̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - geography

Two new Climate Change Master's programmes launched at Cambridge

sc604 — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 10:44:01 +0000

̽��ֱ��two Master's programmes, in Anthropocene Studies and Holocene Climates, will welcome their first students in October 2020 and will be hosted in the Department of Geography. They are among the first Master's degrees in the world to study the connected issues of global change, past, present and future from such a cross-disciplinary vantage point. Students on both programmes will complete a common course in interdisciplinary thinking and analysis.

̽��ֱ��programmes will provide students with deep insights into the processes and outcomes of global change in the past and equip them with the tools to understand and question the processes of human and planetary change and transformation taking place now and into the future.

Applications to both programmes are now open, and potential students can find out more at the upcoming postgraduate open day on Friday, 1 November.

̽��ֱ��MPhil in Anthropocene Studies will provide students with the knowledge and skills to study, explore and critique the implications, tensions and challenges inherent in the idea of the Anthropocene: the proposed ‘age of humans’ which reflects the enormous impact of humanity on our planet.

What does it mean for humanity to be considered a geological force? Who might promote, and who might resist, this proposed language signifying the age of humans? How might this idea change how people think ethically about the environment, themselves and their actions in the world? How can the sciences, social sciences and humanities each contribute towards understanding the profound challenges that the Anthropocene signifies?

̽��ֱ��Anthropocene Studies programme is led by prominent geographer and climate change scholar Professor Mike Hulme. He established the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in 2000 and is the author of the book ‘Why We Disagree About Climate Change’.

“ ̽��ֱ��academic discipline of geography is perfectly placed to scrutinise the contested idea of the Anthropocene … and to do so in a fresh and holistic manner,” he said. “Geographers recognise and value the multiple ways people come to create and know their worlds and we explore the interactions between human life and environmental change that lie at the heart of the Anthropocene provocation.”

̽��ֱ��Holocene Climates MPhil, led by Professor Ulf Büntgen, will develop students’ expertise at the interface of climate and history in a new way, beginning from the premise that exchange and dialogue across different disciplines should be normal practice.

̽��ֱ��programme will focus on the generation, interpretation and integration of different forms of evidence of past climate change and variability, addressing questions such as: How and why has climate varied during the Holocene? How have such changes and subsequent environmental factors interacted with ecological and societal processes and systems? How might this evidence of past climate change guide today’s responses to future change?

Together with his colleagues, Professor Büntgen conducts fieldwork all over the world, researching the causes and consequences of changes in the Earth’s climate system across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

“With its academic expertise, sub-disciplinary breadth and state-of-the-art laboratory infrastructure, Cambridge’s Department of Geography offers a unique opportunity to address a multitude of interrelated questions associated with the entanglements of the volcano-climate-human nexus throughout the Holocene,” he said. “Due to their conceptual understanding of the complexity of past climate variability and human history, geographers are in the pole position to reach out to other disciplines within the natural and social sciences and even the humanities.”

̽��ֱ��two programmes will enhance students’ careers, whether inside or outside academia, public or private sectors, national or international organisations, or in developed or developing world contexts. ̽��ֱ��degrees are designed to accommodate students with a wide range of first-degree backgrounds and are open to international, EU and UK students.

Cambridge researchers are working across the sciences, engineering, humanities and social sciences to develop solutions to climate change. In addition, the ̽��ֱ�� is shortly due to launch Cambridge Zero, an ambitious climate change initiative bringing together the wide range of climate-related research happening at the ̽��ֱ��.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is launching two new climate-focused graduate programmes, exploring the past and potential futures of the interaction between the planet and humanity, to train a new generation of creative and innovative leaders to respond to our most pressing global challenge.

Ulf Büntgen

Alps Tree branch

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Sea Change

sc604 — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 09:13:26 +0000

̽��ֱ��coast is an intrinsic part of British identity – and perhaps nowhere is it more at risk than in the East of England. Cambridge researchers are working with communities and organisations across the region to manage the coast for the future, by working with nature rather than against it.

