La forêt n’est pas un espace naturel comme nous l’avons longtemps pensé. En utilisant l’ensemble des services que lui offre la forêt, l’homme influence la dynamique des espaces forestiers. L’objectif de cette thèse, s’inscrivant dans le champ de l’histoire de l’environnement, est d’analyser, dans le temps long, les interrelations entre paysages et sociétés riveraines, d’identifier les ruptures et continuités paysagères qui ont jalonné l’histoire forestière de l’Avesnois pour aboutir à ce que nous connaissons aujourd’hui. Cette recherche a été menée dans le cadre d’un contrat Cifre participant au Plan Forêt Régional - dont l’objectif est de doubler la superficie boisée sur l’ensemble du territoire d’ici une vingtaine d’années- et au Schéma Régional de Cohérence Ecologique Trames Vertes et Bleues. Ce dispositif en Sciences humaines et plus particulièrement en Histoire étant rare, il a fallu construire une démarche au carrefour de la démarche fondamentale et la démarche appliquée. Car non seulement il s’agissait d’analyser les modalités des actions humaines et leurs impacts sur les espaces forestiers mais il fallait plus particulièrement répondre à une demande des acteurs du monde forestier actuel conditionnant ainsi certaines problématiques scientifiques. Essentiel à la compréhension des interactions entre l’homme et son milieu, l’emboîtement des échelles spatio-temporelles constitue le cœur de cette recherche. La prise en considération de l’importance des emboîtements des échelles d’analyses, impliquant un croisement de sources de nature variée, ont conduit à une réflexion sur les outils et les méthodes à employer pour répondre aux questionnements initiaux. Tout en composant avec les limites des sources qu’il étudie, l’historien offre un recul sur les processus spatio-temporels qui ont fabriqué le paysage forestier d’aujourd’hui. Cette distanciation est nécessaire pour mener à bien les politiques environnementales actuelles : préserver un paysage, sa biodiversité doit nécessairement interroger le temps. / The forest is not a space natural as we thought of it for a long time. By using all the services which offers him the forest, the man influences the dynamics of the forest spaces. Our objective is to analyse, in the long time, the relations between landscapes and societies, to reveal the weight of the silvicultural inheritances in the contemporary sylvo-systems, to identify the breaks and the continuities of the landscape which marked out the forest history of the Avesnois, to end what we know today. This research was led within the framework of a Cifre contract participating in the Plan Forest Regional – the objectif of which is to double the surface afforested on the whole territory- and in the Regional Plan of Ecological Coherence Green and blue Wefts. This Cifre contract in Human sciences and more particularly in History being rare, it was necessary to build an approach in the crossroads of the fundamental approach and the applied approach. Because not only it was a question of analyzing the modalities of the human actions and their impacts on the forest spaces but it was more particularly necessary to answer a demand of the actors of the current forest world, conditioning certain scientific problems. The main part in the understanding of the interactions between the man and its environnement, the crossing of the spatiotemporal scales establishes the heart of this research. The taking into consideration of the importance of the crossings of the scales of analyse, implying a crossing of sources of varied nature, led to a reflection on tools and methods to use to answer the initial questionings. While composing with the limits of the sources which he studies, the historian offers a backward movement on the spatiotemporal processes which made the forest landscape of today. This distance is necessary to bring to a successful conclusion the current environmental policies : to protect a landscape, its biodiversity, it is inevitable to resort to the past.

This thesis attempts to disentangle the multilayered interactions between Greater Los Angeles’s history, its built environment, and its inequitable treatment of different peoples, focusing on how transportation in surrounding suburban communities like San Gabriel Valley has developed in relation to the inner city of Los Angeles. Greater Los Angeles contains a long, winding trajectory of transit-based environmental injustices, from the indigenous societies being overtaken by the Spanish missions, to the railroads and streetcars boosting the farmlands and urban growth of Los Angeles, leading into the decline of transit and rise of automobile-oriented suburbia. Within the San Gabriel Valley, the suburban community of El Monte has a varied history in its racialized spatiality and transportation development, rising from a former agricultural hub and to its more recent growth as a vibrant working-class suburb full of minorities. Based on a case study of El Monte’s past and present built environment, this thesis looks at the present situation of El Monte’s downtown district, including a walkthrough of its ongoing downtown revitalization project centered on transit-oriented development around the newly renovated regional bus station. This thesis finds the city of El Monte and Greater Los Angeles’s transit agencies have approached the renewed economic and public interest in transit in disconnected ways, leading to mixed results for its working-class minority populace, but also finds avenues in which the government and the public can cooperatively create more equitable transit-based communities for the future.

