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With their spectre of intergenerational betrayal, global environmental crises increasingly entangle politics with matters of care, attachment and love – especially the unconditional bonds we are so often assumed to share with our offspring. As a contribution to the nascent field of paleoenvironmental humanities, our approach to questions of care and responsibility turns from future horizon-scanning to the realm of human origins. The paper focuses on two broad sets of paleo stories which share a concern with rifts or stress points that complicate originary events and scenes. The first of these is a family of hypotheses which propose that pivotal evolutionary developments took place in the climatically variable and tectonically active terrain of the East African Rift. The second is the co-operative breeding hypothesis which contends that communally distributed childcare arrangements are a definitive characteristic of the genus Homo, while also highlighting the conditionality and precariousness of human intergenerational care. Taken together these approaches point to deep-seated fault-lines running through both our home planet and our own psychosocial being. Confronting these rifts, we argue, might help loosen the hold of notions of ontological reconciliation between humans and nature that risk exacerbating the very problems they seek to resolve, while also helping us to seek attachments that are more conducive to living with and through earthly volatility.

Headstarting is a conservation approach that suggests offering an advantage to a population by improving egg production, survival of embryos and/or juveniles. In this article, we are providing the quantitative data obtained during 10-years for different stages of headstarting (production of eggs per pair, hatching and fledging rates) and the resulting impact (survival to maturity, philopatry rate, sex ratio, apparent survival, growth/decline rate) on the local population of the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper. We have shown that headstarting gain is reduced over time from fledging to long-term recruitment to the local breeding population. The possible reasons for this reduction are suggested and discussed. The unexpected finding was a drastic difference in sex ratios of the new recruits which was about even for headstaring, but strongly male-biased for wild reared birds. We suggest that to happen due to increased mortality of female chicks in nature. We have also shown only headstarting could stop the global decline of the species, particularly once the suggested improvements are implemented and the number of pairs involved is scaled up. Headstarting also had a significant social effect due to involvement of in-creasing numbers of people both in the local communities in Chukotka and from many countries on the flyway into searching for marked birds and learning about waders, raising awareness about ecological problems on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, thus, making the need for conservation actions on the flyway more obvious and sensible.

Understanding both the distribution and habitat use of populations through the annual cycle is vital to understanding how vulnerable species are to environmental change. However, distributions and habitat use can vary among individuals and populations, particularly in generalist species, with variation depending on external environmental factors, such as resource availability. Comprehensive information across multiple populations is important to guide spatial planning of protected areas and is increasingly available for breeding individuals, but it is still lacking for many species, particularly seabirds, during the non-breeding season, especially those with declining populations. We investigated within-species variation in migratory strategies, non-breeding habitat selection and habitat and spatial specialisation in a declining, opportunistic, generalist seabird, the European herring gull Larus argentatus, from multiple breeding colonies across northwest England and southwest Scotland using global positioning system (GPS) tracking during the non-breeding season of 2014/15. Although several individuals stayed within the area of the breeding colony, the majority of individuals migrated in a southerly direction and spent half of the annual cycle (on average 53%) away from the breeding area and kept moving through the non-breeding period. During non-breeding, herring gulls selected mainly marine intertidal, but also a range of anthropogenic terrestrial habitats. However, habitat selection differed between geographical regions, within a geographical region and among individuals. There was a generalist use of non-breeding habitats at the population level, but some habitat specialisation at the individual level that was repeatable through the non-breeding period despite individuals showing low spatial specialisation. The results highlight the importance of intertidal habitat and a mix of alternative foraging habitats in the wintering areas of herring gulls. The results also highlight that habitat selection in an opportunistic generalist can vary even between nearby regions and that appropriate conservation management plans may need to be tailored to regional differences in specific non-breeding areas.

