Drained Fields at La Tigra, Venezuelan Llanos: A Regional Perspective

1994 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Spencer ◽  
Elsa M. Redmond ◽  
Milagro Rinaldi
Keyword(s):  
Regional Scale ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Population Estimates ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Potential Population ◽  
Field Systems ◽  
Venezuelan Llanos ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Economic Considerations

This paper discusses drained-field studies in Venezuela, beginning with the first investigations two decades ago that focused on field systems themselves and proceeding to recent research by the authors that examined the drained fields of La Tigra as part of a regional-scale project in the state of Barinas. The La Tigra fields are dated to the Late Gaván phase (A.D. 550-1000), a time of extensive habitation in the region. An analysis of excavated pollen samples from the drained fields and a nearby village site has revealed that whereas maize was the predominant plant, there was notable intersite variability in the secondary cultigens. The paper also considers whether population pressure could have prompted the construction of the La Tigra fields. A comparison of archaeological population estimates to estimates of potential population under varying assumptions of productive capacity yields no indication of demographic pressures. We suggest that drained-field construction in this case was motivated primarily by political-economic considerations, part of a strategy whereby the regional elite sought to stimulate and mobilize the production of surplus by village farmers.

scholarly journals Analysis of the Role of Parent’s Lifestyle by the Authoritative Parenting Style in Girls of Grade Three of High School in Zahedan: A Cross Sectional Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Azam Akbarizadeh ◽  
Khadijeh Khoeini
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Parenting Style ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Sample Volume ◽  
Authoritative Parenting ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Authoritative Parenting Style ◽  
Political Economic

Background: Every family applies a certain educational style in individual and social education of their children. These styles are influenced by many factors, including cultural, social, political, economic styles, etc. The parents’ lifestyle is one of styles that have a great impact on parenting. In this regard, the goal of present research is analysis of the role of parent’s lifestyle by the authoritative parenting style. Methods: The research method is descriptive-analytic based on library, documentary and field studies. Statistical Society of the research is all intelligent girls of grade three in high school of Zahedan during 2015-2016 school years. Cochran formula has been used to determine the sample volume which 311 people were estimated. Spearman statistical methods and multiple regressions have been used to analyze the data. Results: The results of the research show that the lifestyle and its components have a significant correlation with authoritative parenting style and can predict it. Conclusion: The findings of this study, while having applicable aspects in this domain, can be helpful in planning supplementary remedial procedures.

scholarly journals Fire and Its Interactions With Other Drivers Shape a Distinctive, Semi-Arid ‘Mallee’ Ecosystem

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Clarke ◽  
Luke T. Kelly ◽  
Sarah C. Avitabile ◽  
Joe Benshemesh ◽  
Kate E. Callister ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Regional Scale ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Arid Ecosystems ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Pest Species ◽  
Age Classes ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Animal Communities ◽  
Semi Arid

Fire shapes ecosystems globally, including semi-arid ecosystems. In Australia, semi-arid ‘mallee’ ecosystems occur primarily across the southern part of the continent, forming an interface between the arid interior and temperate south. Mallee vegetation is characterized by short, multi-stemmed eucalypts that grow from a basal lignotuber. Fire shapes the structure and functioning of mallee ecosystems. Using the Murray Mallee region in south-eastern Australia as a case study, we examine the characteristics and role of fire, the consequences for biota, and the interaction of fire with other drivers. Wildfires in mallee ecosystems typically are large (1000s ha), burn with high severity, commonly cause top-kill of eucalypts, and create coarse-grained mosaics at a regional scale. Wildfires can occur in late spring and summer in both dry and wet years. Recovery of plant and animal communities is predictable and slow, with regeneration of eucalypts and many habitat components extending over decades. Time since the last fire strongly influences the distribution and abundance of many species and the structure of plant and animal communities. Animal species display a discrete set of generalized responses to time since fire. Systematic field studies and modeling are beginning to reveal how spatial variation in fire regimes (‘pyrodiversity’) at different scales shapes biodiversity. Pyrodiversity includes variation in the extent of post-fire habitats, the diversity of post-fire age-classes and their configuration. At regional scales, a desirable mix of fire histories for biodiversity conservation includes a combination of early, mid and late post-fire age-classes, weighted toward later seral stages that provide critical habitat for threatened species. Biodiversity is also influenced by interactions between fire and other drivers, including land clearing, rainfall, herbivory and predation. Extensive clearing for agriculture has altered the nature and impact of fire, and facilitated invasion by pest species that modify fuels, fire regimes and post-fire recovery. Given the natural and anthropogenic drivers of fire and the consequences of their interactions, we highlight opportunities for conserving mallee ecosystems. These include learning from and fostering Indigenous knowledge of fire, implementing actions that consider synergies between fire and other processes, and strategic monitoring of fire, biodiversity and other drivers to guide place-based, adaptive management under climate change.

