North-west Highlands Of Scotland Research Articles

The impacts of COVID-19 on digitalisation and social capital in crofting communities in Scotland

ABSTRACT Increasing digitalisation and access to communication technologies has arguably never been more important to rural communities than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Digitalisation assumes a distinct character when looked at through a rural lens, reliable and accessible digital tools and infrastructure having marked implications for the future of rural communities. This was especially pertinent during COVID-19 lockdowns, when in rural (as well as urban) communities there was a push to host local activities and services online. Using reflections from both in-person and online research engagements with a crofting community in the North West Highlands of Scotland, this paper reflects on how the use of digital tools can support the development of different types of social capital. Successful rural digitalisation has the potential to benefit rural crofting communities in multiple ways: e.g. by supporting rural repopulation efforts, enabling access to new digital markets to sell produce, and supporting active participation in local decision-making through online meetings. Several barriers to realising digital benefits still exist in rural regions with specific digitalisation needs and challenges. The paper reflects on empirical findings and considers the future sustainability of rural crofting communities in the post-COVID, digital age.

Markers to Emigration from North West Sutherland: The Presbyterian Cemeteries of Lot 21 of Prince Edward Island

A number of studies of emigrant communities in Canada have utilized the evidence from gravemarkers to indicate place of origin. This investigation of gravemarkers from five Presbyterian cemeteries on Lot 21 of Prince Edward Island demonstrates emigration from an area of the north west Highlands of Scotland to a particular community over a period of approximately 50 years. The chronology of emigration as revealed in the gravemarkers is analysed in the light of what is known about tenurial change within the homeland. Emigrant histories of several individuals or families recorded in two of the cemeteries have been compiled to examine their family and communities in the homeland, to set out the circumstances under which they emigrated and to outline the challenges they faced in Canada. An examination of the evidence from gravemarkers alongside a study of extant surnames and family reconstitution suggests that, in this case, gravemarkers provide a valuable but only partial indication of precise origin.

Life renewal of 15 t needle valve

During the 2014 routine refurbishment of a 60-year-old 60′′ diameter scour needle valve at SSE's Quoich Dam in the North West Highlands of Scotland, it was found that the inlet casing had deteriorated beyond repair and required replacing. The valve inlet casing was severely corroded, deeply pitted and the internal stay vanes were found to be cracked. This was considered to be due to over excessive vibration during partial openings of the valve over an extended period of time. Different options were researched to provide a life renewal for the 15 t valve, most involving the installation of a new replacement. The solution adopted was to recast the 5 t inlet casing using a UK foundry and machine workshop and all remaining salvageable parts of the valve being suitably refurbished. This paper describes how a change of material properties and minor alterations to the internal geometry of the inlet casing provided a cost-effective solution and increased the life expectancy of the needle valve.

Evidence for pre-Caledonian discontinuities in the Achnashellach Culmination, Moine Thrust Zone: the importance of a pre-thrust template in influencing fold-and-thrust belt development

South of the Loch Maree Fault in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, an unexplained step-wise thickening of Torridon Group strata, from c. 200–1000 m, occurs towards the Loch Maree Fault, within the trailing edges of the stacked thrust sheets of the Achnashellach Culmination in the Caledonian Moine Thrust Zone. This thickening cannot be explained readily by Caledonian thrust tectonics alone, and suggests that thrusting was superimposed upon a pre-Caledonian non-layer-cake template giving rise to a thrust-parallel thickness change of Torridon Group strata in the thrust belt. Cross-section constructions within the culmination constrain discrete abrupt thickness changes of the Torridon Group succession preserved within the Coire nan Clach and Toll Ban thrust sheets. We infer the existence of a pre-existing discontinuity in the form of either a set of pre-Caledonian faults striking parallel or sub-parallel to the long-lived Loch Maree Fault in its southwestern wall, or palaeovalleys creating locally greater thicknesses of Torridon Group sediments in the pre-thrust template. Such palaeovalleys may have been eroded along pre-existing discontinuities. In either case, these discontinuities will have contributed to generating step-wise thickness changes in preserved Torridon Group strata prior to Cambro-Ordovician overstep and then contributed to controls on the observed (lateral) variations in thrust architecture and the northwards step-wise thinning of the Achnashellach Culmination towards the Loch Maree Fault. This northern termination of the Achnashellach Culmination demonstrates the importance of the pre-thrust template in constraining the three-dimensional architecture of lateral changes within fold-and-thrust belts.