Britain from the Air: 1945-2009

sjr81 — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 17:25:21 +0000

Aerial photographs of Britain from the 1940s to 2009 – dubbed the ‘historical Google Earth’ – have been made freely available online.

Online atlas explores north-south divide in childbirth and child mortality during Victorian era

sc604 — Tue, 15 May 2018 07:36:56 +0000

̽��ֱ��Populations Past website is part of the Atlas of Victorian Fertility Decline research project based at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, in collaboration with the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex. It displays various demographic and socio-economic measures calculated from census data gathered between 1851 and 1911, a period which saw immense social and economic change as the population of the UK more than doubled, from just under 18 million to over 36 million, and industrialisation and urbanisation both increased rapidly.

̽��ֱ��atlas allows users to select and view maps of a variety of measures including age structure, migration status, marriage, fertility, child mortality and household composition. Users can zoom in to an area on the map and compare side-by-side maps showing different years or measures.

̽��ֱ��maps reveal often stark regional divides. “Geography plays a major role in pretty much every indicator we looked at,” said Dr Alice Reid from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, who led the project. “In 1851, more than one in five children born in parts of Greater Manchester did not survive to their first birthday. In parts of Surrey and Sussex however, the infant mortality rate at the same time was less than a third that number.”

While there are broad north-south divides in most of the maps, patterns at a local level were more complicated: in the northern urban-industrial centres such as Manchester, infant and child mortality were high, while many rural areas of the north had mortality rates as low as rural areas of the south. And in London, there is a sharp east/west divide in fertility, infant mortality, the number of live-in servants, and many other variables.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found that different types of industry were often associated with different types of families: in coal mining areas where there was little available work for women, women married young and often ended up with large families. In contrast, women in the textile-producing areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire had more opportunities to earn a wage, and perhaps consequently, had fewer children on average.

There are also big differences over time. ̽��ֱ��period saw a sharp drop in the number of women who continued to work after marriage, for instance. In 1851, more than a third of married women were in work across large sections of the country, but by 1911, only a tiny fraction of married women worked outside the home, apart from the textile-producing areas of the Northwest.

“This might be associated with the rise of the culture of female domesticity: the idea that a woman’s place is in the home,” said Reid.

Across the Western world, fertility rates have declined over the past 150 years. Gaining a historical perspective of how and why these trends have developed can help improve understanding of the way in which modern societies are shaped.

Between 1851 and 1911, England and Wales changed from countries where there were variable fertility and mortality rates to countries where rates for both were low. Child mortality and fertility fell from the 1870s, together with a fall in illegitimacy, but infant mortality did not start to fall until the dawn of the twentieth century.

As part of the project on fertility decline, the researchers have investigated fertility in more detail. For the first time, they have been able to calculate age-specific fertility rates for more than 2000 sub-districts across England and Wales during this era, and their results challenge views on the way that fertility fell.

“It’s long been thought that the fall in fertility was achieved when couples decided how many children they wanted at the outset of their marriage, and stopped reproducing once they had reached that number,” said Reid. “While this may have happened in more recent fertility transitions, such as in South-East Asia and Latin America, when reliable contraception was widely available, it was not a realistic scenario in the Victorian era.”

“We don’t find age patterns of fertility which would be produced by this type of ‘stopping’ behaviour during the Victorian fertility decline,” said Reid’s collaborator Dr Eilidh Garrett from the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex. “Such behaviour would show up as a larger reduction of fertility among older women, but instead, women of all ages appear to have been reducing their fertility.”

As well as the interactive maps, the Populations Past site provides a variety of resources for researchers, teachers and students at all levels. ̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Economic & Social Research Council and the Isaac Newton Trust.

A new interactive online atlas, which illustrates when, where and possibly how fertility rates began to fall in England and Wales during the Victorian era has been made freely available from today.

