Wild Landscapes Research Articles

Colonizing Paradise: Landscape and Empire in the British West Indies by Jefferson Dillman

Reviewed by: Colonizing Paradise: Landscape and Empire in the British West Indies by Jefferson Dillman Linda L. Sturtz Colonizing Paradise: Landscape and Empire in the British West Indies. Jefferson Dillman. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2015. 264 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, references, index. $54.95 cloth (ISBN 978-0-8173-1858-1); $54.95 electronic (ISBN 978-0-8173-8804-1). Europeans and European Americans perceived the Caribbean landscape as a locus both of seductive splendor and of horrific lawlessness. Even in Columbus's first letters depicting the "New World," the Admiral depicted the American landscape as embodying both lush beauty and monstrous wilderness, often simultaneously (p. 11). By the end of the sixteenth century, according to Jefferson Dillman, Europeans saw the New World as a location where the struggle between the virtues present in an Edenic paradise battled against the kingdom of the Devil, and their representations of its geography depicted these conflicting views. Dillman argues that the earliest Spanish descriptions of the land provided the foundation for later English perspectives. His analysis of two maps of Jamaica published in the 1670s (pp. 91-4) is particularly effective in showing how cartographic images of pirate-controlled spaces publicized the lawless Caribbean, even before the adoption of large-scale enslavement of Africans. Diverging images, of paradise and hellishness, shaped subsequent European views of the Caribbean landscape. Over time, according to Dillman, English depictions of the landscape and its significance shifted. Characteristics of bifurcated Edenic paradise and locus of horror persisted, and the latter grew during the era when English settlers turned to brutal enslavement of Africans to cultivate their fertile sugar fields in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Added to these characterizations were new views of the landscape that encompassed a more "scientific" outlook: the cataloguing of once-unfamiliar plants in the published work of Sir Hans Sloane, the "bioprospecting" efforts of Europeans searching for exotic flora for commercially viable export crops (including medicines), and the establishment of public and private botanical gardens "that sought to create knowledge of and thus control over, a wilderness landscape" (p. 107). In Dillman's account, the Edenic landscape, once fallen, could be "recovered" through a cultivation of a "rational landscape vision" merged with "a Christian recovery narrative that placed the restoration of the West Indian wilderness to its God-given potential" (p. 107). In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a shift toward picturesque artistic sensibilities among British visitors and colonists introduced a vision of the landscape that made the horrors of slavery as miniscule as the depictions of the enslaved in vast panoramas that highlighted soaring mountains, lush fields, and roaring rivers. In some accounts, the enslaved became [End Page 195] part of the landscape, as when William Beckford reported that "There is something particularly picturesque and striking in a gang of negroes when employed in cutting canes upon the swelling projections of a hill" (p. 165). Dillman presents a coherent narrative of how landscapes changed in the European imagination between 1492 and the 1830s before concluding with a short "epilogue" examining the images of the Caribbean represented in late twentieth-century tourist board marketing. Sometimes the narrative seems too straightforward. Fears about the natural world persisted for longer in the minds of Europeans and Africans alike, and hurricanes shape the narratives and demarcate time among modern residents of the Caribbean. The structure of the book is a bit funnel-like, starting with a broad geography of the Caribbean that includes all of the islands and even the mainland – with Columbus's encounter with the Orinoco River as emblematic of the first encounter – and a multinational European encounter with the Americas that highlighted the Spanish in the first generation of explorers. The book's focus quickly and deliberately narrows to the Anglophone Caribbean in the second chapter and maintains this concentration throughout the rest of the book. Dillman justifies this approach by pointing out that seventeenth-century Spaniards and English Puritans "shared discourses on the New World that included the aforementioned satanic epic and the theme of spiritual gardening" and claims that "the spiritual world of the sixteenth-century English traveler to the Indies differed little from his...

