Shifting Sand Research Articles

Response of Soil Fungal Community to Reforestation on Shifting Sand Dune in the Horqin Sandy Land, Northeast China.

Reforestation of native shrub on shifting sand dunes has been widely used for desertification control in semi-arid grassland in Northeast China. Previous studies have confirmed that plantation establishment facilitates fixing sand dunes, restoring vegetation, and improving soil properties, but very few have focused on the response of the soil fungal community. In this study, a chronosequence of Caragana microphylla (CM) shrub sand-fixation plantations (8-, 19-, and 33-year-old), non-vegetated shifting sand dunes (0 years), and adjacent natural CM forests (NCFs; 50-year-old) in the Horqin sandy land were selected as experimental sites. Soil properties including enzymatic activities were determined, and the composition and structure of the soil fungal community were investigated using the Illumina MiSeq sequencing technique based on the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rDNA. This study aimed to (1) describe the response of the soil fungal community to revegetation onto a moving sand dune by planting a native shrub plantation; (2) determine the main soil factors driving the succession of the fungal community; and (3) discuss whether the soil fungal community can be restored to its original state by reforestation. The reforestation of CM significantly ameliorated soil properties, increased soil fungal diversity, and altered the composition and structure of the soil fungal community. Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Zoopagomycota were the dominant phyla in all sites. Ascomycota did not respond to plantation development, whereas the other two dominant phyla linearly increased or decreased with the plantation age. The relative abundance of dominant genera varied with sites and showed a waning and waxing characteristic. The composition and structure of the soil fungal community in the 33-year CM plantation were very close to that of the NCF, indicating the restorability of the soil fungal community. The succession of the soil fungal community was directly driven by soil properties, of which soil moisture, organic matter, total N, urease, and protease were the main affecting factors.

The United States’ Position in Africa: On Solid Ground or Shifting Sand?

After decades of benign neglect, followed by a four-year period of outright disdain, the United States finally announced on August 8, 2022, a policy towards the continent of Africa that seemed to herald an era of treating the countries of Africa with respect and dignity, and acknowledging African agency in our bilateral and multilateral dealings. The question is whether the countries of Africa take this newly announced attitude seriously and will they act accordingly. Is the US position in Africa on a solid foundation, or are we witnessing a shift in global alliances with this significant portion of the global south moving closer to those who are not our friends? The large number of African countries abstaining on the United Nations votes calling for a Russian pullout from Ukraine or condemning Russia for the invasion have exposed cracks in African solidarity with the so-called West. But is this a new phenomenon, or an indication of the way things have always been?

Radiometric dating of the Ootun palaeosol and its implication for the age of the Shifting Sand in Ngorongoro Lengai Geopark (Arusha, Tanzania)

The Shifting Sand is a barchan dune in Ngorongoro Lengai Geopark in Arusha, Tanzania. The geopark, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is protected by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. The dune ranks amongst the main geosites that have been attracting numerous tourists; it formed as a result of volcanic ash eruptions that led to tephra deposition on a palaeosol (palaeosurface) in the Ootun area. The easterly winds modified the ash into dunes and headed to the Olduvai Gorge area. The age of the Shifting Sand dune is not known in detail. In the present study, we employ the radiocarbon (14C) dating method to date a subsurface palaeosol bed in the Ootun area where the tephra (i.e., original Shifting Sand materials) was originally deposited. An Accelerator Mass Spectrometer was used to determine the carbon-14 date of the palaeosol so as to estimate the age of the Shifting Sand dune, and an Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescent Spectrometer to determine the chemical composition of the Shifting Sand material and the tephra bed for correlative purposes. A radiocarbon (14C) date of 2510 ± 30 years BP for the Ootun palaeosol was obtained to estimate the minimum age of the Ootun subsurface tephra deposited in the area; since then, this started to move westwards towards the Olduvai Gorge area, where it is today defined as the Shifting Sand. The current findings add educational value to the Shifting Sand in Ngorongoro Lengai Geopark and improve our understanding of the eruption history of the Gregory Rift volcanoes.

Geochemical, Mineralogical, and Geomorphological Characterization of Ash Materials as a Tracer for the Origin of Shifting Sands near Oldupai Gorge, Ngorongoro, Tanzania.

