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During the middle Pueblo II period, a thriving ceramic distribution network linked the upland areas of northwestern Arizona with the lowland areas of southern Nevada. One kind of pottery transported through this network was Shivwits Ware, made on the southern end of the Shivwits Plateau, Arizona. Despite being located some 115 kilometers (70 mi) from the latter area, middle Pueblo II inhabitants of the Moapa Valley, Nevada, regularly acquired and used Shivwits Ware jars. By the late Pueblo II period, however, this ceramic distribution network had collapsed. This paper explores possible causes of the collapse by investigating changes in settlement patterns and landscape usage on the Shivwits Plateau. These data suggest that the collapse of the ceramic distribution network coincided with a shift in subsistence strategies triggered by climatic changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mangroves are critical in the ecological, economic and social development of coastal rural and urban communities. However, they are under threat by climate change and anthropogenic activities. The Sunda Banda Seascape (SBS), Indonesia, is among the world’s richest regions of mangrove biomass and biodiversity. To inform current and future management strategies, it is critical to provide estimates of how mangroves will respond to climate change in this region. Therefore, this paper utilized spatial analysis with model-based climatic indicators (temperature and precipitation) and mangrove distribution maps to estimate a benchmark for the mangrove biomass of the SBS in six scenarios, namely the Last Inter-glacial Period, the current scenario (1950–2000) and all four projected Representative Concentration Pathways in 2070 due to climate change. Despite mangroves gaining more biomass with climate change (the increase in CO2concentration), this paper highlighted the great proportion of below-ground biomass in mangrove forests. It also showed that the changes in spatial distribution of mangrove biomass became more variable in the context of climate change. As mangroves have been proposed as an essential component of climate change strategies, this study can serve as a baseline for future studies and resource management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The impending form and extent of climate change and its direct impacts present disproportionate challenges for the most socially and economically disadvantaged groups within populations. Evaluating the vulnerability of disadvantaged groups in the context of climate change has presented tremendous theoretical, methodological and policy challenges especially where vulnerability assessment research is focused at the local community level. This study addresses the challenges by developing an interdisciplinary methodology, based on expert knowledge, and uses the state of South Australia as a case study. It focuses on key indicators that measure the exposure of local communities to climate change and socio-economic vulnerabilities of local populations. A main contribution in this study is the novel incorporation of physical, environmental and socio-demographic data sets and extensive use of spatial modelling and estimation methods to spatially define climate change and social vulnerability “hot spots”. This paper assesses vulnerability under moderate and high Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change CO2emission scenarios in order to generate an assessment model to be used before planning is done. The result is the creation of a practical tool through which decision-makers can better understand how the complexity of one's local spatial context influences the unique exposure, which different vulnerable communities have, to the impacts of climate change. This paper presents a useful tool that can be used in the initial assessment phase by planners and policy-makers to better assist those who are limited in their ability to adapt to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Thornthwaite Moisture Index (TMI) is a climate classification used in biophysical and biological studies. A TMI mapping of Victoria/Australia over the century indicated its applicability to assess climate change induced patterns of moisture variability. This paper progresses upon this, developing analytical procedures to assess the quality of the climate data used as input, and to select suitable spatial resolution for the output map. It is argued here that these are interrelated issues, and that the selection of a certain data quality level or a spatial resolution for TMI mapping needs to consider a trade-off between precision and scale. Results indicated that different trade-off options affect the climate classification and, therefore, a proposed framework can be used for non-arbitrary decisions on TMI mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a novel decision support system (DSS) will be introduced, based on geospatial data analyses that we developed for the Hungarian forestry and agricultural sectors. This work was part of a larger research project, whose goal is to evaluate the impacts of projected climate change on forestry and agriculture and to identify potential adaptation options. The proposed DSS integrates various environmental coverages, including topography, vegetation, climate, soils, and hydrology. It also processes time-series data such as meteorological variables. The novelty of the system is its geospatial and geostatistical capability to map species spatial and climate space distribution and yield data using machine learning techniques (Maximum likelihood and Fuzzy logic). The DSS can generate projections, as well as sensitivity and risk assessments, and in this way, it can help to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies. The web-based implementation of the DSS allows decision-makers to directly interact with both current and projected geoinformation. The mechanics and the benefits of the DSS will be demonstrated on a Hungarian county where the system was first implemented as a prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disaster management for urban areas is a growing priority owing to factors such as the relentless migration to cities, unplanned development, changing climate, and increasing operational and maintenance costs. New information and communication technologies offer