In 1851, more than one in five children born in parts of Greater Manchester did not survive to their first birthday. In parts of Surrey and Sussex however, the infant mortality rate at the same time was less than a third that number.

Alice Reid

Populations Past

Early childhood mortality rates in 1851 (left) and 1911 (right). ̽��ֱ��highest rates are in red and the lowest in blue.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

̽��ֱ��capital of drinking: did 19th-century Liverpool deserve its reputation?

amb206 — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 09:00:00 +0000

“Liverpool had a problem with drink.” With this opening sentence, David Beckingham’s new book, ̽��ֱ��Licensed City: Regulating Drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920, gets straight to the heart of his subject matter.

Beckingham is by no means the only scholar to look at the history of alcohol consumption in an iconic city. But he takes a distinctive geographical approach. He probes how problem drinking was defined largely in relation to public drinking, and links the increase in recorded drunkenness in police statistics to an emerging negative national reputation.

̽��ֱ��Licensed City charts a period in which Liverpool saw phenomenal growth as a booming port with global reach across Britain’s empire. Its population grew tenfold – soaring from just 77,000 in 1801 to 700,000 at the end of the century – as the city absorbed workers seeking employment on ships, in its docks and allied industries.

There were two very different Liverpools in evidence: one the projection of the aspirations of the city’s grandees, their wealth set in stone in some of the country’s finest mid-Victorian buildings; the other the grim reality of insanitary, cheaply constructed housing, with streets that in the popular imagination quickly became “haunts of crime”. ̽��ֱ��gap between the two, Beckingham argues, became a source of municipal anxiety.

Outlets serving and supplying drink expanded in parallel with poverty, pubs and bottle shops (off licences) clustering in areas that were home to low-paid dock workers and casual labourers. Of these, many were Irish migrants who had fled famine at home, only, in the words of a contemporary commentator, “to find death abroad.” They became easy scapegoats in this city of sanitary disaster.

In the second half of the 19th century, the reputation of the city hit a new low with mortality rates substantially higher than the national average. On 28 August 1866, ̽��ֱ��Times newspaper (citing a local Liverpool paper) reported that: “Liverpool has been pronounced the most drunken, the most criminal, the most pauper-oppressed, and the most death-stricken town in England.”

To unpack this record, Beckingham’s primary sources are police reports, and minute books of the city council and licensing magistrates, all held in Liverpool Record Office, as well as local newspapers. They reveal how the anxieties of residents and reform-minded politicians – keen to arrest an emerging national sentiment that the city’s leaders were failing in their civic responsibility – were made manifest in public battles against booze.

Many of those calling for reform belonged to different wings of the temperance movement, and were adamant that the city’s problems had their roots in the over-supply of drink. In some streets it was estimated that there was one public house for every 13 people. As one reformer declared: “Public houses lead to drunkenness and drunkenness to crime.” ̽��ֱ��pub thus became a focal point in the fight to redeem Liverpool’s municipal reputation.

More specifically, so too did the system that gave them their licences. ̽��ֱ��licensing of businesses serving and supplying alcohol can be dated to the 16th century. Beckingham profiles how this ancient system, legislated for nationally and dispensed by local magistrates, was adapted to tackle Liverpool’s distinctive urban challenges.

One such problem for regulators was the use of pubs by prostitutes, keen to solicit the attentions of sailors enjoying leave on shore. Parliament resisted banning women from pubs, though in 1872 it did legislate that publicans should restrict the time spent in them by reputed prostitutes. Prosecutions proved difficult, however, because it was not clear when “reasonable refreshment” ended and more dubious behaviour began.

̽��ֱ��magistrates had another tool at their disposal, however, because licences came up for renewal on an annual basis. This gave Liverpool’s magistrates scope to address problem premises because they could review the management of pubs and threaten to cancel licences. In 1909, for example, a licence was renewed on condition that the publican limit the drinking time of known prostitutes to just four minutes – a measure that now seems laughably impractical.

