V. B. Sochava Institute of Geography

A warming climate is expected to have an impact on the magnitude and timing of river floods; however, no consistent large-scale climate change signal in observed flood magnitudes has been identified so far. We analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past five decades, using a pan-European database from 4262 observational hydrometric stations, and found clear patterns of change in flood timing. Warmer temperatures have led to earlier spring snowmelt floods throughout northeastern Europe; delayed winter storms associated with polar warming have led to later winter floods around the North Sea and some sectors of the Mediterranean coast; and earlier soil moisture maxima have led to earlier winter floods in western Europe. Our results highlight the existence of a clear climate signal in flood observations at the continental scale.

INTRODUCTION: Lower prevalence rates of allergic diseases in rural as compared with urban populations have been interpreted as indicating an effect of air pollution. However, little is known about other factors of the rural environment which may determine the development of atopic sensitization and related diseases. OBJECTIVE: The authors tested the hypothesis that children growing up on a farm were less likely to be sensitized to common aerollergens and to suffer from allergic diseases than children living in the same villages but in nonfarming families. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Three age groups of schoolchildren (6-7 years, 9-11 years, 13-15 years) living in three rural communities were included in the analyses. An exhaustive questionnaire was filled in by 1620 (86.0%) parents. A blood sample was provided by 404 (69.3%) of the 13-15 year olds to determine specific IgE antibodies against six common aeroallergens. RESULTS: Farming as parental occupation was reported for 307 children (19.0%). After adjustment for potential covariates such as family history of asthma and allergies, parental education, number of siblings, maternal smoking, pet ownership, indoor humidity and heating fuels, farming as parental occupation was significantly associated with lower rates of sneezing attacks during pollen season (adjusted OR 0.34, 95% CI 0.12-0.89) and atopic sensitization (adjusted OR 0.31, 95% CI 0.13-0.73) whereas the association with wheeze (adjusted OR 0.77 95% CI 0.38-1.58) and itchy skin rash (adjusted OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.49-1.50) was not statistically significant. The risk of atopic sensitization was lower in children from full-time farmers (adjusted OR 0.24, 95% CI 0.09-0.66) than from part-time farmers (adjusted OR 0.54, 95% CI 0.15-1.96). CONCLUSION: Factors directly or indirectly related to farming as parental occupation decrease the risk of children becoming atopic and developing symptoms of allergic rhinitis.

Analyses of the year‐month mean maximum and minimum surface thermometric record have now been updated and expanded to cover three large countries in the Northern Hemisphere (the contiguous United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China). They indicate that most of the warming which has occurred in these regions over the past four decades can be attributed to an increase of mean minimum (mostly nighttime) temperatures. Mean maximum (mostly daytime) temperatures display little or no warming. In the USA and the USSR (no access to data in China) similar characteristics are also reflected in the changes of extreme seasonal temperatures, e.g., increase of extreme minimum temperatures and little or no change in extreme maximum temperatures. The continuation of increasing minimum temperatures and little overall change of the maximum leads to a decrease of the mean (and extreme) temperature range, an important measure of climate variability. The cause(s) of the asymmetric diurnal changes are uncertain, but there is some evidence to suggest that changes in cloud cover plays a direct role (where increases in cloudiness result in reduced maximum and higher minimum temperatures). Regardless of the exact cause(s), these results imply that either: (1) climate model projections considering the expected change in the diurnal temperature range with increased levels of the greenhouse gases are underestimating (overestimating) the rise of the daily minimum (maximum) relative to the maximum (minimum), or (2) the observed warming in a considerable portion of the Northern Hemisphere landmass is significantly affected by factors unrelated to an enhanced anthropogenically‐induced greenhouse effect.

