Search Results (7)

After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, we wanted to determine how the islanders viewed environmental organizations as part of an effort to understand the relationships between attitudes, institutions, and environmental and social justice issues. As a category 5 hurricane, Hurricane Maria was one of the strongest to hit Puerto Rico. Yet, the US mainstream media coverage of this and other environmental issues was lacking. From a total of 90 environmental organizations in Puerto Rico, we surveyed 19 that were active in the southwest of the island. We asked: (1) How do local people view environmental and social justice issues and (2) given their organizations’ efforts to deal with these issues, what are their successes? To address these questions, we developed a survey in English and Spanish and conducted personal and online interviews with 30 relevant individuals. Their most successful outcomes included: (1) educating and creating greater awareness of environmental issues; (2) introducing environmental changes into their communities; and (3) becoming and surviving as economically sustainable organizations. The results inform our understanding between environmental organizations and social and environmental justice in Puerto Rico and more broadly, because the organizations surveyed are at the center of fighting climate change and achieving environmental justice. Full article

Global climate change, especially extreme drought events, presents a complicated challenge to humanity and Earth’s system in the 21st century. As an extremely important carbon sink region in China, Southwest China has encountered frequent drought disasters in recent decades. It is critical to explore the frequency, duration, severity, and other associated characteristics of drought events as well as their spatial and temporal patterns in the region from a long-term perspective. In this study, we used the latest dataset from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) between 1901 and 2018 to extract all drought events by calculating the standardized anomaly of the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Theil–Sen median trend analysis, the Mann–Kendall test, and the moving t-test were used to reveal the spatial trend and mutation point of drought severity. The results showed that (1) The standardized anomaly of the 3-month SPEI can accurately identify drought events in Southwest China. In total, 72 drought events occurred during this period, of which the consecutive drought in autumn, winter, and spring from 2009 to 2010 lasted the longest, having the most substantial severity and the most extensive damage range. (2) Drought events mainly started in spring and early summer and ended in autumn and winter. The distribution of drought was the most expansive and the drought severity was the most serious in September. (3) In terms of spatial pattern, Guangxi has the highest frequency of drought events, with some areas experiencing up to 100 events. The average duration of drought events ranged between 3.5 and 5.5 months, with most lasting for 4–5 months. The most severe drought areas are mainly concentrated in southern Sichuan and western Yunnan. Overall, the severity of drought events in the west were generally higher compared to that in the east. (4) Over the past 120 years, most of the region (82.46%) showed an increasing trend in drought severity, with a slope of up to −0.01. About 15.12% of the areas exhibited a significant drying trend (p < 0.05), particularly in southern Sichuan, eastern Guizhou, and northern and southern Yunnan. Such analyses can serve as a scientific foundation for developing drought prevention and mitigation measures as well as exploring how drought events affect the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystems in Southwest China. Full article

This diachronic study is a variationist analysis of subject pronoun expression (SPE) in two key Spanish-language Arizonan newspapers, El Fronterizo (1878–1914) and El Tucsonense (1915–1957), following Tucson’s annexation to the United States through the Gadsden Purchase, a period of great social change during which the Spanish-speaking population in the city underwent a gradual process of anglicization. Since some research on SPE in Spanish in the United States suggests that English-Spanish bilingualism increases the use of overt subject personal pronouns (SPPs) because of their almost categorical use in English, this study’s main aim is to track the initial stages of such progression in a period when social bilingualism was steadily extending in Tucson. In this respect, our results show that the presence of overt SPPs does increase over time in the data analyzed; however, lower rates of overt SPPs in contemporary Tucson and Phoenix spoken Spanish raise the possibility that the percentage surge in the aforementioned period is rather due to the offline written nature of the newspapers, which, for instance, weakens the effect of online constraints, such as switch reference, ambiguous TAM endings, and non-reflexive verbs. Even so, regression analyses with the mixed-effects statistical software Rbrul reveal that the linguistic factor groups shaping SPE in the diachronic data are essentially the same ones found operating in contemporary varieties of Spanish. Full article

