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Agriculture in the populated islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, a protected area due to its unique biodiversity, has been detrimental to its conservation but highly required to meet food necessities. A potential solution to make agricultural farming more sustainable is adopting water-saving technologies (WSTs). Therefore, this study aimed to test the effectiveness of using WSTs such as Groasis Waterboxx® in three of the most valuable crops in the islands through participatory research with the involvement of a group of farmers from the Floreana and Santa Cruz islands and explore a possible transition to more sustainable agricultural practices. Capsicum annuum, Cucumis sativus and Solanum lycopersicum were cultivated using Groasis Waterboxx® and compared to conventional irrigation practices (drip-irrigated controls) to assess the variability of productivity, the number of fruits and individual fruit weight (IFW). In addition, differences in plant traits were analyzed by crop, and island. Results suggested that WSTs such as Groasis Waterboxx® may provide on-farm benefits regarding the yields of the studied traits. From this study, it is difficult to determine whether participation in such a research study will permanently change irrigation practices. However, the participant’s responses to the study suggest an increase in their understanding of the use and benefits of WST.

En este trabajo se analiza el origen y las relaciones entre travertinos y jasperoides intercalados en rocas volcaniclásticas jurásicas en el distrito argento-aurífero Manantial Espejo, ubicado en el borde sur-occidental del Macizo del Deseado, provincia de Santa Cruz, Argentina. Los cuerpos de travertino constituyen estratos delgados de hasta 60 cm de espesor de calcita micrítica finamente laminada, en ocasiones con estratificación rítmica de calcita y ópalo, asociados a depósitos de tobas de caída y tufitas de ambiente lacustre. En algunos afloramientos, los morfotipos reconocidos revelan que la precipitación del carbonato correspondía a sectores proximales relacionados a geisers y conductos de vapor, los cuales se orientaban a los largo de las fracturas que constituyeron los canales de circulación de fluidos. La posterior silicificación de los niveles carbonáticos produjeron jasperoides que se presentan como cuerpos tabulares subverticales y subhorizontales, estos últimos con características texturales similares a aquellas de sinters. La silicificación se originó tardíamente, posiblemente durante la etapa principal del régimen hidrotermal que generó las vetas portadoras de plata y oro. Los travertinos se formaron en un ambiente de hot spring, relacionado con fracturas de un sistema de cizalla conjugado orientadas entre N 20° a 45° E y N 20° a 40° O y constituyen las evidencias más tempranas de la presencia de un régimen epitermal asociado al proceso volcánico jurásico, en un régimen tectónico distensivo, en Manantial Espejo.

The following interview addresses a big question at the heart of preservationist practice: how do you encourage people to appreciate the beauty and historical significance of their surroundings and to take care of them? The personal testimony of Abdeslem Abdelhak, active in Bel Horizon since its founding in 2001, conveys a nuanced and democratic vision of the role that associations can play in preserving architectural vestiges from the past. By training guides, publishing books, advocating the preservation of sites like the sixteenth century Spanish fort Santa Cruz, and storytelling, Bel Horizon in general and Abdelhak in particular have been working to stimulate deep knowledge of the city's evolution and thus popular stewardship of its future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El proyecto de investigación asociado a esta publicación pretende el estudio y acercamiento a las Pymes radicadas en la región con el fin de determinar los rasgos sobresalientes que estas tienen en materia de gerenciamiento. Se buscó indagar sobre las Pymes para determinar concretamente si realizan Planeamiento Estratégico, si las políticas de Recurso Humanos se vinculan a dicho Planeamiento y si desde estas empresas se incorpora innovación tecnológica y de qué modo incorpora el avance tecnológico en su función de producción. A tales fines se llevó adelante una campaña de relevamiento mediante encuestas que permitió estudiar e inferir el comportamiento de las organizaciones empresariales al respecto de varios de estos aspectos, la presente publicación logra caracterizar las pymes en conceptos generales y da evidencia del avance e incorporación de las Tecnologíasde Información y Comunicación en las PyMEs, explicando los principales mecanismos de innovación en esta materia.