The Spoon-billed Sandpiper Calidris pygmaea is a ‘Critically Endangered’ migratory shorebird. The species faces an array of threats in its non-breeding range, making conservation intervention essential. However, conservation efforts are reliant on identifying the species’ key stopover and wintering sites. Using Maximum Entropy models, we predicted Spoon-billed Sandpiper distribution across the non-breeding range, using data from recent field surveys and satellite tracking. Model outputs suggest only a limited number of stopover sites are suitable for migrating birds, with sites in the Yellow Sea and on the Jiangsu coast in China highlighted as particularly important. All the previously known core wintering sites were identified by the model including the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, Nan Thar Island and the Gulf of Mottama. In addition, the model highlighted sites subsequently found to be occupied, and pinpointed potential new sites meriting investigation, notably on Borneo and Sulawesi, and in parts of India and the Philippines. A comparison between the areas identified as most likely to be occupied and protected areas showed that very few locations are covered by conservation designations. Known sites must be managed for conservation as a priority, and potential new sites should be surveyed as soon as is feasible to assess occupancy status. Site protection should take place in concert with conservation interventions including habitat management, discouraging hunting, and fostering alternative livelihoods.

The spoon-billed sandpiper Calidris pygmaea, a migratory arctic-breeding shorebird, is one of the world’s rarest birds and its population has undergone a large decline in recent decades. We conducted surveys at its most important known wintering area in the Upper Gulf of Mottama in Myanmar to estimate recent (2009 – 2016) changes in its numbers there. The total number of small shorebirds present in the Upper Gulf was counted and the proportion of them that were spoon-billed sandpipers was estimated from sample scans. These two quantities were multiplied together to give the estimated number of spoon-billed sandpipers in each of four years. Total numbers of combined small shorebird species tripled from 21,000 to 63,000 between 2009 and 2016, coincident with efforts to reduce hunting pressure on waterbirds. However, the proportion of small shorebirds that were spoon-billed sandpipers declined and their estimated absolute numbers fell by about half from 244 to 112 individuals. It is probable that loss of intertidal habitat and shorebird hunting elsewhere on the migration route of the spoon-billed sandpipers wintering at Mottama is causing a continued decline, though this is occurring at a less rapid rate than that recorded from Arctic Russia before 2010. The number of spoon-billed sandpipers wintering on the Upper Gulf of Mottama remains the highest single-site total for this species from any known wintering site. Preventing any resurgence of illegal shorebird hunting and ensuring long-term protection of the intertidal feeding habitats and roost sites in the Gulf are high priorities if extinction of this species is to be averted.

Introduction and Objectives. The expansion of novel technologies and ICT solutions can serve for the improvement of population health when used appropriately. The main challenge is digital literacy among population, especially older persons. Older persons can benefit by using new technologies and ICT solutions in many aspects (monitor of heart rate, activity time, calories, create and maintain social networks). The SEFAC project supports the population health with specifically developed ICT solution for the improvement of lifestyles in order to reduce the burden of major chronic diseases and to increase the sustainability of health systems. Participants and Methods. The SEFAC project is developed for the improvement of lifestyles of citizens (+50) that are involved in 7-week program based on the mindfulness approach. The participants were given the opportunity to use SEFAC App on their smartphones or tablets. The main goal of the SEFAC App was to enable participants to use SEFAC knowledge even after the face to face workshops ended. Results. The SEFAC app is available in English, Dutch, Italian and Croatian and it is a part of the implementation phase in four pilot sites of the SEFAC project (Cornwall, Rotterdam, Treviso and Rijeka). The results of Rijeka pilot site implementation will be shown – creation of an user account, installing the App on the devices and showing features that SEFAC App offers (coaching and motivation, monitor nutrition and physical exercise, manage dietary/ physical activity goals, mindful bell, mindfulness practices) in order to prevent, delay, slow down or even reverse the progress of a chronic disease(s), in line with their personalized dietary and activity goals. Conclusion. The benefit that the SEFAC App offers is the possibility to empower users for pro-active self- health management making it an excellent tool for supporting and encouraging participants in a service of a healthy aging with novel technologies.