̽��ֱ��licensing committee also enforced opening hours and age rules for customers, which were successively tightened across the period, and clamped down on so-called ‘child messengers’ sent to pubs to fetch beer.

They also used their discretion to manipulate the layout of pubs in order to target problem behaviours. Many of these were associated with women, from prostitutes in pubs to anxieties about effects on families from mothers who drank, even to the degrading effects of bar work on women.

Responses included restricting the numbers of doors to pubs, even the times at which they could be used, so that women drinkers could be spotted by bar staff, police inspectors and even other customers. Specific features in pubs also came under scrutiny. ̽��ֱ��cosy corners known as snugs (now much loved today by heritage fans) were notorious for allowing immoral activities to go on undetected, with the connivance if not involvement of barmaids.

Design also became a way that brewers could fight back, with their own attempts to reform and reclaim the reputation of the public house. Likewise, battles over licensing were later lauded as a central factor in changing Liverpool’s record and reputation for drunkenness.

Liverpool provides a striking case study for debates surrounding alcohol consumption and the limits of government intervention in the social lives of citizens. Many of the themes in Beckingham’s book have much wider relevance – both to other cities and other periods, including our own.

His contribution is to draw attention to perceptions of problem behaviours: Victorian drinking ‘problems’ were often working-class public order offences identifiable because they were easily visible. Middle-class drinking, behind closed doors, largely escaped official scrutiny. That distinction is both our inheritance and modern licensing’s challenge, he concludes, if it is to respond to today’s definitions of problem drinking.

̽��ֱ��Licensed City: Regulating Drink in Liverpool, 1830-1920 by David Beckingham is published by Liverpool ̽��ֱ�� Press.

In his new book, geographer David Beckingham looks at the rigorous licencing regime that Liverpool’s authorities put in place to tighten their grip on problem drinking in the pubs that proliferated across the city. Similar attitudes frame today’s perceptions of public and private alcohol consumption.

Public houses lead to drunkenness and drunkenness to crime.

19th-century reformer

Martin Lewis from Vancouver Island, Canada

̽��ֱ��Parrot Hotel, Liverpool, 1908

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Fossilised tree and ice cores help date huge volcanic eruption 1,000 years ago to within three months

ps748 — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 12:30:00 +0000

Writing in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews the team describes how new analysis of the partly fossilised remains of a tree killed by the eruption, and ice cores drilled in Greenland, lead them to conclude the eruption occurred in the final months of 946 AD.

̽��ֱ��volcano, also known as Mount Paektu, is located on the border between China and North Korea. ̽��ֱ��team of researchers, led by Dr. Clive Oppenheimer from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Geography, set out to establish an accurate date for the event by making new radiocarbon measurements on a fossilised larch trunk recovered from the Chinese side of the volcano. ̽��ֱ��tree was 264 years old when it was killed and buried by a flow of larva, hot ashand pumice.

Armed with new information, the modern-day time detectives set about ascertaining when this could have happened. They reckoned the tree would have been standing in 775, a year that was marked by a burst of cosmic rays reaching the Earth. Evidence of this event, in the shape of radiocarbon, was found in one of the tree’s rings and by counting to the outer ring, the team was able to work out when the tree must have perished. Further analysis indicates it had stopped its seasonal growth suggesting Autumn or Winter as the likely time of its demise.

By cross-referencing with ash deposits found in ice cores drilled in northern Greenland, the team could narrow down the calculation to the last 2 or 3 months of 946 AD.

Lead author, Dr Oppenheimer says:

“ ̽��ֱ��Millennium eruption has fascinated scientists and historians for decades because of its size, potential worldwide impacts, and the mystery surrounding when it actually happened. Lacking a clear historical record of the event, there have been dozens of attempts to date the eruption using conventional tree ring techniques. We got lucky thanks to the burst of cosmic radiation that bathed the Earth in the year 775. It was only recently recognised that this left a worldwide signature in trees alive at the time. Now we have a secure date for the eruption at last, we can be more confident in investigating the effects it has on the climate, environment and society.”