Abstract Luminescence dating is unique amongst geochronological methods in dating the deposition of sediments based upon the properties of the constituent minerals. For Quaternary sediments the event being dated is the last exposure of the grains to daylight, and an implicit assumption is that this exposure was sufficient to remove any pre‐existing signal. Until recently it has been difficult to test this assumption, other than by dating samples from a given depositional context with an age that is known from independent methods. There have been a series of technological and methodological developments in the past 5–10 yr that make it possible to undertake many replicate measurements of the luminescence from a single sample and hence to explicitly test whether for a specific sample all the grains had their luminescence signal reset at deposition. This allows the reliability of the luminescence age to be assessed. Where all the grains in a sample were not exposed to sufficient daylight to reset their luminescence signal, the apparent age will be an average value of the luminescence from all the grains measured at one time. Where many grains are measured simultaneously, this will overestimate the depositional age. The distribution of apparent age can be made clear by reducing the number of grains being measured in a given experiment, ultimately to the point of measuring individual sand‐sized mineral grains. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

For routine luminescence dating applications the commonly used Risø readers are bundled with analysis software, such as Viewer or Analyst. These software solutions are appropriate for most of the regular dating and publication jobs, and enable assessment of luminescence characteristics and provide basic statistical data treatment. However, for further statistical analysis and data treatments, this software may reach its limits. In such cases, open programming languages are a more appropriate approach. Here, we present the R package ‘Luminescence’ for a more flexible handling of luminescence data and related plotting purposes, using the statistical programming language R. The R language as well as the package and the source code are provided under the General Public License (GPL) conditions and are available for free. The basic functionality of the package is described along with three application examples. This package is not an alternative to the existing software (Analyst, Viewer) but may provide a collection of additional tools to analyse luminescence data and serve as a platform for further contributions

Abstract This study provides a detailed structural glaciological analysis of changes in surface structures on the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula prior to its collapse in February–March 2002. Mapped features include the ice-shelf front, rifts, crevasses, longitudinal linear surface structures and meltwater features. We define domains on the ice shelf related to glacier source areas and demonstrate that, prior to collapse, the central Larsen B ice shelf consisted of four sutured flow units fed by Crane, Jorum, Punchbowl and Hektoria/Green/Evans glaciers. Between these flow units were ‘suture zones’ of thinner ice where the feeder glaciers merged. Prior to collapse, large open-rift systems were present offshore of Foyn Point and Cape Disappointment. These rifts became more pronounced in the years preceding break-up, and ice blocks in the rifts rotated because of the strong lateral shear in this zone. Velocity mapping of the suture zones indicates that the major rifts were not present more than about 20 years ago. We suggest that the ice shelf was preconditioned to collapse by partial rupturing of the sutures between flow units. This, we believe, was the result of ice-shelf front retreat during 1998–2000, reducing the lateral resistive stress on the upstream parts of the shelf and glacier flow units, ice-shelf thinning and pre-shelf-break-up glacier acceleration.

Abstract Aims Vegetation‐plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co‐occurring in the same community. Vegetation‐plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level. Results sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community‐weighted means and variances of traits using gap‐filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community‐weighted means of key traits. Conclusions The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale.