Shifting sand (SS) is a single dune-shaped mass of black ash material moving across western Ngorongoro in northern Tanzania. The moving sand has become an important tourist destination for several decades. Despite being part of the important geosites at the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the nature, origin, and behaviors demonstrated by SS remain poorly understood. This work contributes toward understanding the nature and identification of the possible origin of the SS through the correlation of geochemical, mineralogical, and geomorphological data of ash material from four selected locations in the study area. To achieve this goal, elemental, mineralogical, and morphological characterization of ash samples was performed by energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence, polarized petrographic microscopy, automated sieve shaker, and binocular microscopy techniques, respectively. Correlation studies were based on magnesian-ferriferous associations, similarities in mineralogy, particle size, shape, and distribution patterns of ash materials, and weather data. There are close similarities in the chemical compositions among ash samples of SS, Ootun area, and Oldoinyo Lengai. Augite and magnetite minerals appear only in samples of SS, Ootun area, and Oldoinyo Lengai, while hornblende appears only in the samples from the Ngorongoro crater. Oldoinyo Lengai rock petrography revealed significant amounts of augite minerals. Blocky and elongated-shaped ash particles dominate the samples from SS, Ootun area, and Oldoinyo Lengai. The particle size of ash materials decreases westwards across the study site. The distribution patterns of ash material align with the west-south-west wind direction. Based on these findings, the study concludes that SS and Ootun ash could be tephra depositions resulting from past volcanic eruptions of Oldoinyo Lengai.

"Exile Memoirs: Beyond the Confines of Obligated Memory" Memoirs Reviewed

"Exile Memoirs: Beyond the Confines of Obligated Memory" Memoirs Reviewed María de los Ángeles Torres Cecilia M. Fernández. Leaving Little Havana: A Memoir of Miami Cuban's Ghetto. Orlando, FL: Beating Winds Press, 2013. Translated to Spanish by Gonzalo Ravelo, 2015. José María de Lasa. My Story: Family, Cuba and Living the American Dream. Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal, 2018. Gerardo González. A Cuban Refugees Journey to the American Dream: The Power of Education. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018. Dania Rosa Nasca. Lights Out: A Cuban Memoir of Betrayal and Survival. Dania Rosa Nasca, 2016. Luis Santeiro. Dancing with Dictators: A Family's Journey from Pre-Castro Cuba to Exile in the Turbulent Sixties—A Memoir. Luis Santeiro, 2017. Marisella Veiga. We Carry Our Homes with Us. Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2016. Like all wars, the Cuban Revolution generated carefully constructed narratives of its history with heroes and villains starkly cast and storylines carefully scripted. Inversely, the opposition did the same. For the exile community, the revolution betrayed became a central theme, as did triumphs in exile. We became the golden exiles who thrived despite the loss of nation, family, property, and imagined futures. Our defiance included reproducing Cuba in the United States. And nostalgia was a way of not forgetting. But with this process came an official narrative that demanded unanimity in the renditions of past and present. Paul Ricoeur calls this obligated memory; what we are expected to remember is not necessarily what happened to us, but it is what we must remember. The reality was more complex, as were the human experiences lived through multiple histories, and some of these have found themselves into testimonials and memoirs. Some of the first cracks in the official narrative surfaced when young Cuban exiles started to return to the island, an act that in and of itself defied the official narrative of exile. With this movement came testimonies of life in the United States that for many of us, especially those raised outside the nestled confines of Cuban Miami, included ugly confrontations with racism and discrimination because we were Cubans. In Contra viento y marea, for instance, [End Page 301] Lourdes Casal and a group of editors from Areíto gathered personal testimonies from those returning to Cuba with the Antonio Maceo Brigade. The stories did not fit neatly into the narrative of the golden exile. Much later Ruth Behar and Juan Leon initiated a project to collect personal narratives of those who did return to Cuba, further constructing alternatives to the tropes of survival and success. Bridges to Cuba, their two-volume publication of personal narratives, poems, and stories established a plurality of experiences. By Heart/De Memoria: Cuban Women's Journeys in and out of Exile, which I edited, brings together women's personal narratives of encounters with the island from those of us in exile and with narratives from those on the island. By the 1990s, returning had also generated its own mythologies and acceptable renditions, and these essays complicated the narratives on both sides of the Florida Straits. All these projects have sought to build alternative communities through texts. Other memoirs sought to fill in the personal stories of immigration. Cuban immigration has been periodized by time and method of departure. The dramatic exodus of fourteen thousand unaccompanied minors in Operation Pedro Pan engendered its own deeply militarized memories that reflect the collective coping with the pain arising from the separation of parents and children. Pedro Pans become symbols of the origins of a community born of extreme sacrifice. The narrative called for presenting our experience as heroic, as we were saved from communism. Silence might have been expected about the pain or abuse encountered by the children. Still, memoirs like Carlos Erie's, Waiting for Snow to Fall in Havana, presented a more complex set of experiences, as did Flora Gonzalez's essay "House on Shifting Sand: in Bridges. Both the Cuban and the US government complicated the Mariel exodus by casting immigrants as criminals and unwanted escoria. But Mirta Ojito's Waiting for Mañana gave us the version of traveling through those hate-filled and racialized rhetorical waves...

