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This paper presents the local institutional and organizational development insights from a five-year ongoing interdisciplinary research project focused on advancing the implementation of sustainable urban water management. While it is broadly acknowledged that the inertia associated with administrative systems is possibly the most significant obstacle to advancing sustainable urban water management, contemporary research still largely prioritizes investigations at the technological level. This research is explicitly concerned with critically informing the design of methodologies for mobilizing and overcoming the administrative inertia of traditional urban water management practice. The results of fourteen in-depth case studies of local government organizations across Metropolitan Sydney primarily reveal that (i) the political institutionalization of environmental concern and (ii) the commitment to local leadership and organizational learning are key corporate attributes for enabling sustainable management. A typology of five organizational development phases has been proposed as both a heuristic and capacity benchmarking tool for urban water strategists, policy makers, and decision makers that are focused on improving the level of local implementation of sustainable urban water management activity. While this investigation has focused on local government, these findings do provide guideposts for assessing the development needs of future capacity building programs across a range of different institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harmful algal and bacterial blooms linked to deforestation, soil loss and global warming are increasingly frequent in lakes and rivers. We demonstrate that climate changes and deforestation can drive recurrent microbial blooms, inhibiting the recovery of freshwater ecosystems for hundreds of millennia. From the stratigraphic successions of the Sydney Basin, Australia, our fossil, sedimentary and geochemical data reveal bloom events following forest ecosystem collapse during the most severe mass extinction in Earth's history, the end-Permian event (EPE; c. 252.2 Ma). Microbial communities proliferated in lowland fresh and brackish waterbodies, with algal concentrations typical of modern blooms. These initiated before any trace of post-extinction recovery vegetation but recurred episodically for >100 kyrs. During the following 3 Myrs, algae and bacteria thrived within short-lived, poorly-oxygenated, and likely toxic lakes and rivers. Comparisons to global deep-time records indicate that microbial blooms are persistent freshwater ecological stressors during warming-driven extinction events. Harmful algal and bacterial blooms are increasingly frequent in lakes and rivers. From the Sydney Basin, Australia, this study uses fossil, sedimentary and geochemical data to reveal bloom events following forest ecosystem collapse during the end-Permian event and that blooms have consistently followed warming-related extinction events, inhibiting the recovery of freshwater ecosystems for millennia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces articles in this special double issue, which consists of a selection of papers presented at the Ninth World Congress of Comparative Education, held at the University of Sydney, Australia, in July 1996, on the theme of ?Tradition, Modernity and Post-modernity in Comparative Education?.

Approximately 85% of Australia's population live along the coastal fringe, an area with high exposure to extreme inundations such as tsunamis. However, to date, no Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessments (PTHA) that include inundation have been published for Australia. This limits the development of appropriate risk reduction measures by decision and policy makers. We describe our PTHA undertaken for the Sydney metropolitan area. Using the NOAA NCTR model MOST (Method for Splitting Tsunamis), we simulate 36 earthquake-generated tsunamis with annual probabilities of 15100, 151,000 and 1510,000, occurring under present and future predicted sea level conditions. For each tsunami scenario we generate a high-resolution inundation map of the maximum water level and flow velocity, and we calculate the exposure of buildings and critical infrastructure. Results indicate that exposure to earthquake-generated tsunamis is relatively low for present events, but increases significantly with higher sea level conditions. The probabilistic approach allowed us to undertake a comparison with an existing storm surge hazard assessment. Interestingly, the exposure to all the simulated tsunamis is significantly lower than that for the 15100 storm surge scenarios, under the same initial sea level conditions. The results have significant implications for multi-risk and emergency management in Sydney. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outcome of over fifteen years research on large urban assemblages from the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne is discussed in terms of approaches to the archaeology of the modern city as they have evolved over the period. To better understand the archaeology of urban poverty we require innovations in both methods and ideas, the most far-reaching being a transnational archaeology of urban poverty founded on the analysis of migration, consumption and class formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health can be influenced by a number of neighbourhood physical and social environmental characteristics. We aimed to determine whether urban sprawl (based on population density) in Sydney, Australia, is associated with self-rated health and psychological distress. We used a cross-sectional multilevel study design. Individual level data on self-rated health and psychological distress were obtained from the 2006 and 2007 NSW Population Health Survey. We did not find significant associations between urban sprawl and self-rated health and psychological distress after controlling for individual and area level covariates. However, positive neighbourhood factors were generally associated with better self-rated health and lower psychological distress but few of these associations were statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, Australia, was established in 1819 to accommodate male convicts, but in later years the building served as a depot for immigrant women (1848-86) and as an asylum for destitute women (1862-86). The occupation of the latter group in particular resulted in the loss of large numbers of clay tobacco pipes under the floorboards. The quantity and distribution of the pipes is used here to examine smoking behavior among the destitute female inmates, and to assess their relationships with each other and the institution in which they were confined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stormwater modelling indicated an average annual discharge from Sydney estuary catchment of 215,300 mL and loadings of 0.8, 0.5, 1.7, 3.2, 1.1, 3.6 and 17.7 tonnes for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn, respectively. Priority for remediation should be given to creeks with high-metal loads in the upper and central estuary, as well as discharging to the western shores of Middle Harbour. Managerial strategies need to target dissolved and particulate metal phases to ensure effective remediation. The proportion of metals discharged under low- (<5 mm rainfall/day), medium- (>5 to <50 mm/day) and high-flow conditions (>50 mm/day) was approximately 10%, 60% and 30% of total loading, respectively. Under high-flow conditions the estuary becomes stratified and most metals are exported to the sea, whereas metals discharged during low-flow may be remediated by infiltration. Effective remediation will depend on the extent to which ‘first-flush’ metals associated with medium-flow conditions can be remediated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, the increase of Asian migrants in large cities has contributed significantly to the cultural landscape of Australia, especially in the city suburbs. Based on the Census and in-depth interviews of 103 Taiwanese migrants, this research examines the location decisions and residential preferences of Taiwanese migrants in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. The reasons for choosing the state, the particular city, and specific area of residence are probed into. The survey shows that migrants moved to Australia mainly for children's education, lifestyle and political instability reasons. The main reasons for choosing to settle in Sydney were favourable business opportunities, and the northern part of Sydney was preferred. Those who chose Brisbane are attracted by the good climate there, and the residents preferred the Sunnybank area. Melbourne was chosen for the good education it offers, and areas on transportation lines near good schools are selected. Choice of residence was based mainly on their needs and their resources which may change over time. In general, they always choose to locate in close proximity to their family, friends and Taiwanese communities. Their locational choice depends on income and housing budget, proximity to good schools and shopping centers, and information from friends or earlier migrants. Based on such factors, this study clearly demonstrates that the Taiwanese immigrants are fundamentally different from early Chinese settlers who once aimed to settle at Chinatown locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]