The Bealach na Bà: a highland challenge environment

ABSTRACTAn iconic road in the north-west Highlands of Scotland has been portrayed as an ideal sporting and leisure landscape due to its severity and perceived remoteness, once on the periphery of Britain’s motoring reality in the early twentieth century, and again in the early twenty-first century as an unintended consequence of British governmental defence spending. This paper will explore the historic background to the route, and how the print media of the Victorian and Great War eras helped to shape its identity as a physical challenge, at a time when global exploratory firsts still captured the public imagination. Portrayed variously as ‘a terror’ to be feared and a hill ‘to slaughter’, the road could be argued to have become a legend in and of itself to motorists, cyclists and motorcyclists, as well as offering an access into an archetypal Scottish Highland landscape for walkers, climbers and hunters. Now, one hundred years on from its first flourishing as a sporting location, print and new media are once again driving the road’s increased profile.

Cumulonimbus capillatus cloud over the Assynt–Coigach mountains in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland

WeatherVolume 69, Issue 9 p. E1-E1 Inside Cover Photograph Cumulonimbus capillatus cloud over the Assynt–Coigach mountains in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland First published: 29 August 2014 https://doi.org/10.1002/wea.2312Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume69, Issue9Special Issue: Space weatherSeptember 2014Pages E1-E1 RelatedInformation

A Geological Excursion Guide to the North-West Highlands of ScotlandA Geological Excursion Guide to the North-West Highlands of Scotland. GoodenoughKathryn M.KrabbendamMarten (eds) Edinburgh Geological Society in association with NMS Enterprises, 2011, 228 pp. ISBN 978-1-905267-53-8, £15.99.

A Geological Excursion Guide to the North-West Highlands of ScotlandA Geological Excursion Guide to the North-West Highlands of Scotland. GoodenoughKathryn M.KrabbendamMarten (eds) Edinburgh Geological Society in association with NMS Enterprises, 2011, 228 pp. ISBN 978-1-905267-53-8, £15.99.

Place and the "Spatial Turn" in Geography and in History

I. INTRODUCTIONA few years ago, British Telecom ran a newspaper advertisement in British press about benefits - and consequences - of advances in communications technology. Featuring a remote settlement in north-west Highlands of Scotland, and with clear implication that such out-of-the-way were now connected to wider world (as if they had not been before), advert proclaimed Geography is History. What advert signalled to as end of geography in sense of social gradients associated with space and distance is what is known, variously, as time-space convergence and time-space distanciation.1 The terms embrace not just collapse of geographical space given technical advances (in travel time and in communications - consequences of what Castells calls the information age and the network society2), but also idea that modern world has become more homogenized. One place is now much same as another. Further, given likelihood of such technical and cultural changes continuing into future, geographical distinctiveness, evident in particularity of place, would be a thing of past: geography would indeed be history. There is, of course, much evidence to contrary: that, in face of globalisation, questions of locality, sense of place and of identity in place matter now more than ever. Even, then, as Francis Fukuyama cautioned against death of liberal democratic politics as The End of History,3 geography - that is, geography understood as questions to do with place, and questions to do with where you are in world as part of questions about how you are and who you are in world - has had considerably heightened significance and for some places and people more than others.4These notions of place - as a particular location, and character or sense of place - are only part of meanings associated with place in geographical and in historical work. Like space, its regular epistemic dancing partner in geographical ubiquity and metaphysical imprecision, place is a widespread yet complex term. What follows is historiographie al in focus and, of necessity, partial in range. I offer a historiographical survey of term place, principally but not alone within recent work in geography. In more detail, and with reference to one of strong senses in which place is used, namely that of locale, the local, or localness, I trace here connections between place, space, and idea of local as evident in recent work in history and in geography, especially within history and geography of science. Particular attention is paid in this context to distinctive features of what we may think of as spatial turn in history of science by looking at idea of place and space in recent work in Enlightenment studies. My argument is three-fold. Notions of place and space, much debated by geographers, have been as central a concern for intellectual historians and historians of science as for philosophers and others, but they have been differently expressed. There is, I shall argue, value in looking at these different views in order to understand that whilst place is a commonplace term it is not agreed upon: working with imprecision has been both opportunity and restriction. In relation to work within history of science and in Enlightenment studies, consideration of so-called spatial turn, of place as social practice and of placing as a process in accounting for uneven movement of ideas over space and time may help provide some precision and strengthen connections between geography and history.II. PLACE (IN GEOGRAPHY): A PARTIAL HISTORIOGRAPHYPlace is one of most fundamental concepts in human geography. It is also one of most problematic.5 Place, or small-scale regional space, features as a subdivision within Classical tripartite division of cosmography (the earth in relation to other planetary bodies), geography (the earth as a whole) and chorography (parts of earth or regional geography). …