Abstract Accumulation of snow under forest canopies is known to decline with increasing canopy density and leaf area because of snow interception and sublimation in the canopy. Seasonal snow accumulation measurements, collected over a decade from various forest stands in western Canada, were used to test and develop methods to relate forest snow accumulation to stand properties and observations of either small‐clearing seasonal snow accumulation or seasonal snowfall. At sub‐stand scales, the variability of seasonal snow accumulation was not well related to stand leaf area, seasonal interception or small‐clearing seasonal snow accumulation. At the stand scale, physically based snow interception equations predicted seasonal snow accumulation from the stand leaf area and the seasonal snow accumulation or snowfall in adjacent clearings. A simple parametric form of these equations showed the sensitivity of seasonal snow accumulation to leaf area at the forest stand scale and suggested a relationship to extrapolate snow accumulation or snowfall measurements from clearings to forests. These relationships, developed from Canadian boreal forest observations, are consistent with Kuz'min's (1960. Formirovanie Snezhnogo Pokrova i Metody Opredeleniya Snegozapasov . Gidrometeoizdat: Leningrad) relationship between accumulation and canopy density derived from Russian observations, suggesting a good degree of transferability. Copyright © 2002 Crown in the right of Canada. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Efforts are increasingly being made to classify the world’s wetland resources, an important ecosystem and habitat that is diminishing in abundance. There are multiple remote sensing classification methods, including a suite of nonparametric classifiers such as decision-tree (DT), rule-based (RB), and random forest (RF). High-resolution satellite imagery can provide more specificity to the classified end product, and ancillary data layers such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, and hydrogeomorphic layers such as distance-to-a-stream can be coupled to improve overall accuracy (OA) in wetland studies. In this paper, we contrast three nonparametric machine-learning algorithms (DT, RB, and RF) using a large field-based dataset (n = 228) from the Selenga River Delta of Lake Baikal, Russia. We also explore the use of ancillary data layers selected to improve OA, with a goal of providing end users with a recommended classifier to use and the most parsimonious suite of input parameters for classifying wetland-dominated landscapes. Though all classifiers appeared suitable, the RF classification outperformed both the DT and RB methods, achieving OA >81%. Including a texture metric (homogeneity) substantially improved the classification OA. However, including vegetation/soil/water metrics (based on WorldView-2 band combinations), hydrogeomorphic data layers, and elevation data layers to increase the descriptive content of the input parameters surprisingly did not markedly improve the OA. We conclude that, in most cases, RF should be the classifier of choice. The potential exception to this recommendation is under the circumstance where the end user requires narrative rules to best manage his or her resource. Though not useful in this study, continuously increasing satellite imagery resolution and band availability suggests the inclusion of ancillary contextual data layers such as soil metrics or elevation data, the granularity of which may define its utility in subsequent wetland classifications.

Beginning with Friedrich Ratzel, the founders of migration studies all mentioned the natural environment as an important determinant of human mobility. As migration theories grew in coherence and complexity over the course of the twentieth century, however, environmental considerations generally disappeared from explanations of displacement. They would reappear in a largely unconnected discourse stressing the threat of future waves of “environmental migrants” in the end-of-the-century context of climate change anxiety. This alarmist stance was heavily criticized by several migration scholars during the same period of time as a corpus of empirical studies emerged that reconsidered the possible impact of the environment on migration. The purpose of this article is to analyze the intellectual history of this swing of the pendulum. The first part examines the rationale for the temporary disappearance of the environment from migration studies, as this major shift has not yet been fully or systematically studied. The second part considers the renewal of interest in environmental migration. Finally, the last part argues that although a solid body of new research documents the contemporary migration–environment nexus, additional work is needed to reembed the environment more firmly within migration theories, taking into account the increased focus on the nature–society nexus, which has recently expanded in geography.

Prevalence rates of childhood asthma and allergy have been on the increase for several decades. The present study investigated whether this trend continued during the 1990s in adolescents living in Switzerland. Between 1992 and 2000, the change in prevalence of specific immunoglobulin E to aeroallergens, asthma symptoms and hay fever symptoms assessed by parents' and students' answers to the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood questions was investigated using three cross-sectional surveys. In total 1,324 (74.9%), 1,668 (80.6%) and 1,250 (73.9%) adolescents participated. Prevalence rates of asthma and current asthmatic symptoms remained constant, irrespective of whether the assessment was based on parental questionnaires or the student's self-completed written or video questionnaires (students' report of current wheeze 8.8, 7.3, and 8.3%). Similarly, no further increase was observed for reported hay fever rates and allergic sensitisation rates (positive multiscreen allergy test, SX1-test: 34.6, 38.9, and 35.6%, respectively). Although time trends in the occurrence of a series of known risk factors were recorded, none of these factors had a significant impact on asthma and allergy prevalence over time. No further increase in asthma and allergy rates occurred during the 1990s in adolescents living in Switzerland. However, to adequately assess the trend a longer period of observation is needed.

