Academic literature on the topic 'Graubünden (Switzerland)'

Ten propolis samples from Bulgaria, Italy and Switzerland were analyzed by GC-MS. As expected, most samples displayed the typical chemical pattern of “poplar” propolis: they contained pinocembrin, pinobanksin and its 3-O-acetate, chrysin, galangin, prenyl esters of caffeic and ferulic acids. Two samples differed significantly: one from the Graubünden Alpine region, Switzerland, rich in phenolic glycerides, and one from Sicily which contained only a limited number of phenolics and was rich in diterpenic acids.

This contribution presents the different situations of Italian in the cantons of Ticino (where a gradual reduction in dialectophony is taking place) and Graubünden (where the dialect is being preserved), as well as the standardisation of Swiss Italian, which is taking place through the process of 'standard by mere usage' (AMMON, 2003, p. 2). A number of important theoretical concepts are brought up to date here in a very enlightening way: the concept of dilalie (BERRUTO, 1987) to describe the functional overlap between two varieties of a language, the pluricentricity of languages (CLYNE, 1989), models of standardisation of pluricentric languages (AMMON, 1989) and the representation of the bicentricity (AUER, 2005) of Italian (Italy and Switzerland).

AbstractThe four Palearctic species of the shore-fly genus Discomyza Meigen are revised, including the description of an undescribed species. The undescribed species, D. baechlii, is found at higher elevations mainly in Austria and Switzerland (type locality: Graubünden: Ausserferrera-Cresta (1300-1670 m; 46°28'N, 9°31'E). Three species, D. baechlii, D. incurva, and D. maritima, form a monophyletic species group; the fourth species, D. maculipennis, has only been found in Japan in the Palearctic region and is undoubtedly an introduction from the Oriental region. Lectotypes are designated for: Discomyza amabilis Kertész, Discomyza pelagica Frauenfeld and Psilopa incurva Fallén.

The article examines the Rhaeto-Romance language ("Bündnerromansch", "Romansch") as part of the linguistic diversity in the Swiss Confederation, which has reached the status of an official language in the country, although it is currently spoken by less than one per cent of its population. An overview of the history of today's canton Graubünden - a mountainous region where Rhaeto-Romance is mainly used – is reviewed. Attention is drawn to Peider Lansel's struggle to assert and preserve the language; the role of Lia Rumantscha organization for its recognition as the fourth national language in the past, and today - for the spread of Rhaeto-Romance culture through education, promotion of the spoken and written language, support and coordination of projects of regional Romansh associations. A brief statistical report shows the percentage of the population in the state using this language as the main one. Several major dialects of Romansch are briefly considered, from which the common written language of Rhaeto-Romance developed, called Rumantsch Grischun; the role of music, television and radio in its dissemination and preservation; its promotion activities, such as publishing books and textbooks, efforts to establish it as a first language in its distribution areas.

The rapid rate of global warming currently underway highlights the need for a deeper understanding of abrupt climate change. The Younger Dryas is a Late-Glacial climate event of widespread and unusually rapid change whose study can help us address this need for increased understanding. Reconstructions from the glacial record offer important contributions to our understanding of the Younger Dryas due to (among other things) the direct physical response of glaciers to even minor perturbations in climate. Because the glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) provides a more explicit comparison of climate than properties such as glacier length or area, ELA methods lend themselves well to paleoclimate applications and allow for more direct comparisons in space and time. Here we present a physically based ELA model for alpine paleoglacier climate reconstructions that accounts for differences in glacier width, glacier shape, bed topography and ice thickness, and includes error estimates using Monte Carlo simulations. We validate the ELA model with published mass balance measurements from 4 modern glaciers in the Swiss Alps. We then use the ELA model, combined with a temperature index model, to estimate the changes in temperature and precipitation between the Younger Dryas (constrained by 10Be surface exposure ages) and the present day for three glacier systems in the Graubünden Alps. Our results indicate an ELA depression in this area of 320 m ±51 m during the Younger Dryas relative to today. This ELA depression represents annual mean temperatures 2.29 °C ±1.32 °C cooler relative to today in the region, which corresponds to a decrease in mean summer temperatures of 1.47 °C ±0.73 °C. Our results indicate relatively small changes in summer temperature dominate over other climate changes for the Younger Dryas paleoglaciers in the Alps. This ELA-based paleoclimate reconstruction offers a simple, fast, and cost-effective alternative to many other paleoclimate reconstruction methods. Continued application of the ELA model to more regions will lead to an improved understanding of the Younger Dryas in the Alps, and by extension, of rapid climate events generally.