Characteristics of Desertification and Short-Term Effectiveness of Differing Treatments on Shifting Sand Dune Stabilization in an Alpine Rangeland.

Rangeland desertification is one of the most serious problems threatening the ecological environment and socio-economic development on the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. To combat desertification and reduce its adverse effects, some strategies have been undertaken to stabilize the mobile sand dunes and restore the desertified land. In this study, rangeland desertification with a gradient degree of none, light, medium, severe and extreme was assessed, and short-term effectiveness of different treatments on stabilizing the shifting sand dunes was evaluated by monitoring selected vegetation and soil properties. Results showed that vegetation became thinner and sparser, and soil environment deteriorated significantly under desertification, leading to a poor and low diversity ecosystem. Applying a checkerboard protection strategy in which herb species were planted and using a shrub vegetation planting method without checkerboard protection on mobile dunes for five years, vegetation growth state and soil properties were improved. Soil particles were finer, vegetation restoration was more rapid, and soil nutrient improvement was more apparent at the lower locations of the sand dunes under the checkerboard protection planted with herbs, which performed slightly better in improving soil properties than the shrub planting method alone. A longer time period would be required for vegetation and soils on the sand dunes to be restored to sustain more intensive land use. These findings provide more insight into dune stabilization, allowing effective management in the ecological restoration of desertified rangeland.

Audit Within the Corporate Governance Paradigm: A Cornerstone Built on Shifting Sand?

AbstractThis paper is a case study‐based investigation of aspects of the current paradigmatic approach to ‘good’ corporate governance, with its focus on the interlinked roles of internal control and risk management procedures, internal audit and external audit, overseen and coordinated by a formal structure of board committees, in particular the audit committee. The evidence that we adduce from the study of four high‐profile cases of perceived accounting and governance failure provides limited assurance that this approach will in fact be cost‐effective or efficient in preventing further such cases of accounting and governance failure. Specifically, issues as to remuneration and fee dependence, lack of relevant knowledge and expertise, social and psychological dependence upon executive management appear to have significantly and negatively affected the quality of decision‐making of governance gatekeepers. This suggests that further consideration of relevant economic, institutional and cognitive/behavioural factors beyond the rational choice model of traditional economics should underpin future developments in required modes and structures of governance.

Composition of Soil Seed Bank Over Cholistan Desert Microhabitats at Dingarh Fort Area, Pakistan

Soil seed banks were assessed in three soil layers (L1, from 0 to 2 cm, L2, 2 to 4 cm and L3,4 to 6 cm depth ) from five microhabitats i.e., Lee-ward side of sand dune (S1), Wind-ward side of sanddune (S2), Clayey area covered with sand (S3), Interdunal sandy area (S4) and Shifting sand dune of siteDingarh Fort area (S5) in Cholistan desert of Pakistan to analyse differences of soil seed bank among thesehabitats. Ten soil samples were collected from each microhabitat and from each layer i.e., 0-2 cm depth(L1), 2-4 cm depth (L2) and 4-6 cm depth (L3) by using 15´15´6 cm metallic sampler. Consistentdifferences in seed composition were observed among these microhabitats. Seedling emergence approachwas used to assess the soil seed bank of Cholistan desert. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) wasused for the soil seed bank and the plant species analysis. The microhabitats S3 (Clayey area covered withsand) and S4 (Interdunal sandy area) contributed prominently to the total variance in the species and hadmaximum density of seed bank and soil layer L1 contained maximum number of seeds.

