Academic literature on the topic 'Vegetation and climate South Australia Far North Region'

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living t

East and South-East Asia is a vast and diverse region (Fig. 6.1). The northern boundary can be taken as approximately 45 degrees latitude, from the Gobi desert on the west across Manchuria to the northern shores of Hokkaido, the main island of northern Japan. The southern boundary is over 6,000 kilometres away: the chain of islands from Java to New Guinea, approximately 10 degrees south of the Equator. From west to east across South-East Asia, from the western tip of Sumatra at 95 degrees longitude to the eastern end of New Guinea at 150 degrees longitude, is also some 6,000 kilometres. Transitions to farming within this huge area are discussed in this chapter in the context of four major sub-regions: China; the Korean peninsula and Japan; mainland South-East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, the Malay peninsula); and island South-East Asia (principally Taiwan, the Philippines, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, and New Guinea). The chapter also discusses the development of agricultural systems across the Pacific islands to the east, both in island Melanesia (the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands east of New Guinea) and in what Pacific archaeologists are terming ‘Remote Oceania’, the islands dotted across the central Pacific as far as Hawaii 6,000 kilometres east of Taiwan and Easter Island some 9,000 kilometres east of New Guinea—a region as big as East Asia and South-East Asia put together. The phytogeographic zones of China reflect the gradual transition from boreal to temperate to tropical conditions, as temperatures and rainfall increase moving southwards (Shi et al., 1993; Fig. 6.2 upper map): coniferous forest in the far north; mixed coniferous and deciduous forest in north-east China (Manchuria) extending into Korea; temperate deciduous and broadleaved forest in the middle and lower valley of the Huanghe (or Yellow) River and the Huai River to the south; sub-tropical evergreen broad-leaved forest in the middle and lower valley of the Yangzi (Yangtze) River; and tropical monsoonal rainforest on the southern coasts, which then extends southwards across mainland and island South-East Asia. Climate and vegetation also differ with altitude and distance from the coast.

Today the wild boar (subspecies Sub scrofa lybica Gray, 1868) is the largest wild mammal found in Israel (Mendelssohn & Yom Tov 1999a). Sus scrofa has formed an integral part of the fauna of Israel since c.0.78 Mya, with the earliest skeletal remains derived from the Lower Palaeolithic site of Gesher Benot Ya’akov, Israel (Hooijer 1959; Geraads & Tchernov 1983). Remains of wild boar are commonly found in archaeological assemblages in this region (e.g. Davis 1982; Tchernov 1988), and according to 19th-century travellers, wild boar were abundant throughout Palestine, including the thickets of the Jordan river and the Dead Sea, and even extended into the arid regions of the northern Negev and Judean desert (Tristram 1866; Hart 1891; Bodenheimer 1958; Qumsiyeh 1996). However, during the period of the Mandate of Palestine (1923–48) the population size of wild boar was severely reduced by hunting, and as a consequence, their distribution was reduced to the Jordan valley, from the Hula Lake in the north to Sdom at the southern tip of the Dead Sea (Bodenheimer 1958; Mendelssohn & Yom-Tov 1999 a, 1999b). Since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 they have been protected by legislation, which, coupled with the reduced numbers of predators, has resulted in a marked increase in their numbers. Nowadays, wild boar occupy most of their former habitats including the coastal region. The species has also been observed as far south as Nahal Besor in the northern Negev, but it has been proposed that these animals may represent hybrids of domestic pigs and wild boar (Mendelssohn & Yom-Tov 1999b). Four main concentrations of wild boar can be identified in Israel today: the Upper Galilee (especially in the national park of Mount Meiron), the Hula Nature Reserve, the Golan Heights, and Sdom. As shown in Table 12.1, these areas differ markedly in vegetation, altitude, and climate. A study of dental pathology in skeletal collections derived from these groups showed significant differences between the four areas (Horwitz & Davidowitz 1992). Specifically, the Sdom group was characterized by an unusually high frequency of hypodontia of the lower third incisor, indicative of inbreeding.