Land-Related Conflicts in Uchagga, 1960-2000

Utafiti ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-53
Author(s):  
Reginald Elias Kirey
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Family Conflicts ◽  
Land Conflicts ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Land Scarcity ◽  
Kilimanjaro Region ◽  
Level I ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Political Economy Approach

Land scarcity and its related conflicts are a serious problem facing the Chagga people of Moshi Rural District in the Kilimanjaro region. The problem started during the colonial period when a massive amount of land was grabbed by the colonial governments and some was acquired by colonial missionaries. As a result, the Chagga were dispossessed of the land they had reserved for future use. Although much of the land alienated by the colonial authorities was nationalised after independence, the problem of land scarcity lingered, due to population pressure. The net result of this situation was an increased incidence of land grabbing, encroachment, eviction, misdistribution of land, and perpetuation of family conflicts including gender-related injustices. Post-colonial agrarian reform policies such as villagization and liberalisation created the tendency to privatize land and intensify the market for it, which exacerbated conflicts over land at the local level. I argue that land scarcity, as a cause of land-related conflicts, resulted not only from population pressure, but also from competitive land use as well as political and cultural factors. My argument is premised on the assumption that the forces behind land-related conflicts in Africa, as observed by Ward Anseeuw and Chris Alden (2010), do not behave logically. The paper sheds light on the complexity of land conflicts by analysing their political, economic, cultural and historical dimensions. The political economy approach, normative quest theory and scarcity school of thought is used to analyse the complexity of the land crisis in Uchagga.

Social landscapes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Natural Rock ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Field Systems

In 1960 a rock climber found a small Middle Bronze Age pot wedged in a cleft in the rock halfway down the eastern face of Crow’s Buttress, a granite outcrop on the southern edge of Dartmoor in Devon (Pettit 1974, 92). The Middle Bronze Age was a period during which extensive field systems were constructed on Dartmoor (Fleming 1988). As we shall see later in this chapter, these have often been thought to indicate the intensification of agriculture and an increasing concern to define land ownership in response to population pressure (e.g. Barrett 1980a; 1994, 148–9; Bradley 1984, 9; Yates 2007, 120–1; English 2013, 139–40). Such models imply the commodification of the natural world: the landscape is viewed primarily as a resource for economic exploitation. Yet this small pot calls such assumptions into question, for it can surely be best interpreted as an offering to spirit guardians or ancestors associated with a striking natural rock formation. This hints at a quite different way of engaging with and understanding the landscape. In this chapter we will explore the links between people and landscape, beginning with the monumental landscapes of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, moving then to consider what the appearance of field systems during the Middle and Late Bronze Age tells us about human–environment relationships during the later part of the period, and finally considering some of the ways in which animals were incorporated into the social worlds of Bronze Age communities. Funerary and ceremonial monuments of various sorts are the most eye-catching feature of the Early Bronze Age landscape and have dominated our interpretations of the period. By contrast, as we have seen in Chapter 4, settlement evidence of this date is relatively sparse. This, and recent isotope analyses of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age inhumation burials (Jay et al. 2012; Parker Pearson et al. 2016), suggest a significant degree of residential mobility.

scholarly journals Accelerating land cover change in West Africa over four decades as population pressure increased

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie M. Herrmann ◽  
Martin Brandt ◽  
Kjeld Rasmussen ◽  
Rasmus Fensholt
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Human Footprint ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Change Intensity

AbstractRapid population growth in West Africa has exerted increasing pressures on land resources, leading to observable changes in the land cover and land use. However, spatially explicit and thematically detailed quantitative analyses of land cover change over long time periods and at regional scale have been lacking. Here we present a change intensity analysis of a Landsat-based, visually interpreted, multi-date (1975, 2000, 2013) land cover dataset of West Africa, stratified into five bioclimatic sub-regions. Change intensities accelerated over time and increased from the arid to the sub-humid sub-regions, as did population densities. The area occupied by human-dominated land cover categories more than doubled from 493,000 km2 in 1975 to 1,121,000 km2 in 2013. Land cover change intensities within 10 km of new settlement locations exceeded the region-wide average by up to a factor of three, substantiating the significant role of population pressure as a force of change. The spatial patterns of the human footprint in West Africa, however, suggest that not only population pressure but also changing socioeconomic conditions and policies shape the complexity of land cover outcomes.

scholarly journals PRINCIPLES OF SOVIET MODERNISM IN THE ENSEMBLE OF THE SQUARE NAMED AFTER PLEVEN IN ROSTOV-ON-DON

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
A. Ivanova-Ilyicheva ◽  
N. Sidorenko
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Functional Relationship ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Town ◽  
Economic Considerations

The current desire for compaction of the urban environment is dictated primarily by economic considerations that have changed perceptions of the value of urban development. This leads to the gradual destruction of one of the most important characteristics of Soviet modernism architecture – the aesthetic and functional relationship between the architectural object and the natural environment. Over the past decades, in the regions, including in the South of Russia, the loss of individual structures with artistic value and the entire urban planning solutions occurs. The example is the ensemble of the park named after the Pleven city (Pleven’s ensemble) in Rostov-on-Don. The article is devoted to its studying. The paper provides a retrospective analysis of the gradual formation of the Pleven’s ensemble. The author reveals the architectural, artistic and volume-compositional features of the structures that form it: the square, the park named after the town of Pleven, Bulvar Druzhby, Museum of international friendship, “Pleven” cinema and the supermarket. Spatial relationships between the studied objects and the environment are determined. The field studies define the modern state within the ensemble of objects, and the existing town-planning situation is fixed. It reflects the loss of spatial relations and features of the formation of the urban environment, which are characteristic of Soviet modernism.