The Scientific Outcome was produced by participants in the first-ever IPCC-IPBES co-sponsored workshop which took place in December 2020. This workshop is placed in the context of recent international agreements including the Paris Agreement, the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and ongoing preparation for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that converge on solving the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss as essential to support human well-being. The Scientific Outcome further develops and substantiates the conclusions of the Synopsis, summarizes the emerging state of knowledge involving climate change and biodiversity with the objective to inform decision making and highlight options for action, and to identify knowledge gaps to be filled by scientific research. The Scientific Outcome includes seven sections, the references outlining the evidence reviewed within those sections and the report glossary.

“Thermokarst” as a process is the melting of ground ice and the consequent formation of depressions. Thermokarst landforms depend on the tectonic regime of a region, the ground ice content, and the degree to which the permafrost equilibrium is disturbed. Thermokarst forms are especially prominent in the lowlands of the subnival region with permafrost. The authors distinguish two modes of thermokarst development—permafrost back-wearing and down-wearing—based on their investigations in Siberia. The first mode is characteristic of a more dissected relief. In this case permafrost back-wearing takes place and the process is characterized by development of gullies, thermocirques, and parallel retreat of steep walls with ice veins, resulting in a lower lowland level. The second mode of thermokarst development is due to permafrost melting from above and is typical of a flat undissected relief, mainly that of watershed regions. characteristic forms are depressions with steep slopes and flat floors (alases). Thermokarst valleys develop through coalescence of alases. Thermokarst processes destroy the lowland relief of large areas and create characteristic forms resulting in a lower lowland level. Thus thermokarst represents a special type of lowland development in permafrost conditions.

Abstract Results obtained during the International Polar Year (IPY) on the thermal state of permafrost and the active layer in the Antarctic are presented, forming part of ANTPAS (‘Antarctic Permafrost and Soils’), which was one of the key projects developed by the International Permafrost Association and the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research for the IPY. The number of boreholes for permafrost and active‐layer monitoring was increased from 21 to 73 during the IPY, while CALM‐S sites to monitor the active layer were increased from 18 to 28. Permafrost temperatures during the IPY were slightly below 0°C in the South Shetlands near sea‐level, showing that this area is near the climatic boundary of permafrost and has the highest sensitivity to climate change in the region. Permafrost temperatures were much lower in continental Antarctica: from the coast to the interior and with increasing elevation they ranged between −13.3°C and −18.6°C in Northern Victoria Land, from −17.4°C to −22.5°C in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and down to −23.6°C at high elevation on Mount Fleming (Ross Island). Other monitored regions in continental Antarctica also showed cold permafrost: Queen Maud Land exhibited values down to −17.8°C on nunataks, while in Novolazarevskaya (Schirmacher Oasis) at 80 m a.s.l. the permafrost temperature was −8.3°C. The coastal stations of Molodeznaya at Enderby Land showed permafrost temperatures of −9.8°C, Larsemann Hills – Progress Station in the Vestfold Hills region – recorded −8.5°C, and Russkaya in Marie Byrd Land, −10.4°C. This snapshot obtained during the IPY shows that the range of ground temperatures in the Antarctic is greater than in the Arctic. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In recent debates on the regulation and governance of contemporary capitalism and its territorial form, there is an emerging consensus that successful economic development is contingent on a movement away from the nation-state and policy interventions at the national scale toward subnational institutional frameworks and supports. In effect, both an ‘institutional turn’ and a ‘scalar turn’ appear to be occurring, through which the heterogeneity of economic growth may be explored. The author scrutinises these claims by examining what is becoming known as ‘new regionalist’ orthodoxy in economic development. This orthodoxy is particularly powerful because its concerns for resolving economic and democratic deficit by harnessing the regional scale are supported by academics, politicians, and policymakers alike. Focusing on England's Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), a radical initiative in regional economic governance, the author argues for a need to rethink the nation-state and the processes through which its intervention is being scaled. RDAs have been given a remit to enhance economic and social development, but rather than their providing decentralised ‘partnerships for prosperity’, a number of contradictions and tensions are revealed. These indicate that England's own brand of new regionalism is heavily steered by political fiat and central government dictate. To inform new regionalist debates, the author consequently argues that a new (regional) scale of state power is emerging and RDAs are forming part of a political strategy aimed at rescaling, instead of resolving, an economic and democratic deficit. The author concludes by calling for a closer engagement in political – economic geography between state theory, crisis theory, and the scaling of state power and suggests a need to formulate a fourth-cut theory of crisis.