improved opportunities to address these factors. This paper presents and describes the digital city concept as a means of capturing, analysing and applying (digital) information about the city area, its services, and their design and operation. In particular, the functionality of the digital city can be adapted for managing urban flood disasters. The paper highlights the need to manage the urban stormwater cycle integrated with urban planning. Urban flooding should be mitigated by having a judicious mix of both structural and nonstructural strategies, which are selected with the full participation of all stakeholders. The management of urban flooding is illustrated with application to the tropical island of St Maarten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the use of geographical information systems for predicting the possible implications of future climate change (as suggested by General Circulation Models) on the archaeological resource of selected parts of two major British river systems, the Trent and Yorkshire Ouse. The effects of future climatic change on the historic environment are likely to come from both natural 'system' responses, such as increased bank erosion and valley floor sedimentation, as well as the human adaptive responses selected to manage the impacts of climate change. The models described in this paper allow predictions to be made and quantified about how selected natural and anthropogenic responses may impact upon the archaeological resource. Such approaches, which are relatively rapid to implement and low cost, provide an important management tool for guiding policy makers and heritage managers in the face of changing climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of the third assessment report of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, vulnerability to climate change has become an important research question. Vulnerability assessment on the urban scale has become a major issue. This paper describes a conceptual framework for modelling vulnerability at the urban scale, the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment model. The model is applied to Shanghai, a typical geographically vulnerable and rapidly-urbanizing case study area. Using Arc-GIS, a vulnerability map was created for understanding the spatial dynamics of climate change vulnerability in Shanghai. An additional process, combined with the weighting coefficients, produced different vulnerable areas. Based on the vulnerability map, we located several high risk areas. The vulnerability of each area was assessed. Identifying the risks in each case and associating them with a specific region can be useful for decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will present research on the vulnerability mapping of coastal archaeological sites currently being undertaken in Northern Ireland. The ultimate aim of this research is improve current predictions of where archaeological sites and landscapes will be at risk in the future from coastal erosion. The initial stage of this approach uses a suite of oblique aerial photographs to construct a baseline of eroding locations and coastal geomorphology. The erosion baseline can then be integrated with existing historic environment records to obtain a coarse first-pass archaeological vulnerability assessment. Subsequent stages can then use this assessment to prioritize future mitigation such as field surveys or monitoring exercises, or conduct further refinements of vulnerability classifications by incorporating information on site type and positioning on a local scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and human activities have changed a number of characteristics of river flow in the northwest of China. Numerous problems such as water resource shortage, drying up of rivers, water pollution are the direct consequences of these changes. In this paper, we used the example of Yulin city in northwest China to assess the spatio-temporal characteristics and driving forces of annual river flow changes. Our research was based on the long-term time series of hydrological data from 1956 to 2005, to analyse annual flow in four main rivers (Kuye River, Tuwei River, Wuding River and Jialu River). The river flow depends upon the runoff characteristics of the river catchment, therefore we used variation ratio, variation index, unevenness, Runoff-Concentration Degree (RCD) and Runoff-Concentration Period (RCP) to determine the change in runoff characteristics of the four main rivers flows of the Yulin city. We tested the tendency of runoff by the Mann-Kendall non-parameter statistical method to obtain the temporal evolution law. At the same time, Kriging spatial interpolation and GIS were used to derive the spatial evolution law. The dates of climate change (precipitation) and human activities were also used to calculate the driving forces for annual runoff changes of the rivers’ catchments. Through the accumulation curves and multi-recursive techniques, we built the correlation between precipitation and runoff. The driving factors for annual runoff change were then calculated by using the runoff coefficient method. Results showed that the distribution of annual runoff was uneven and had a small accumulation in July and August, especially in Kuye River, and there seemed to be a significant reducing trend in annual runoff. Isolines and the thematic map of Mann-Kendall tests U(R) revealed that the Tuwei River's catchment is the most affected catchment, with annual runoff substantially changed. At the 5% significance level, precipitation did not significantly drop compared with annual runoff. We also found that precipitation is not the only factor responsible for the decreased annual runoff. Therefore we included human activities affect in this case study by using the past 25 years land use, water conservancy and urbanisation data. We discriminated the impacts of climate change and human activities on the surface runoff by multi-recursive analysis method and runoff coefficient method. The results showed that human activities are the direct cause for the changes of river runoff. The results of the study also revealed that the Wuding and Jialu rivers had the most and the least changes in the runoff respectively; this phenomenon should be seriously considered for future water resources planning and management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]