Environmental concerns are relatively recent. Ancient armies would have little or no concept that they caused environmental damage. Such armies were ‘eco-warriors’ nevertheless, but in the sense of ...against the ecosystem, not for it. An army’s success may result from marching on its stomach, but what those stomachs produced could also conduct environmental warfare. Surprisingly little has been published about ancient armies’ daily bodily waste – urine and faeces – or the environmental impact where they encamped. An encamping army would cause rapid local and increasingly extending environmental change and devastation. Woodland would be steadily consumed, water security a constant concern, disease from pollution a threat. Food supplies would be sucked into camps from nearby and increasingly further afield. As for a camp’s growing smell, an enemy’s nose would have been more than adequate to find their foe. Using the example of Roman armies in the succession of camps mainly associated with the 2nd century BC campaigns against the Celtiberian city of Numantia, Spain, eye-watering sewage statistics emerge for when an army encamped, and its general environmental impact.
To date, Rome's intervention to the West from the mid-second century BC has not really been looked at with any sense of overview. Instead, there has been an unconnected series of micro-regional ...studies looking at particular areas, from the river Ebro in Spain round to Italy on the land front, and from the Balearic Islands to Corsica, Sardinia and even Sicily as regards the seaborne aspect. In contrast, the aim of this volume is to push the historical and archaeological debates about Rome's expansion beyond these traditional geographical boundaries and the discipline-based previous research. The entire north-western Mediterranean is treated as a micro-region and is addressed using various interdisciplinary approaches. The result is to provide an innovative and comprehensive overview of the north-western Mediterranean in a period of historical crossroads, aided particularly by focusing on the connectivity and integration within this region as two interrelated issues. While Republican Rome enforced itself as an expansive power towards the West, all sorts of polities, military operations and individuals also played a significant role in creating interconnectivity and integration of the north-western Mediterranean into a new hybrid reality. In order to uncover such processes of hybridisation, contributors to this volume were encouraged to focus on the historical, archaeological and numismatic material from several areas within the region, and to incorporate aspects of interdisciplinary methodologies in order to address the region's military, political, social and economic interconnections with Italy, Rome and each other within the overall period.
Excessive nutrient loading is a major threat to aquatic ecosystems worldwide that leads to profound changes in aquatic biodiversity and biogeochemical processes. Systematic quantitative assessment of ...functional ecosystem measures for river networks is, however, lacking, especially at continental scales. Here, we narrow this gap by means of a pan-European field experiment on a fundamental ecosystem process—leaf-litter breakdown—in 100 streams across a greater than 1000-fold nutrient gradient. Dramatically slowed breakdown at both extremes of the gradient indicated strong nutrient limitation in unaffected systems, potential for strong stimulation in moderately altered systems, and inhibition in highly polluted streams. This large-scale response pattern emphasizes the need to complement established structural approaches (such as water chemistry, hydrogeomorphology, and biological diversity metrics) with functional measures (such as litter-breakdown rate, whole-system metabolism, and nutrient spiraling) for assessing ecosystem health.
Leaf litter breakdown, a critical ecosystem level process in streams and other aquatic environments, has been conceptualized using models borrowed from terrestrial systems. We argue that current ...views of the process in freshwaters need to be conceptually improved. Specifically, we think the idea that breakdown proceeds in three distinct temporal stages (leaching, conditioning, fragmentation) has been overemphasized. Leaching, the massive loss of soluble leaf components within 24 h after immersion, is generally considered to constitute a well-defined first stage. Recent evidence suggests, however, that the initial solute losses are largely an effect of the unnatural drying procedures to which experimental leaves are normally subjected. Fresh leaf litter does lose solutes when immersed, but gradually throughout the breakdown process rather than instantly upon wetting. Conditioning, the second breakdown stage, describes the enhancement of leaf palatability for detritivores by microbial colonization, and is thus ultimately targeted towards a group of organisms (which contribute to litter degradation) rather than addressing the breakdown process per se. Furthermore, conditioning implies a key role for detritivorous invertebrates and underrates the established direct degradative activity of microbial decomposers. If, thus, leaching and conditioning are not generally useful operators to describe portions of the litter breakdown process in freshwaters, the traditional concept, which emphasises leaching, conditioning and fragmentation as three sequential stages, loses much of its appeal. Consequently, we propose a new conceptual model, in which the coincidence and interplay of various subprocesses of litter breakdown is more strongly recognized. In this model, we propose to view the process in terms of the products of litter breakdown-as a complement to the usual perspective which focuses on litter mass loss. Six primary breakdown products are considered: bacterial, fungal and shredder biomass; dissolved organic matter; fine-particulate organic matter; and inorganic mineralization products such as CO2, NH4+ and PO43-. We present a scheme illustrating the hypothesized formation of these products throughout breakdown. However, to improve understanding of the process, application of the proposed conceptual framework in experimental work is necessary.
The Holistic Integrity Test (HIT) - Quantified Resilience Analysis. Rising sea levels and wider climate change mean we face an increasing risk from flooding and other natural hazards. Tough economic ...times make it difficult to economically justify or afford the desired level of engineered risk reduction. Add to this significant uncertainty from a range of future predictions, constantly updated with new science. We therefore need to understand not just how to reduce the risk, but what could happen should above design standard events occur. In flood terms this includes not only the direct impacts (damage and loss of life), but the wider cascade impacts to infrastructure systems and the longer term impacts on the economy and society. However, understanding the “what if” is only the first part of the equation; a range of improvement measures to mitigate such effects need to be identified and implemented. These measures should consider reducing the risk, lessening the consequences, aiding the response, and speeding up the recovery. However, they need to be objectively assessed through quantitative analysis, which underpins them technically and economically. Without such analysis, it cannot be predicted how measures will perform if the extreme events occur. It is also vital to consider all possible hazards as measures for one hazard may hinder the response to another. The Holistic Integrity Test (HIT), uses quantitative system analysis and “HITs” the site, its infrastructure, contained dangers and wider regional system to determine how it copes with a range of severe shock events, Before, During and After the event, whilst also accounting for uncertainty (as illustrated in figure 1). First explained at the TINCE 2014 Nuclear Conference in Paris, it was explained in terms of a Nuclear Facility needing to analyse the site in response to post Fukushima needs; the hit is however universally applicable. The HIT has three key risk reduction goals: The ability to tolerate and withstand shocks, while continuing to sustain key safety functions; the ability to wisely direct and manage the crisis situation, accounting for the diverse scenarios that could occur; to be able to quickly recovery and stabilise to a safe and secure state that is stable and sustainable in the long term.
The main source of archaeological evidence for Late Roman Republican camps is a complex of installations around the Iberian city of Numantia in Spain, excavated by Adolf Schulten in the early 1900s. ...This book reassesses Schulten and concludes that much of his interpretation is questionable. Radically different alternative reconstructions making use of recent fieldwork are presented for several of the sites. A discussion of dating evidence leads to alternative dates being offered for some of the camps. To aid interpreting the sites, army organisation and art of encampment for the period of the Numantine Wars is discussed. This study gives added importance to the sites at Numantia, for they not only form the main source of archaeological evidence for Late Republican camps, but provide evidence for the form of camp for both the late manipular army and the early cohort one.
Coastal communities are increasingly threatened by flooding from climate change-induced sea level rise and potential increases in storminess. Informed decisions on risk and resilience related to ...flood risk need to be made, but the assessment process is complex. It is difficult to bring all of the climate science and sea level rise projections to decision-making, and as a result, decisions are made without a real understanding of the uncertainties involved, a problem magnified the further projections go into the future (Figure 1).
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