit land invasions and negative societal effects1-5. Many roads are being constructed illegally or informally and do not appear on any existing road map6-10; the toll of such 'ghost roads' on ecosystems is poorly understood. Here we use around 7,000 h of effort by trained volunteers to map ghost roads across the tropical Asia-Pacific region, sampling 1.42 million plots, each 1 km2 in area. Our intensive sampling revealed a total of 1.37 million km of roads in our plots-from 3.0 to 6.6 times more roads than were found in leading datasets of roads globally. Across our study area, road building almost always preceded local forest loss, and road density was by far the strongest correlate11 of deforestation out of 38 potential biophysical and socioeconomic covariates. The relationship between road density and forest loss was nonlinear, with deforestation peaking soon after roads penetrate a landscape and then declining as roads multiply and remaining accessible forests largely disappear. Notably, after controlling for lower road density inside protected areas, we found that protected areas had only modest additional effects on preventing forest loss, implying that their most vital conservation function is limiting roads and road-related environmental disruption. Collectively, our findings suggest that burgeoning, poorly studied ghost roads are among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests.

Debating Environmental Change and Conflict in the Global South: Learning from Selected Cases in Africa

The crux of this paper centres on the dynamics of environmental change and ensuing conflict. This review paper accentuates the various theoretical underpinnings regarding environmental change and conflict. Particular reference was given to countries in the Global South because they are the most affected by environmental change-related conflict. It was established in this paper that population growth is positively correlated to militarised interstate disputes, although this is not always the case. Again, there is a lack of coding in current conflict dates, to the extent that it is often complicated to ascertain whether specific conflict trends can be traced back to environmental change. Conflict data usually use data sets from the environment-conflict nexus that only capture high-intensity conflict events, which often ignore low-scale conflict within states and districts. Thirdly, the averaging conflict would likely lead to biassed academic and policy conclusions. Fourthly, poor economic performances, either persistent or temporary, have the likelihood of causing violent conflicts. For instance, a land invasion in Brazil occurred immediately after adverse economic shocks.Further environmental degradation can cause migration by perpetuating migration. A significant obstacle encountered in the field of Risk perception literature pertains to the tendency of scholars to heavily depend on excessively deterministic explanations when conceptualising the concept of resource scarcity. Once more, the assessment of environmental change is exclusively based on small variations in temperature and precipitation. The examples examined in this study were selected from diverse geographical regions, encompassing East Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa. In agro-pastoral West Africa, the frequency of conflicts is on the rise. As a result, policymakers and multilateral funders are increasingly shouldering the responsibility due to the ongoing growth of populations and the changing environmental conditions. There seems to be a correlation between environmental degradation and conflict; however, the relationship between these two is not always apparent or might be the other way around. Based on current theorising and available empirical evidence, it remains debatable whether environmental degradation increases the risk of violent conflict or whether conflict is leading to natural resource deterioration.

Design of A Highly Sensitive, Low-cost Underwater Force Plate to Record Substrate Reaction Forces.

The study of underwater walking presents major challenges because the small forces applied during underwater walking are difficult to measure due to the lack of a sufficiently sensitive force plate that functions underwater. Understanding the force interaction between the underwater walker and the substrate may lead to better understanding of the evolution, ecology, and biomechanics of underwater walking. The shift from aquatic to terrestrial life was a crucial transition in animal evolution where, underwater walking preceded the invasion of land and combines mechanics from terrestrial locomotion (substrate reaction forces) and aquatic swimming (buoyancy and drag). In this work, we describe our design of a low-cost underwater force plate made using 3D printed multi axis load cells equipped with commercial strain gauges amplified with a custom circuit board, and custom code to gather force data. The use of 3D printed sensors allows customization of the material and thickness of the shear beam load cell to accommodate the loads for a wide range of study species. We show that our design can detect loads as small as 1 mN (filtered) with minimal noise and present sample live animal trials of several species. The 3D multiaxial load cells, circuit design, and custom code are open-source and available online.

