thoughts from geography
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Stable States and Thresholds
Disturbances can result in the collapse of the relationships between adaptive cycles at different scales. The collapse occurs when the relationship is pushed past a threshold. Systems reorganise themselves and produce a new identity as new relationships are formed. Thresholds therefore determine the system identity.
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System Disturbances
To improve the resilience of a system, potential perturbations must be identified along with their foreseen effects. Managers will not be able to identify all the disturbances that a system can undergo or the effects that could result. Surprise events are inevitable and could be beyond the scale of influence of managers.
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Historic Indicators
As discussed adaptive cycles function at a variety of scales. Each component of a system also has its own adaptive cycle and they are linked in a spatial and temporal context. Interactions between the cycles involves the sharing of information or matter and as long as transfers are maintained, the system overall is sustained. Systems…
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Cycle Assessment
The system has shown it is capable to attract more tourists and for longer periods of stay and this has led to an increase in the value of takings. Employment figures too have risen over the 2000-2009 period. Unemployed persons have remained steady and the trend for unemployment rates was, until 2008, down. The HPI…
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Adaptive Cycle Indicators
A system’s resilience can only be assessed by determining its current position within the adaptive cycle. Socio-economic indicators will be used to determine the relative position of individual components within the cycle and a judgement made on the relative position of the focal system itself.
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Component and Service Scales
Systems change over time and space, it is unavoidable. To manage resilience, understanding that systems change across and influence multiple scales is needed. Scales above the focal system are also significant to maintaining resilience.
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The Focal System
In order to ascertain the resilience of a system it must first be defined and bound. Port Phillip Bay as the focal system will include the water body and the major conurbations around its coast (Figure 5).
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The Fertile Crescent
Domestic Domestication is the most important development in human history over the last 13,000 years (Diamond, 2002; Bell, et al., 2005). Domestication is distinct from most means of environmental manipulation such as cultivation, in which wild species are sown in fields of choice. Domestication takes plants and raises those with desirable traits (Weiss, et al., 2006).
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The EU Balancing Act
The institutions of the European Union (EU) are products of the aspirations that drive the EU’s desires. They exist to ensure that the will of the ‘community’ is enforced and to project power that no individual member state can do alone (Peterson & Shackleton, 2002). To achieve this seems an impossible task amongst 27 members,…
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Permafrost – Inuvik, Canada
Permafrost is a thickness soil or bedrock beneath the surface that has been permanently frozen for at least 2 years, with mean ground temperatures less than 0ᵒC. (Holden, 2008; Davis, 2001). Continuous and Discontinuous are the two main types. Washburn (1979) indicates that up to 26% of the Earth is affected by permafrost. Most of…
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