El objetivo del trabajo es analizar las formaciones partidarias de izquierda en la provincia de Santa Cruz como espacios de discusión en el entramado político, teniendo en cuenta su estructuración como partido, la forma de organización y su accionar partidario en los diferentes escenarios. El trabajo se basa en una búsqueda en diferentes diarios provinciales, recopilación de resultados electorales y realización de entrevistas a los protagonistas. Con ello se pretende llegar a conocer la dinámica de organización interna y el entramado de relaciones que tejieron estos partidos, para luego mantenerse como minoría activas en el escenario político santacruceño.

Argentina ha experimentado un auge de las actividades mineras, sobre todo de la megaminería metalífera, en el escenario de una acelerada expansión de actividades extractivas en América Latina. La instalación de emprendimientos mineros a gran escala y a cielo abierto desencadena profundas reconfiguraciones de los espacios de extracción. El presente artículo toma como ejemplo la expansión minera en la provincia argentina de Santa Cruz que ha llegado a ocupar un lugar central en la cartografía minera argentina en los últimos veinte años. A partir del caso del mega-emprendimiento a cielo abierto Cerro Vanguardia y la localidad más cercana, Puerto San Julián, discutimos cómo la expansión mega-minera cambia de manera fundamental la relación entre actores privados y públicos, cómo contribuye a legitimar las actividades mineras de la operadora minera transnacional y minimizar las consecuencias socio-ambientales. Primero se indaga en las particularidades de la expansión de la minería santacruceña, y segundo, se analiza el rol de la Agencia de Desarrollo de Puerto San Julián como institución creada por la operadora transnacional que materializa la relación entre los actores políticos, privados y sociales de la localidad.

Nesh (pronounced “Naysh”) Dhillon is operations manager for the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Markets, which include locations in downtown and Westside Santa Cruz, Live Oak, Felton, and (added in 2009, after this oral history was recorded) Scotts Valley. All operate open year-round except the Felton market, which is open May through October.Dhillon’s parents both grew up poor—his father in a farming family in northern India, his mother in rural Oregon—but with a preference for fresh, nutritious foods, which they passed on to their son. A high-school education at a Jesuit institution in Portland, Oregon, instilled in the young Dhillon a deep concern for ethical behavior, cooperation, and justice—values that, he says, have also informed his career choices. Initially aiming toward medical school, he shifted direction when he discovered sustainable agriculture at the University of Oregon. After a stint of post-graduation employment in bars and restaurants on the Oregon coast, he relocated to Santa Cruz, where he joined the staff of a local winery before taking a job as assistant manager for the farmers’ market in 2000, eventually moving into the operations manager position.In this oral history, conducted by Sarah Rabkin on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at Rabkin’s home in Soquel, California, Dhillon discussed the emergence of the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Market out of the rubble of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; the market’s growth and evolution over the ensuing two decades, and the pleasures and challenges of managing year-round farmers’ markets in an agriculturally rich, socially diverse, sometimes politically contentious community.

Nesh (pronounced “Naysh”) Dhillon is operations manager for the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Markets, which include locations in downtown and Westside Santa Cruz, Live Oak, Felton, and (added in 2009, after this oral history was recorded) Scotts Valley. All operate open year-round except the Felton market, which is open May through October.Dhillon’s parents both grew up poor—his father in a farming family in northern India, his mother in rural Oregon—but with a preference for fresh, nutritious foods, which they passed on to their son. A high-school education at a Jesuit institution in Portland, Oregon, instilled in the young Dhillon a deep concern for ethical behavior, cooperation, and justice—values that, he says, have also informed his career choices. Initially aiming toward medical school, he shifted direction when he discovered sustainable agriculture at the University of Oregon. After a stint of post-graduation employment in bars and restaurants on the Oregon coast, he relocated to Santa Cruz, where he joined the staff of a local winery before taking a job as assistant manager for the farmers’ market in 2000, eventually moving into the operations manager position.In this oral history, conducted by Sarah Rabkin on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at Rabkin’s home in Soquel, California, Dhillon discussed the emergence of the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Market out of the rubble of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; the market’s growth and evolution over the ensuing two decades, and the pleasures and challenges of managing year-round farmers’ markets in an agriculturally rich, socially diverse, sometimes politically contentious community.