ENGAGING COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA: EVALUATING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE EXPROPRIATION OF LAND WITHOUT COMPENSATION BILL

The post-1994 era in the South African public imagination was envisaged to herald widespread and transformative efforts to reverse the gross injustices and human rights violations inflicted over many decades of apartheid and colonialism. One of the key measures initiated by the democratic government to drive this nation building project was the land reform programme. The ‘land question’, which is a popular tagline in South Africa when reference is made to land reform, has come to define the general discourse of socioeconomic disadvantage and change in the post-apartheid and post-colonial period – similarly to other former settler colonies in the African continent and the broader Global South. For South Africa though, this specific issue has been characterised by numerous challenges and failures largely at the level of the state, wherein a significant lack of public engagement, public participation and democratic redistribution was not being done according to ‘the will of the people’. On several occasions, the South African state has gone on a ‘solo crusade’ to implement the land reform programme under complex conditions that are largely unfavoured by ordinary people ‘on the ground’ – especially those who were the primary victims of land dispossession under colonialism and apartheid. As a result, over the past few years, indigenous black communities across the country especially in (semi)urban and township areas have voluntarily ‘occupied’ land at their own will and sometimes ‘illegally’, to take up settlement space and determine their lives on the land of their birth. Beyond the public discourse of ‘land invasions’ and ‘failed land reform projects’, this study was conducted to closely understand the extent to which public engagement and participation has been integral in the systematic mechanism(s) to transform the patterns of land ownership and control in the democratic South Africa. To do this, the site of KwaZakhele, Silvertown, in Port Elizabeth was selected to conduct the study. Methodologically, qualitative semi-structured interviews were utilised to conduct the study and the Marxist Concept of Citizenship was selected as a theoretical framework for the study by the researcher. The study has found that, amongst the general legislative and political shortfalls of public participation breakdown, there are other deep seated structural socioeconomic issues that are at the root of the problem – such as economic inequalities and very low prospects of social mobility – which collectively reproduce the persistent inadequacies of political instability and social unrest in the area. The study recommends an astute combination of ‘bottom-up’ active citizenship and major socioeconomic transformation in the area as a systematic and structural mechanism to empower the community of Silvertown to be the champion of its own liberation struggle for the freedom of its people to own land and democratically participate in their own governance, self-determination, and prosperity.

A Subsurface Stepping Stone Hypothesis for the Conquest of Land by Arthropods

The conquest of land by arthropods is commonly believed to be a surface phenomenon associated with the arrival of photosynthetic plants, atmospheric oxygenation, and an ozone shield in the mid-Paleozoic Era. However, recent molecular and fossil evidence suggests terrestrial fauna may have first appeared in the Cambrian, before the proliferation of plants and ozone, which are thought to be essential for survival. This raises the question—how could arthropods survive on land without established plants and an ozone shield? We propose a hypothesis that chemolithoautotrophic cave ecosystems, independent of photosynthesis, may have served as a subsurface stepping stone, providing a possible explanation for the land invasion enigma. Chemolithoautrophic caves have offered abundant food and radiation protection, enabling ancient arthropods to evolve strategies to adapt to new frontiers through gradual dispersion from the sea to shielded cave waters, then to cave hygropetric margins of cave waters, and, finally, to the surface.

Statebuilding and indigenous rights implementation: Political incentives, social movement pressure, and autonomy policy in Central America

What explains when states strengthen, maintain, or erode political-territorial Indigenous autonomy regimes? Indigenous activists around the world have fought for the right to govern their own lands and communities and have sometimes won major legal concessions from national governments. Yet initial breakthroughs often give way to lackluster state implementation or even erosion of Indigenous autonomy rights. We examine how statebuilding incentives structure governments’ implementation of autonomy, drawing on cases in Central America. Under some circumstances government officials may perceive Indigenous autonomy regimes as the best option to promote state influence over otherwise difficult-to-reach territories and populations. Autonomy regimes may improve governability, for example, in regions where criminal organizations or other armed actors operate. Autonomy regimes may also lead Indigenous peoples to increasingly identify themselves with the national state. Finally, autonomy regimes may further integrate Indigenous communities into markets by creating property relations and consultation mechanisms that defuse Indigenous opposition to extractive projects. When these statebuilding incentives to advance governability, identification, and extraction are absent, however, government officials are more likely to erode autonomy regimes. Through comparisons of the trajectories of Indigenous autonomy regimes in Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua, we show how these statebuilding concerns shaped state policies towards Indigenous autonomy across governments’ ideologies and regime types. Our findings highlight the importance of examining social movements’ practical consequences, and how aligning movement demands with statebuilding interests may shape whether gains can be defended and sustained, an especially pressing concern for Indigenous movements facing extractive projects, land invasions, and climate change.