The racialization of Mexican Americans in northern Mexico, that is, the U.S. Southwest, following the Anglo-Americanization during the second half of the nineteenth century, is an excellent case study of the historical formations of Anglo-American and Spanish American racial orders. Both racial orders were based on a hierarchy that privileged Whiteness and stigmatized Blackness. Yet Spanish America’s high levels of miscegenation resulted in ternary orders allowing for gradation in and fluidity within racial categories, in addition to the formation of multiracial identities, including those of individuals with African ancestry. Anglo-America was characterized by restrictions on miscegenation and more precise definitions of and restrictions on racial categories. This prohibited the formation of multiracial identities while buttressing a binary racial order that broadly necessitated single-race (monoracial) identification as either White or nonWhite, and more specifically, as White or Black, given their polar extremes in racial hierarchy. Within this order, hypodescent applies most stringently to those with African ancestry through the one-drop rule, which designates as Black all such individuals. This article examines monoracialization through historical processes of Mexican–American identity formations. Over the twentieth century, this shifted from White to Brown, but without any acknowledgment of African ancestry. Full article

Groundwater resources are regularly the principal water supply in semiarid and arid climate areas. However, groundwater levels (GWL) in semiarid aquifers are suffering a general decrease because of anthropic exploitation of aquifers and the repercussions of climate change. Effective groundwater management strategies require a deep characterization of GWL fluctuations, in order to identify individual behaviors and triggering factors. In September 2019, the Guadalquivir River Basin Authority (CHG) declared that there was over-exploitation in three of the five groundwater bodies of the Almonte-Marismas aquifer, Southwest Spain. For that reason, it is critical to understand GWL dynamics in this aquifer before the new Spanish Water Resources Management Plans (2021–2027) are developed. The application of GWL series clustering in hydrogeology has grown over the past few years, as it is an extraordinary tool that promptly provides a GWL classification; each group can be related to different responses of a complex aquifer under any external change. In this work, GWL time series from 160 piezometers were analyzed for the period 1975 to 2016 and, after data pre-processing, 24 piezometers were selected for clustering with k-means (static) and time series (dynamic) clustering techniques. Six and seven groups (k) were chosen to apply k-means. Six characterized types of hydrodynamic behaviors were obtained with time series clustering (TSC). Number of clusters were related to diverse affections of water exploitation depending on soil uses and hydrogeological spatial distribution parameters. TSC enabled us to distinguish local areas with high hydrodynamic disturbance and to highlight a quantitative drop of GWL during the studied period. Full article

High-frequency (HF) radars are efficient tools for measuring vast areas and gathering ocean parameters in real-time. However, the accuracy of their wave estimates is under analysis. This paper presents a new methodology for analyzing and validating the wave data estimated by two CODAR SeaSonde radars located on the Galician coast (NW Spain). Approximately one and a half years of wave data (January, 2014–April, 2015) were obtained for ten range cells employing two different sampling times used by the radar software. The resulting data were screened by an updated method, and their abundance and quality were described for each radar range cell and different wave regime; the latter were defined using the spectral significant wave height (Hm0) and mean wave direction (Dm) estimated by two buoys and three SIMAR points (SImulación MARina in Spanish, from the wave reanalysis model by Puertos del Estado (PdE)). The correlation between the results and the particularities of the different sea states (broadband or bimodal), the wind and the operation of the devices are discussed. Most HF radar wave parameters’ errors occur for waves from the NNE and higher than 6 m. The best agreement between the Vilán radar and the Vilano-Sisargas buoy wave data was obtained for the dominant wave regime (from the northwest) and the southwest wave regime. However, relevant contradictions regarding wave direction were detected. The possibilities of reducing the wave parameters’ processing time by one hour and increasing the numbers of range cells of the radars have been validated. Full article

Eucalyptus globulus Labill is the main exotic broadleaf species planted and managed for pulp and energy production in Spain, where it covers an area of more than 0.6 million ha. The climatic and soil conditions of the planting areas range from the predominantly acidic or fertile soils developed over limestone in Atlantic areas of the north and northwest of the Iberian Peninsula to the less weathered soils developed from slates, sandy deposits or limestone in the drier southwest. The widely varying conditions explain the large differences in proposed fertilizer prescriptions. This review paper provides an analysis of the proposed practices and prescriptions by considering trial results and the need to develop site specific prescriptions for seedling standards and fertilization at planting establishment. Analysis of nutritional studies and of nutrient balances over a whole rotation is presented in order to provide basic information for defining maintenance fertilization, identified as the main bottleneck for sustainable wood production in these stands. Different fertilization practices are used by non industrial owners and Spanish pulp companies, with the last one applying a more intense management relying in more fertilization. A complete consideration of nutrition-related operation and decisions is shown to be essential for maintaining potential productivity, reduce biotic and abiotic damages and reduce mineral fertilization needs. Full article