Introduction and objectives. Europe is facing an unstoppable epidemic of chronic non- communicable diseases. That burden represents a particular challenge for the national healthcare systems, regional governments, local stakeholders and policy makers. Lifestyle changes can reduce the incidence of chronic diseases so the SEFAC project introduces a novel approach to such changes in the community with engagement of social network of health and social care professionals as well as volunteers. The main objective of the SEFAC project (GA no. 738202) is encouragement of citizens in prevention and self – management of chronic non – communicable diseases. Participants and Methods. A total of 360 participants who are 50 years and older and are at risk of developing major chronic diseases or have a cardiovascular disease and/or type II diabetes mellitus attended the seven week workshop program in four European pilot sites: Cornwall, UK ; Rijeka, Croatia ; Rotterdam, The Netherlands ; and Treviso, Italy. Mindfulness based workshops aimed at improving health, promoting healthy habits and healthy lifestyle. By integrating mindfulness into the workshops, participants had the opportunity to learn new skills for improvement of self – efficacy, self – esteem and improve their ability to self – manage their health. The SEFAC program was supported by SEFAC App that was developed to improve the outcome of the workshops. Results. Diversity of the SEFAC project in implementation in four European cities will be shown as well as similarities. Involvement of volunteers and social/ health professionals by community alliances is shown to be valuable for the sustainability and visibility of the project. Conclusions. Community based approach as it is presented in the SEFAC project, is a challenge for every community, but taking into account all the cultural and traditional values, it is possible to implement SEFAC in every part of EU.

Combustion – especially the burning of fossil fuels – is central to the problematic of human geologic agency and to any meaningful political or cultural response to the current planetary predicament. But a consideration of the politics of combustion raises the issue of another kind of fire: the explosive combustion that is at the core of state or military arsenals and the crux of most forms of insurrectionary force. While fire has been part of our planet’s history for hundreds of millions of years, there is no natural equivalent to the high-speed combustive chain reaction that is the blast of gunpowder. This paper traces the ‘thermopolitics’ of firearms that began with the discovery of explosive powders in 9th century China, but which builds on a much longer history of experimentation with and application of chambered fire. While the fire of the artisan brought enchanting and beautiful objects into the world, escalating military use of gunpowder installed new powers of destructiveness into the very core of modern social life. Moving from a biopolitical to a thermopolitical perspective, it is argued that the shocking demands of functioning in proximity to the explosion turns the social organization and cultural sensibilities of modernity into a kind of infernal machinery. In our own era, the internal combustion engine has inherited something of the ‘infernal’ power of the militarized explosion, and ramped it up to the scale of global environmental change. This raises questions not only about to get the runaway forces of planetary fire under control, but about what other uses – more gratuitous and glorious – might yet be made of the explosive firepower we have brought into the world.

In 2009, exploratory drilling of geothermal wells in Iceland’s Krafla volcanic caldera unexpectedly struck magma. The fact that the encounter didn’t have catastrophic consequences has excited considerable interest - and an international research facility is now being set up to explore energy generation and other possibilities of closer engagement with magma. We take this event as an incitement to explore how the Earth-changing `violence’ of volcanic or igneous processes might be seen not simply as happening in time, but as both generative and destructive of time itself. We approach volcanism through the construct of a `speculative geology’ that draws on a recent return to metaphysical themes in philosophy as well as a growing interest in geological processes in the arts, humanities and popular culture. In this way, alongside cause-effect relations, we explore the more enigmatic processes through which subterranean geological forces offer an excessive potentiality from which humans and other life forms select and actualise a narrower range of creative or generative possibilities. The paper explores three significant volcanic episodes: a series of massive magma extrusions around 1.9 billion years ago linked to the ascendance of multicellular life, volcanism present in the East African Rift during pivotal phases of human evolution and the volcanic activity of the early-mid Holocene viewed as a contextual factor in the emergence of ancient practices of artisanal pyrotechnology. Our reading of the dynamic and violent interchange between the inner and outer Earth in these examples points to a non-self-identical planetary condition, on which the very structure of temporality emerges through a play of destruction and generativity. In this light, we circle back on the Krafla project to consider questions of risk, uncertainty and responsibility that attend the potential new interface with the underworld of magma.

