Southwestern Australia is unique as it contains the world`s most nutrient-impoverished soils, experiences a prolonged-summer period and the vegetation is extremely fire-prone. It is also ...world-renowned for its relative high level of flora biodiversity. This book focuses on the diverse range of morphological and physiological adaptations evolved by the flora to survive in the harsh Mediterranean-type climate.
This book puts middle Australia under the microscope, examining how quality of life is faring in the face of change and uncertainty. 400 Australians from around the country shared their experiences ...of work, family, and community for this book, creating a striking picture of Australian society into a new millennium. This lived experience is set against hard data so that we can truly understand the impact - good and bad - of economic restructuring on the broad Australian middle class. Meticulously researched, it mounts a moral and intellectual counter-argument to economic reform. A sequel to the best-selling Economic Rationalism in Canberra, Michael Pusey's book will be equally important.
Linking Australia's Landscapes Ian Pulsford, James Fitzsimons, Geoff Wescott / Ian Pulsford, James Fitzsimons, Geoff Wescott
2013, 2013-06-05
eBook
Networks of land managed for conservation across different tenures have rapidly increased in number (and popularity) in Australia over the past two decades. These include iconic large-scale ...initiatives such as Gondwana Link, the Great Eastern Ranges Initiative, Habitat 141°, and the South Australian NatureLinks, as well as other, landscape-scale approaches such as Biosphere Reserves and Conservation Management Networks. Their aims have been multiple: to protect the integrity and resilience of many Australian ecosystems by maintaining and restoring large-scale natural landscapes and ecosystem processes; to lessen the impacts of fragmentation; to increase the connectivity of habitats to provide for species movement and adaptation as climate changes; and to build community support and involvement in conservation. This book draws out lessons from a variety of established and new connectivity conservation initiatives from around Australia, and is complemented by international examples. Chapters are written by leaders in the field of establishing and operating connectivity networks, as well as key ecological and social scientists and experts in governance. Linking Australia's Landscapes will be an important reference for policy makers, natural resource managers, scientists, and academics and tertiary students dealing with issues in landscape-scale conservation, ecology, conservation biology, environmental policy, planning and management, social sciences, regional development, governance and ecosystem services.
How Australia Compares is a handy reference that compares Australia with 17 other developed democracies on a wide range of social, economic and political dimensions. Whenever possible, it gives not ...only snapshot comparisons from the present, but charts trends over recent decades or even longer. Its scope is encyclopaedic, offering comparative data on as many aspects of social life as possible, from taxation to traffic accidents, homicide rates to health expenditure, and international trade to internet usage. It uses a highly accessible format, devoting a double-page spread to each topic, with tables on one page and a clear explanation and analysis on the facing page. In each discussion the focus is to put the Australian experience into international perspective, drawing out the implications for its performance, policies and prospects.
Why Australia prospered McLean, Ian W
2012., 20121111, 2012, 2013-01-01, 20130101, Letnik:
43
eBook
This book is the first comprehensive account of how Australia attained the world's highest living standards within a few decades of European settlement, and how the nation has sustained an enviable ...level of income to the present. Beginning with the Aboriginal economy at the end of the eighteenth century, Ian McLean argues that Australia's remarkable prosperity across nearly two centuries was reached and maintained by several shifting factors. These included imperial policies, favorable demographic characteristics, natural resource abundance, institutional adaptability and innovation, and growth-enhancing policy responses to major economic shocks, such as war, depression, and resource discoveries.
Natural resource abundance in Australia played a prominent role in some periods and faded during others, but overall, and contrary to the conventional view of economists, it was a blessing rather than a curse. McLean shows that Australia's location was not a hindrance when the international economy was centered in the North Atlantic, and became a positive influence following Asia's modernization. Participation in the world trading system, when it flourished, brought significant benefits, and during the interwar period when it did not, Australia's protection of domestic manufacturing did not significantly stall growth. McLean also considers how the country's notorious origins as a convict settlement positively influenced early productivity levels, and how British imperial policies enhanced prosperity during the colonial period. He looks at Australia's recent resource-based prosperity in historical perspective, and reveals striking elements of continuity that have underpinned the evolution of the country's economy since the nineteenth century.
The past decade has seen an unprecedented growth in the study of language contact, associated partly with the linguistic effects of globalization and increased migration all over the world. Written ...by a leading expert in the field, this much-needed account brings together disparate findings to examine the dynamics of contact between languages in an immigrant context. Using data from a wide range of languages, including German, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Croatian and Vietnamese, Michael Clyne discusses the dynamics of their contact with English. Clyne analyzes how and why these languages change in an immigration country like Australia, and asks why some languages survive longer than others. The book contains useful comparisons between immigrant vintages, generations, and between bilinguals and trilinguals. An outstanding contribution to the study of language contact, this book will be welcomed by students and researchers in linguistics, bilingualism, the sociology of language and education.
Geographies of Australian Heritages Shaw, Brian J, Dr; Jones, Roy, Professor; Graham, Professor Brian
2007, 20171130, 2007-11-01, 2017-11-30, 20070101
eBook
In any settler and/or postcolonial society, heritage is a complex and contested topic that involves indigenous, imperial and other migrant components. In Australia, this situation is compounded by ...the unique characteristics of the country's natural environment, the considerable diversity of its migrant intake and the demographic and technological imbalances between its indigenous and settler populations. This volume brings together internationally recognized academics and emerging scholars, whose expertise extends through the areas of tourism, planning, heritage management, environmental studies and state and local government. Through a representative set of case studies from across the country's states and capital cities, the contributors demonstrate the range and diversity of heritage issues currently confronting Australia, and consider possible ways of resolving these.
•C-C relation is found between daily/sub-daily extreme rainfalls and maximum temperature.•Rainfall-temperature scaling relation is strong in short time extreme rainfall.•Rainfall-temperature scaling ...relationship is varied with the analysed time window.•Found scaling changing trend facilitates future extreme rainfall predictions.•Seasonal impact on rainfall-temperature scaling changing trend is highly variate.
Understanding the relationships between extreme daily and sub-daily rainfall events and their governing factors is important in order to analyse the properties of extreme rainfall events in a changing climate. Atmospheric temperature is one of the dominant climate variables which has a strong relationship with extreme rainfall events. In this study, a temperature-rainfall binning technique is used to evaluate the dependency of extreme rainfall on daily maximum temperature. The Clausius-Clapeyron (C-C) relation was found to describe the relationship between daily maximum temperature and a range of rainfall durations from 6min up to 24h for seven Australian weather stations, the stations being located in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Darwin, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. The analysis shows that the rainfall – temperature scaling varies with location, temperature and rainfall duration. The Darwin Airport station shows a negative scaling relationship, while the other six stations show a positive relationship. To identify the trend in scaling relationship over time the same analysis is conducted using data covering 10year periods. Results indicate that the dependency of extreme rainfall on temperature also varies with the analysis period. Further, this dependency shows an increasing trend for more extreme short duration rainfall and a decreasing trend for average long duration rainfall events at most stations. Seasonal variations of the scale changing trends were analysed by categorizing the summer and autumn seasons in one group and the winter and spring seasons in another group. Most of 99th percentile of 6min, 1h and 24h rain durations at Perth, Melbourne and Sydney stations show increasing trend for both groups while Adelaide and Darwin show decreasing trend. Furthermore, majority of scaling trend of 50th percentile are decreasing for both groups.