WAYS TO STABILIZE THE CONDITION OF THE TRANSPORTATION OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS IN THE CONDITIONS OF LARGE-SCALE RUSSIAN AGGRESSION

The issue of transportation of agricultural products from the producer to the buyer is important for our country. Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine emphasized the extreme importance of the transport complex for the economy and society. With the beginning of invasion of Ukrainian land, air communication with the world was completely stopped, and sea ports were also blocked. With the beginning of hostilities on the territory of Ukraine, the routes of transportation of agricultural products were disrupted, a large number of elevators were destroyed, the road surface of warehouses was destroyed, and sea ports were seized. The purpose of this article was to study the current state of freight transportation in the conditions of martial law, to improve and stabilize the ways of transporting agricultural products. The task was to find ways to improve logistics and ways to protect grain products from missile strikes, as well as possible ways to export this grain from the territory of Ukraine. The article presents the results of an analytical analysis of the state of transportation of agricultural products, suggests ways to stabilize and solve the problem. The development of logistics and cooperation with foreign partners, the construction of protected hubs for storing grain products, as well as the construction of modern elevators that could accumulate large volumes of products for their further transportation in large batches to consumers. The best option for Ukraine would be the creation of grain hubs in European countries, as well as transport grain by motor vehicle, accumulate grain in large batches, and deliver it to other parts of the world, through the ports of Europe. However, today it is not so easy, because currently European countries are imposing restrictions on the import of our grain products. Today, despite the difficult military situation, the lost part of the transport infrastructure and logistics, Ukraine is one of the largest grain exporting countries. The restoration of traditional ways of freight transportation and the constant search for new ones is a sign of a healthy and promising policy for the development of the transport industry. The European choice of our state, the support of partners will ensure uninterrupted freight transportation and will give new impetus to the development of river and railway transport.

Forest Loss Related to Brazil Nut Production in Non-Timber Forest Product Concessions in a Micro-Watershed in the Peruvian Amazon

Madre de Dios is considered an important center of biodiversity in Peru due to its extensive Amazonian forests. However, the forests are under growing pressure due to land invasion, agricultural expansion, and gold mining. This makes support for forest management very important. This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between forest loss, land cover, land-use changes, and Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa Humb. & Bonpl) production in forest concessions in the Peruvian Amazon (2004–2020). Remote sensing techniques were used to classify images using the random forest algorithm, which was applied to the Landsat-5 thematic mapper, Landsat-7 enhanced thematic mapper, and Landsat-8 operational land imagery. Brazil nut production data from 2004–2020 was provided by the Regional Forest and Wildlife Service of Madre de Dios. In forest concessions, the forest area decreased continuously over the whole study period (160.11 ha/year). During the same time period, the change in forest cover in the concessions from Brazil nut to other uses was 4681 ha. At the same time, the authorization and extraction of Brazil nuts varied during the study period but did not show a downward trend. We found a significant and inverse relationship between the conversion of forest to agricultural land and Brazil nut production. However, there were insignificant relationships between forest loss, the persistence of agricultural and forest areas, and Brazil nut production. Therefore, despite the forest loss in the forest concession areas, Brazil nut production has not decreased. Production may not be affected because land pressure is higher near access roads, affecting only the areas near the roads rather than the actual areas where the Brazil nut-producing trees are located. Our results showed that nut production in non-timber forest product concessions would be negatively affected by deforestation and forest degradation, but only slightly.

Examining the Morality of the U.S. Atomic Bombings: Strategic Necessity or Controversial Decision?

The morality of the two atomic bombings conducted by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has long raised contention among both strategists and the general public. This paper discusses the strategic context of World War IIs Pacific theater and proposes that despite the unprecedented cruelty casted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic weapons, the bombs were dropped out of the strategic necessity to bring a swift end to the war. By reviewing the diaries of key commanders, the U.S. Armys reports and forecasts of a land invasion of Japan, and account of Japanese resilience and unfathomable refusal to surrender under conventional circumstances, this study demonstrates that by forcing an early Japanese surrender, the atomic attacks obviated a land invasion of Japan, which would have inflicted much heavier casualties and thus provide the moral underpinnings of the atomic weapon attacks.