The article aims to understand the debates that took place on miscegenation on Santa Cruz. Attempt to relate them with the political context, trying to understand the power that history and racial ideas could have at the time of legitimizing or reviling political positions, own and others, as part of the regionalist struggle with the central state. It focus in two periods, one during the first half of the 20th Century when Santa Cruz intellectuals claim the Hispanic blood purity of the city population, and the other, on the second half, when they began to recognize positive qualities of the mixture of Spanish descendants and Eastern Bolivian lowland indigenous.

Unpublished data from Raúl Martínez Crovetto on plant practices and meanings among the Aonik'enk people of Santa Cruz documented during 1967, were found at the Institute of Botany of the Northeast (IBONE). Its value is a priori remarkable in view of the limited background on ethnobotany of this human group. The aims of this study were to value, analyze, update and interpret the voluminous set of information documented at fieldwork by Martínez Crovetto, to compile and classify the scattered data found in the literature on the subject, and to compare these data with those referred to for the Selk'nam (onas) of Tierra del Fuego. The methodology corresponds to historical ethnobotany, which considers data from the past as a primary source of information on which the classical ethnobotanical method is applied. A total of 163 data on Aonik'enk ethnobotany from Raúl Martínez Crovetto's field records were valued, as well as 105 from published secondary sources consulted. In total, 244 different ethnobotanical data about this people are referred for 117 botanical taxa. Most ethnobotanic uses were food (90; 36.7%) and medicinal (81; 33%). The coincidence between the Aonik'enk and Selk'nam data exceeds 60%, indicating the existence of links between their ethnobotany. This contribution is the greatest input into Aonik'enk ethnobotany both for the amount and diversity of data compiled, and for the volume of new unpublished data informed. Edible uses of Rumex species roots and of Chuquiraga avellanedae aerial part are cited here for the first time for Argentina, as well as Mulguraea tridens roots for making of combs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food system activities have modified 40% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. These activities affect the sustainability of food systems – and their ability to provide agroecosystem services. Here, we compare three food systems in Bolivia. One is agro-industrial (soybean), one is indigenous to a Guarani community (maize and beans), and one is an agroecological, horticulture-based food system. We use the Agroecosystem Service Capacity (ASC) approach, which is based on a list of 23 agroecosystem services that allow the ASC index of farm-based agroecosystems to be estimated. Our findings show that agroecological (ASC = 2.57) and indigenous (ASC = 2.43) farm-based agroecosystems have a higher capacity to provide farm-based agroecosystem services than the agro-industrial (ASC = 0.82). This capacity differs because farmers in the agroecological and indigenous farm-based agroecosystems achieve a higher structural diversity and know how to use more agroecosystem services. These results could promote more sustainable food systems by fostering agricultural landscapes that provide a diversity of farm-based agroecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1940s, inter-American music projects created new networks of intellectual and musical exchange. This article contributes new archival research on the decades-long relationship between Charles Seeger (US composer, teacher, and cofounder of the Society for Ethnomusicology) and Domingo Santa Cruz (Chilean composer, lawyer, diplomat, and founder of the Chilean Music Review). A conceptual focus on "mediations" brings together textuality, materiality, and ideology to expand our narratives and methodologies in critically analyzing the geopolitics of musical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project's main objective was to estimate the value added to fish landed in Moss Landing, Monterey and Santa Cruz harbors in 2003 as fish moved from fishermen to processors, packages, distributors and seafood retailers. Another goal was to document the "spatial distribution" of the region's fishing activity during the six-year period from 1998 to 2003.

