This thesis argues that territoriality is a crucial yet underexplored spatiality of social movements and rethinks it as a dialectical process of struggle, in light of the 2011 wave of occupation-based uprisings. It argues that dominant understandings of territoriality remain trapped within definitions of hierarchical strategies to control people and things in space. Moreover, it is suggested that the predominance of network-based approaches to theorising social movements has provided little room for a detailed engagement with territoriality. The thesis starts by opening up territoriality to the dialectical thought of Henri Lefebvre and John Holloway, and reorients it towards the antagonisms of power-to-against-power-over and the appropriation-against- domination of space. Rather than a top-down strategy of exerting power-over, the thesis argues that territoriality should be seen as inherently dialectical in character, part of an ongoing process of subverting space towards new social relations and values. Based on militant research with Occupy London - consisting of a seven-month ethnography, forty-three in-depth interviews, and archival analysis – the thesis then maps out and explores the ways in which this movement produced territoriality as a key spatiality of its politics. The thesis argues that territoriality was produced through four core sets of practices: taking space; encountering space; holding space; and losing space. It deals with each territorial practice in turn, exploring how they are productive of territoriality, and drawing out central antagonisms. It then argues that paying attention to these practices not only allows us to rethink territoriality as a spatiality of relevance to radical social change, but that it makes us alert to the contradictions and tensions that underlie social movements and the possibilities for negotiating them. In this way the thesis speaks not only to theoretical debates on the geography of social movements but also to practical concerns of contemporary activism.

Oxygen isotope ratios have become an indispensable tool in elucidating past climates. In recent years the chitinous remains of chironomid larvae (Insecta: Diptera: Chironomidae), which are abundant in most lacustrine sediments, have received increasing attention as a proxy for reconstructing the oxygen isotope composition of past lake waters (δ18Olakewater). The interpretation of stratigraphic changes in the oxygen isotopic composition of chironomid remains (δ18Ochironomid) is underpinned by the fundamental assumption that δ18Ochironomid is primarily reflective of δ18Olakewater, which itself is intimately associated with climate. In this investigation a series of laboratory and field-based calibration studies were conducted, with the aim of contributing to the development of δ18Ochironomid as a tool in palaeoclimate reconstructions. All analyses were performed on purified chironomid remains using a high temperature conversion elemental analyser (TC/EA) coupled, via a ConFlo III open split interface unit, to a Delta V Advantage isotope ratio mass spectrometer (IRMS). Compositional heterogeneity and exogenous contamination are known to have a deleterious influence on δ18O determinations from chitinous remains, including chironomids. In order to produce meaningful δ18Ochironomid measurements, non-amino polysaccharide impurities present in chironomid samples were eliminated through a series of liquid solvent-based extractions (2:1 DCM: MeOH, 0.25M HCl, 0.25M NaOH) performed at 20°C for 24 hours. The chosen reaction conditions were based on the results of a systematic study evaluating the influence of chemical pre-treatments on the δ18O of contemporary chironomid head capsules isolated from commercially grown larvae. To date the absence of a standardised pre-treatment procedure has hindered inter-laboratory comparisons, therefore it is recommended that analysts employ a similar protocol in the future. Laboratory and field-based calibration studies indicate that the interpretation of δ18Ochironomid is not straightforward, with signals influenced to varying degrees by δ18Olakewater, temperature and secondary factors (e.g. diet). The findings of these calibration studies were used to construct a novel chironomid-carbonate palaeothermometer, which was applied to δ18Ochironomid and δ18Obulk_carbonate records obtained from a Late-glacial sediment sequence (Hawes Water, UK). Although the general climate trends reported by this approach are generally in good agreement with other palaeoclimate reconstructions from the region, absolute temperature estimates were unrealistically low (ranging between −9 and +11°C). Based on the limited available data the spurious temperature estimates were attributed to diagenetic alteration. The strong correlation observed between the two independent δ18O records indicates that diagenetic alterations are likely to have retained some of the original isotopic signature. Despite the efforts of this investigation it is clear that this approach remains in its infancy, with further extensive calibration studies necessary. However, the results presented in this thesis demonstrate that in suitable limnological settings δ18Ochironomid has great potential for elucidating past climates.