Planning the Wild: In Times of Tourist Invasion

Planning the Wild: In Times of Tourist Invasion Many travellers seek wilderness areas to experience unspoilt nature, remoteness and solitude. Maintaining these conditions, however, becomes increasingly difficult once a wilderness area becomes a popular tourist destination, making planning a vital task if areas are to be sustained as wilderness. Given that the wilderness concept is hotly debated, it becomes highly challenging to use in practical work, such as planning. Lately, tourism in Iceland has increased at a rapid rate. The country’s uninhabited Central Highlands are characterized by wilderness landscapes which nowadays attract many tourists. With increased tourism and other land uses, this wilderness landscape is rapidly changing. Iceland’s first National Planning Strategy (NPS) for the Central Highlands has recently been approved by the Icelandic parliament. This paper reviews the extent to which the planning strategy takes tourists’ preferences into consideration and to critically discuss the challenges of tourism planning in wilderness areas. The results highlight the paradox existing between wilderness and tourism development, demonstrating the critical importance of planning tourism in the wild. Despite the fact that the emphasis of the NPS is placed on preserving the wilderness areas of the Highlands, increased accessibility and the availability of tourism facilities are also stressed, thus leaving a door open for the anthropocentric perspective. Therefore some highly debatable issues are left unclear, allowing for open interpretations for the various stakeholders of where and how much tourism development is considered appropriate in the Icelandic Central Highlands.

Seeking Peace of Mind: Paranoia and its Therapy Through Nature in John Burnside’s A Summer of Drowning

This article examines the development of paranoia in John Burnside’s A Summer of Drowning. The study will mainly focus on anxiety as the main cause of the protagonist’s anxious feelings. The protagonist, Liv, suffers from paranoid feelings as a result of drowning her schoolmates. Consequently, she becomes psychically anxious.Her anxiety intensifies when she meets people whom she suspects of complicity in murdering her schoolmates.The study, in this respect, will follow a textual analysis of the protagonist’s paranoia which constitutes her anxiety.It will provide a close reading of the protagonist’s behaviors, feelings, and suspicion of other people.These behavioral attributes will be scrutinized as lucid indications of her psychic disorder. As such, Sigmund Freud’s concept of anxiety is going to be applied in order to analyze the latent causes of the protagonist’s anxiety, and paranoia thereof. The application of Freud’s concept of anxiety will be detailed by discussing the psychoanalytical critical insights suitable to interpret anxiety and its negative effects upon the protagonist’s behavior. She is triggered by her mother’s predilection to nature, and she decides to resort to wild landscapes as exits for her paranoia.She prefers being away of people.Just so,she becomes aware of her natural surroundings, such as landscapes and meadows. Accordingly, Cheryll Glotfelty’s concept of eco-consciousness and Greg Garrard’s concept of dwelling will be utilized to analyze the novel’s natural settings as exits for the protagonist’s anxiety.Together, these concepts are going to be the interdisciplinary approach to explore the protagonist seeking of solace and peace of mind in nature.

Journeys into Darkness: Critical Essays on Gothic HorrorJamesGoho. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Journeys into Darkness: Critical Essays on Gothic Horror James Goho. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.This collection of essays examines what author calls dread... primal fear and an ontological unease in world (3). Containing ten chapters, six of which are revisions of previously published essays, Goho explores four themes found in Gothic literature. These four include urban landscape, wilderness, manifestation of economic, social, and political anxieties and conflicts, and a voice which is given to those who suffer or experience evil (3, 4). Essays consider five American and two British authors, including Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, H. P. Lo veer aft, and Fritz Leiber.According to author, all four of themes mentioned above can be found in fiction of Charles Brockden Brown. Goho states that Brown created not just American Urban Gothic, but American Gothic as a whole. Flis novels depict family disintegration and individual disintegration through collisions with uncanny (7). Goho discusses three of Brown's novels in this chapter with Wieland being an example of how isolation of wilderness can turn a family man into a killer; Arthur Mervyn being an example of how disease can turn civilized people into savages; and, Edgar Huntly being an example of how civilized man turns into a savage in wilderness, when confronted with savages who are already there (American Indians.Likewise, these four themes can be found in a variety of works that trace their beginning to Salem trials. Witchcraft, an Old World phenomenon, found fertile ground in New World among the dark, brooding side of Puritanism (163), fear of Indians and vast, potentially hostile wilderness. Attempting to escape economic, political, social, and religious injustice, colonists merely recreated New World in image of Old. He examines a number of witch narratives, such as those by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, Fritz Leiber, and John Updike. Anyone who reads contemporary horror fiction or watches films in genre knows that is not dead. Rather she is a continuing archetype because... [she] speaks to a primal fear. It is not fear of a witch; rather is fear of relentless and violent persecution (176) that induces us to read or watch these instantiations of Gothic.Goho analyzes four short works by prolific British writer Arthur Machen that reflect third theme of Gothic. These are Great God Pan, Inmost Light, Shining Pyramid, and White People. These stories were written in late Victorian era; all concern science and ask question, Do ends justify means? The male scientists in stories certainly believe answer is yes, and each story illustrates what they are willing to do for knowledge's sake. In each story, women are victims of horrific experiments, and, in all, these women die violent deaths. In end, says author, it is all about sacrifice of women to appease desires of men for knowledge and control (73).Algernon Blackwood's Canadian stories, according to Goho, propose that nature is wondrous but perilous (93). Stories such as Wendigo and Haunted Island reveal wilderness landscape as sublime, intensely beautiful, and awe-inspiring, but terrifying in its vastness. It harkens back to our early ancestors and their fear of dark and all that dark contained. And, speaks to fear of loneliness as well. Confronted with wilderness' majesty, one feels how truly small and alone one is. Goho believes that Blackwood's short stories yield a forest beautifully described and ... more alive and sentient than human characters (92).Whereas Blackwood presents wilderness as a backdrop upon which to expose humankind's loneliness, Fritz Leiber sets against urban landscape. …