Historical ecology is an emerging and interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain the changes in ecosystems over time through a synthesis of information derived from human records and biological data. The methods in historical ecology cover a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. However, methods for the more recent past (about 200 years) are largely limited to the human archive and dendrochronological evidence which can be subject to human bias, limited in spatial extent or not appropriate for non-forested systems. There is a need to explore new methods by which biological data can be used to understand historic vegetation and disturbance regimes over the recent past especially in arid ecosystem types. Soil phytolith analysis has the potential to provide much needed information regarding historical conditions in both areas. Phytoliths are structures formed in plants through deposition and accumulation of silica within and around cell walls that are released from plants and preserved in sediments long after death and decay of plant material. The City of Rocks National Reserve in southern Idaho was an excellent place to develop new methods in historical ecology because the human records of historic environmental conditions were so rich. There were two overarching and interconnected objectives for this dissertation research. The first was to reconstruct an ecological history of the City of Rocks National Reserve from the period of overland emigration to present. The second objective was to explore the utility of soil phytolith analysis for inferring vegetation and disturbance regime change over the recent past by testing its sensitivity to record known changes. I employed modern analogue studies, a multi-core approach and detailed core analysis to test for known changes through analysis of extraction weights, relative abundance of phytolith assemblages, microscopic charcoal and burned (darkened) phytoliths. My results showed that this combination of history and soil phytolith analysis would be a useful approach for inferring vegetation changes (e.g. increases in introduced grasses) and disturbances (e.g. fire) in ecological histories.

The swift parrot (Lathamus discolor, Psittacidae) is an endangered, austral migrant that inhabits forests and woodlands of south-eastern Australia. With a small population size (2500 birds), broad winter distribution (1 250 000 km2) and often cryptic nature, the swift parrot is a challenging species to study. In autumn they migrate north from their Tasmanian breeding grounds in search of suitable food resources throughout their winter range on mainland Australia. They are therefore dependent on a combination of suitable wintering, migration and breeding habitats. Although they spend a large proportion of their lives within winter habitats, the spatial and temporal dynamics of habitat use in this part of their range is poorly understood. This thesis aims to provide a greater understanding of large-scale winter habitat use by swift parrots, in both historic and current contexts, and provide a basis for future conservation management. ¶ Swift parrots, or red-shouldered paroquets as they were previously known, were among the first Australian birds to be scientifically described and illustrated following European settlement in 1788. However, within 60 years of settlement, habitats throughout the range of the species were being impacted upon. An important aspect of this habitat loss is the speed and spatial extent with which it occurred throughout the parrots’ broad distribution. Although the most extensive habitat loss in some areas occurred during colonial times, habitats continue to be lost as a result of various land management practices. Such impacts are also likely to be exacerbated by the ongoing cumulative impact with rapid climate change. As a result the swift parrot is an endangered species and is the subject of an ongoing national recovery program, to which this thesis contributes. ¶ Conserving habitat for the swift parrot, and other wide-ranging fauna species, is challenging since impacts in one area tend to be dismissed based on the assumption that there is sufficient habitat in other areas. These conservation challenges are discussed in regard to the national swift parrot recovery program. Although recovery program implementation for this species has been successful in identifying and protecting some important habitats, there are still many gaps in our knowledge that need to be addressed through a continuing and adaptive recovery effort, including an understanding of variable habitat use throughout their winter range. ¶ A study of swift parrot winter habitat use was therefore conducted at 53 sites across New South Wales over five years (2001-2005). Swift parrots used a diversity of winter foraging habitats in coastal and/or western slopes regions of New South Wales each year, including several habitats that occur in endangered ecological communities. Landscapes containing winter foraging habitat included scattered trees, remnant vegetation and continuous forests, and swift parrots foraged extensively on lerp and nectar from a diversity of tree species within these. The occurrence of swift parrots at foraging sites was primarily associated with the abundance of lerp, nectar and non-aggressive competitors. Although swift parrot abundance fluctuated significantly between years and regions, over half of all foraging sites were used repeatedly, highlighting their likely importance for conservation. ¶ Patterns of habitat use throughout the species’ winter range were also studied across five states/territories using volunteer data from 4140 surveys. These surveys were conducted by up to 300 volunteers twice a year, for seven years (1998-2004) with swift parrots detected in 19% of surveys. As a result, this study provided the first demonstration of large-scale drought related movements by a migratory population throughout their winter range. It also demonstrated the dynamic spatial and temporal patterns of winter habitat use, including repeated use of sites, by an austral migrant. Four regions in central Victoria were used most consistently, although the birds also visited other regions each year. ¶ During drought swift parrot abundance was significantly correlated with rainfall, whereby most of the population either concentrated in a few regions or migrated longer distances (up to 1000km) to drought refuges in wetter coastal areas. However, swift parrot abundance was not associated with specific climate variables during years of average to high rainfall throughout most of their range. Instead they appeared to prefer habitats within particular regions. Importantly this study emphasises that conservation measures need to be implemented throughout the distribution of migratory species, including drought refuge habitats and areas outside conservation reserves.

