bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Forestry and Flooding in the Annecy Petit Lac Catchment, Haute-Savoie 1730-2000
Authors: Crook D.S. , Siddle D.J. , Jones R.T. , Dearing J.A. , Foster G.C. , Thompson R. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Upland environments are particularly vulnerable to the stresses of climate change. The strength and persistence of such forces are not easy to measure and hence comparison of climate impacts with anthropogenic impacts has remained problematic. This paper attempts to demonstrate the nature of human impact on forest cover and flooding in the Annecy Petit Lac Catchment in pre-Alpine Haute Savoie, France, between 1730 and 2000. Local documentary sources and a pollen record provided a detailed history of forest cover and management, making it possible to plot changes in forest cover against local and regional precipitation records, and their individual and combined impacts on flooding. A main period of large-scale, uniform and rapid deforestation in the catchment was identified in the early nineteenth century, but sub-catchment patterns of reforestation and regeneration have varied up to the present. The period of deforestation was accompanied by demographic expansion and regional scale exogenous forces, such as small scale industrial development, foreign occupation, war, caveats and laws, acting alongside local scale endogenous forces and land fragmentation, agricultural crisis, and the desire for pasture. These all produced conflict between individual needs and those of communities and resulted in localised changes in forest cover. Joint phases of deforestation and flooding are more evident in individual second order tributaries than the whole catchment, but there appears to be no obvious or simple causal link between forest cover change, climate anomalies and flooding.
Draining the Marshlands, Disciplining the Masses: The Linth Valley Hydro Engineering Scheme (1807-1823) and the Genesis of Swiss National Unity
Authors: Speich Daniel 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
The first large-scale hydro technical project of modern Switzerland, the Linth Valley hydro engineering scheme (1807-1823), has been considered to be 'a great moral endeavour'. The paper asks, what historical conditions made it possible to conceive of hydro technical engineering in moral categories? Following the political views of the main promoter of the scheme, Hans Konrad Escher (1767-1823), it shows, that within a specific ideological framework no clear-cut distinctions were drawn between the natural, the technical and the social. Rather, within this early example of environmental management, genuinely technical means of engineering were successfully used to address both urgent political and social problems of the time. The main argument is, that the act of draining marshlands successfully promoted national unity and set important preconditions for the later to be founded liberal nation state.
Arabic Treatises on Environmental Pollution up to the End of the Thirteenth Century
Authors: Gari Lutfallah 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Ever since the earliest Arabic writings on medicine we meet treatises on widespread illnesses or crowd diseases, including epidemics. Some of those works discuss the causes and treatment; others deal with the treatment only. This paper is limited to the works that deal with environmental pollution as a cause of such illnesses. They cover subjects like air and water contamination, solid waste mishandling and environmental assessments of certain localities. The treatises reviewed are those written by (1) al-Kindi, (2) Qusta b. Luqa, (3) al-Razi, (4) Ibn al-Jazzar, (5) al-Tamimi, (6) Abu Sahl al-Masihi, (7) Ibn Sina, (8) Ali b. Ridwan, (9) Ibn Jumay', (10) Ya'qub al-Isra'ili, (11) Abdullatif al-Baghdadi, (12) Ibn al-Quff and (13) Ibn al-Nafis. Studying the contents of each work shows which authors were merely copying the Greek theory of humours and miasma, and which made genuine contributions to the field. The period covered in the paper is up to the end of the thirteenth century a.d. This is because the Black Death took place in the fourteenth century, and encouraged several authors of that time to write about epidemics and plagues. Other contemporary researchers have studied these later works.
Continuities in Environmental Narratives: The Case of Kabale, Uganda, 1930-2000
Authors: Carswell Grace 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This article looks at continuities and change around the issue of agricultural sustainability in colonial and post-colonial Kabale. It argues that a series of environmental narratives developed during the colonial period, which have been largely unquestioned since then. It shows how the perception of the district being threatened with environmental degradation has continued from the earliest colonial period up to the present day. Many of the assumptions made by colonial officials remain unquestioned, and with few exceptions the policy rhetoric remains unaltered in the post-colonial period. It argues that recent evidence suggests that these assumptions need to be seriously questioned.
'The Common Cormorant or Shag Lays Eggs Inside a Paper Bag'. A Cultural Ecology of Fish-eating Birds in Western Australia
Authors: Sassoon Joanna 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This paper builds a history of the rise of ecological awareness of the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia through the cultural perceptions of fish-eating birds. A history of understandings of the specific habitat ecology is traced through the rise of scientific knowledge about fish-eating birds as competitors with fishermen. The impact of this changing awareness on the river ecology is discussed as well as how this scientific knowledge became subservient in the political domain to developmentalist ideology.