Journey to the centre of the ice: narrating ice-core drillings in northern Greenland

On the remote icecap in northwest Greenland, an international team of glaciologists led by scientists from Copenhagen University recently drilled a 2537.36 m long ice core, finally reaching bedrock in July 2010. The ice core charts a climate history that reaches back more than 115,000 years to the Eemian period. This time travel ultimately aims at predicting the climate of the future. While the heroic polar expeditions of the past ventured into unknown spaces horizontally, the secrets of the frontier are now vertically stored in the ice cores. In Secrets of the Ice, five videos produced for public dissemination, Greenland is displayed as an empty, frozen space, waiting to be conquered by scientists. Resonating with classical Arctic explorer myths, this conquest has to overcome the difficulties presented by a harsh wilderness landscape. The article situates the glaciological project in Greenland within a network of colonial relations that marks the storylines adopted by both video producers and scientists.

Extracting the Past from the Present: Exotic Prizes, Empty Wilderness, and Commercial Conquest in Two Oil Company Advertisements, 1925–2012

This article undertakes a comparative analysis of two oil company advertisements—British Petroleum’s (BP) “Persian Series”, published in London in 1925, and Cenovus Energy’s “Canadian Ideas at Work”, published across Canada in 2012. These advertisements are separated by eighty-seven years, and were produced in different countries, by different companies, and for different audiences. Yet, a closer reading of these documents reveals that they are two sides of the same coin: both narrate the extraction of oil as a great game of commercial conquest, whereby exotic prizes trapped beneath wild and empty landscapes are unlocked by oil companies. How could two advertisements that appear so radically distant feel so close? In what ways do the oil cultures of the past inflect those of the present? This article engages with such questions by critically deconstructing and comparing the imagined worlds of oil presented in BP and Cenovus’ advertisements, tracing the ways in which the resource is represented through the binaries of ancient and modern, empty and urban, wild and civilized. By configuring oil as a constellation of ideas rather than a system of things, this investigation reveals how the colonial legacies of the past continue to seep through the oil cultures of the present.

The capacity of rural territories in Georgia

Abstract In the presented work, the authors on the example of developed European countries ground the demographic parameters about the capacity of Georgian village, which in their opinion, fluctuate from 2.3 million to 4.5 million people. Besides, it is determined the optimal number of labor resources required for the agricultural sector, which the authors point of view is within the 300–330 thousand. Of course, reliability of these data considerably depends on the economic (including agrarian and agricultural development) policies adopted in the country, land consolidation, stimulation of cooperative system of farming, development of industrial and social infrastructure in rural area and implementation of other projects. This objective itself won't be attained, of course. The main goal and objectives of Georgia in agricultural sector, which, in our opinion, may be oriented at two lines: the first one, the maintenance and development of village as administrative-territorial unit (this objective also includes protection of cultural and wild landscapes), and the second one, formation of agricultural structure capable of providing food security. A principally new agricultural policy and purposeful strategy for agro-food sector development (which includes a system, vision, structure, strategies, tactics, personnel's will, human resource personnel training), which will be addressed to all those problems, which ultimately are associated with improvement of social and economic conditions in rural area and enhancement of agrarian labor stimulation. And finally, we would keep in mind that: the village, first of all, is a space for habitation, but not for economic activities. The main goal of agricultural development is to approach the habitation status (social and cultural) of rural population to the status of the urbanized area that is of crucial importance for the maintenance and development of human resources in rural area, and therefore, for the extended reproduction of agricultural sector and agro-food production.