̽��ֱ��fossilised tree trunk recovered from the side of the volcano

Previous attempts to date the eruption had led historians to scan medieval texts for clues. Some argued the event led to the collapse of the Bohai kingdom (698-925 AD), however the findings now prove this predated the eruption. ̽��ֱ��kingdom spanned a vast area of what was then eastern Manchuria and northern Korea. ̽��ֱ��new date focuses attention instead on a chronicle from a temple in Japan that reports “white ash falling like snow” on the 3rd November 946 AD. This site is not near any of Japan’s active volcanoes, and is close to where ash from the Millennium eruption has recently been identified in lake sediments. It may well pinpoint the actual date of the eruption since it would only have taken the ash clouds a day or so to reach Japan.

Changbaishan is a site revered by the Koreans. It is steeped in folklore and Koreans see it as their spiritual and ancestral home. Its eruption in 946 was one of the most violent of the last two thousand years and is thought to have discharged around 100 cubic kilometres of ash and pumice into the atmosphere – enough to bury the entire UK knee deep.

Clive Oppenheimer et al “Multi-proxy dating the ‘Millennium Eruption’ to late 946 CE" (DOI:10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.12.024)

An international team of researchers has managed to pinpoint, to within three months, a medieval volcanic eruption in east Asia the precise date of which has puzzled historians for decades. They have also shown that the so-called “Millennium eruption” of Changbaishan volcano, one of the largest in history, cannot have brought about the downfall of an important 10th century kingdom, as was previously thought.

Now we have a secure date for the eruption at last, we can be more confident in investigating the effects it has on the climate, environment and society

Clive Oppenheimer

Changbaishan volcanic crater

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

̽��ֱ��Tibetan lama who wrote a world geography

amb206 — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:00:00 +0000

Early in the 1800s, a Tibetan lama travelled from Drepung monastery in Lhasa to Beijing. ̽��ֱ��journey of more than 2,000 miles would have taken him around four months. As an important Buddhist leader, he may well have been conveyed most of the way in a sedan chair. On the way, his retinue would have fallen in with travellers from other lands and heard unfamiliar languages. Perhaps this journey wakened the young lama’s natural curiosity about the world’s geography and its peoples, their customs and characteristics.

No-one knows why Btsan po no mon han wrote the remarkable Tibetan text, the Dzam gling rgyas bshad (DGRB), which translates as ̽��ֱ��Detailed Description of the World. First published in Mongolia in 1830, the book is in several parts, divided by continent and country. ̽��ֱ��section that describes Tibet, which comprises less than a quarter of the text, has been translated into European languages and has become one of Tibet’s most-read classics. ̽��ֱ��remainder of the text, however, has not been widely researched in the west.

Research by Lobsang Yongdan, a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology, now sets the entire text of the DGRB into a more deeply informed historical, political, anthropological context. In particular, Yongdan shows through his tracing of the many influences apparent in the book just how widely its author interacted with other thinkers in the intellectual circles of early 19th-century Beijing which was host to missions, trading posts and diplomats from many parts of the world.

“As a Tibetan, I come from a country that has been a magnet for western anthropologists who are drawn to the integrity and ‘otherness’ of its culture. I began my academic career as a historian of Tibet but in studying the DGRB within a western framework, I have taken an anthropological approach in order to look at the text from multiple viewpoints in terms of spiritual belief systems and history of science as well as national and cultural identities,” said Yongdan.

“I am myself the ‘otherness’ because I am that ‘native’ or ‘local informant’ on whom anthropologists rely to conduct interviews and to obtain information. Returning to the places where I was born, grew up and was educated is not the typical model for conventional anthropological inquiry. However, I considered that by going to back to Tibet and conducting my inquiries at Kumbum monastery, I was carrying out ‘anthropology at home’, an approach that is making an increasingly important contribution.”