Francois Mitterrand and Nature
Authors: Sainteny Guillaume 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
With the help of extensive quotations, this paper shows that the writings of Francois Mitterrand contain many professions of his love for nature, and reflections on the bond between man and nature. In contrast to these aesthetic and mystical, almost religious outpourings, his references to environmental issues, to ecology and to the environmental movement are few, and they are counterposed by exaltations of materialism and material progress. This dichotomy, and Mitterrand's failure when in office to really engage politically with the conservation of nature and the environment, can partly be explained by the anthropocentric and conservative spiritual values engendered by his rural catholic upbringing.
'On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic' in Environmental History
Authors: Wynn Graeme 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
George Perkins Marsh is both the hero and the foil of this paper. His well-known book, Man and Nature , and his reputation as the fountainhead of the conservation movement lie at the very centre of the story offered here. But this account also casts some doubt upon the precedence generally attributed to some of Marsh's ecological claims, and questions the wisdom of placing Marsh and other historical figures on pedestals that elevate them too readily and too markedly above their peers. It does this by probing the reception of Marsh's ideas in New Zealand in the 1870s, by considering the ideas of largely-forgotten Titus Smith about human impacts upon the vegetation of Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century, and by wondering about the implications of these tales of environmental understanding from two colonial realms for the practice of environmental history in the twenty-first century. This is thus both an engagement with Marsh and a story about stories, about how they are constructed, about how they travel and about how they influence the ways in which historians present the past and speak to the future.
Marsh at Cravairola: Boundary-Making in the Italo-Swiss Alps
Authors: Lowenthal David 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
George Perkins Marsh, United States minister to Italy, renowned as a linguist and a geographer, was a fitting choice to be named arbiter of a disputed Italo-Swiss boundary segment, the alpe of Cravairola, north of Domodossola and west of Locarno, in 1874. Although Cravairola was on the eastern (Swiss) side of the mountain chain, it was owned and used seasonally, for pasturage and timber, by villagers from two Italian communes. Logging and the flotation of timber were devastating the Swiss torrent of the Rovana and the Val Maggia below. This essay reproduces Marsh's authentic text, printed here for the first time from his own manuscript. It also recounts the boundary dispute's history, Marsh's inspection of the area with the two countries' agents, the issues at stake, and the reasons Marsh awarded the territory in question to Italy. Ancient and uncontested claims of jurisdiction over the area by Italian communes in Marsh's view had to take precedence over the best interests of both countries in terms of access, land management and watershed conservation. Subsequent critiques query Marsh's analysis but confirm its importance as a legal precedent in boundary arbitration.
George Perkins Marsh: The Times and their Man
Authors: Judd Richard W. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
David Lowenthal is correct in suggesting that George Perkins Marsh was America's most influential mid-nineteenth-century conservationist. Lowenthal's biography, however, fails to address Marsh's intellectual and social 'times'. This article challenges the premise that Marsh was unique in laying out an ecological justification for conservation. It suggests that these principles were common currency in early American natural history. Drawing on theological and evolutionary thinking, naturalists searched for patterns of purpose and interrelatedness in nature, and this quest laid the groundwork for ecological consciousness and conservation thinking, well before publication of Marsh's Man and Nature .
'Nature in League with Man': Conceptualising and Transforming the Natural World in Eighteenth-Century Scandinavia
Authors: Oslund Karen 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This article examines a series of projects and discussions, among the Enlightenment elite in the Danish kingdom, about the need for technological improvement and agricultural reform in Iceland, a distant province of the Danish state in the eighteenth century. One of the most important of these projects was the importation of reindeer from northern Norway to Iceland in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in response to famine conditions and plagues that had decimated the sheep population on the island. These projects and the language that their instigators and supporters used show that the Enlightenment elite sought to re-define Icelandic and Northern nature, reclaim a territory that had been historically viewed as a wilderness, and remodel it into a well-regulated and homogeneous part of the state. Their vision of nature in the North Atlantic was a radical break with previous traditions of describing nature in Iceland and one of the first times that Icelanders sought to establish themselves as authorities about conditions in their country.
Human Impact on the Environment in the Annecy Petit Lac Catchment, Haute-Savoie: A Documentary Approach
Authors: Crook D.S. , Siddle D.J. , Dearing J.A. , Thompson R. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
It is axiomatic that mountain environments are particularly vulnerable to changes in patterns of human use, over both long and medium terms, but also over quite short periods of critical activity. This paper uses archaeological and documentary records to look at the human impact on one such montane environment, the pre-alps of Savoy, over the long-term, from pre-history up to the pre-modern period. The use and modification of landscape is estimated at the level of the Annecy Petit Lac hydrological catchment taking into account spatial differences in land use in the uplands, mid-slope and plain. Land use patterns and nutrient balance are reconstructed for specific periods in time between 1561 and 1892. Results from this study demonstrate that seven main phases of human activity have left their traces in the environmental record during the historical period through to the pre-modern period. Of these the 1730-1770s and 1840-1860s stand out as two discernible periods of heightened environmental pressures at higher altitudes, which manifest themselves as discernable lowland environmental problems, such as flooding, increased erosion and declining soil fertility.