From “Nazi Cows” to Cosmopolitan “Ecological Engineers”: Specifying Rewilding Through a History of Heck Cattle

Rewilding has become a hot topic in nature conservation. Ambitious schemes are afoot to rewild continental Europe and North America. Hopes are being invested in the political, economic, and therapeutic potentials of future wilds. Popular and scientific enthusiasms for the wild are frequently ahistorical and apolitical, however. This article begins to address this problem. It offers one genealogy of rewilding, focusing on a history of Heck cattle and their deployment in European rewilding projects. These animals were back-bred by two German zoologists in the 1930s, with Nazi patronage, for release as hunting prey in the annexed territories of Eastern Europe. Some cattle survived the war and their offspring have become prominent, alongside new back-breeding initiatives, in contemporary efforts to rewild a unifying Europe. Cattle now figure as cosmopolitan ecological engineers, whose grazing will create functional, wild landscapes. This genealogy examines what and where is understood to be wild and who is authorized to make such decisions in this story. Drawing cautiously on this extreme example, it examines historic rewilding as a form of reactionary modernism. It critically traces the emergence, persistence, and transformation of various ontologies, geographies, and epistemologies of wildness in Europe to position contemporary rewilding as a mode of ecomodernism. When compared, rewilding under Nazi rule and in the contemporary European Union are found to be different in every relevant problematic respect. Reflecting on differing conceptions of what it means to be modern helps specify a multiplicity of rewildings past and present. The article concludes with a set of criteria for discriminating among rewildings to inform the emergence and analysis of this conservation paradigm.

Green infrastructure practices – strategies how to sustain life in metropolitan areas

Green Infrastructure is ‘an interconnected network of green space that conserves natural ecosystem values and functions and provides associated benefits to human populations’ [1, p. 12]. It contributes to long term strategic development goals for data and information management. The research paper was introduced with the aim to protect green areas in urban environment by improving biodiversity, leisure and recreation, tidal and fluvial flood risk management, grey water treatment and quality of life. Planning and design of green system should provide appropriate responses to the distinctive local circumstances. Green spaces encourage social interactions, form new places to practise sport and contribute to public health and fitness, as well as have indirect benefits for a range of environmental services. The research hypothesis is that Green Infrastructure is a framework for conservation and development and we need to design Green Infrastructure systems strategically to connect across urban, suburban, rural and wilderness landscapes and incorporate green space elements and functions at the state, regional, community, neighbourhood and site scales [2]. Analysis and design of emerging Green Infrastructure system take a holistic view which links related physical, environmental, economic, social and cultural aspects of local communities.