Historically, interest in the DGRB has been patchy. From the later 19th century onwards, Europeans focused on the section of the text that deals with Tibet as a useful source of information. Tibetans, on the other hand, were much more intrigued by the sections that describe the world beyond their borders.

Yongdan is uniquely qualified to research the DGRB and its author. He was raised in Dobi in Amdo, north east Tibet. As a boy he joined a monastery and it was there that he first read the DGRB. Fluent in Tibetan, Chinese and English and conversant with the practice and literature of Tibetan Buddhism, Yongdan brings a multi-cultural viewpoint to his study of the text. “I first studied Btsan po’s work as a young Tibetan monk trying to understand the history of my country and how Tibetans studied world geography in earlier times,” he said. “I’ve spent the past four years looking in detail at the geographical conceptualisation, the creation of, and responses to the work.”

Only the sketchiest of details are known about Btsan po. He was born in 1789 in U lan mu ru in Amdo. Identified as a fourth reincarnation of third Btsan po no mon han, Ngag dbang ’phrin las rgya mtsho, he may have entered the Gser khog monastery as young as two. As a child, he would have been taught Buddhist logic, literature and cosmology. From 1808, he studied at Drepung monastery, one of the largest monasteries in Lhasa. He passed away in Beijing 1839, the year that marked the first Opium War between the Manchu and the British.

Around 1814, Btsan po travelled to Beijing to become a spiritual leader to the Qing emperor. During his long residence in Beijing, Btsan po read early Jesuit works of geography and became friendly with members of the Russian orthodox mission in Beijing. He met European scholars and diplomats, scientists and conversed with them on matters of world geography and the events of the day. ̽��ֱ��country-by-country descriptions in the book contain evidence of his encounters.

Yongdan reveals that Btsan po embarked on the compilation of a detailed world geography of his own volition, and as a Tibetan intellectual engaged with western knowledge on an equal footing with Europeans and others. In this respect, his research challenges the accepted view of geography - as a rational or scientific way to study lands, their inhabitants, and features of the physical world – as an exclusively European enterprise shared with the rest of the world.

He said: “Western discourse tends to make a sharp distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘scientific’ geography. Geography compiled with religious motivations is often regarded as ‘cosmography’ and depicted as belonging to the super-terrestrial realms, with little or no relationship to the geographical features of the earth. On the other hand, scientific geography is seen as rational and global. Most importantly, scientific geography was developed in Europe where its driving forces were exploration and imperialism.”

For centuries, Tibet was seen as one of the most remote places in the world. ‘Isolated’, ‘mysterious’ and ‘unmodernised’ became standard descriptions of historical Tibet. Yongdan suggests that this stereotypical picture is misleading and that Tibetans, like their European counterparts, were intensely curious about the world and open to the communication of knowledge on all kinds of topics.

“My work contests the view that Tibet was a backward place, closed to the rest of the world, prior to the arrival of the British in 1904 and the Chinese in 1950. Independently of European participation, Tibetans were actively involved in translating, studying and writing about European mathematical, cosmological and geographical knowledge in Tibetan,” said Yongdan. “Btsan po’s descriptions of countries in Africa, the Middle East and central Asia suggest that these countries were not new to him by virtue of his encounters with Europeans. Rather, he treats at least some of these countries as places that Tibetans had known for centuries.”

Africa appears in the DGRB as the continent of Ba lang spyod, the western continent in Buddhist cosmology. Btsan po writes: “ ̽��ֱ��European calls this continent Libby [Liberia?] or Africa. ̽��ֱ��continent is triangular in shape and it is huge. Its north extends to the Mediterranean Sea, the southern tip of continent is near the Steel Wall [Antarctica], the east extends to the Indian Ocean, and the west is bordered by sea. It takes eight months to journey from east to west and one year from the tip of the south to the north.”