Lewis Petit and his Plans of Scottish Fortifications and Towns, 1714–16

The background and context to the cartography of the French military engineer Lewis Petit and his work in Scotland is explained. Petit was responsible for drafting the earliest plans and profiles of four castles in the north-west Highlands of Scotland (1714), as well as the earliest town plans of Perth and Inverness (1716). A consideration of their functions, particularly through the Board of Ordnance archives, allows a better understanding of these plans and their value as historical sources, as well as their accurate dating. Petit's work reflected national and international developments, including war in Europe and the Jacobite rebellions in Britain. His cartography illustrates the spread of new European military theories and practices, at a time when a professional corps of military engineers was being established in Great Britain. Through studying Petit and his maps we can gain a fuller understanding not only of the Board of Ordnance in Hanoverian Scotland, but also of the militarisation of cartography in the eighteenth century, and the emergence of standards relating to colour, scale and terminology.

Younger Dryas glacial landsystems in North West Scotland: an assessment of modern analogues and palaeoclimatic implications

By explicitly linking process to form, landsystem models developed in modern environments provide powerful tools for the reconstruction of past environments from the sedimentological and geomorphological record. Some landform characteristics, however, may originate by more than one process (equifinality), so although a particular depositional model may “fit” the data, it is not necessarily the correct one. Here, we critically examine the use of modern analogues to interpret glacial landforms, focusing on “hummocky moraine”, a distinctive landform association consisting of numerous sharp-crested moraine mounds and ridge fragments, which occurs on many valley floors in upland Britain. Detailed studies of examples of Younger Dryas age in the North West Highlands of Scotland show that they represent ice-contact fans which have been affected to varying degrees by ice push and subglacial deformation, and that they formed at active, oscillating ice margins. The sedimentological data are inconsistent with an origin by englacial thrusting, as has been proposed for similar moraines elsewhere in upland Britain on the basis of morphological criteria. Comparison with modern glacial landsystems shows that, although aspects of “hummocky moraines” in the study area have close modern counterparts, none provides an exact analogue in all respects. This may reflect the distinctive climate of western Scotland during the Younger Dryas. Estimates of mean July temperatures in the Younger Dryas in Scotland, based on chironomid assemblages, are c. 8 °C at sea-level. When combined with reconstructed equilibrium line altitudes for contemporaneous glaciers, these estimates indicate mean annual precipitation totals in the range of 2358±337 mm yr −1 at sea-level in NW Scotland, c. 26% higher than present-day values. The implied heavy snowfall suggests that glaciers in western Scotland during the Younger Dryas were of high activity type, unlike modern glaciers in Svalbard, for example. High glacier velocities and high winter precipitation would suppress permafrost development, despite low mean annual temperatures. The climatic environment also favoured rapid oscillations of glacier margins, during both glacier build-up and retreat phases. Climatic factors, combined with the availability of large quantities of subglacial debris, led to the development of distinctive glacial landsystems, which may have no direct modern analogue.