I. A compilation of 362 cooling ages, including 52 newly reported in this study, from nine thermochronometric systems, ⁴⁰K/³⁹Ar amphibole, ⁴⁰K/³⁹Ar white mica, ⁸⁷Rb/⁸⁶Sr white mica, ⁴⁰K/³⁹Ar biotite, ⁸⁷Rb/⁸⁶Sr biotite, zircon and apatite fission track, zircon and apatite (U-Th)/He, indicate that the base of the Austroalpine allochthonous ‘orogenic lid’ was not in full thermal equilibrium with its Penninic substrate until at least the middle Oligocene, approximately 29-28 Ma, to allowably as late as the early Miocene, ca. 18 Ma. There is about a factor-of-five difference in cooling rates between the hanging wall (ca. 4°C/m.y.) and footwall (ca. 20°C/m.y.) during this period. In addition, there are demonstrably higher metamorphic grades, including blueschist- and eclogite-facies, in the Pennine footwall compared to lower greenschist-facies in the Austroalpine hanging wall. Together these two facts demonstrate that hot, high-pressure Penninic nappes were forced upward against the cold, low-pressure overriding Austroalpine plate in a very short time window of approximately 7-10 m.y. between the time of peak metamorphism during the Eocene and the time of thermal equilibration with the overriding plate during the Oligo-Miocene. The most likely mechanism to produce such a cold-on-hot juxtaposition is a normal fault, and therefore, we conclude that an important period of nappe emplacement in the Central Swiss Alps occurred concurrently with orogen-perpendicular normal fault motion at the base of the Austroalpine allochthon persisting well into the Oligocene and possibly into the early Miocene, post-dating the 32-30 Ma age of the Bergell intrusion.

Mesoscopic structural measurements made at the top and bottom of the Pennine zone in eastern Switzerland indicate multiple, spatially heterogeneous directions of movement. At the top, in the Oberhalbstein Valley, movement directions vary from dominantly top-east to top-south-southeast a very minor top-north component within Pennine rocks of the Martegnas shear zone and no preferred movement direction within the Austroalpine hanging wall. Near Piz Toissa, a minimum of two kilometers of nearby structural section in the Err and Platta nappes have been faulted out. At the bottom of the Pennine zone in Val Lumnezia and the Chur Rhein Valley at Trimmis, we observe top-northwest, top-north, and top-northeast movements. In Val Lumnezia, the Sub-Penninic Scopi zone (Gotthard cover rocks) shows movement in a top-northwest direction; the superjacent Peidener imbricate fault zone, a relatively thin (ca. 50 to 100 m thick) structural zone consisting of Scopi zone lithologies, shows movement in a northeasterly direction; above that, the basal Penninic Bündnerschiefer shows no dominant movement direction. To the east, in the Chur Rhine Valley, movement is well defined as exclusively top-north. Therefore, movement directions in the lower Bündnerschiefer are broadly top-north but heterogeneous in direction along strike between Val Lumnezia and Chur Rhein Valley, and, as first suggested by Weh and Frotizheim (2001), it may be erroneous to regard the basal Pennine thrust as a simple through-going structure. In Val Lumnezia, the Scopi-Peidener-Pennine nappes resemble a “jelly sandwich” in which the thick Pennine mass utilized the Peidener zone to move in an oblique sinistral-normal slip sense past the southeast-dipping allochthonous Scopi zone and its east-dipping Gotthard “massif” substrate. If the Peidener zone continues northeastward beneath alluvial cover of the Chur Rhein Valley, it may serve as a late, NE-directed shear zone that separates the Pennine nappes from European units. If so, it would explain the apparent truncation and progressive omission of allochthonous elements of European affinity along the zone from southwest to northeast beneath alluvium of the Chur Rhein Valley. We therefore infer that the direct juxtaposition of Penninic units to the east with the Helvetic autochthon to the west at the latitude of Trimmis records an episode of top-northeast, orogen-parallel strike-slip and extensional movement.