Specificity of the formation of modern social housing in Ukraine as a consequence of the russian invasion

The Soviet Union, among other states, was distinguished by the construction of housing at a great pace and volume, which was included in the programs of future social development for every 5 years. It was believed that the scale of Soviet construction should testify to the advantages of the Soviet system of government (and in fact the ruling political regime was formed by a one-party system) and the socialist system of management. Housing construction was carried out for the people under conditions of equality and equal distribution by state bodies of living space per person. The liberation of Ukraine from the Russian Communist Party dictate led to a prolonged Russian invasion of Ukrainian land due to the Russian Federation's inadmissibility of such "arbitrariness" on the part of Ukraine as choosing a pro-European path and democratization. With the acquisition of Independence in Ukraine, there was a reassessment of the values previously declared by the communist authorities, when the dictatorship of the proletariat and the hegemony of the poorest sections of the population were proclaimed. Mass housing construction, as an industry that had to serve as communist propaganda, actually met the minimum needs of the people. This is especially evident when comparing the Soviet heritage and the modern construction of social housing in other countries. The state of war in our country has given us an understanding that the problem of creating social housing is growing in our difficult conditions, covers a huge number of the population that lost their homes as a result of hostilities and takes various forms that need to be identified.

Dynamics of Informal Settlement Expansion on the Urban Fringe: The Case of Birbir Town, Southern Ethiopia

This study examines the dynamics of fringe land invasion in Birbir Town, southern Ethiopia by adopting a descriptive survey design with both qualitative and quantitative data analyses. Primary data were acquired through a household survey, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and observations. This study also benefited from relevant secondary sources. Using a simple random sampling technique, 156 household heads were selected from Birbir and two adjacent rural areas. The study revealed that informal settlement expansion in the form of fringe land invasion occurs in Birbir Town predominantly due to population increase, urban sprawl, migration, poor land administration and governance systems, a lack of boundary demarcation, and the presence of available unserviced public land near the town. The process was intensified by actors such as farmers, local administrators, informal dealers, politicians, and local elders. The encroachment of urban fringe areas has led to deforestation, relinquishment of cultivable acreage, entitlement disputes, a prevailing trend of illicit land occupation, an unstructured urban expansion pattern, and a surge in criminality, fostering discordant communities. This study contributes to the understanding of informality on the urban fringe as posing socioeconomic and governance challenges in small towns of developing countries by presenting the case of Birbir.

Виклики металургійної галузі України в умовах сьогодення

The relevance of the study is due to the full-scale invasion of the territory of our country by the enemy, which led to the suspension of the work of most Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises in the East of Ukraine, and caused a significant decrease in planned indicators and production volumes. The constant attacks on energy infrastructure also negatively affected the operations of such enterprises. Since March 2022, mining and metals companies in the government-controlled areas of Ukraine have continued to operate at a loss. Compared to the pre-war period, the utilization of steel mills in 2022 fell by 85% on average. The article characterizes the main challenges of the metallurgical industry with the beginning of russia's full-scale invasion; the dynamics of metallurgical production indicators for ten years from 2012 to 2021 in the pre-war period, and quarterly volumes for 2022-2023 since the beginning of the war in terms of iron and steel production, including the dynamics of exports of metallurgical products, are studied. The necessary post-war directions as vectors for the development of the metallurgical industry are highlighted. The study on this topic allowed us to identify the following new challenges and obstacles to the development of the Ukrainian metallurgical industry as a result of the full-scale invasion of Ukrainian lands by the occupier: production shutdown and destruction of industrial infrastructure; shortage of working capital; logistical constraints; and lack of energy resources. Based on the above factors and the challenges faced by the Ukrainian economy during the year of the war, the following important and necessary vectors for the development of the metallurgical industry after our victory and the end of the war have been identified: the restoration of the steel industry as a leading sector of the national economy to ensure rapid growth in demand for steel structures to rebuild destroyed cities and villages; the restoration of stable energy supply and liberation from the occupation of the territories with metallurgical plants will allow restoring the full capacity of these enterprises, and, as a result, increase the volume of exports of metal products to the EU and other countries; attracting investments in the restoration of housing and machine-building infrastructure will help increase demand for metal products; facilitating access to Ukrainian goods to their markets by many countries will have a positive impact on the progress in the development of the Ukrainian steel industry.