Insects, which represent the most species-rich taxa, are extremely important ecosystem components. The diversity patterns of insects have, however, been widely ignored in biodiversity research. In my thesis, I aim to establish a basic understanding of the diversity patterns of insect assemblages in the temperate forest and forest plantation ecosystems of Northern China, and to investigate how these patterns correlate with vegetation and environmental conditions. The study aims to give further insights into the insect diversity status and measures to conserve or even enhance their diversity in the large secondary and plantation forests which have been and are currently established throughout northern China. The study focuses on two distinct insect taxa: ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and geometrid moths (Lepidoptera: Geometridae). In the main study area located within the Changbaishan Natural Reserve (CNR) in Jilin Province, 4844 individuals (47 species) of ground beetle and 9285 individuals (155 species) of geometrid moth were sampled. In addition, 1488 ground beetles (24 species) and 2047 geometrid moths (165 species) were sampled in the secondary and plantation forest area at Dongling Mountain (DLM) in Beijing. A first important result of this work is that the α-diversity of both ground beetle and geometrid moth assemblages decreased significantly with increasing elevation at CNR. My results also show that the relationships between phyto-diversity and the diversity of insects are weak and furthermore likely to be driven by underlying environmental factors. The significant changes which have recently occurred in the plant species composition at CNR chiefly related to changes in the climatic conditions suggest that insect species are also under high pressure in this area. Finally, this study suggests that in the temperate religions of Northern China, secondary and plantation forests can potentially harbour high levels of insect α-diversity compared with mature, more pristine forests.

Increasing rates of volcano-tectonic (VT) seismicity are one of the most common precursors before volcanic eruptions. Previous quantitative studies of VT precursors have focussed on volcanoes in subduction zones, with compressional background stress fields. To compare these studies with similar precursors observed before eruptions in extensional stress fields, VT seismicity was examined before ten flank eruptions at Mt Etna, in Sicily, between 1977 and 2008. Thirty percent of the eruptions were preceded by exponential increases in VT seismicity, with durations of months to years. Two exponential accelerations were also identified that did not result in an eruption. The locations of earthquakes suggest that pre-eruptive and non-eruptive VT sequences were both the result of the pressurisation of a magma chamber, causing stress changes in the surrounding crust and volcanic edifice. The behaviour of precursory sequences was further investigated through a series of rock-physics experiments in the laboratory. Samples of Etna basalt were deformed at a constant strain rate. Fracturing was recorded as acoustic emissions, which are analogues of VT events. Using a novel experimental design, experiments were performed in extensional, as well as in compressional, stress fields. In all cases, sample failure was preceded by exponential increases in the total number of acoustic emissions with time. The results are well described by a theoretical model for which the exponential trends reflect the probability of cracking under a constant strain rate and are characterised by the ratio of applied differential stress to a characteristic thermodynamic stress, calculated independently from the rock’s composition and the pressure and temperature of the experiment. The experimental results support the interpretation that exponential VT trends in the field can be used to follow the pressurisation of a magma body and, hence, they can potentially be used to improve forecasts of eruptions at volcanoes, regardless of the prevailing stress field.

The 2011 Area Classification for Output Areas (2011 OAC) is a new open geodemographic classification of the UK based on 2011 UK Census data. The 2011 OAC, created in partnership with the Office for National Statistics (ONS), supersedes the 2001 Area Classification for Output Areas (2001 OAC) to provide the most current open geodemographic view of the UK. The 2001 OAC was widely used in academia, local government and by commercial organisations, but its reliance on data from the 2001 UK Census has led to a perceived degradation of reliability over time and a decline in users. The release of the 2011 UK Census data provided the opportunity to create a 2011 OAC which could address some of the acknowledged flaws of the 2001 OAC, such as the methods used for data handling, to create a more robust methodology. The publication of this methodology with accompanying documentation, in addition to utilising open-source software, guarantees the reproducibility of the 2011 OAC; with an additional benefit of the methodology being able to act as a template for future bespoke open geodemographic classifications. Open geodemographic classifications, unlike those provided by commercial organisations, have historically been unable to utilise ancillary data sources to enrich and update their systems. This research proposes an alternative approach; utilising the limited range of Open Data sources made available regularly at the small granular level to create uncertainty indicators. These indicators allow areas of uncertainty that develop over time within the classification’s geodemographic assignment to be identified; allowing users the opportunity to take compensatory action. This project delivered a new open geodemographic classification of the UK. The methodological advances, use of open source software and ability to assess the temporal stability of geodemographic assignments mean the 2011 OAC can be considered a step forward for open geodemographics.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the transnational practices, activities, identities and behaviours of migrants from the former Yugoslavia to Britain. The main aims of the research are to analyse the extent and nature of economic, political and socio-cultural transnationalisms amongst migrants from the former Yugoslavia and to explore the potential factors which could contribute to the presence (or absence) of transnational activities and identities. The dynamics of transnationalism are considered through the twin concepts of transnational acting and transnational being and belonging. The study seeks to make a contribution to addressing the gap in the literature of comparative studies of transnationalism of different ethno-national groups within one host state and transnational activities and identities as exhibited (or not) by those migrants who did not migrate ‘voluntarily’. The qualitative study employs a grounded mixed-methods approach combining a survey of and interviews with migrants from Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia and Slovenia who had migrated to Britain over the period of 1953 to 2010, with archival work. The variables considered as potentially contributing factors include country of origin, nationality, ethnicity, age, gender, marital status, age at the time of migration, immigration status and the context of departure and context of reception at the time of the journey of migration. Motivations for migrating were considered as a potentially key variable in determining a migrant’s transnational profile and this is explored at some length in the context of the different catalysts for migrating from the region; the relationship between Britain and Yugoslavia and its constituent parts is also discussed. The study finds that, whilst ethnicity and motivations for migration appear to be key variables in determining engagement as a transnational migrant, deconstruction of potentially contributing individual variables cannot take place in isolation without taking into account the context of an individual’s migration experience as a whole.