Zircon (U-Th)/He (ZHe) cooling ages from the Oberhalbstein Valley indicate that the Austroalpine-Pennine contact was still active at ca. 27 Ma, and that the Martegnas shear zone was active, in part, between ca. 27 and 24 Ma. It is likely that the Piz Toissa klippe formed around this time during the late Oligocene. The pattern of much younger ZHe ages at the bottom of the Pennine zone is independent of any nappe boundaries, including the Peidener imbricate fault zone, but is consistent with the rise of the Aar massif during the Miocene. Tectonic movements, as recorded by the mesostructure in the Austroalpine, Penninic, and Sub-Penninic domains, and local ZHe cooling ages generally support the conclusion drawn strictly from cooling ages that the Pennine zone was emplaced en masse as a coherent ‘piston’ or ‘mega-pip’ during Oligocene to early Miocene time (approximately 29 to 18 Ma), well after juxtaposition of Apulia with cratonic Europe (continent-continent collision) and during the development of Alpine topography and the peripheral basins (viz. Molasse and Lombardi). Additional top-north movement and late uplift and flexure of the nappe stack, along with the Aar massif, occurred primarily in middle to upper Miocene time, following the post-collisional structural interposition of the Pennine zone between Europe and Apulia.

II. Nine carbonate phases at Kennecott, Alaska were measured for their clumped isotope (∆₄₇) equilibration temperatures. The total range for carbonate temperatures spans 38-164°C. Premineral phases are relatively cool (43-71°C); synmineral phases are relatively warm (89-157°C); late postmineral phases are the most cool (38-59°C) but overlap some premineral phases. Zebra dolomite precipitated in the range 130-163°C. Dedolomite, a hallmark alteration feature of the mineralizing fluids, falls into a narrow range of 98-109°C, consistent with the stability field for the low-temperature chalcocite polymorph. Except for one sample, none of the synmineral calcites crystallized within the stability field of djurleite, a volumetrically significant component of the main-stage ore, which suggests that intergrown djurleite may have been a somewhat later recrystallization product of chalcocite rather than a coeval phase.

Calculated compositions for δ¹⁸O_water vary from -4.2 to +11.0‰. The most depleted water precipitated hydrothermal baroque dolomite, whereas the most enriched water was associated with recrystallized limestone wallrock on the periphery of the orebody. Waters that precipitated calcite+copper vary from -1.1 to +9.3‰.

Intriguingly, rhythmic layering in zebra dolomite can be resolved in ∆₄₇ space, and preliminary data indicate that the coarser-grained baroque dolomite bands precipitated at temperatures 5-10°C cooler than the surrounding, finer-grained dolomite wall rock bands.

The calculated values of δ¹⁸O_water support a genetic model that invokes redox changes associated with fluid mixing as the likely mechanism responsible for copper deposition. In this model a sulfidic, basinal fluid having δ¹⁸O similar to seawater mixes with a cuprous fluid having heavier δ¹⁸O (5 to 8‰) which was derived from the Nikolai Greenstone during prehnite-pumpellyite-facies metamorphism.