The present dissertation attempts to follow and analyze each and every individual stage of food provisioning of a late medieval monastic community. Chapter One is an introductory survey, describing the topic, its status quaestionis, problems and methodology. Chapter Two establishes the geography of crops in the rural hinterland of Norwich, with each manor specializing in different crop. A close analysis of the crop geography partially supports the Von Thünen thesis. Chapter Three looks at the agricultural trends of the demesnes. Roughly speaking, the period between c. 1290 and 1370 was a history of wheat’s expansion at the expense of rye, on the one hand, and legume shrinkage at the expense of grazing land. Chapter Four discusses annual grain acquisition, its components and disposal. It shows that about eighty per cent of the total supply derived from harvest, while the remainder came in form of tithes, grants and purchases. Chapter Five deals with the human and equine interaction. The bovine population was certainly dominant, but the draught horses easily outnumbered the oxen. Each year,the Priory authorities saved a great deal of money, because of (virtually) free customary carting service. Chapter Six explores the space for storing and processing of the annual grain supply. The five adjacent buildings, namely the Great Granary, brewery, bakery, mill and staples, allowed most effective cooperation between dozens of Priory labourers working in victual departments, on the one hand, and decreased transportation costs. Chapter Seven attempts to establish the relation between the Priory population, its annual grain supply and demand. Conversion of the grain into approximate calorific and financial equivalent reveals that the supply must have exceeded the demand. Chapter Eight is deals with the actual consumption of the grain supply. As far as Norwich monks are concerned, their annual bread and ale supply has certainly exceeded their normal requirements and there is no hint about selling the surplus. Joining the bread and ale accounts with those of the cellar, we arrive at astonishing calorific figures. Chapter Nine discusses the charity activities of Norwich Priory, particularly connected to the distribution of bread and ale among the needy. There were three distinctive groups: hermits, prisoners and paupers. According to almoner’s accounts, the Priory allocated generous sums of loaves and ale to the paupers.