Collapsing thermal plumes were investigated through experimental and numerical simulations. Collapsing plumes are an uncommon fluid dynamical phenomenon, usually observed when the heat source is removed. A series of fluid dynamical experiments were conducted on thermal plumes at a variety of temperature and viscosity contrasts, in a cubic plexiglas tank of inner side dimension 26.5cm and no-slip sides. The fluid was heated by a small 2cm diameter heater. Experimental fluids included Lyle’s Golden syrup and ADM’s Liquidose 436 syrup, which have strongly temperature-dependent viscosities and high Prandtl numbers (10³-10⁵ at experimental conditions). Visualisation techniques included white light shadowgraphs and Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) of the tank's central plane. Temperature contrasts ranged from 3-60°C, and two differing forms of collapse were identified. At very low temperature differences stalled collapse was observed, where the plumes stall in the lower third of the tank before collapsing. At temperature differences between 7-23°C normal plume evolution occurred, until lenticular collapse developed between midway and two-thirds of the distance from the base of the tank. The lens shape originated in the top of the head and was present throughout collapse. At temperatures above ΔT=23°C, the plumes followed the expected growth and shape and the head flattened out at the top of the tank. Thermal collapse remains difficult to explain given experimental conditions (continuous heating). Instead, it is possible that small density differences arising from crystallisation at ambient temperatures changes plume buoyancy and therefore induces lenticular collapse. The evolution of the refractive index of the syrup through time to ascertain this possibility was measured. Additionally, SPIV revealed the presence of a large, downwelling, low velocity mass in the tank that inhibited the growth of low temperature difference stalled collapse plumes. In the mantle it is likely that the stalled collapse plumes would be unable to be detected by tomography because they would be unable to traverse far from the thermal boundary layer and would collapse back to the base. This would mean that they would have little impact on redistributing material in the mantle. The plumes in this stalled collapse regime had rise times comparable to diffusion times, which is an additional reason for the collapse. The lenticular collapse in the mantle could cause depletion of a deep-source and redistribute the material in the region where the plume began to collapse with some material flowing back to the base of the mantle. Numerical simulations using Fluidity (Fluidity, is an adaptive mesh finite element package) were undertaken to explore the parameter range where the two collapse phenomena were observed experimentally. These simulated plumes did not show signs of collapse in the purely thermal simulation but at temperature differences up to 14°C the plumes stalled and were unable to ascend to the top of the tank. The aspect ratio of the tank was changed to explore the effect this had on plume stalling. At increased tank height the plume ascended further in the tank whilst the conduit radius remained constant. However, the very low temperature difference plumes remained unable to reach the upper surface of the tank. In contrast, when the tank width was increased the plumes ascended a little further in the tank but stalled at an earlier time and the plume conduit width generally increased. This implied that the tank width was inhibiting the growth of the plume marginally. Therefore, changing the aspect ratio of the tank does not inhibit the stalling of the simulated plumes and is unlikely to be influencing the experimental plumes growth, stalling and collapse.