Etiology and prevalence of skin disease in Holothuria arguinensis

Event Abstract Back to Event Etiology and prevalence of skin disease in Holothuria arguinensis Fernando G. Canovas1*, Jorge A. Domínguez-Godino1 and Mercedes González-Wangüemert1 1 Centro de Ciências do Mar do Algarve, Fisheries, Biodiversity and Conservation, Portugal Sea cucumbers is seriously over-exploited by fishery pressure, pointing at aquaculture as profitable alternative for a highly demanding market (González-Wangüemert et al. 2015). However, occurrence of diseases could cause serious economic losses and becoming a limiting factor for sustainability of this industry (Yang et al. 2015). Despite that important fact, any study has been performed upon identification of common pathologies and isolation of etiological agents in Atlanto-Mediterranean species, probably because aquaculture of sea cucumber in Europe is still at an early stage. Invertebrates medicine is not easy, but provides an opportunity to contribute to a new and emergent field of animal health (Lewbart 2012). This work addresses the study of etiopathological and epidemiological aspects of diseases, in Holothuria arguinensis. This sea cucumber is becoming target species for aquaculture in Europe (Dominguez-Godino et al., 2015). Sampling was carried out across Ria Formosa Natural Park, where previous information about density, habitat description, human pressures and presence of sick individuals have been reported by our team. This habitat can be considered a semi-closed system, which will allow to infer valuable information about prevalence and morbility of main diseases in wild landscapes with high human influences. Disections were performed and tissue samples were collected from integument, respiratory tree, Polian vesicule and gonads. Microorganisms were cultured in agarose media with sea water and incubated at 18ºC (in dark) until enough growth was noticeable (5-12 days). 16S rRNA gene were amplified using primers 27F/1492R (Muyzer and Marty 2014). Identification was assessed using a metagenomic workflow. Bacterial agents have been identified during outdoor cultivation and wild environment. Etiology of pathological manifestations in integument was associated to bacteria species of the family Bacillaceae, and fungi. In contrast, etiology of internal lesions was associated to species of the families Pseudoalteromonadaceae and Aeromonadaceae. Mortality was described higher in diseases with integumet manifestations (Yang et al. 2015). In contrast, morbility should be higher in diseases with internal pathology, by causing insidious clinical signs (lost of weigth, deformations, atrophia). Acknowledgements This research was supported by CUMARSUR project (ref. PTDC/MAR-BIO/5948/2014) funded by Fundacão para Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal). M. González-Wangüemert was funded by FCT Investigator Programme-Career Development (ref. IF/00998/2014).

The political ecology of human-wildlife conflict: Producing wilderness, insecurity, and displacement in the Limpopo National Park

Like conservation-induced displacement, human-wildlife conflict (HWC) has potentially negative implications for communities in and around protected areas. While the ways in which displacement emerges from the creation of 'wilderness' conservation landscapes are well documented, how the production of 'wilderness' articulates with intensifications in HWC remains under examined both empirically and conceptually. Using a political-ecological approach, I analyse increases of HWC in Mozambique's Limpopo National Park (LNP) and the subsequent losses of fields and livestock, as well as forms of physical displacement suffered by resident communities. While intensifications of encounters between wildlife on the one hand and people and livestock on the other result in part from increases in wildlife populations, I argue that HWC and the ways in which it constitutes and contributes to various forms of displacement results more centrally from changing relations between wildlife and people and the power and authority to manage conflict between them. Both of these contributing factors, moreover, are the consequence of practices that aim to transform the LNP into a wilderness landscape of conservation and tourism. HWC and its negative impacts are thus not natural phenomena, but are the result of political decisions to create a particular type of conservation landscape.

About this title ‐ Appreciating Physical Landscapes: Three Hundred Years of Geotourism

Geotourism, as a form of sustainable geoheritage tourism, was defined and developed, from the early 1990s, to contextualize modern approaches to geoconservation and physical landscape management. However, its roots lie in the late seventeenth century and the emergence of the Grand Tour and its domestic equivalents in the eighteenth century. Its participants and numerous later travellers and tourists, including geologists and artists, purposefully explored wild landscapes as‘geotourists’. The written and visual records of their observations underpin the majority of papers within this volume; these papers explore some significant geo-historical themes, organizations, individuals and locations across three centuries, opening with seventeenth century elite travellers and closing with modern landscape tourists. Other papers examine the resources available to those geotourists and explore the geotourism paradigm. The volume will be of particular interest to Earth scientists, historians of science, tourism specialists and general readers with an interest in landscape history.

Entender la naturaleza para crear una industria. El petróleo en la exploración de John Mcleod Murphy en el istmo de Tehuantepec, 1865

In 1851, John McLeod Murphy was the junior officer of the U.S. Navy in charge of drafting the hydrographic report during the scientific expedition of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, directed by Major Barnard. During his survey Murphy observed the oil springs and lakes scattered around the Atlantic Plains of the Isthmus. Years later in New York, Murphy was observing with interest the massive wealth generated by petroleum; he decided to move again to the Isthmus to explore more thoroughly the area. In 1865 Murphy prepared an important feasibility study on the possibility to build oil settlements in South Veracruz. Geographic survey, topographic measurements, geological interpretation, and logistic, are some of the elements proposed by Murphy to describe the making of oil in the uncontaminated and wild Mexican natural landscapes.