Responding to claims of Anthropocene geoscience that humans are now geological agents, social scientists are calling for renewed attention to the social, cultural, political and historical differentiation of the Anthropos. But does this leave critical social thought’s own key concepts and categories unperturbed by the Anthropocene provocation to think through dynamic earth processes? Can we ‘socialize the Anthropocene’ without also opening ‘the social’ to climate, geology and earth system change? Revisiting the earth science behind the Anthropocene thesis and drawing on social research that is using climatology and earth systems thinking to help understand socio-historical change, this article explores some of the possibilities for ‘geologizing’ social thought. While critical social thought’s attention to justice and exclusion remains vital, it suggests that responding to Anthropocene conditions also calls for a kind of ‘geo-social’ thinking that relates human diversity and social difference to the potentiality and multiplicity of the earth itself.

This article suggests that one way of leaving behind the gravitational pull of essential and hierarchical conceptualizations of race is to follow climate science in digging deeper into the prehistory of human evolution and physiological differentiation. We begin by outlining the value of Paul Gilroy’s post-racial imaginary, set out in Between Camps, as one that is future-oriented: a post-race that relies upon an after-race escape from biologism while assuming a given Homo sapien oneness. In distinction, our post-racial analytic is a move towards a deep time of ‘pre-race’ from which any subsequent human unity is conceived as precarious, contingent and achieved. This post-racial pre-race deploys the combined provocations of anti-racist scholarship, climate science and paleoanthropology to empty race of its violent hierarchies by going deeper into, rather than away from, biology and its attendant vital relations.

Distance-specific fuel economy (FE) and emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) from transit buses representing diesel, retrofitted diesel, hybrid-electric diesel, and lean-burn natural gas technologies are presented in this paper. Emissions were collected from these buses at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (WMATA) test site in Landover, Maryland. In this program, one bus each from diesel, retrofitted diesel, hybrid-electric diesel, and natural gas technologies was tested on 17 chassis cycles and the other buses were tested on a subset of these cycles. Data show that the test cycle has a profound effect on distance-specific emissions and FE, and relative emissions performance of technology is also cycle dependant. Lean-burn natural gas buses demonstrated their low PM output, diesel engines showed low HC output, benefit of exhaust filtration was evident, and the positive effect of hybrid-electric drive technology was most pronounced for low-speed transient cycles.

Distance-specific fuel economy (FE) and emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) from transit buses representing diesel, retrofitted diesel, hybrid-electric diesel, and lean-burn natural gas technologies are presented in this paper. Emissions were collected from these buses at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (WMATA) test site in Landover, Maryland. In this program, one bus each from diesel, retrofitted diesel, hybrid-electric diesel, and natural gas technologies was tested on 17 chassis cycles and the other buses were tested on a subset of these cycles. Data show that the test cycle has a profound effect on distance-specific emissions and FE, and relative emissions performance of technology is also cycle dependant. Lean-burn natural gas buses demonstrated their low PM output, diesel engines showed low HC output, benefit of exhaust filtration was evident, and the positive effect of hybrid-electric drive technology was most pronounced for low-speed transient cycles.

The current drought in Australia raises questions about the extent to which urban life depends on physical forces that come with their own dynamics and eccentric rhythms. I suggest that currently deepening understandings of the inherent volatility of earth processes might help us appreciate the accomplishments of those who have stayed in place for hundreds or thousands of years: peoples whose 'nomadic' journeys through deep time have taken them through major bio- or geo-physical transformations in their environments. In this way, we might learn to recognize how most urban or settled life inherits terrains whose irregularities and extremes have been softened by the efforts of these prior inhabitants. In a world where we can expect major environmental changes to induce new waves of estrangement and displacement, I ask whether a sense of the immeasurable debt which we owe to those people who came before us might help inspire the kind of cosmopolitan sensibilities we would hope for.