Environmental History in China
Authors: Maohong Bao 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
As a subdiscipline, environmental history appeared in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, environmental history studies have been launched in many countries in the world, including China. Since China uses its own writing system with Chinese characters, the environmental history studies done in China have remained unknown outside China. As global environmental problems were becoming more serious and world environmentalism was developing vigorously, the trend to internationalise American environmental history studies was strengthened and there was an increasing need to understand Chinese environmental history and the state of its studies. That is why I wrote this paper, which I hope will improve understanding and co-operation between Chinese and international environmental history studies. The paper is divided into four parts: (1) The rise of environmental history studies in China; (2) The main contents of Chinese environmental history studies; (3) The principal methods and characteristics; (4) The major problems to be solved.
Africa: Histories, Ecologies and Societies
Authors: Carruthers Jane 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
A survey of African environmental history during in the period 1994 to 2004 is is provided and distinctions between the environmental history of Africa and that of other geo-regions are identified. It is argued that the promises of the earlier environmental historiography have not been realised and that an emerging trend embeds Africa's environmental history within the framework of social history and issues around science and changing societies. The article focuses on work that has appeared in Environment and History, analysing the trend-setting role that this journal has played.
Emerging from the Wilderness (or, from Redwoods to Bananas): Recent Environmental History in the United States and the Rest of the Americas
Authors: Coates Peter 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This essay charts and reflects on developments in the environmental history of the Americas over the past decade, arguing that the field has become more inclusive and complex as it tackles a broader spectrum of physical environments and moves beyond an emphasis on destructiveness and loss as the essence of relations between humans and the rest of the natural world. New approaches to traditional subjects such as conservation and national parks are examined too. While paying due attention to the United States, it also highlights progress in Canadian environmental history and (English language) coverage of Central and South America.
Environmental History in Europe from 1994 to 2004: Enthusiasm and Consolidation
Authors: Winiwarter Verena , Armiero Marco , van Dam Petra , Dix Andreas , Eliasson Per , Holm Poul , Jeleček Leos , Lambert Robert A. , Massard-Guilbaud Geneviève , de Molina Manuel Gonzáles , Myllyntaus Timo , Oosthoek Jan , Pfister Christina , Rácz Lajos 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This review presents European scholarship in environmental history by highlighting a limited number of works which have proved significant in their respective countries. The decade from 1994-2004 saw the development of a new scholarly network for environmental history in Europe. Members of this network have contributed to an overview about important work done in their region during the last ten years. A series of case studies on the UK, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Czechia and Slovakia are offered. The emerging picture shows the diversity of approaches and themes as well as the different degrees of institutional backing and involvement into teaching curricula. The introduction discusses the language challenges in Europe and some common traits in the development are sketched in the conclusions.
Hugh Cleghorn and Forest Conservancy in India
Authors: Das Pallavi 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This paper examines the important and pioneering role played by Dr. Hugh Cleghorn, a Scottish medical surgeon, in the implementation of forest conservancy in colonial India. I focus on three aspects of his contribution in India, which preceded forest conservancy in Britain itself. Firstly, I deal with the social and intellectual background of Cleghorn that greatly influenced his ideas on forests. Then I discuss Cleghorn's contribution to forest conservation in India. Here, I analyse Cleghorn's views on the causes of deforestation in India. I then examine his ideas on forest conservancy and the importance of forests. Given the economic and political context, I also show how and to what extent he could use his ideas to influence the colonial state to implement forest conservation. I explain why it was that the colonial state accepted Cleghorn's conservation views. I argue that to the extent that Cleghorn was able to show that forest conservation would maintain the timber supply to support infrastructure intended to exploit India's resources efficiently and thereby generate revenue, the colonial state accepted his proposals. Finally, I discuss what kind of forest conservancy, based on Cleghorn's ideas, was adopted by the state.