PERCEIVED RESTORATIVE BENEFITS OF OBUDU MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE, NIGERIA

Specific natural environments evoke restorative potentials for the amelioration of stress necessary for human wellbeing. However, studies focusing on the evaluation of this phenomenon have covered mainly forests, wilderness and urban landscape features, while mountain landscape features have not been adequately explored. This study examined the perception of individuals regarding the benefits of contact with the features of a mountain landscape environment in relation to human wellbeing. A direct rating scale questionnaire was administered to 200 respondents drawn from a population of lecturers and students. Overall findings suggest that the multi-stimulus Obudu mountain landscape environment possesses the potential to enhance wellbeing through excitement, calmness and stress relief. This finding will inform policy makers and landscape architects in decision-making concerning the development of mountain landscape environments and provision of landscape features for specific environments.

Biophysical and anthropogenous determinants of landscape patterns and degradation of plant communities in Mo hilly basin (Togo)

In mountainous areas, biophysical settings and human disturbances strongly influence landscape patterns and dynamics requiring a permanent understanding of their combined influence. In this study, we investigated the diversity and patterns of wild landscapes in relation to ecological factors, human disturbances and land protection regime in the Mo river basin (Central Togo). First, we used geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing techniques to quantify and spatially explicit the major land cover types occurring in the area. We performed a supervised classification of Landsat 8 image from 2014. Next, we used vegetation ordination and classification methods to detect vegetation group types and their similarity level from forest inventory data collected at 75 sites. Data from soil samples at the 75 sites and DEM-based topographical indices were used as biophysical variables to analyze factors of current landscape structure. Both satellite image classification and the outputs from ordination methods indicated that three major vegetation types (forestlands, woodlands and savannahs/shrubs) occurred in protected (PA) and unprotected (UPA) areas. Image classification showed that savannahs/shrubs are the most widespread vegetation types (54.4%) while forestlands and woodlands cover 10.4% and 26.4% of the total area, respectively. UPA showed high rates of human disturbances that shaped the occurrence of a fourth vegetation type made up mainly by degraded savannahs and woodlands. Along the land protection gradient, the landscapes are driven by soil nutrients and moisture, in combination with the influence of topography and human disturbances. In both PA and UPA, and along protection gradient, majority of features exhibited significant differences among plant communities. The spatial analyses combined with the field data providing information on vegetation cover, species richness, and human footprint indices suggested that some areas outside protection still exhibit high potentials for land conservation. In multifunctional landscapes of Mo basin, conservation strategies could also be encouraged in the wild landscapes of community common lands to promote both biodiversity conservation and sustainable provision of ecosystem services.

Three centuries (1670–1970) of appreciating physical landscapes

Abstract Although modern geotourism, as a form of sustainable geoheritage tourism, was only recognized as such in the 1990s, its roots lie in the seventeenth century and the Grand Tour with its domestic equivalents. At that time, a few elite travellers recorded their experiences of landscapes, natural wonders, quarries and mines. Such travellers’ observations were supplemented by those of the antiquarians for much of the eighteenth century; at that century's close, the first modern geologists were recording their observations. The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion in public interest and engagement with geology, and field excursions were provided by the burgeoning natural history and geology societies. By the close of the nineteenth century, the Romantic movement had successfully promoted wild landscapes to a newly expanding urban population. The development of the Grand Tour and the landscape aesthetic movements, the various influential institutions, key personalities and locations are considered insofar as they provide an overview of the background to historical geotourism. All are underpinned by a theoretical consideration of the geotourism paradigm and how geotourism historical studies can contextualize modern geotourism.