Land Resources and Constraints to Crop Production

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Greenland ◽  
P. J. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Soil Degradation ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
World Population ◽  
Land Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Potential Population ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Do So

Several assessments have been made which indicate that if adequate inputs are used, the extent of land resources is sufficient to support a world population in excess of 8 billion (Buringh and Van Heemst, 1977; Higgins ct al., 1982; de Vries et al., 1995; Dyson, 1996). There have also been many dire warnings that the methods that must be used to produce the necessary crops will lead to soil degradation and environmental pollution, as a result of which it will be impossible to sustain the present population, let alone a much greater one (Brown, 1988; Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1990; Myers, 1991; Ehrlich et al., 1993; Brown and Kane, 1995). The most detailed of these various studies is that by FAO, “Potential Population Supporting Capacity of Lands in the Developing World” (Higgins et al., 1982). Although the authors reached the conclusion that the soils of the world were able to support a population in excess of 8 billion, it was also concluded that, in 1976, 19 countries were “at risk” because they will not be able to produce sufficient food for their population in the year 2000, even at “high levels” of inputs; 36 were at risk because they could not do so at intermediate levels; and no fewer than 65 could not do so at low levels, which is all that most of them could afford. The latest estimate of the number of countries at risk at low levels of input is 82. Thus, while the world may not be on the brink of the Malthusian precipice, there are several countries that are. Rwanda, which has the highest population density of any country in Africa, appears to have fallen over the brink. At low levels of inputs, and with population pressure driving fanners to exploit soils, soil degradation and a decline in productivity are inevitable. Thus, there are many who believe that whatever practicable methods are used, it will not be possible to produce the crops necessary to support the world population. Borgstrom (1969), for instance, stated that “the world . . . is on the verge of the biggest famine in history. . . . Such a famine will have massive proportions and affect hundreds of millions, perhaps billions. By 1984 it will dwarf and overshadow most of the issues and anxieties that now attract attention.” The fact that this did not happen, just as the prophets of doom from Malthus on have so far been proved wrong, has led many others to assume that there is unlikely to be a continuing problem of food production, although many continue to predict massive famines in the near future.

Out of the Ashes

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory L. Simon
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Fuel Load ◽  
Vulnerable Communities ◽  
Tunnel Fire ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Risk Areas ◽  
Fire Area ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Economic Considerations

This chapter continues the discussion of post-disaster reconstruction and fire mitigation efforts by presenting two examples that illustrate the continued extraction of profits from these high-risk areas. First, home reconstruction data in California and Colorado reveal that rebuilt homes are both bigger and more proximate to one another than prefire structures. Not only do these larger homes increase property values; they also increase overall fuel load and potential fire spread between structures. The chapter reviews important political economic considerations leading to this reconstruction outcome that has in turn injected more fuel and value onto the landscape. Second, it considers the emergence of the private firefighting industry to illustrate yet another group seeking to extract profits from high-risk residential landscapes across the West. The chapter shows that fire-prone landscapes like the Tunnel Fire area are notable for their ability to generate wealth both before and after hazard events. Over time financial opportunism has contributed to the formation of vulnerable communities while simultaneously incentivizing efforts to mitigate those very same risks. This marks a financially viable self-fulfilling prophecy: profits in production, profits in protection.

Use of fish production per unit biomass ratios for measuring the productive capacity of fish habitats

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 (8) ◽  
pp. 1657-1667 ◽  
Author(s):  
R G Randall ◽  
C K Minns
Keyword(s):  
Life History Theory ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Productivity Index ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Fish Production ◽  
Size At Maturity ◽  
Eastern Canada ◽  
Habitat Productivity ◽  
Species Specific

Species-specific production rate per unit biomass (P/B, per year) ratios were calculated for 79 freshwater fish species of eastern Canada. P/B (per year) ratios were calculated using two methods, which were based on allometry with fish weight-at-maturity and life expectancy, respectively. P/B (per year) values obtained by the two methods were significantly correlated, as expected from life history theory, since the two predictors (longevity, size-at-maturity) were themselves correlated. Species-specific P/B (per year) ratios were also significantly correlated with field observations of P/B from published sources. The estimation of P/B based on allometry with fish size is recommended because of its utility; the predictive equation is P/B (per year) = 2.64Wmat-0.35, where Wmat is weight-at-maturity. Both the coefficient 2.64 and the exponent -0.35 of this equation are provisional and require further validation from field studies of fish production. More accurate estimates of P/B are possible if population-specific information on size-at-maturity or mean size is known. The product of average fish biomass and estimated P/B coefficients (habitat productivity index (HPI) = B × P/B) is a proposed measure of habitat productive capacity.

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