This article is an extended review of Graham Harman's Heidegger Explained: From Phenomenon to Thing. The paper explains Harman's argument that Heidegger's famous broken tool incident - the account that introduces a critique of presence based on the withdrawn dimensions of things - has a much greater relevance than is usually imagined. It explores Harman's extrapolations from Heidegger to rethink the very nature of objects - or things in themselves, their relations to each other, and their own unfathomable inner being. The paper goes on to note the implications of this argument for thinking more generally about relationality, space, and the more-than-human.

1. Millions of shorebirds migrate each year through a small number of highly productive staging areas where they often conflict with fisheries interests. Delaware Bay, USA, is a major shorebird stopover site where, in spring, many thousands of shorebirds undergo rapid mass gain by feeding on the eggs of commercially harvested horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus. 2. Environmental factors may cause deviations from the best migration schedule. We used within-year mass gain data from red knot Calidris canutus caught in Delaware Bay between 1998 and 2005 to determine the degree of flexibility individuals have to vary migration speed. 3. Mass gain by birds below 133 g was shown to comprise 15.3% fat (39 kJ g(-1)), the remainder being lean mass (6 kJ g(-1)). Above this critical level, fat comprised 83.9% of mass deposition. The rates of energy deposition (kJ d(-1)) were therefore fundamentally different between the two states but were among the highest ever recorded among vertebrates (5-7 x basic metabolic rate). 4. A total of 36-62% of the variation in observed rates of energy deposition between 1998 and 2002 was explained by a year factor, date and mass at initial capture and interaction terms, such that light-weight birds at the end of May had rates of mass gain or energy deposition two to three times higher than birds of similar mass in mid-May, indicating that birds were attempting to achieve a certain mass by a certain date. In 2003 and 2005, this relationship broke down as a result of lower densities of eggs. 5. Synthesis and application. The maintenance of high densities of crab eggs required for high rates of mass gain in red knot requires severe cuts in, or the complete cessation of, the crab harvest, reduced human and raptor-related disturbance as well as management of beaches to provide sufficient crab-spawning habitat. These findings are widely applicable to other systems where harvesting activities come into conflict with migrating animals and show that certain sections of the population, in this case the long-distance migrants from South America, will be impacted more than short-distance migrants whose physiology may give them access to altto alternative food resources.

How should we respond to the increasingly dense bundle of economic, cultural and ecological interconnections that span the globe and stretch into the future? What kinds of ethical and public engagements are demanded of researchers who work on global environmental, economic and social issues? The term interdependence may provide a powerful framework for advancing thinking and debate both within academia and among wider publics in relation to these questions. Members of the Open University's Geography Department have been working with partners to build the Interdependence Day project. The project combines research, cultural work, communications and public participation in an attempt to make sense of our responsibilities to people distant in space and time, and to the nonhuman natural world. This article reviews nearly a century of deployments of the term interdependence in political and academic writing, introduces the distinctive work that might be done with the term in the critical social sciences, and outlines the Interdependence Day project.