Recent and pending federal marine management actions on the U.S. West Coast, from groundfish regulations to marine reserves and National Marine Sanctuary management plan revisions, have highlighted the critical need for socioeconomic information on marine resource uses and associated communities. The need for this information is both practical and legal. In practical terms, because resource users affect and are affected by management, socioeconomic information can be used to inform and enhance the effectiveness of management design, implementation and evaluation. In legal terms, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA, and amendments), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) require consideration of the "human dimensions" in the design and implementation of federal actions that affect the human and biophysical environments.In central California, the site of three National Marine Sanctuaries (NMSs) and diverse federally- and state-managed fisheries, socioeconomic information to assess the impacts of management actions has been critically lacking. Among the types of information needed are qualitative and quantitative analyses of market channels through which value is added to the catch. These market channels are defined by the social and economic linkages among fishermen, receivers, processors and others, and are manifest in the spatial distribution of the quantity and value of fish products within and beyond the region.1To address these information needs, we conducted a study of the production and distribution of fish products landed at the three main Monterey Bay area (MBA) ports: Moss Landing, Monterey and Santa Cruz. The overarching goal of the research was to help inform the assessment of potential social and economic impacts of fishery management and other measures and events. Specific objectives were: 1) todescribe the spatial organization of processing activities for fish landed at Monterey Bay ports (i.e., Moss Landing, Monterey and Santa Cruz); and 2) to estimate value added in Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties to fish landed at Monterey Bay ports. This report provides a technical summary of the study background, followed by the methods, results and conclusions drawn.

Este estudio comprende una valoración cuali-cuantitativa de las especies de aves asociadas ecológicamente a humedales del sur de la provincia de Santa Cruz, Argentina. Se trabajó en dos reservas naturales municipales con una rica diversidad de aves, la Reserva Costera Urbana en Río Gallegos y Reserva Natural Municipal Laguna Nimez en El Calafate. Se seleccionaron un total de 27 especies de aves posibles de observar entre ambas reservas por su potencial para ser aprovechadas para la práctica del aviturismo, ponderando de forma diferenciada entre quienes lo realizan de forma ocasional y profesional.

The Thematic Volume “Early-Middle Miocene Paleontology in the Río Santa Cruz, Southern Patagonia, Argentina. 130 years since Ameghino, 1887” deals with the geology, chronology and the fossils of the Santa Cruz Formation in the Río Santa Cruz recovered in recent expeditions (2013-14). It gathers 13 articles by 21 authors and highlights the need to integrate historical information in paleontological studies of the Cenozoic of Patagonia.

Considerada a mais importante obra de engenharia brasileira do século XVIII, a Ponte dos Jesuítas, tombada pelo Iphan em 1938, foi construída por religiosos inacianos como parte de um sistema complexo de drenagem e irrigação da Fazenda Santa Cruz, localizada na Zona Oeste da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. O trabalho aqui apresentado é o primeiro estudo sistemático dos elementos da ponte, realizado com o objetivo de identificar alterações de seus traços originais por meio da integração de textos, imagens históricas e estudo petrográfico das rochas utilizadas como cantarias. Os resultados permitiram reconhecer sinais de intervenções de diferentes períodos e identificar funções de alguns elementos construtivos da obra.

Alpine environments and their temporal changes are rarely studied at high latitudes in the southern hemisphere. We analyzed alpine plants, soil temperatures, and growing-season length in mountains of two landscapes of South Patagonia (46° to 56° SL): three summits (814–1085 m a.s.l) surrounded by foothill grasslands in Santa Cruz province (SC), and four summits (634–864 m a.s.l.) in sub-Antarctic forests of Tierra del Fuego province (TF). Sampling followed the protocolized methodology of the Global Observational Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA). Factors were topography (elevation and cardinal aspect) and time (baseline vs. re-sampling for plants, five annual periods for temperatures), assessed by univariate and multivariate tests. Plant composition reflected the lowland surrounding landscapes, with only 9 mountain species on 52 totals in SC and 3 on 30 in TF. Richness was higher in re-sampling than baseline, being assemblages more influenced by aspect than elevation. Mean annual soil temperature and growing-season length, which varied with topography, were related to the Multivariate El Niño Southern Oscillation Index (MEI) but did not show clear warming trends over time. We highlight the importance of long-term studies in mountainous regions of extreme southern latitudes, where factors other than warming (e.g., extreme climate events) explain variations.