The morphology of glacially fluted terrain: examples from the Northwest Highlands of Scotland

The aim of this paper is to describe the morphological variation present within the fluted terrain of the Highland ice-field which existed in the Scottish Highlands during the Loch Lomond Stadial (Younger Dryas). Three types of fluted landform are identified in the Torridon area: (1) ‘hummocky-flutes’; (2) regular megaflutes; (3) streamlined hills. The morphological characteristics and mode of formation of each of these three types of fluted terrain is discussed and their distribution within other parts of the Highland ice-field is examined.

Strandflat development and Quaternary shorelines on Tiree and Coll, Scottish Hebrides

AbstractThe islands of Tiree and Coll in the Scottish Inner Hebrides are dominated by staircases of glaciated rock‐platform surfaces in Lewisian gneiss that are interpreted here as areas of strandflat. The rock platform surfaces exhibit differential glacio‐isostatic uplift from east to west and are considered to indicate at least four separate periods of strandflat formation during prolonged intervals of Quaternary cold climate. It is suggested that many of the well‐known areas of high rock platform located farther east in the Scottish Inner Hebrides represent eroded remnants of the strandflat surfaces described here. The existence of the Tiree and Coll strandflat surfaces in conjunction with their formation during periods of Quaternary glaciation implies that they were produced during periods when mainland Scotland was ice‐covered yet when the western margin of the ice sheet was normally located east of these islands. A prominent Late‐glacial raised shoreline also occurs on both islands and declines in altitude to the west, from 22 m in northeastern Coll to 9 m in western Tiree. It is believed that this shoreline, whose regional gradient is 0.39 m km−1, may represent part of the Main Wester Ross Shoreline that was formed in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland during a period of glacial advance that interrupted the decay of the last (Late Devensian) ice sheet. The general similarity in altitude between the Late‐glacial shoreline features and rock platform surfaces implies that during each period of Quaternary strandflat formation, relative sea‐level returned to the same approximate position. This would appear to indicate that the glacio‐isostatic and glacio‐eustatic components affecting the positions of relative sea level in Scotland have remained in approximate equilibrium throughout the duration of the Quaternary.

A note on the regional context of the Loch Monar synform

AbstractThe Loch Monar Synform folds the Sgurr Beag slide in the central northwest Highlands of Scotland. The east–west trend of the synform is oblique to the regional trend of the slide. However, when late-stage strain effects associated with superimposed folds on the synform are removed using computer techniques, the trace of the synform axial surface becomes perpendicular to the regional trace of the slide. The synform also becomes tighter and recumbent in attitude. The synform axis is parallel to strongly developed lineations. Folds of this generation appear to be localized in the vicinity of the slide. These observations suggest a model of folding associated with movement of the slide, followed by locking up of the slide and internal strain resulting in the superimposed folds and rotation of the synform.

Owner motivation and land use on landed estates in the north-west Highlands of Scotland

Although rarely defined, the terms misuse and underuse have been widely used in relation to the land uses of large Highland estates. This paper considers the results of a study of estates in north-west Sutherland which examined the links between owner motivation and land use. The estates are classified according to land use and use intensity, and differences in these are considered as the product of owner motivations and management objectives, and of the financial backgrounds of owners. The dominant owner motivation is private enjoyment, particularly on sporting estates. Management structures are typically simple, reflecting the restricted range of uses. Most decision-makers are non-resident and their management input is more important on commercially-orientated estates than on those associated with private sport. Government agencies, except those associated with grants and subsidies, have little influence on management: owner motivation is more important. Most estates in the survey identified development potential, but few had invested in developments. Amenity rather than economic potential, particularly on sporting estates, is the most important constraint. More commercially-orientated estates generated investment capital internally from their enterprises. There seems to be a growing difference between estates associated with private sport and all other types of estates. Even on land of similar quality, the latter are expanding their enterprises, while the former are contracting. In the absence of a coherent public policy framework, landholders are the rural decision-makers. If land development and employment creation are to be pursued in the rural Highlands, a more positive and interventionist approach is required.

Summer Field Meeting in the North-West of Scotland: 11–18 September 1971

The report provides an itinerary for a week's Field Meeting in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. The main purpose of the Meeting was to visit areas along the Moine Thrust Belt which have been the subject of recent work. The structure of the Eriboll, Assynt and Lochalsh areas is described in some detail and a running commentary is provided to the geology encountered en route .