Three laboratories, VTT, Environment Canada and West Virginia University measured standard size urban buses driving various duty cycles on chassis dynamometers.The number of test cycles per laboratory varied from 6 to 16. Included in the vehicle matrix were European and North American diesel and natural gas vehicles.Environment Canada performed a comparison of a conventional diesel vehicle and a diesel-electric hybrid vehicle.Fuel consumption as well as exhaust emissions were measured.The main objective of the project was to evaluate how various duty cycles affect fuel consumption and exhaust emission figures.As could be expected, the results vary significantly not only by test cycle, but also by vehicle technology.In some cases increased fuel consumption or load results in increased emissions, in other cases reduced emissions.However, for most, vehicles emissions can be directly proportioned to the amount of fuel consumed.In this respect NOx-emissions from SCR-vehicles form an exception, as well as particle emissions from vehicles producing very low absolute particle emission levels. Scaling factors to be used for comparing emission results generated with different duty cycles were developed.Most of the evaluated test cycles provide coherent fuel consumption and emission results.Some specific test cycles result in abnormalities, and must therefore not be considered representative for buses.All three laboratories performed measurements on three common cycles, the ADEME-RATP Paris bus cycle, the Orange County Transport Authority cycle and the Braunschweig bus -cycle.This made it possible to also compare European vehicles and North American vehicles with each other.However, such a comparison is only indicative, as there are differences in vehicle specifications, testing equipment and also in test procedures and testing conditions.

Understanding numeric changes in wader populations requires knowledge of the demographic parameters underlying such changes, i.e. survival and recruitment. Data from long-term monitoring programmes are crucial for obtaining these parameters. Following discussions held at a workshop on demographic monitoring of wader populations at the 2004 International Wader Study Group meeting, we present guidelines for establishing new programmes to monitor survival and recruitment of waders in non-breeding areas, particularly those species that breed in the Arctic. We provide a general overview of some common issues in the demographic monitoring of waders and then provide detailed methods for measuring both recruitment and survival on the non-breeding grounds.

A commentary on the 1st Auckland Triennial, the chapter engages with the work of artists John Lyall, Mariele Neudecker, Michael Parekowhai and Bill Hammond in order to explore the biological and cultural dimensions of inhabiting an island. It links together processes of biological species introduction (and bio-invasion) with cultural transmission, suggesting that there are similar dynamics at work in the biological and cultural realms. As a site of `infectious rhythms' of invasion, catastrophe and creativity, the material experience of island life, it is suggested, is far from that of the tranquillity and timelessness often imagined by distant metropolitan centres.

In 2020, UK shooting and rural organisations pledged to achieve a voluntary transition from the use of lead shot ammunition to non-lead alternatives for hunting by 2025. The SHOT-SWITCH research project was set up in 2020 to monitor progress towards this aim by examining the proportions of wild-shot common pheasants Phasianus colchicus available to consumers in Great Britain that were killed using lead and non-lead shot. In the study’s third season, 2022/2023, 94% of pheasants sampled had been killed using lead ammunition. Statistically, this is a significantly smaller proportion than in the preceding two seasons (both > 99% lead), but it remains large. We found no direct evidence of any effect of recent voluntary initiatives to promote the replacement of lead with non-lead ammunition by suppliers and retailers of wild-shot game.

This chapter in an edited collection discusses the relationships between food, climate change and race. It argues for further engagement with the materiality of race in the social sciences.

Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpipers Calidris pygmaea migrate from their breeding grounds in Russia to winter on the coasts of southern China and South-east Asia. Previous studies on Leizhou Peninsula, Guangdong Province, China have shown that the species is present there in winter, as well as during the autumn and spring migration periods. However, there have been no formal estimates of the number of birds present. In November–December 2020 we conducted systematic searches for Spoon-billed Sandpipers marked individually with leg flags at Tujiao (Leizhou Peninsula) and also made scan surveys there to estimate the proportion of birds with marks. We used these data in combination to make a closed-population mark-resighting estimate of the local population in the Tujiao study area of approximately 60 individuals. Our estimate and its lower 95% confidence limit are both considerably larger than the 33 birds found during a co-ordinated count at Donghai Island, Hebei and Tujiao combined a few weeks later. This may be because raw counts tend to miss some individuals and therefore underestimate the total. The total for Tujiao represents about 8% of the estimated world population in winter, making it the second most important known wintering site after the Upper Gulf of Mottama in Myanmar.