'Free, Bold, Joyous': The Love of Seaweed in Margaret Gatty and Other Mid-Victorian Writers
Authors: Hunt Stephen E. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
With particular reference to Gatty's British Sea-Weeds and Eliot's 'Recollections of Ilfracombe', this article takes an ecocritical approach to popular writings about seaweed, thus illustrating the broader perception of the natural world in mid-Victorian literature. This is a discursive exploration of the way that the enthusiasm for seaweed reveals prevailing ideas about propriety, philanthropy and natural theology during the Victorian era, incorporating social history, gender issues and natural history in an interdisciplinary manner. Although unchaperoned wandering upon remote shorelines remained a questionable activity for women, 'seaweeding' made for a direct aesthetic engagement with the specificity of place in a way that conforms to Barbara Gates's notion of the 'Victorian female sublime'. Furthermore, while women's contributions often received an uneven reception within the masculine institutions of professional science, marine botany proved to be a more accommodating area for participation. At Ilfracombe, Eliot wrote that she believed collecting and naming was a means to achieve distinct and definite ideas in her understanding of the world. The argument is developed that many needed to reorient their personal cosmologies in order to make sense of, and impose meaning upon, an uncertain world, thus contributing to the great debate about evolution.
'A Convulsed and Magic Country': Tourism and Resource Histories in the Mexican Caribbean
Authors: Redclift Michael 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Much of the discussion of 'space' in the recent literature has been concerned to provide a more 'active' account of its role in the transformation of historical epochs. Geographical frontiers, for example, are ascribed figuratively, temporally and spatially in ways that serve to influence succeeding events. Their 'discovery' is acknowledged as an element in powerful myths, which are reworked to create environmental histories as important as the material world they describe. This article takes as an example the Mexican Caribbean, which has recently been 'discovered' as a location for mass tourism and whose early tourist 'pioneers' are beginning to be celebrated in the region. It argues that far from having been an empty space, much of the area currently devoted to tourism once played an important role within global markets, especially through the production of dyewoods, chicle (the original raw material for chewing gum) and other natural resources. The paper concludes that discourses of space can be divided into three phases, the 'analogue', the 'digital' and the 'virtual', each of which contributes to a mythology of succession.
A Soil Conservation Safari: Hugh Bennett's 1944 Visit to South Africa
Authors: Dodson Belinda 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Hugh Bennett, then Chief of the United States Soil Conservation Service, paid a two-month official visit to South Africa in 1944. His visit threw into relief many of the country's social and political cleavages, not least the administrative division between the Department of Agriculture, responsible for soil conservation on white-owned farms, and the Department of Native Affairs, responsible for soil conservation in so-called 'native areas'. The latter were paid scant attention in the itinerary, and Bennett himself appeared reluctant to acknowledge how any national soil conservation effort would be compromised by the racially segregated socio-political context in which it occurred.
Antecedents to the Community Wildlife Conservation Programme in Kenya, 1946-1964
Authors: Matheka Reuben 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Studies on wildlife conservation in Kenya have tended to overlook the efforts made by the colonial administration to involve African communities in wildlife conservation. In most of the existing studies, wildlife conservation in colonial and early independent Kenya is viewed as the perpetuation of a 'Western' or conventional conservation ethos emphasising separation of wildlife conservation from other socio-economic activities. Consequently, the evolution of community wildlife conservation in the country from the late 1970s is portrayed as a programme without antecedents. But as this paper demonstrates, attempts to involve Africans in wildlife conservation in Kenya have a long history.
Public Works in an Autocratic State: Water Supplies in an Imperial Russian Town
Authors: Smith Alison K. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
In the 1830s and 1840s, Russians became particularly interested in water as a public health issue. Despite the attention of the state and the tsar, localities like the town of Kazan were largely unable to affect changes in public health due to bureaucratic obstacles and financial constraints. After the modernising Great Reforms, private interests helped bring older plans into reality. However, their success caused Russia to lag further behind the West, where private interests were ceding ground to public ones in the face of new understandings of contamination and hygiene.
How the Coast Became High: An Historical Introduction to the High Coast ( Hoega kusten ) World Heritage Site in Sweden
Authors: Nordlund Christer 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
The purpose of the present article is to investigate the 'career' of the High Coast as landscape. The High Coast in north-eastern Sweden has become a popular tourist site annually attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors from throughout the world. Its environment is not only considered pleasing from a recreational aspect, but also of extraordinary intrinsic value. Citing the fact that the area has evidenced the greatest land elevation anywhere since the end of the Ice Age, the High Coast was placed on UNESCO's prestigious World Heritage List in the year 2000, thereby becoming the first site in all of northern Europe to earn that status purely on account of its natural environment. In the present article, aspects of the process whereby the High Coast's value has been articulated and established are examined. Particular attention is paid to tourism and scientific, artistic and environmentalist activities pursued in the area during the twentieth century, and connections are made between these activities and the socio-economic development of the region. Furthermore, a comparison between the High Coast and the Grand Canyon in the south-western United States is made.