Deglaciation and Vertical Displacement of Shorelines in Wester and Easter Ross

IN 1958 the construction of a dam at Loch Droma in the North-west Highlands of Scotland revealed a thick deposit of finely varved grey silts below surface peat and sands. Near the base of these silts was a zone of grey-brown silt, rich in macroscopic plant remains and other organic material, and subsequently dated by radio-carbon content to I2,8io+I55 B.P. (W. Kirk and H. Godwin, I963). The early date of this deposit, its location in a small basin about 900 feet above sea-level on the divide between Atlantic and Moray Firth drainage, and the absence of stratigraphical evidence that ice had occupied the pass of Dirrie More in which the Droma basin lies at any subsequent date, called into question the Late-glacial history of the North-west Highlands outlined byJ. K. Charlesworth (Charlesworth, 1956) and the correlation byJ.J. Donner of Late-glacial retreat stages on the southern margins of the Scottish Highlands with those proposed by Charlesworth for the Highlands as a whole (Donner, I957). Since both of these authors linked glacial retreat stages with changing sea-level (see, for example, Donner, 1959) and since Charlesworth's 'M' stage (Donner's 'Zone III') was in part derived from its association with the so-called 'Ioo-foot raised beach' in the North-west Highlands it became clear that further detailed work was required not only on the deglaciation of the Droma area but also on the problem of relating this chronology with the evidence for changing sea levels in the Late-glacial and early Post-glacial times on the Atlantic and Moray Firth seaboards of the area.

Further records of distribution of blowflies in Great Britain

The local blowflies were sampled by bait-trapping at a number of stations in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland and their western seaboard, the Western Isles and eastern and southern England, to supplement the results of an earlier survey of the distribution of Calliphorine blowflies in Great Britain.Of the species of Lucilia, L. richardsi Collin was as numerous as L. scricata (Mg.) in the south-east, but relatively infrequent further north, and was not found in the Northwest Highlands or Islands. L. ampullacea Villen. and L. silvarum (Mg.), though earlier found in the eastern part of the Northwest Highlands, are rare or absent on the western seaboard and in the Western Isles. L. illustris (Mg.) is relatively infrequent in the Northwest Highlands and Islands, but in these regions was found as far north as Lairg, and in the Outer and Inner Hebrides.Of the species of Calliphora, neither C. loewi End. nor C. uralensis Villen. were found in any of the eight stations in eastern and southern England. C. uralensis was common in the Western Isles and on the northwest seaboard. C. loewi more common in the Central Highlands and apparently absent from the Islands.Acrophaga subalpina (Ringdahl) was not taken in the stations in the east and south of England, Cynomyia mortuorum (L.) only in the three more northerly of these, north and west of the Wash, and Phormia terraenovae R.-D. at onlv one station further south, Wye.

The Larger Fungi in the North-West Highlands of Scotland

The Larger Fungi in the North-West Highlands of Scotland

Scourie Dykes And Laxfordian Metamorphism

Retort and fuller explanation evoked by comments in a paper by E. B. Bailey relative to the Lewisian in the northwest Highlands of Scotland. A comment by H. H. Read and reply by Bailey are included.

The pre-Torridonian metamorphic history of the Loch Torridon and Scourie areas in the North-West Highlands, and its bearing on the chronological classification of the Lewisian

Summary The paper describes the metamorphic history of two areas of Lewisian gneiss in the North-West Highlands of Scotland. Metamorphosed sedimentary rocks are described for the first time from the Loch Torridon area. It is shown that both in the Loch Torridon and the Scourie districts the gneisses have been produced in two separate periods of metamorphism, migmatization and deformation. These two metamorphic episodes, which are named the Scourian and Laxfordian episodes, are separated in time by a period of uplift and tension during which a series of uniform dolerite dykes was intruded. Since a very great interval of time appears to have elapsed between the two metamorphic episodes, it is suggested that the rocks produced during these episodes should be regarded as members, not of a single formation as heretofore, but of two distinct chronological units.