The present dissertation attempts to follow and analyze each and every individual stage of food provisioning of a late medieval monastic community. Chapter One is an introductory survey, describing the topic, its status quaestionis, problems and methodology. Chapter Two establishes the geography of crops in the rural hinterland of Norwich, with each manor specializing in different crop. A close analysis of the crop geography partially supports the Von Thünen thesis. Chapter Three looks at the agricultural trends of the demesnes. Roughly speaking, the period between c. 1290 and 1370 was a history of wheat’s expansion at the expense of rye, on the one hand, and legume shrinkage at the expense of grazing land. Chapter Four discusses annual grain acquisition, its components and disposal. It shows that about eighty per cent of the total supply derived from harvest, while the remainder came in form of tithes, grants and purchases. Chapter Five deals with the human and equine interaction. The bovine population was certainly dominant, but the draught horses easily outnumbered the oxen. Each year,the Priory authorities saved a great deal of money, because of (virtually) free customary carting service. Chapter Six explores the space for storing and processing of the annual grain supply. The five adjacent buildings, namely the Great Granary, brewery, bakery, mill and staples, allowed most effective cooperation between dozens of Priory labourers working in victual departments, on the one hand, and decreased transportation costs. Chapter Seven attempts to establish the relation between the Priory population, its annual grain supply and demand. Conversion of the grain into approximate calorific and financial equivalent reveals that the supply must have exceeded the demand. Chapter Eight is deals with the actual consumption of the grain supply. As far as Norwich monks are concerned, their annual bread and ale supply has certainly exceeded their normal requirements and there is no hint about selling the surplus. Joining the bread and ale accounts with those of the cellar, we arrive at astonishing calorific figures. Chapter Nine discusses the charity activities of Norwich Priory, particularly connected to the distribution of bread and ale among the needy. There were three distinctive groups: hermits, prisoners and paupers. According to almoner’s accounts, the Priory allocated generous sums of loaves and ale to the paupers.

<p>Through a case study of Carteret County, North Carolina, this research explores historic and contemporary narratives about fishery resource-use issues (e.g., conflicts over ocean spaces and species, disputes over fisheries governance, competing claims about the value of fish and fishing) in order to contribute to nature-society research in the fields of political ecology, cultural and economic geography, and environmental history. This project has three main objectives: (1) To analyze how historic narratives about fish and fishing have changed over the past century; (2) To evaluate the resource-use narratives of contemporary commercial and recreational fishers; and (3) To examine the process of state fisheries policymaking.</p><p>This project employed discourse analysis to analyze historic newspaper articles, contemporary interviews with commercial and recreational fishers, and North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission meeting records. This research showed increasing frictions between commercial and recreational fishers over time, precipitated by state regulatory decisions and increasingly divergent interpretations by fishers of the proper roles for fish in environmental, economic, and social systems. Commercial and recreational fishers had distinct ways of thinking about fishery resources, shaped by their personal fishing histories as well as larger socioeconomic trends. In particular, though both types of fishers would agree that `fish are valuable public resources that should not be wasted,' their definitions of value, public, and waste were very different. Further, both recreational and commercial narratives are expressed within the policy process, and most policymaker decisions are compromises between commercial and recreational arguments. Political alliances frequently shift, but Division of Marine Fisheries staff (and their reports) often display substantial power to influence decision-making. Fish stock assessments often serve as objects around which moral arguments are made about how fisheries should be managed and allocated. </p><p>Overall, this research indicates that valuing nature also means valuing particular types of interactions between human and nonhuman nature (in this case fish). Further, different modes of interacting with fishery resources over decades have worked to separate recreational and commercial fishers socially and politically (leading to clashes where they overlap spatially). Where these cultural politics matter most is in struggles over the purpose of different types of fish and the meaning of central concepts in fisheries management, as the outcomes have implications for both the practical use of resources and the character and scale of governing institutions.</p> / Dissertation