In this present article, the sin was brought into perspective. For this purpose, our attention is focused on Santa Cruz neighborhood, located in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro city, which receives insufficient investments from the Government, scores a low Social Progress Index, suffers from the exponential growth of the urban violence, also is a victim of voracity and irresponsibility by the large companies placed on the local area, besides has its population target by stigma and prejudice. At this first and brief moment, the Aristotelian Philosophy and Christ ethics will be appealed – where the sin shows up itself as a fundamental category – and Literature (throug the work of Dante Alighieri) – we demonstrate throughout this article, wich phenomenon/relations that mark the contemporary show themselves as a new guise of the classic capital sins. As mentioned, referring to Santa Cruz, each of them, supposed social dimension of sins is made explicit. Superb, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony and sloth are all thematized here, leading us to conclude that these exposed sins are far away to leading their sinners to “hell”. In certain way, from its towers, bubbles or castles, they keep looking skewed or at some distance to the Santa Cruz neighborhood, contributing to maintain it invisible in the city context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As part of a current investigation a number of stone structures have been registered throughout the locality of Santa Cruz (Argentina), which have been assigned to various functions such as hunting blinds, cairns, bases of awnings and "chenques" or funerary structures. Associated to one of these funerary structures, which is located at the top of Cerro Horqueta or Madre e Hija, human skeletal remains were recorded. In February of 2018, the structure was visited with the aim of obtaining a sample for radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis. The present work aims to generate bio-archaeological information, which is currently non-existent for the studied area. Specifically, we present here a bio anthropological analysis on a tooth recovered in the mentioned context. We determined it is a human, permanent upper left canine that belonged to an adolescent or young adult. The presence of a process of incipient hypercementosis, which can be interpreted as indicative of the use of the dentition for para-masticatory purposes, and the burial structure in which the tooth was found allow us to think that the individual may have belonged to an indigenous hunter-gatherer group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Blood meal host selection by mosquito vectors is an important component in understanding disease dynamics of pathogens that threaten endemic fauna in isolated islands such as Galápagos. Research on the feeding behavior of mosquitoes can provide clues to the hosts and vectors involved in disease transmission. This information is particularly critical for endemic wildlife fauna in island systems that have evolved without resistance to novel diseases such as avian malaria. The aims of this study were to determine the blood-feeding patterns of two species of mosquitoes found in Galápagos and discuss how their feeding behavior may influence the transmission of pathogens such as avian malaria. Methods: In the summer of 2015, we sampled two mosquito species (Aedes taeniorhynchus and Culex quinquefasciatus) across 18 different sites on Isla Santa Cruz, which is the second largest island in Galápagos and has the largest human population. We trapped mosquitoes using CDC light traps and CDC gravid traps and identified sources of blood meals for engorged mosquitoes by sequencing a portion of the vertebrate mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. Results: Out of 947 female mosquitoes captured, 320 were blood-fed, and PCR amplifications were successful for 301 of the blood meals. Results revealed that both Aedes taeniorhynchus and Culex quinquefasciatus feed from a variety of vertebrate taxa, numerically dominated by humans on Isla Santa Cruz. Conclusions: The high proportion of mammalian blood meals could represent locally available and abundant hosts on Santa Cruz. However, host surveys and estimates of relative abundances of vertebrate species will need to accompany mosquito trapping studies on non-inhabited and inhabited islands in Galápagos to further validate this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive livestock system of South Patagonia is carried out on large-scale paddocks, with low animal carrying capacity and high environmental fragility. The historical grazing management, since the end of the 19th century, has caused the desertification of the landscape in a large part of the territory. Different institutional efforts have sought to promote better