̽��ֱ��rich detail found in the DGRB indicates that its author had read widely in a range of languages. After giving the names of almost 80 European countries and places, he provides a general description of the continent: “While summer is hot and it rains a lot, in the winter there is heavy snow and cold. Because of the four different seasons, the Earth appears in four different colours, white, yellow, black and green. As I hear, there is a variety of grains in this land, and its harvest is better than other places. There is a tree called “olive” (a li ba) from which the fruit can be eaten and which can be ground for oil.”

Btsan po describes Europe as a fertile land where all kinds of foods and fruits grew, where people lived happily and in prosperity. “ ̽��ֱ��kings are friendly to each other, and they send goods to each other, so if there is a shortage of materials in the one country, the other kings send the materials to that country. Men do not marry until they are thirty years old, and women twenty years old, none have the custom of having more than one wife, whether the person is a follower of Jesus, a monk or nun, a king or a minister, and all respect women.”

In the style of the time, Btsan po makes sweeping statements – especially in his descriptions of people. “In general, Chinese people are beautiful and well-shaped. They speak with gentle voices and are polite. Although they act as deep thinkers and honest, in reality, they are accustomed to trickery and cowardice. They have difficulty in trusting other people. If they do trust someone, they are loyal and steady.” ̽��ֱ��English do not impress him because “… compared to other Europeans, they are ill-mannered people as they like to drink so much”.

More than 20 years have passed since Yongdan first read the text of the DGRB as a teenager in the Kumbum monastery in the north-eastern part of the Tibetan plateau. He recalled: “One night an older monk invited a group of us to supper. During the course of a conversation about Tibet and the world beyond our borders he told us that Tibetans knew about the world before the British and Chinese arrived – and that Tibetans charted the world like Europeans did in earlier times. We did not believe it as we had already absorbed the universal message that Tibetans knew little about what lay beyond their borders.”

Yongdan’s trajectory as a Tibetan scholar has taken him first to monasteries in Amdo, where he studied Tibetan languages, Buddhism and philosophy, then to California where he studied political science, and most recently to Cambridge where he has spent the past five years studying for a MPhil and PhD in Social Anthropology.

He said: “Like Btsan po, I was raised in the Buddhist tradition and, like him, I left my country to learn more about the world. Throughout my years of studying in the west, Btsan po and his world geography remained at the forefront of my mind. As a Tibetan, I always wanted to know how Tibetans viewed about the Europeans and its cultures in the past. My research into the DGRB has provided me with answers and insights that have changed my views about the history of east–west encounters, and those between the west and Tibet in particular.”

Inset images: Amdo, Tibet; Btsan po’s residence in Drepung monastery, Lhasa; globe with place names in Tibetan, said to have been made by Rtse sngags ram pa, a monk at Labrang in the 1920s, based on a wall painting in the Hevajra Temple at Labrang monastery; Lobsang Yongdan as a young monk (all images: Lobsang Yongdan).

A study by Tibetan scholar Lobsang Yongdan revisits a long-ignored section of a historic text to reveal how Tibetans were engaging with western scientific knowledge two centuries ago. His research into a geography of the world, first published by a lama in 1830, challenges stereotypical views of Tibet as an isolated and inward-looking society.

My work contests the view that Tibet was a backward place, closed to the rest of the world, prior to the arrival of the British in 1904 and the Chinese in 1950.

Lobsang Yongdan

̽��ֱ��Russian State Library, St Petersburg.

̽��ֱ��Fourth Btsan po no mon ham. Watercolour portrait by Zakhar Leont’evsky (1799–1874).