Studies of outdoor recreation and the social construction of wilderness have shown how urban consumption of wilderness areas dispossessed rural residents from traditional land uses. Though essential for understanding power struggles over land use, these studies pay little attention to rural involvement in creating recreational areas. In contrast, this dissertation focuses on how rural non-indigenous people used, enjoyed and constructed their own recreational hinterland. Set in twentieth-century British Columbia, where wilderness adventure is popular and where mountains, oceans and lakes lend themselves to romantic and sublime aesthetics, the case studies here examine rural recreation by considering the forms that “rural” has taken in British Columbia, the relationship of civil society to government, conceptions of Crown and private land as a commons, the production and consumption of recreational spaces, and ethics such as woodcraft, “leave-no-trace,” the “good life” and postmaterialism. The sources include interviews with participants in these activities and archival sources such as diaries, newspapers, government records on parks, forestry and transportation, and letters that citizens wrote to government. This material is set within the context of historical studies of outdoor recreation, the social construction of wilderness, automobiles and parks, the informal economy, and the contested commons. The first two case studies involve the imaginative transformation of mountain landscapes into parks and playgrounds to attract tourists at Mt. Revelstoke and on Vancouver Island’s Forbidden Plateau. During the Second World War, the province was reluctant to create parks for local recreation, but at Darke Lake in the Okanagan, the Fish and Game Club lobbied successfully for a small park, challenging the supremacy of logging as an essential war industry. After the war, the state’s view of parks shifted. The provincial government promoted recreational democracy, and offered parks as part of the “good life” to working families from booming single-industry towns, sometimes responding to local demands as in the case of the Champion Lakes. Inspired by the American Wilderness Act of 1964, some British Columbians sought to preserve large tracts of roadless, forested land. The Purcell Wilderness Conservancy (1974) in the Kootenay region resulted from a local trail-building effort and a letter-writing campaign. Beginning in the late 1980s, retirees in Powell River started building trails on the edges of town. This group is still active in ensuring that their forested hinterland remains an accessible commons for recreational use. The rural British Columbians discussed in these case studies consistently engaged with the backcountry as their recreational commons where they could combine work and leisure, harvest non-timber forest products, and promote tourism. Rural residents who were willing to volunteer and enjoyed some leisure time forged networks among tourism promoters and applied for government funding to create access to recreational space, and protect it from uses inconsistent with recreation, such as logging. British Columbians have claimed the right to access Crown land as a commons for recreation in a variety of ways over the twentieth century and these case studies show how rural agency has played a significant role in creating recreational space.

New questions in a changing economy demands development of both contemporary and historical national accounts. One such question concerns economic and environmental relationships. From a national accounting perspective this issue has been approached in terms of environmental accounting. The aim of this study is to investigate how proposals for integrated environmental and economic accounting can be used for an extension of the Historical National Accounts for Sweden and for examining the long-term relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation and resource depletion. This issue is approached through methodological considerations and estimates of iron ore and timber depletion and discharge of pollutants. The conclusions are that it is possible to construct environmental historical national accounts, but that the lack of historical data and theoretical difficulties cause a high level of abstraction and other problems concerning the series. The empirical investigations show that the 19th century can be considered a period of depletion intensive growth. Furthermore, there seems to be evidence of a correlation between changes in the natural resource net prices and previous periodizations of Swedish economic development. Concerning pollutants, the analyses shows an increase of the aggregated discharges until the late 1960s. However, the pollution intensity of growth has fallen throughout the period, possibly in a pattern of long trend periods. / digitalisering@umu

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosopy (PhD) / An environmental history approach is used in this thesis as a foundation for the analysis of the social and environmental changes that have occurred from the ancient past to the present within the Paterson Valley in New South Wales, Australia. The study examines the biophysical basis of the valley’s ecological processes and then describes the influence of the activities of Aboriginal peoples and subsequent European colonisation on the landscape. The study makes use of the various methodologies within social and ecological systems to assist with the analysis. It demonstrates the value of concepts such as complex adaptive systems, the adaptive cycle, panarchy and ecosystem health as ways of conceptualising complex transdisciplinary issues to reach conclusions based on temporal and spatial evidence. The complex relationships that the Aboriginal peoples had with the environment are compared with the various and rapid phases of colonial influences and processes. The social dimension of the changes over time is examined particularly with respect to the Indigenous and European institutions and infrastructure that influence the landscape. A significant issue identified in the study was the changing influence of Western institutions on the ecosystem health of the Valley; from local to global. The implications of this on ecosystem health are discussed. The Valley’s landscapes are divided into alluvial and non-alluvial, with the latter receiving the most attention in the study primarily due to its more extant nature whereas the alluvial rainforest has been virtually eliminated through extensive land clearing. The analysis of the non-alluvial landscape shows how important the Indigenous land management practices were in the maintenance of a complex mosaic of vegetation types specifically influenced by fire. The impact of the removal of the Indigenous influences on the landscape and the imposition of European practices and processes have seen a major reduction in the Valley’s ecological complexity. The study identified processes and factors external to the Valley which are increasingly influencing it. Not all of these are detrimental but they result in the Valley’s ecosystem health being more dependent on global events and processes. The study demonstrates the value of the ecosystem health framework for conceptualising the Valley’s ecosystems and the adaptive cycle for analysing and understanding their changes over time. These approaches provide an opportunity to identify pathways for future management of the Valley’s resources.