Words, Ideas and Ideology in the Shifting Sand of Markets

The transformation of existing knowledge or production of new knowledge is the focus of this article. This theme is explored using women’s health, actions and perceptions, and their interpretations—within a public health perspective—as these evolve around the currently most talked about high-tech obstetric intervention—the practice of surrogacy. The interpretations of words such as production, reproduction, labour and work are central to the present understanding of surrogacy in different societies. At a point in time when social sciences are striving to understand complexities, interconnections and praxis, this article offers a possibility of judicious use of technology and a glimpse, however brief, of man’s natural essence—humanness—the cementing factor in the alternate structure of society waiting to overcome the present conflict between the global hegemonic and democratic forces. The article argues that in contemporary India, the sections where surrogates come from see surrogacy in different ways, and that has to be the starting point for analysis but not the end. Indian law-makers take advantage of this confusion about the nature of surrogacy. It buries the non-exploitative potential of procreation under the ‘compensation for agreeing’ to be a surrogate, denies her rights and undermines the value of gestational motherhood as compared to genetic identity—thus, killing several birds with one stone!

Lines in the Sand? Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. E. Balibar, ‘The Borders of Europe’, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds.), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, trans. by J. Swenson (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1998) pp. 216–233. 2. Y. Lapid, ‘Introduction: Identities, Borders, Orders: Nudging International Relations Theory in a New Direction’, in M. Albert, D. Jacobson, and Y. Lapid (eds.), Identities, Borders, Orders: Re-Thinking International Relations Theory (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001) p. 8. 3. A comprehensive survey of this literature is beyond the scope of this deliberately short position piece. However, some examples symptomatic of the critical shift to which we refer include: L. Amoore, ‘Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror’, Political Geography 25 (2006) pp. 336–351; M. Coleman, ‘A Geopolitics of Engagement: Neoliberalism, the War on Terrorism, and the Reconfiguration of US Immigration Enforcement’, Geopolitics 12/4 (Oct. 2007) pp. 607–634; S. Elden, ‘Contingent Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity, and the Sanctity of Borders’, SAIS Review of International Affairs 26/1 (2006) pp. 11–24; H. Van Houtum, O. Kramsch, and W. Zierhofer (eds.), B/ordering Space (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate 2005); D. Johnson and S. Michaelson (eds.), Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press 1997); P. Kumar Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr (eds.), Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press 2007); W. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000); D. Newman, ‘Borders and Bordering: Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue’, European Journal of Social Theory 9 (2006); N. Parker, ‘From Borders to Margins: A Deleuzian Ontology for Identities in the Postinternational Environment’, Alternatives 34/1 (2009) 17–39; C. Minca, ‘Giorgio Agamben and the New Biopolitical Nomos’, Geografiska Annaler 88B/4 (2006) pp. 387–403; C. Rumford (ed.), ‘Global Borders’, of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Special Issue (forthcoming); M. Salter, ‘The Global Visa Regime and the Political Technologies of the International Self: Borders, Bodies, Biopolitics’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 31/2 (2006) pp. 167–189; R. B. J. Walker, Before the Globe/After the World (London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming); N. Vaughan-Williams, Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2009); W. Walters, ‘Border/Control’, European Journal of Social Theory, Special Issue (ed. by C. Rumford) 9/2 (2006) pp. 187–193; J. Williams, The Ethics of Territorial Borders: Drawing Lines in the Shifting Sand (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2006). 4. J. Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press 1976); J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1982); J. Derrida, Limited Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1988). 5. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993). 6. G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998). 7. C. Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos Press 2001).