As a minority language in Switzerland, Graubünden Romansh is one of the four national languages and a partial official language. It is one of the three official languages in Graubünden and, depending on the number of speakers, it is divided into monolingual Romansh, multilingual and German communities. It has been researched and documented in depth from a philological point of view; and its position and use are increasingly being investigated. The usual methods with surveys and statistics prove to be too rough and imprecise to adequately determine the subtle patterns of (linguistic) behaviour. The preservation measures adopted are failing and degenerating into mere administration of the language. This article focuses on the participant observation of multilingual conversations in order to identify the multi-layered criteria of the choice between Romansh and German more clearly and concretely. My language biography is at the same time a review of my 40 years of field research in Romansh-speaking communities.

News traveled quickly in the early modern era, and printed accounts of the most recent international disasters fueled this fascination. Book and print collectors could experience these incidents safely at home with novel, interactive broadsheets with liftable flaps. The most famous grouping showed the 1618 rockslide that completely destroyed the Graubünden mining district of Plurs, near Switzerland. Inspired by Zurich printer Johann Hardmeyer’s 1618 publication, in 1619, Strasbourg and Nuremberg publishers Jacob van der Heyden and Johann Philipp Walch produced their own. Such tactile additions helped viewers literally grasp the extent of the wreckage while they perused the letterpress describing the newsworthy event. This article examines these unruly printed landscapes, their published afterlives, and their relationship to existing landscape modes.

This chapter examines the Surmiran dialect which is a form of Swiss Rumantsch. Surmiran is a Romance language which is one of the spoken languages in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. The emphasis of this chapter is on a single verb which lacks many of the forms other verbs possess, hence forcing the speakers to use a distinct, but almost synonymous verb as an alternative. Treated within a broader context, the verb dueir in Sumiran which is a Latin reflex of the dēbēre, provides an opportunity to evaluate how gaps should be treated within the context of Optimal Theory. This defectiveness in the Surmiran dueir was a result of the morphologization of the vowel alternations of the Swiss Rumantsch.

RepSi (acronym standing for Repertorio lessicale dei regionalismi d’uso scolastico della Svizzera italiana) is a project that aims at collecting and analyzing up-to-date data about the perception and the usage of the Swiss variety of Italian (ISIT) in the educational context in the Italian-speaking Regions of Switzerland, namely Ticino and Graubünden. This contribution is divided in two main sections: the first one intends to explain how the project RepSi has been developed and which milestones have already been reached during the first year of work; the second one presents a selection of words (explained both in their meaning and in their use) and some further developments related to school teaching and perception of this regional variety of language.

The use of copper was first established in the western Alps during the late fifth/ early fourth millennia BC. There were several metal-using groups in what is now modern Switzerland during the fourth millennium, including the Cortaillod and Pfyn cultures, followed in the third millennium BC by groups of the Saône-Rhône culture (Strahm 1994). The first direct evidence of copper production, however, only dates from the Late Bronze Age. This is based on the dating of smelting slag heaps in the valley of Oberhalbstein in the canton of Graubünden (Fasnacht 2004). These slags derive from the smelting of chalcopyrite ore derived from pillow lavas of the ophiolite geology in that area (Geiger 1984). The ability to smelt iron-rich copper ore involved a furnace technology that seems to have been first developed in the eastern Alps (see Chapter 7). No prehistoric mines are known; however, their existence may be inferred from the smelting of local ore at Late Bronze Age sites such as Savognin-Padnal and Marmorera-Stausees in the Oberhalbstein valley. Potential mining sites have been identified (see Schaer 2003), however, these have yet to be investigated in any detail. There are numerous deposits of copper mineralization in many parts of France. These occur in Brittany, the Pyrenees, the Corbières, on the margins of the Massif Central, the Maures, and the Alps. Research over the past 30 years has identified prehistoric copper mines in several of these areas. Further discoveries are possible in the difficult terrain of the Alps and Pyrenees, and also in areas where early copper mines have not been discovered, such as Brittany where deposits of steam tin and gold are also known. The oldest metal objects in France are recorded in the Paris Basin, where a small number of sheet copper beads date to the second half of the fourth millennium BC. These include the burial at Vignely (Seine-et-Marne) where a necklace of nine such beads was found with the burial of a five-year old child dated to 3499–3123 BC (Allard et al. 1998).