Understanding the general pattern of how a clade evolves over time is a central aim of palaeontology and evolutionary biology. The observation that the tree of life is asymmetric in species distribution necessitates that rates of evolution, speciation, and extinction vary through time and across phylogeny. The way this variation is distributed can help to inform on historic events, selection pressures, and relationships. Often, at the origination of a clade, it is supposed that there is an ‘early burst’ of diversification, before rates of speciation and morphological evolution slow down as the clade ages. One example of a supposed ‘early burst’ is that of placental mammals, but the internal relationships of the earliest members of this group have prevented further study of macroevolutionary parameters. In this thesis, by building the largest cladistic data matrix to date, I test the relationships of mammals from the earliest Cenozoic, and from the resulting phylogenies, test the hypotheses that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction resulted in an adaptive radiation of placental mammals. I show that Phenacodontidae are most parsimoniously ancestral to Perissodactyla, that a division between Boreoeutheria and Atlantogenata is better supported than one between Xenarthra and Epitheria or Afrotheria and Exafroplacentalia at the root of Placentalia, and that all “condylarths” can be placed, with varying degrees of confidence, as stem members of laurasiatherian orders. I show that there was an increase in rate of morphological evolution immediately after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, that Placentalia is extremely likely to have originated less than 70 million years ago, and that the rise of Placentalia was associated with an increase in morphospace occupation, and, with a lag, mean pairwise dissimilarity of taxa. These conclusions support the contention that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction was not just an important time in Earth’s ecological history, but crucial to the diversification of mammals to the level observed today.

From an increasing awareness of the risks posed by climate change emerge the need to model potential impacts on coasts at a high spatial resolution, broad spatial scales, and time scales that correspond to the widely used IPCC sea-level rise scenarios. Little previous work has been carried out at this scale in the UK. This thesis investigates the potential of ‘reduced complexity’ models as a tool to represent mesoscale impacts of sea-level rise on UK estuarine environments. The starting point for this work is the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM), which has been widely used in the USA. The SLAMM source code is first modified to accommodate the different tidal sedimentary environments and habitats found in the UK, and evaluated in a pilot study of the Newtown estuary, Isle of Wight. The modified SLAMM is then applied to the more complex environments of the Suffolk estuaries and the Norfolk barrier coast in order to evaluate its ability to produce meaningful projections of intertidal habitat change under the UKCP09 scenarios. Validation is also attempted against limited known historic changes, while a comparison of the SLAMM outputs to a GIS-based approach is also undertaken. Given sufficient sedimentation data, this approach produces robust projections in landform and habitat change at a whole estuary scale, with visually powerful outputs to convey possible future changes to stakeholders and policy makers. Although the nature of the SLAMM outputs is more sophisticated than the GIS-based approach, SLAMM is shown to have some limitations. The most serious of them lies in the empirical nature of the various sub-models of intertidal deposition and erosion. Whilst these can be calibrated to give meaningful results for saltmarsh, the lack of a robust formulation for tidal flats means that SLAMM is unable to resolve key landform and habitat transition in estuaries.

Hong Kong has seen a significant increase in wine consumption since the withdrawal of wine tax in February 2008, and the Special Administrative Region (SAR) has now become Asia’s wine-trading hub. However, while alcohol consumption is a recognised academic subject in the fields of anthropology, geography and cultural studies, current research offers limited information on Hong Kong’s wine industry, the reasons behind the popularisation of wine, or how consumers drink wine. This thesis investigates the ways in which people of different ethnic and social backgrounds residing in Hong Kong consume alcohol. It is argued that some Hong Kong citizens consume alcohol in various ways to construct a postcolonial identity. This finding was uncovered through the exploration of the development of Hong Kong’s wine industry; the way that people practise wine consumption; how alcohol is consumed at home, work and in leisure spaces; how liquid modern identity is constructed in drinking spaces through experiential consumption. This thesis argues that Hong Kong citizens are currently experiencing a phase of uncertain social and cultural changes following the 1997 handover. They find themselves in a transitory moment as they are moving away from the old Hong Kong, which was ruled by the British government, to the new Hong Kong, which is slowly being transformed by the Beijing government. Wine consumption has increased in popularity because it enables Hong Kong’s citizens to display cultural capital while simultaneously distancing themselves from mainland Chinese society. This research was carried out using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including statistical analysis, ethnography, elite interviews and focus groups to develop frameworks to investigate and theorise Hong Kong’s culture and society through alcohol consumption. The methodological frameworks, theoretical debates and empirical findings contribute to wider knowledge in Asian studies, drinking cultures and geographies of consumption.