“Only the Rivers Do Not Come Back”: Conservation Displacement and Rural Responses in Costa Rica

AbstractCosta Rica’s environmental regime is world renowned, and since the mid-twentieth century, the country has protected its inestimable natural resources via land conservation expropriation. Through conservation Costa Rica ended the historical plague of deforestation, and its national parks and nature reserves buttress an ecotourism industry that is an important source of foreign revenue. But with every act of conservation, a human toll was also paid. As rural lands became protected areas, rural people lost access to places they depended on for survival. They hence became “victims” or, to some, “enemies” of conservation, and in nearly every setting, they resisted by carrying out land invasions; squatting; unauthorized ranching, farming, and mining; and even environmental banditry (as with the burning of La Casona in Santa Rosa National Park in 2001). Focusing on a handful of celebrated cases of land conservation, this analysis demonstrates how the creation of natural havens such as Corcovado National Park in 1975 displaced rural people and the various ways those people responded.

Vertebral Column Variation of Mudskippers (Gobiidae: Oxudercinae): Early Stages of Water-to-land Transition

Carrying a gravitational load requires modifications of the skeletal system during water-to-land transition of vertebrates. Early stages of the transition are little known due to incomplete and scattered fossil deposits which can be fulfilled by examining extant amphibious fishes facing analogous conditions. In the present study, we compared vertebral morphometrics of eight oxudercine gobies (Parapocryptes serperaster, Pseudapocryptes elongatus, Oxuderces nexipinnis (low terrestrial); Boleophthalmus boddarti and Scartelaos histophorus (moderate terrestrial), Periophthalmus chrysospilos, Periophthalmodon schlosseri, and Periophthalmodon septemradiatus (high terrestrial)) to gain understanding of the vertebral modifications during land invasion. Results show that the higher terrestrial species possess higher flexibility of the vertebral column, heavy ossification of the neural and haemal spines in the caudal region, and the dorsal twisting feature of the caudal base which could serve effective terrestrial locomotion and allow to perform various body postures. The flexibility of the anterior portion of the caudal region could serve the tail standing and leaping of some mudskippers. We tentatively presume that terrestrial locomotion of oxudercine gobies is endowed by flexibility of the vertebral column and heavy ossification of the caudal vertebrae.

The Heartland: An American History by Kristin L. Hoganson

Reviewed by: The Heartland: An American History by Kristin L. Hoganson Michelle Martindale Kristin L. Hoganson, The Heartland: An American History. New York: Penguin Press, 2019. xxvi, 399 pp. $18.00 (paper). In her new book, The Heartland: An American History, Kristin L. Hoganson continues to examine the American empire, this time focusing on the American Midwest. While the area surrounding Champaign, Illinois, sits at the center of the book, The Heartland travels to the edges of the United States and across the Atlantic to break apart the mythologies of mid-western exceptionalism. Hoganson approaches ideas of the heartland both geographically and metaphorically, revealing a space that was not insulated from nineteenth- and twentieth-century globalization. Rather, it emblematized Americans' quests to integrate themselves into new global markets. To prove that the Midwest was more complex than the insular, exceptional, isolationist, or provincial traits often ascribed to it, Hoganson takes on well-worn midwestern topics such as farming and livestock industries, birding, and hunting. Fans of Hoganson's previous works on gender and race will [End Page 195] not be disappointed as she extends race and gender to midwestern preferences for northern border regions as well as to the unlikely casting of racial stereotypes onto livestock. Foremost, Hoganson attacks the notion of an insular Midwest that somehow protected quintessential American values. By concentrating on agricultural markets in chapters two through five, Hoganson thoroughly details the ways in which Midwesterners concerned themselves with national and global politics. From the transfer of German tiling technology that drained midwestern marshes to the competition of midwestern pork in British markets, Hoganson argues that Midwesterners were anything but static or insular. This point shines brightest in diplomatic histories of chapter four. She deploys trade journals, letters, and government publications to link populist movement agricultural politics to European imperialism. Using the University of Illinois in Urbana, Hoganson reveals the ground-level experiences of students and faculty who found themselves entangled in imperial webs. The faculty, hoping to cultivate imperial relationships to grow the global importance of Illinois agriculture, pulled agricultural knowledge from European colonial experiments. Meanwhile, British colonial subjects attending the university carved out a place of acceptance in an otherwise culturally narrow-minded community in order to gain a world-class agricultural education. In chapters two and three, Hoganson contributes to borderlands history and racial studies through her examination of cattle and Berkshire hog markets. While examining the economic ties of commodities to the British empire, she also reveals the deeply entrenched racism held by many who participated in the American hog and cattle markets. The Heartland reveals how Americans attached racial and gender stereotypes to both cattle and hogs, often seeing the imports from the South with "Mexican" and "African" heritage as inferior, while praising livestock originating from Canada as superior. Because Midwesterners perpetuated and profited from these ideas, Hoganson casts "the Midwest as a place where borderlands converged" (75). Hoganson begins and ends the book with the ideas of settlement and displacement. The Heartland moves beyond popular notions that Europeans pushed Native American groups, specifically the Kickapoo, from the area in order to domesticate, cultivate, and settle the land. Rather, chapter one posits that while settlements formed and White encroachers did push the Kickapoo out of Illinois, the new Champaign population continued to be quite mobile. Throughout the book, Hoganson traces the Kickapoo [End Page 196] through multiple removals by the U.S. government and encroaching newcomers. In her last chapter, we find the Kickapoo in their most recent forced relocation, situated on the U.S.-Mexican border. Here they battled for access to basic human rights, including the ability to move freely across their territory that straddles the Rio Grande River. With these bookends, Hoganson underscores two major currents of imperialism: invasion of a foreign land and the injustices imposed on its inhabitants. With these twin threads, she simultaneously dispels ideas that midwestern "settlers" earned their right to the land through settlement and that the largest threat to American ideals came from foreigners. While the analytical framework of the book is strong, chapter five lacks the tight structure of preceding chapters. Seeking to address popular theoretical analyses of the environment through meteorology...

