Geography (Scholarly Publications) http://hdl.handle.net/2262/228 2013-05-12T21:27:58Z 2013-05-12T21:27:58Z QUINN, EMMA http://hdl.handle.net/2262/61268 2011-12-14T14:47:05Z 2011-12-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Visa Policy as Migration Channel, Ireland Author: QUINN, EMMA Abstract: An Irish visa is a form of pre-entry clearance to travel to a point of entry to the State only. Whether or not the visa carries any legitimate expectation of entering the State has been debated in the courts. Ireland and the UK lie outside the Schengen zone and the issuing of both short and long-term visas is a national competence. Within the Schengen zone, the regulation of short-term visas falls within the competence of the EU, while long-term visa policy is set by the Member State. The Schengen short-stay regime concerns visas, issued by a Member State, which allow Third Country Nationals to enter that Member State, or several Member States, for stays not exceeding three months per six-month period. The Irish system is essentially discretionary, whereby the Minister for Justice and Equality1 decides whether or not to grant applications for visas; exceptions relate to beneficiaries of EU Treaty free movement rights. Description: PUBLISHED

2011-12-01T00:00:00Z QUINN, EMMA http://hdl.handle.net/2262/61261 2011-12-14T14:20:10Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Temporary and Circular Migration: Ireland Author: QUINN, EMMA Abstract: The current study is part of an EU-wide study intended to promote understanding of temporary and circular migration by Third Country nationals. Most migration policy development in Ireland has been related to migration that is ultimately viewed as temporary. Ireland’s policy decision to prioritise migration from the enlarged EU in 2004 facilitated the entry of workers to a tight labour market. Emigration data now show that this population is highly mobile and has responded quickly to changed economic conditions by moving on to other destinations. Knowledge about circular and temporary migration patterns is limited by the fact that available data sources do not record exits from the State. It is not known how long people who enter the State as temporary migrants stay, or how many make Ireland their permanent home. Ireland has no immediate plans to introduce formal circular migration programmes. However, there have been significant recent policy developments relevant to temporary migrants, in particular, student migrants are a group for which further policy development is planned. Description: PUBLISHED

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z DAVIES, ANNA MULLIN, SUSAN JOSEPHINE http://hdl.handle.net/2262/60815 2011-11-18T12:52:55Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Greening the economy: interrogating sustainability innovations beyond the mainstream Author: DAVIES, ANNA; MULLIN, SUSAN JOSEPHINE Abstract: Current international economic and environmental conditions have led to increasing calls for alternative pathways of development. Globally the language of a green economy is being promoted as a means to develop a ‘win-win’ for the economy and the environment. There are concerns, however, that the emerging frameworks for sustainable economic renewal marginalise social dimensions of sustainability and the already existing practices of sustainability innovation within the social economy. Using empirical evidence from Ireland this article examines the dimensions of this marginalisation by interrogating the dynamic landscape of environmentally-focused social economy enterprises (ESEEs) as additional spaces of sustainability innovation for a greener economy. It is found that while these enterprises can be cast as spaces of actually existing sustainable development tensions persist which together raise general questions about measuring and communicating sustainability as well as more foundational issues relating to permissible forms of sustainable economic renewal. Description: PUBLISHED

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z EDWARDS, ROBIN JAMES http://hdl.handle.net/2262/59851 2011-10-05T14:52:03Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Reassessing transfer-function performance in sea-level reconstruction based on benthic salt-marsh foraminifera from the Atlantic Coast of NE North America Author: EDWARDS, ROBIN JAMES Abstract: The need to increase the number and distribution of sea-level records spanning the last few hundred years has led to particular interest in developing high-precision, geologically based sea-level reconstructions that capture decimetre and multi-decadal scale changes. Transfer functions for tide level are statistical tools that quantify the vertical relationship between inter-tidal microfossils and elevation within the tidal frame and their use in sea-level reconstruction is growing in popularity. Whilst a range of sampling strategies, dataset qualities and underlying statistical models have been used in transfer-function development, all variants share the common requirement of accurately extracting precise species-elevation relationships from surface data, and reliably applying these to fossil assemblages to infer past conditions. We present surface foraminiferal data from six transects sampled at three sites spanning a large latitudinal range extending from Newfoundland (Canada) to North Carolina (USA). These data demonstrate that significant spatial differences exist within the high-marsh foraminiferal assemblages commonly used to reconstruct past relative sea-level (RSL). We standardise these data to account for inter-site differences in tidal range using several variants of the standardised water level index (SWLI) of Horton et al. (1999b) and show that the best performance is achieved by using the highest occurrence of foraminifera as the upper tidal datum level. The standardised surface foraminiferal data are used to develop a suite of foraminiferal transfer functions for tide level which are then applied to fossil assemblages from two sediment cores to reconstruct palaeomarsh-surface elevation. We highlight the manner in which species-elevation relationships are extracted and modified during transfer-function development, and the impacts that choices in dataset composition and transfer-function type have on the resulting reconstructions. Our results graphically illustrate the importance of these choices and the impacts of temporal and spatial variability in foraminiferal distributions, none of which are adequately represented or discernible from the standard summary statistics of performance that commonly accompany transfer-function reconstructions. We conclude that a more explicit treatment of the transfer-function development process is required to support the growing body of precise RSL reconstructions that are now appearing in the literature. To that end, we make the following four recommendations for a framework to assist in transfer-function development that will allow better record inter-comparison and minimise the potential for producing precise but ultimately inaccurate reconstructions: 1) sampling for surface data should focus on capturing complete species response curves rather than simply compiling modern analogues for fossil material; 2) The similarity between the surface assemblages used to produce transfer functions and the fossil assemblages to which they are applied, should be better quantified using range of statistical approaches, and must accompany any reconstruction; 3) where modern analogues are lacking in local surface assemblages, data from additional sites should be added, with selection based on fulfilling the requirements of the previous two recommendations. The manner in which individual species optima are combined to produce a composite optimum, and the extent to which this provides a reasonable representation of the surface data should also be documented; 4) the application of WA PLS component 2 (and higher) cannot be justified solely on the grounds of increased performance measures (e.g. r2jack and RMSEP), and if applied, the pattern of optima updates should be used to highlight species that may distort reconstructions. Description: PUBLISHED