Budgeting on Shifting Sand

THE headlines are daunting. Plunging home values, skyrocketing fuel costs, declining state revenues, and a multitude of other budget worries add up to nightmares for state budget officials and school business directors. Even the most conservative observers will admit that budget cuts in most districts go beyond trimming fat and are cutting deep into the meat. According to Mike Griffith, senior school finance analyst for the Education Commission of the States, each economic slowdown affects different states in different ways. For example, the impact of the current slowdown is less severe in states that rely on mineral extraction taxes or in states with a large agricultural base. In addition, those states that did not experience the boom in the housing market are not being affected as much by the current bust. But states that rely on businesses other than mineral extraction or agriculture--especially those that rely on manufacturing--are already feeling the pinch of the economic downturn. Governors and state legislatures have used a variety of means to try to stave off the impact on districts of reductions in current and future revenues, but looking for efficiencies appears to be one of the more common approaches. Proactive policies can be implemented prior to bad economic times, and reactive policies can be used in response to a downturn. Purchasing cooperatives. A study conducted on behalf of the Leadership for Education Achievement in Delaware Committee found that, if school districts pooled their purchasing power, they could reduce their costs by between 8% and 14%. In 2006 the Rhode Island legislature passed P.L. 298. This legislation directed the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, working with the Department of Administration, to establish a statewide purchasing system for products and services pertaining to public schools. These include telecommunications, wireless services, general insurance products and services, and school transportation for children with special needs. Shared services. While shared services might include purchasing, this type of collaboration can also include management and instruction. Iowa was one of the first states to offer incentives for districts to share services, and the legislature continues to tweak laws to encourage such collaboration. S.F. 447, passed one year ago, reinstated earlier incentives for reorganization and whole-grade sharing, created operational sharing incentives, and mandated a statewide study of efficiencies and sharing. S.F. 447 provides additional funding for districts that share one or more operational functions for at least 20% of the school year in such areas as management, business, human resources, transportation, or operation and maintenance. The additional funding is available to a district for a maximum of five years during the period covering the budget years 2008-09 through 2012-13. Also passed one year ago, Indiana S.B. 526 was an omnibus bill that included provisions related to shared services. Article 42.5 of this bill authorizes school corporations (districts) to take specific actions to reduce noninstructional expenditures and allocate the resulting savings to student instruction and learning. Authorized actions include creating insurance pools with other school corporations, aggregating purchases of natural gas, and consolidating specified purchases. Such shared services can even include arrangements to provide instructional services and management. Educational service centers are required to report annually on the results of their efforts during the preceding school year to help school corporations pool resources. Last September, the Michigan legislature enacted H.B. 4592. This bill requires each intermediate school district to conduct a study of opportunities for its constituent districts to share services with other districts or other units of local government. Among the services that might be shared are transportation, human resources, purchasing, technology support, professional development, accounting, and event management. …

Nematode communities in the artificially vegetated belt with or without irrigation in the Tengger Desert, China

Shifting sand dunes threatened the Baotou-Lanzhou railway being kept on operation smoothly seriously crossing Shapotou on the southeastern edge of the Tengger Desert (China). Artificial vegetation input was employed in Shapotou and a vegetated belt was established for stabilizing the shifting sand dunes. Nematode communities from bare soil between vegetation (ST, STI) and soil under the vegetation (ST-V, STI-V) in the vegetation belt, were investigated. All sites received natural rainfall, of which STI and STI-V received irrigation supplements. Total 43 genera were found in four types of soil samples, and Acrobeles, Acrobeloides, Chiloplacus, Panagrolaimus, Aphelenchoides and Ditylenchus were dominant genera in our study. Nematode abundance per 100 g fresh soil (47–552), the number of taxa identified (8–20), species richness (1.51–3.41), the proportion of plant feeders (0.3%–4.2%) and abundance of all cp groups responded to vegetation. The proportion of omnivores (0.5%–7%), the number of taxa identified, Shannon index (1.26–2.12), species richness, genus dominance (0.18–0.40) and abundance of cp3–5 responded to irrigation supplements. The application of PCA helped to reveal that almost all nematode taxa exhibited a positive loading on the horizontal axis, it implied that nematode abundance was generally higher on sites with planted input. Besides, it showed a vegetation gradient from bare soil between vegetation to soil under vegetation along the first axis, while an irrigation gradient along the second axis. Similarly, classification analysis based on all cased involved indicated that two-main group of nematodes was distinguished by their habitats under vegetation from bare soil. Those results suggested that vegetation input might play a more important role on nematode community composition than irrigation supplements for stabilization of shifting sand dunes. Therefore, nematode community composition could be as an indicator of stabilization of sand dune approaches of plant input with only natural rainfall versus with natural rainfall in combination with irrigation supplements in our system. However, the apparent anhydrobiotic state of the nematode fauna required special consideration in desert system, thus the utilization of the nematodes as an indicator of stabilization of sand dune regimes should be further explored on anhydrobiotic nematodes.