Efficiency of drip irrigation technology of cotton in saline soils of Bukhara oasis

This article presents the results of scientific research on the use of cotton drip irrigation technology in conditions of water scarcity, saving water resources, assessing the growth and yield of cotton. At the same time, the technology of drip irrigation in the cultivation of the “Bukhara-102” variety of cotton was compared with the options grown in the traditional way. During the experiments, in the control field for the cultivation of the Bukhara-102 variety of cotton, i.e. in the 1st variant, which was irrigated by land invasion, irrigation was carried out 5 times during the growing season according to the scheme 1-3-1. 1240 cbm·ha-1, the seasonal irrigation norm, was 4780 cbm·ha−1; in drip irrigation in variant 2, the irrigation regime was 8 times. The cotton was irrigated according to the scheme 2-5-1. During the period of cotton growing and irrigation, irrigation works were carried out at the rate of 462-488 cbm·ha−1 and seasonal irrigation at the rate of 3339 cbm·ha−1. Less water was used in 1916 cbm·ha−1. When the effect of drip irrigation technology on the yield of cotton was studied, the yield of cotton in the first variant was 3.58 t·ha−1, while in the second variant of drip irrigation was 4.49 t/ha−1. This is 0.91 t·ha−1 higher than the control variant.

Analysing Impediments to the Effective Distribution of Low-income Housing in South Africa: The Case of the Delft Symphony Community in Cape Town

One of the dilemmas facing the post-Apartheid government in South Africa is the shortage of housing, often expressing itself in the rapid increase of informal settlements, especially in urban townships. The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to examine key impediments to the effective distribution of low-income housing with the Delft Symphony community in Cape Town used as its contextual focus. To achieve this, content and cross-analytical approaches were used to analyse some crucial insights from the Theory of Justice, the self-help housing model and the empirical findings from 28 key informants was done to gain better insights into various housing dynamics in the Delft Symphony community. Subsequently, poor planning and lack of suitable land for housing, particularly in urban spaces, were identified as key impediments to the effective implementation of low-income housing. This study submits that this situation demands a timeous response from authorities because an increase in population means a high demand for land. Pending short-and-long term solutions, the city will experience land invasions, which might even occur in the areas reserved for other developmental purposes. Therefore, there is a need for collective action to fast-track the processes of land approval for low-income housing in the likes of the Delft Symphony community. Keywords: Challenges, Delft Symphony Community, Housing Delivery, Informal Settlements, Low-income Housing