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes

After the flood: harnessing the power of mud

hps25 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:46:44 +0000

Sixty years ago tonight, a storm surge in the North Sea caused catastrophic flooding on the coast of eastern England. ̽��ֱ��‘big flood’ of 1953 inundated more than 65,000 hectares of land, damaged 24,000 houses and around 200 important industrial premises, resulting in 307 deaths in the immediate flooding phase.

In the aftermath, sea defences were developed and major protection schemes were implemented – the eventual construction of the Thames Barrier being the most conspicuous example. Warning services and emergency responses to flooding became coordinated at a national level, something which hadn’t existed in 1953.

But many of these reinforcements will reach the end of their design life in the next decade. Experts analysing storm surge height and wave activity believe the flood to be a once every 50 year event – it will happen again, they say, it is only a question of when.

Environmental changes and possible sea-level rises hadn’t been properly anticipated when protection schemes commenced, and UK coastal populations have risen by up to 90% in certain areas since 1953 – many designated as high flood risk.

“Such contexts call for more research into complexities of storm surge dynamics, strengthening of coastal planning policy and a more nuanced approach to coastal engineering,” said Dr Tom Spencer, Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit (CCRU) from the Department of Geography.

̽��ֱ��CCRU are currently researching the effectiveness of the natural flood defences offered by coastal ecosystems such as salt marshes and mud flats. They suggest a ‘hybrid engineering’ approach, combining sea walls with natural ecosystems. Such ecosystems not only provide flood protection but store carbon, filter pollutants and increase biodiversity. Over recent years, these important habitats that have become “squeezed out” by rising sea levels and hard sea defences.

̽��ֱ��research is part of a six year programme involving 14 other institutions, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. ̽��ֱ��teams are focusing on the marshlands of the Essex coast and Morecambe Bay.

“We already know that some of the Essex marshes regularly reduce the energy of waves by up to 90% over a distance of 80 metres or so,” said Dr Iris Möller, Lecturer in Physical Geography at Fitzwilliam College and co-investigator on the project.

“Hard defences are expensive and doomed to fail or incur ever-increasing costs. A key priority is the need to restore a natural coastal ‘buffer’ zone, free from human occupation and compatible with the ‘inbuilt’ ability of the coast to respond dynamically to environmental change – such as sea level rise or more frequent storms.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say they now have the technology to accurately measure wave depth and energy across marshes and mud flats, providing engineers and policy makers with the information they need to show the effectiveness of ecosystem-inclusive sea defence systems.

By installing a total of 42 wave recording devices at marshes in Essex and Morecambe Bay, with measurements controlled by solar-powered data logging systems, the team can track wave level and pressure variations as water moves across mud and vegetation. This information is continuously streamed back to Cambridge via mobile phone networks.

̽��ֱ��team are finding that the mud and plants of the marshes naturally dissipate the ferocity of waves from storms, whereas just seawalls can alter the shape of the coast artificially, causing greater erosion through energy redistribution.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge wave research is part of the Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Sustainability project, looking at the range of benefits natural ecosystems can provide – from carbon stores to pollution sinks as well as wave buffers – and how they can integrate with traditional flooding engineering.

“It is important to understand the value of varied habitats that make up the landscape of the UK,” said Professor David Paterson, project leader from the ̽��ֱ�� of St. Andrews. “Coastal systems are some of the most sensitive to pressures of climate change”.

Adds Spencer: “It’s vital that we also investigate the role of ecosystems in coastal risk reduction and how, through ‘hybrid engineering’, both types of approach to coastal defence can be brought together to reduce risks and provide a long-term and robust response to the threat of catastrophic coastal flooding.”

On the 60th Anniversary of the ‘big flood’ that devastated the coastline of eastern England, new research shows that integrating ‘natural’ sea defences such as salt marshes with sea walls is a more sustainable and effective method of flood prevention.

Both types of approach to coastal defence can be brought together to reduce risks and provide a long-term and robust response to the threat of catastrophic coastal flooding.

Tom Spencer

Dr Iris Moller

Mudflat and marsh at Abbots Hall, Essex

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