Geography and Community of Territorial Borders

The Ethics of Territorial Borders: Drawing Lines in the Shifting Sand. By Williams John. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. 192 pp., $69.95 (ISBN: 0-230-00252-8). The Ethics of Territorial Borders , by John Williams, is part of a growing body of literature that discusses state sovereignty and the organization of political authority in terms of the nature of territorial borders (see, for example, Migdal 2004; Ganster and Lorey 2005; Hirst 2005). Since the 1990s, the study of sovereignty and borders has carved out a niche of its own. The field is populated mainly by political geographers, political theorists, and international relations scholars who look into the sustainability of state sovereignty. Their work has become increasingly popular in recent years due to the increasing level of globalization and the resulting questioning of the continued importance of territorial borders within the international system. The Ethics of Territorial Borders exemplifies the advances that this field has seen in recent years. In it, Williams observes significant trends that have stressed the “ethical contingency” of territorial borders. These trends have emerged mainly in response to the challenges of humanitarian intervention and transnational terrorism. However, Williams also seeks to temper the debate by pointing out that territorial borders may well endure as “trip wires,” marking the places at which, historically, conflict has been most likely to take place. He also notes that borders are places that create opportunities for engagement, dialogue, and discourse—stressing the …

RESPONSE: Re: Cancer as a Risk Factor for Dementia: A House Built on Shifting Sand

RESPONSE: Re: Cancer as a Risk Factor for Dementia: A House Built on Shifting Sand

Re: Cancer as a Risk Factor for Dementia: A House Built on Shifting Sand

Re: Cancer as a Risk Factor for Dementia: A House Built on Shifting Sand

Changes in Soil Properties After Establishment of Artemisia halodendron and Caragana microphylla on Shifting Sand Dunes in Semiarid Horqin Sandy Land, Northern China

In the semiarid Horqin sandy land of northern China, establishment of artificial sand-fixing shrubs on desertified sandy lands is an effective measure to control desertification and improve the regional environment. Caragana microphylla Lam. and Artemisia halodendron Turcz. ex Bess. are two of the dominant native shrub species, which are adapted well to windy and sandy environments, and thus, are widely used in revegetation programs to control desertification in Horqin region. To assess the effects of artificially planting these two shrub species on restoration of desertified sandy land, soil properties and plant colonization were measured 6 years after planting shrubs on shifting sand dunes. Soil samples were taken from two depths (0-5 cm and 5-20 cm) under the shrub canopy, in the mid-row location (alley) between shrub belts, and from nonvegetated shifting sand dune (as a control). Soil fine fractions, soil water holding capacity, soil organic C and total N have significantly increased, and pH and bulk density have declined at the 0-5-cm topsoil in both C. microphylla and A. halodendron. At the 5-20 cm subsurface soil, changes in soil properties are not significant, with exception of bulk density and organic C concentration under the canopy of A. halodendron and total N concentration under the canopy of C. microphylla. Soil amelioration processes are initiated under the shrub canopies, as higher C and N concentrations were found under the canopies compared with alleys. At the same time, the establishment of shrubs facilitates the colonization and development of herbaceous species. A. halodendron proved to have better effects in fixing the sand surface, improving soil properties, and restoring plant species in comparison to C. microphylla.

Cancer as a Risk Factor for Dementia: A House Built on Shifting Sand

Cancer as a Risk Factor for Dementia: A House Built on Shifting Sand

The Shifting Sand of a Son's Radical Faith in Peter Dale Scott's Coming to Jakarta: A Poem about Terror

The Shifting Sand of a Son's Radical Faith in Peter Dale Scott's <i>Coming to Jakarta: A Poem about Terror</i>

“Playing on Shifting Sand”: Reflections on the Impact of Political Shifts on Community Action and Public Health

“Playing on Shifting Sand”: Reflections on the Impact of Political Shifts on Community Action and Public Health

Composing with Shifting Sand: A Conversation between Ron Kuivila and David Behrman on Electronic Music and the Ephemerality of Technology

This dialogue between composers David Behrman and Ron Kuivila centers on the ephemerality of technology and technological innovation in musical practice over the last 40 years. The conversation focuses on a musical lineage that begins with the early, live electronic music of John Cage and D.B. Tudor, the projects of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), the work of the Sonic Arts Union and the San Francisco Tape Music Center.