management of rangelands based on adapting the stocking rate of the paddocks. However, the heterogeneity of the landscape within the paddocks still allows the concentration of animals in the most preferred places. In this context, the development of technical recommendations that allow the control of the heterogeneous grazing, requires an updated knowledge about the perception of the producers facing this problem. For this reason, a survey was carried out to 82 extensive livestock producers in Santa Cruz, seeking to characterize the management they perform in the paddocks, the criteria for their design and how they visualize the problem of heterogeneous grazing. A high percentage of producers (~ 75%) detects the problem, but only 8.3% applies more than 2 technologies to address it. The producers, as a whole, show knowledge of an important variety of technologies. However, different limitations indicated by the interviewees, determine that the technologies are not consolidated as common use practices. The extensive system in South Patagonia continues to be carried out mainly under a scheme of minimal intervention of the landscape, just as in its beginnings. It may be necessary to review the technology transfer system from research and extension institutions. However, the participation of the State is also essential, through the design and implementation of policies that provide suitable instruments to encourage, promote, support and monitor the adoption of technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Saleslan Congregation was born in Turin when Italy was going through a process of industrialization and strong secularism. The aim of this Congregation was to cater to children and adolescents in the popular sectores trascending mere school. To move to the Argentina they replicated the methodology implemented in Italy who joined the "Exploradores de Don Bosco". We will discuss how developed in Santa Cruz in the period of confrontation between the secular school and Salesian and between the Exploradores de Don Bosco and Boy Scouts. We will used the documentation provided by both institutions along with the testimonies of the ancient inhabitants of Santa Cruz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Reconstructing paleoenvironments has long been considered a vital component for understanding community structure of extinct organisms, as well as patterns that guide evolutionary pathways of species and higher-level taxa. Given the relative geographic and phylogenetic isolation of the South American continent throughout much of the Cenozoic, the South American fossil record presents a unique perspective of mammalian community evolution in the context of changing climates and environments. Here we focus on one line of evidence for paleoenvironment reconstruction: ecological diversity, i.e. the number and types of ecological niches filled within a given fauna. We propose a novel approach by utilizing ecological indices as predictors in two regressive modeling techniques—Random Forest (RF) and Gaussian Process Regression (GPR)—which are applied to 85 extant Central and South American localities to produce paleoecological prediction models. Faunal richness is quantified via ratios of ecologies within the mammalian communities, i.e. ecological indices, which serve as predictor variables in our models. Six climate/habitat variables were then predicted using these ecological indices: mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation (MAP), temperature seasonality, precipitation seasonality, canopy height, and net primary productivity (NPP). Predictive accuracy of RF and GPR is markedly higher when compared to previously published methods. MAT, MAP, and temperature seasonality have the lowest predictive error. We use these models to reconstruct paleoclimatic variables in two well-sampled Miocene faunas from South America: fossiliferous layers (FL) 1–7, Santa Cruz Formation (Early Miocene), Santa Cruz Province, Argentina; and the Monkey Beds unit, Villavieja Formation (Middle Miocene) Huila, Colombia. Results suggest general concordance with published estimations of precipitation and temperature, and add information with regards to the other climate/habitat variables included here. Ultimately, we believe that RF and GPR in conjunction with ecological indices have the potential to contribute to paleoenvironment reconstruction. Highlights • Machine-learning regression techniques outperform more traditional regression techniques in predicting climatic variables. • Models derived from South American data are broadly applicable to other continents. • The Monkey Beds unit in La Venta, Colombia was likely a wet, warm, aseasonal environment. • The Puesto Estancia La Costa unit in Santa Cruz, Argentina was likely a highly seasonal, mixed habitat environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]