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z DAVIES, ANNA http://hdl.handle.net/2262/57627 2012-03-07T10:32:20Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Geography and the matter of waste mobilities Author: DAVIES, ANNA Abstract: It is the case that ‘all societies both throw things away and abandon them’ (Gregson et al. 2007a, 697). Such divestment does not mean that those things, commonly called waste, cease to exist rather it often marks the beginning of relocation and rematerialisation processes which are conducted at varying scales, from the molecular to the international over different time periods, and with varying amounts of human intervention and environmental impact. These things called waste are moved, with different degrees of design and legality, from place to place (and sometimes back again) and their constituent parts deconstructed, reconstructed and transformed, intentionally or otherwise, altering physical states and levels of toxicity; essentially waste has multiple mobilities. At one level these material functionalities of waste’s evolving trajectories are well known, if not well managed, resulting in manifold conflicts in communities particularly over the siting of waste management facilities such as landfills and incinerators. However much of this work has tended to treat waste as rather fixed in its state and location. I argue in this short essay that there is a growing body of research that is directly, and more helpfully, engaging with elements of waste’s mobilities and much of this is intensely geographical in its configuration. Importantly, in this context, the emergent research is replete with boundary crossing activity not least in literal terms of identifying the dynamic spatial [re]distribution of wastes (in toto or by its constituent parts) across political and administrative constituencies. It also demands broader interdisciplinary interaction between those engaging with waste in the fields of science, governance and engineering. In addition, however, I suggest that this research could be enriched by extending the realm of analysis beyond mobilities of waste matter past and present to consider how proposed development trajectories, such as governmental calls to move towards a green, smart, low carbon economy (Forfás 2009; Department of Energy and Climate Change 2010), will contribute to the dynamics of waste in the future. Description: PUBLISHED

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z TAYLOR, DAVID CHEN, LIPING http://hdl.handle.net/2262/57577 2011-07-12T13:37:59Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Public awareness and performance relating to the implementation of a low-carbon economy in China: a case study from Zhengzhou Author: TAYLOR, DAVID; CHEN, LIPING Abstract: This paper aims to examine levels of awareness and performance relating to the promotion of a Low-carbon economy (LCE) among the general public in Zhengzhou, China. The data and information used were derived from 300 question-naires distributed randomly among households in the west, south and north urban districts of Zhengazhou. The results indicate a combination of high awareness with poor understanding of LCE programmes among respondents, with the poor understanding probably due to a shortage of appropriate information from trusted sources and shortcomings in education. Respondents generally showed positive attitudes toward pro-environmental actions, such as refusing to use plastic bags, waste recycling, water and energy conservation. Apart from regulation and policies, they considered edu-cation and economic incentives as effective mechanisms to promote LCE implementation. Overall those consulted re-sponded favourably towards the prospect of LCE, with some reservations. Results of the study, though limited, suggest that the general public in China has the potential to be a facilitator of environmental improvements in the country. Description: PUBLISHED

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z TAYLOR, DAVID http://hdl.handle.net/2262/41092 2010-10-18T02:02:31Z 2010-10-16T23:00:00Z

