Showing papers in "Geographical Review in 1975"

Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values

Abstract: What are the links between environment and world view? Topophilia, the affective bond between people and place, is the primary theme of this book that examines environmental perceptions and values at different levels: the species, the group, and the individual. Yi-Fu Tuan holds culture and environment and topophilia and environment as distinct in order to show how they mutually contribute to the formation of values. Topophilia examines the search for environment in the city, suburb, countryside, and wilderness from a dialectical perspective, distinguishes different types of environmental experience, and describes their character.

El ni&o 1972: its climatic, ecological, human, and economic implications

Abstract: non. January brought a cessation of the warm-water advance which, along with a normal amount of rainfall, still seemed to be nothing more than a typical summer development in the coastal departments of Tumbes and Piura. By February, conditions had changed: unusually warm (more than 24?C) waters suddenly appeared along the Talara coast as well as ten miles off the coast between Punta Aguja and Salaverry. Yet heavy rains had not been reported. By March, everyone was aware that a strong El Ninio was affecting the coast of northern Peru. Near the shore tropical waters of about 25?C reached as far south as Chimbote, whereas offshore and southward to I2?S the superficial water temperatures rose to more than 24?C. At the same time, heavy rains fell on the coastal lowlands from Tumbes to Salaverry, flooding valuable agricultural land and damaging structures and dwellings. The rains continued through April and May, and not until then did the warm waters begin to withdraw from the coast in a northerly direction. By that

The Overdevelopment of Carriacou

Abstract: HT HE tiny island of Carriacou in the southern Caribbean has white sand beaches, swaying palms, and clear blue waters-the requisite elements of a vacation paradise. It also has less aesthetic though no less typical West Indian characteristics: a high human population density, an island environment permanently scarred by a plantation history, and a transient labor force. Among other factors, occasional drought and accelerated soil erosion contribute to Carriacou's continuously declining carrying capacity. The descendants of plantation slaves continue to occupy the island, and most men who do not emigrate permanently become part-time labor migrants in order to help support Carriacou's human population. Variables bearing on Carriacouans' livelihoods are therefore largely external, outside the control of local islanders, and relatively unpredictable. Evidence from field research and from the sparse archival material pertaining to Carriacou helps explain the islanders' pattern of oscillating labor migration. Eighteenth-century plantation clearing disrupted Carriacou's existing ecosystem and caused severe ecological damage. Subsequent subsistence cropping and overgrazing have been responsible for continued environmental degradation. Carriacou has thus become increasingly less able to support a human population. As a response to ecological change, small island size, and economic dislocation, Carriacouans have extended their livelihood patterns in order to tap a wide variety of wage sources, a necessary though potentially hazardous adaptation. In a broad sense, we can say that Carriacou has been "overdeveloped." This term is chosen not for its conceptual value but to question invalid stereotypes of ex-colonial areas, stereotypes that are particularly useless in the case of the Commonwealth Caribbean.' For too long we have employed a naive "developed versus underdeveloped" dichotomy of world regions that is laden with important assumptions. The "developed" North Atlantic world has been portrayed as hardworking, progressive, and blessed with a happy combination of superior technology and resources. In direct contrast, "underdeveloped" areas have been stereotyped as inhabited by economically inert peasantries that have lagged behind on an absolute scale of development. Economic improvement of the latter areas has thus been considered a matter of catching up. Within the last decade, a growing number of social scientists have challenged the theoretical separation of developed and underdeveloped areas, asserting that economic imperialism created and has increased the economic

Origins of Colonial Transportation in Mexico

Abstract: S TUDIES of transportation networks have followed at least two approaches. In one, the existence of the network is accepted, and analysis of its structure and linkages is emphasized, often using a technique such as graph theory.1 In the other, identification of the processes that account for the particular location of route segments is the central concern.2 Although historical in perspective, such locational studies often appear to cover more extensive time periods than might be thought necessary to explain the forces that have produced the spatial configurations of contemporary networks. The reason for this discrepancy seems to lie in the continuity, or inertia, of principal routes whose location, once established, is perpetuated by the attraction of additional on-line economic support beyond that originally generated between terminals. This continuity is weakened or disrupted only at certain critical moments, principally during the introduction of a major transportation innovation, whose technological requirements dictate a new route alignment, or at times of major cultural and economic change, when new sources of interaction may appear. It is in those moments, often in the distant past, that the original motivation for the location of present-day transport networks must be sought. Such is the case of the route pattern of eastern Mexico. The lines of communication that extend eastward from Mexico City cross a basinstudded high plateau, drop 3,000 meters down the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Madre Oriental from a temperate to a tropical environment, "winding into summer" in the words of Graham Greene, and finally traverse the barranca-sliced gulf lowlands to converge on the port of Veracruz. This represents one of Mexico's principal and oldest transportation axes. For much of the 430-kilometer distance the physical environment places few constraints on route location, but at two points options are limited regardless of technology. On the eastern side of the Valley of Mexico, the peaks of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl form a massive volcanic ridge, the Sierra de Tliloc. Here, routes must either converge on one of two passes or circumvent the

Network Representations of Critical Elements of Pressure Surfaces

Abstract: TJ HE possibility and the desirability of a general spatial systems theory for geography that relates to principles of spatial structure and spatial process at terrestrial scales is a current concern. We have found certain general abstract geometric and topological properties of continuous and everywhere differentiable surfaces to be relevant, informative, productive of additional understandings, and springboards for incisive research in contexts as seemingly different as money, ideas, information, commodity, and population flows,' and the stream orders, hierarchies, and basin nestings of river systems.2 What we offer in this paper are simple extensions to aspects of atmospheric pressure systems. We begin with things about which we entertain fairly firm convictions. A sequence follows which is increasingly speculative but, we hope, also increasingly provocative, in the least pejorative sense of that word. We identify critical elements (points, paths, and areas) of atmospheric pressure surfaces, consider the roles of these elements in the context of flows in the atmosphere, reduce the surface to networks, codify the networks as matrices, and suggest computer-assisted operations on these matrices to produce not only descriptive indices of the connectivities in the system akin to conventional measures in meteorology but also "solutions" to flow problems like those having currency in social science. Final tests of the constructs will require the input of meteorologists concerning physical relationships in the system. A research objective might be to test whether the focusing and channeling of physical quantities from the system into greatly simplified network configurations involve only negligible losses of information so that relevant numerical solutions to simplified forms of the nonlinear partial differential equations of the system (using plausible approximations to initial conditions and boundary values) might be used in programming solutions for forecasting. A more realistic intermediate objective is to obtain critical review and also needed input with respect to atmospheric dynamics. Consider sea-level distribution of pressure for the Northern Hemisphere at a given moment, as illustrated in Figure I, with spatial variations shown by the very well known means of isobars. Each such isobar represents the intersection of an undulating constant-valued atmospheric pressure surface with the sea-level surface. Surfaces intersect along a line. Such a line traces out points of equal value of pressure on the surface on which the variation is to be displayed. Each such sea-level

The Salt Industry of Ming China

Abstract: FOR centuries, salt has been a major industry in China. It is readily available in many parts of the country, and, since it is used regularly by all people as both a seasoning and a preservative, its annual consumption is largely predictable. Salt was first considered an economic good under state monopoly in the seventh century B.C. A tax on salt in the form of a head tax provided the government with a reliable source of revenue. The development of this system of public control reached maturity during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), when from a third to a half of all imperial revenue was derived from the salt tax.1 This paper reconstructs the salt industry in Ming China in its geographical context. It stresses four aspects of the industry: the spatial structure of salt supply, sources of raw materials and methods of production, state control of the salt industry, and the movement and distribution of salt.