Extramural rock-cut sanctuaries in the territory of Cyrene

AbstractChieti University's team in Libya has been mapping and studying the extraordinary patrimony in rupestrian architecture, looking at both funerary and sacred spaces. Particular attention has been paid to the rock-cut sanctuaries in the areas to the east (Ain Hofra/Bu Miliou areas) and to the west (Baggara and Budrag) of Cyrene, which also represent the most problematic zones for looting and vandalism. Therefore, the principal need for these areas has been to plan a project of mapping and recording that is as systematic as possible for this huge patrimony. The resulting data, coming from surveys, non-invasive geo-prospecting, laser scanning of the main monuments, diagnostic mapping of the damaged monuments, as well as from the excavations, have been recorded in a multilayer GIS. In combination with the surveys, a series of excavations have also been organised in several areas in order to have stratigraphic information from sample areas, which have been chosen on the basis of both their typology/monumentality and the degree of risk of damage and looting. These sanctuaries are generally located on the steep slopes of deep canyons, typically associated with water springs, wild landscape, chthonian cults and also, therefore, funerary areas. They are generally monumentalised and emphasised by rock-cut architecture. Among the most interesting finds are the sanctuaries of Budrag and Ain Hofra, with votive inscriptions, rocky altars and shrines. Particularly interesting is the discovery of a rocky high-relief statue of Dionysus, attesting a possible open-air sanctuary in the area of Baggara. It is a unique example of rocky sculpture in Cyrene and it could be one of the best-preserved examples from the Greek world. Distinguishable by their topography, architectonic features and distance from the town, these rocky sanctuaries attest to a reciprocal osmosis between Greco-Roman and Libyan cultural, artistic and ritual elements. The levels of hybridisation and reciprocity vary from case to case and from period to period, suggesting different degrees of Greco-Roman impact, which seem to be, generally speaking, inversely proportional to the distance from Cyrene, giving space and voice to the cults and rites of the local tribes.

Functional species traits of carabid beetles living in two riparian alder forests of the Sila plateau subject to different disturbance factors (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

We studied carabid beetle assemblages found in riparian black alder forests in the Sila plateau (Southern Apennines). These carabid assemblages are characterized by a high incidence of endemic small-sized, low dispersal, highly stenotopic (hygrophilic), and trophycally specialized species. To evaluate the influence of anthropogenic disturbance on these insects, we compared carabid assemblage of an old undisturbed forest (65-170y, wilderness landscape) with that of a younger, partly grazed stand (40-60y, cropland landscape). The carabid assemblage of the disturbed stand was characterized by a higher number of species, but showed a lower incidence of zoophagous specialists and brachypterous beetles, with many species probably coming from an adjacent cropland. However, the disturbed stand maintains almost 80% of the core species found in the older forest, which suggests that these insects are not particularly sensitive to disturbance factors represented by periodic wood harvesting and extensive cattle grazing.

Pre-Columbian floristic legacies in modern homegardens of Central Amazonia.

Historical ecologists have demonstrated legacy effects in apparently wild landscapes in Europe, North America, Mesoamerica, Amazonia, Africa and Oceania. People live and farm in archaeological sites today in many parts of the world, but nobody has looked for the legacies of past human occupations in the most dynamic areas in these sites: homegardens. Here we show that the useful flora of modern homegardens is partially a legacy of pre-Columbian occupations in Central Amazonia: the more complex the archaeological context, the more variable the floristic composition of useful native plants in homegardens cultivated there today. Species diversity was 10% higher in homegardens situated in multi-occupational archaeological contexts compared with homegardens situated in single-occupational ones. Species heterogeneity (β-diversity) among archaeological contexts was similar for the whole set of species, but markedly different when only native Amazonian species were included, suggesting the influence of pre-conquest indigenous occupations on current homegarden species composition. Our findings show that the legacy of pre-Columbian occupations is visible in the most dynamic of all agroecosystems, adding another dimension to the human footprint in the Amazonian landscape.

Recreation changes the use of a wild landscape by corvids

ABSTRACT As urban areas have grown in population, use of nearby natural areas for outdoor recreation has also increased, potentially influencing bird distribution in landscapes managed for conservation. Members of the family Corvidae (crows, ravens, jays, and magpies) have strong interactions with humans and may be directly affected by recreation in wild landscapes. In Mount Rainier National Park, we evaluated the effects of vegetation, visitor use, and the availability of human-subsidized food on the use of landscape features by 4 corvid species: Steller's Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri), Gray Jay (Perisoreus canadensis), Common Raven (Corvus corax), and Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana). We conducted >1,400 point counts across areas that varied in habitat and in the degree of human recreational impact. We calculated predicted occupancy values while allowing for variation in detection probability. In addition to species-specific suites of vegetation and landscape variables, we found that patterns of hu...