Title: Past, current and future Interactions between pressures, chemicaL status and bioLogical qUality eleMents for lakes IN contrAsting catchmenTs in IrEland (ILLUMINATE) Author: TAYLOR, DAVID Abstract: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Ireland-funded project ‘Past, current and future interactions between pressures, chemical status and biological quality elements for lakes in contrasting catchments in Ireland’ (ILLUMINATE) demonstrates the benefits of integrating high quality ecological, environmental and palaeolimnological datasets within a dynamic modelling framework. The project also marks the first application of coupled ecological pressure-response models specifically calibrated for catchments in Ireland. Interactions between current and past ecological pressures and responses are quantified through analyses of a combination of contemporary, historical and palaeolimnological datasets. Results are then used to inform runs of coupled dynamic ecological pressure-response models that are used to simulate future scenarios of catchment-lake linkages. Description: PUBLISHED

2010-10-16T23:00:00Z PAPE, JESSICA http://hdl.handle.net/2262/41034 2010-10-15T02:02:33Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability by Eugene A. Rosa, Andreas Diekmann, Thomas Dietz, & Carlo Jaeger (Eds.) Author: PAPE, JESSICA Abstract: The topic of global environmental change (GEC) is of urgent importance today. To address planetary scale problems like climate change, biodiversity loss, or overconsumption it is important to understand the causes and consequences of human impacts on GEC. In their edited collection Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability Eugene Rosa, Andreas Diekmann, Thomas Dietz, & Carlo Jaeger present a comprehensive overview of approaches to explaining and conceptualizing GEC. By presenting research from authors with different academic backgrounds, this collection aims to enhance the discourse on GEC across disciplinary boundaries by “bridging future work in social and ecological sciences.” By focusing on the human impacts of GEC and the coupled impact of human and natural systems (CHANS), this multidisciplinary work manages to discuss such diverse topics as land use, risk societies, international regimes, common property, and vulnerability. The goal of the book is to “bring together core findings on the human dimensions of GEC to illustrate the advances that have been made in this critical area of study” and to understand the complex challenges of CHANS in the context of environmental change. Description: PUBLISHED

2010-01-01T00:00:00Z EDWARDS, ROBIN JAMES http://hdl.handle.net/2262/40560 2010-08-20T02:02:02Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The Island of Ireland: Drowning the Myth of an Irish Land-Bridge? Author: EDWARDS, ROBIN JAMES Abstract: At the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) c. 26 000 calendar years ago, global sea levels were around 120 m lower than present due to the storage of water on land in the form of large, high-latitude ice sheets. This lowering of sea level exposed portions of the modern seafloor surrounding north-west Europe, forming ‘land-bridges that joined Britain and Ireland to the rest of the continent. Sometime later, these land-bridges were drowned by rising sea levels as the ice sheets melted in response to a warming climate. Precisely when these land connections were severed has been a subject of debate for several decades, driven in part by the desire to understand the postglacial recolonisation of Ireland by plants and animals. The level of the sea relative to the land surface (relative sea-level) results from the interplay between vertical changes in both land and sea level. These processes can be simulated by computer models that describe the response of the solid Earth to the loading and unloading of glacial ice (glacial rebound models). In addition to simulating relative sea-levels, the output from these models can, when combined with bathymetric and topographic data, be used to produce first-order palaeogeographic reconstructions. This paper uses palaeogeographic reconstructions of this kind to investigate the location and duration of possible land-bridges joining Ireland to Britain. These reconstructions are derived from a recently developed glacial rebound model for Ireland that incorporates an updated British-Irish Ice Sheet component and is trained by geological sea-level indicators from around the Irish coast. The resulting reconstructions suggest that Ireland was separated from Britain by c. 16 000 calendar years ago, at which time climate was still cold and local ice caps persisted in parts of the country. No support is found for the idea that a Holocene land-bridge was instrumental in the migration of temperate flora and fauna into Ireland. Description: PUBLISHED

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z EDWARDS, ROBIN JAMES http://hdl.handle.net/2262/33067 2012-07-24T10:50:39Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Post-glacial relative sea-level observations from Ireland and their role in glacial rebound modelling Author: EDWARDS, ROBIN JAMES Abstract: The British Isles have been the focus of a number of recent modelling studies owing to the existence of a high-quality sea-level dataset for this region and the suitability of these data for constraining shallow earth viscosity structure, local to regional ice sheet histories and the magnitude/ timing of global meltwater signals. Until recently, the paucity of both glaciological and relative sea-level (RSL) data from Ireland has meant that the majority of these glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) modelling studies of the British Isles region have tended to concentrate on reconstructing ice cover over Britain. However, the recent development of a sea-level database for Ireland along with emergence of new glaciological data on the spatial extent, thickness and deglacial chronology of the Irish Ice Sheet means it is now possible to revisit this region of the British Isles. Here, we employ these new data to constrain the evolution of the Irish Ice Sheet. We find that in order to reconcile differences between model predictions and RSL evidence, a thick, spatially extensive ice sheet of 600–700m over much of north and central Ireland is required at the LGM with very rapid deglaciation after 21 k cal. yr BP. Description: PUBLISHED

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z