This report presents the main conclusions of the first-ever IPCC-IPBES co-sponsored workshop which took place in December 2020. The workshop explored diverse facets of the interaction between climate and biodiversity, from current trends to the role and implementation of nature-based solutions and the sustainable development of human society. This report is underpinned by the Scientific Outcome, which includes seven sections, the complete references and the report glossary. You can find the Scientific Outcome here https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4659158

Abstract Many glacier snouts in the Himalaya are known to be stagnant and exhibiting low surface gradients, conditions that are conducive to the formation of glacial lakes impounded either by the terminal moraine or by the remnant glacier snout. In this study, we use interferometry and feature-tracking techniques to quantify the extent of stagnation in 20 glaciers across the Everest (Qomolangma; Sagarmatha) region, and subsequently we examine the relationship between local catchment topography and ice dynamics. The results show that only one of the studied glaciers, Kangshung Glacier, is dynamic across its entire surface, with flow rates greater than 40 m a −1 being recorded in high-elevation areas. Twelve other glaciers show some evidence of flow, but are generally characterized by long, stagnant tongues, indicating widespread recession and in situ decay. The remaining seven glaciers show no evidence of flow in any of the available datasets. Hypsometric data suggest that catchment topography plays an important role in controlling glacier flow regimes, with those fed by wide, high-altitude accumulation areas showing the most extensive active ice, and those originating at low elevations exhibiting large areas of stagnant ice. Surface profiles extracted from a SRTM digital elevation model indicate that stagnant snouts are characterized by very low (<2°) surface angles and that down-wasting is the prevalent ablation pattern in the study area.

The past decade has seen a revival of environmental determinism in palaeoenvironmental research, with palaeoclimatic shifts implicated in the collapse of many past civilizations. Implicit in these studies is a belief that the observed cultural transitions can be causally related to the magnitude of climatic change. However, examination of the processes of these declines suggests that many exhibit patterns characteristic of complexity cascading within self‐organized systems. If so, the nonlinear nature of these systems’ responses to external forcing means that the assumption of causality in many of these cases should be considered questionable.

Duller, G. A. T. (2007).Assessing the error on equivalent dose estimates derived from single aliquot regenerative dose measurements. Ancient TL, 25(1), 15-24.

Abstract On 20 September 2002, an enormous rock/ice slide and subsequent mud-flow occurred on the northern slope of the Kazbek massif, Northern Ossetia, Russian Caucasus. It started on the north- northeast wall of Dzhimarai-Khokh (4780 ma.s.l.) and seriously affected the valley of Genaldon/ Karmadon. Immediate governmental actions, available scientific information, first reconstructions, hazard assessments and monitoring activities as well as initial expert judgments/recommendations are documented in order to enable more detailed analyses and modelling of the event by the wider scientific community. Among the most remarkable aspects related to this event are (1) the relation between the recent event and somewhat smaller but quite similar events that occurred earlier in historical times (1835, 1902), (2) the interactions between unstable local geological structures and complex geothermal and hydraulic conditions in the starting zone with permafrost, cold to polythermal hanging glaciers and volcanic effects (hot springs) in close contact with each other, (3) the erosion and incorporation of a debris-covered valley glacier largely enhancing the sliding volume of rocks, ice, firn, snow, water and probably air to a total of about 100 × 10 6 m 3 , and (4) the astonishingly high flow velocities (up to 300 km h -1 ) and enormous length of travel path (18 km plus 15 km of debris/mud-flow). This extraordinary case illustrates that large catastrophic events in high mountain regions typically involve a multitude of factors and require integrated consideration of complex chains of processes, a task which must be undertaken by qualified groups of experts.