Author: Nkjwo (page 4 of 7)

Podcast 49: Kielder: the story of a man-made landscape

Kielder houses

Former Forestry Commission workers houses in Kielder Village withforestry plantations in the background. Source: geograph.org.uk/Stephen Richards.

Around the world, rural landscapes have been transformed by human activity as never before. In England, one of the most striking locations of such anthropogenic changes is Kielder Forest and Water in Northumberland. Since the 1920s, this site has seen a massive tree planting effort, creating one of the largest man-made forests in Western Europe. During the 1970s a large dam and reservoir were constructed at Kielder in order to create a secure water supply for the industries at Teeside. As a result Kielder has witnessed significant and dramatic environmental changes over the course of the twentieth century, as it was transformed from a pastoral agricultural landscape, to that of a commercial forest and finally it received the addition of a large man-made lake.

Construction Kielder Reservoir

The construction of Kielder Dam
and Reservoir. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

To tease out how people have experienced and perceived the man-made environment of Kielder, the Kielder Oral History Project was conducted. On this episode of the podcast, the two researchers who carried out the Oral History project, Professor David Moon of the University of York and Dr Leona Skelton of Durham University, will discuss some of their findings.

 

 

Books and articles mentioned

Christine McCulloch, Dam Decisions and Pipe Dreams: The Political Ecology of Reservoir Schemes (Teesdale, Farndale and Kielder Water) in North East England (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008)

R. McIntosh,’The history and multi-purpose management of Kielder Forest’, Forest Ecology and Management, 79 (November 1995) 1–2, pp 1–11.

Ruth Tittensor, From Peat Bog to Conifer Forest: An Oral History of Whitelee, its Community and Landscape (Chichester: Packard Publishing, 2009).

Relevant links
Kielder oral History project report
Kielder Village Website
Kielder Water and Forest Park website
Kielder Water Wikipedia page
Kielder Forest Wikipedia page

Music credits

Memories of an Old Dog” by Fireproof_Babies
Available from ccMixter

Where You Are Now” by Zapac
Available from ccMixter


Acknowledgements:
The interviews were conducted by Dr Leona Skelton at Kielder during the week 15-19 October 2012. We would like to acknowledge the support of Northumbrian Water plc, especially Andrew Moore and Tonia Reeve, the Forestry Commission, in particular Graham Gill, Julie and Steve Webb of the Kielder Village Store, Duncan Hutt of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust, and the staff of the Calvert Trust Kielder for their assistance in setting up the interviews and, especially, all those who agreed to be interviewed.

AHRCThe Kielder Oral History Project and the production of this podcast was funded by the AHRC Landscape & Environment Programme.

This podcast was simultaneously published on the Histories of Environmental Change website.

Podcast 48: Remaking wetlands: a tale of rice, ducks and floods in the Murrumbidgee River region

Murrumbidgee Map

Map of the The Murray-Darling river system with the Murrumbidgee river in red. Source: Wikipedia

Australia is a dry continent and as a result Australian ecologies can generally be characterised as “boom and bust” and are significantly driven by intermittent and unpredictable wet “booms” and dry “busts”. The populations and movements of many animals are considerably influenced by these wet and dry periods. Birds tend to be “nomadic” and go where the water is. Native Australian ducks are no exception.

Before the arrival of Europeans and their agriculture, ducks only had to compete with other native birds and animals, as well as Aboriginal hunters.

Anas gracilis

Grey Teal (Anas gracilis).
Source: Wikimedia

However, the introduction of water intensive agricultural activity by Europeans changed all this and in particular rice cultivation has been implicated in altering the Murrumbidgee river system in Australia, and as a result the habitat for ducks. The guest on this episode of the podcast is Emily O’Gorman, an Associate Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research of the University of Wollongong. She is an expert on Australian flooding and river history and examines on this podcast the ways in which ducks as well as people negotiated the changing water landscapes of the Murrumbidgee River caused by the creation of rice paddies.

Information on Emily O’Gorman’s book 
Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin – Info from the Publisher.

Music credits

Forecast” by cdk
Available from ccMixter

Where You Are Now” by Zapac
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 47: Canine City: Dogs and Humans in Urban History

Richard Gallo and dog

Richard Gallo and his dog at Petit Gennevilliers
near Paris. By impressionist painter Gustave
Caillebotte. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the modern urbanized world it is often forgotten that throughout history humans have been very dependent on animals for their survival and livelihoods. Until recently most humans in the developed world share their cities with animals, in particular those that provided transport or energy for all kinds of labour. Most obvious of these are horses and donkeys. But none of these animals has such as long symbiotic history with humans as dogs. Today, most dogs in the developed world are kept as pets. However, urban dogs have also been economically as well as culturally important. The history of urban dogs is a story that has hardly been told. This was also noticed by Chris Pearson, Lecturer in Twentieth Century History at the University of Liverpool in the UK, and he is working on a research project entitled “Canine City: Dogs, Humans, and the Making of Modern Paris”. In this episode of the podcast Dr. Pearson talks about this project and the role of dogs in modern urban history.

Blog mentioned
Sniffing the past – Blog on canine history by Chris Pearson

Music credits

Where You Are Now” by Zapac
Available from ccMixter

Copy me in B minor” by My Free Mickey
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 46: Explorations in historical climatology

Thames frost fair

Frost Fair on the River Thames near
the Temple Stairs in 1683-84.
Engraving after a drawing by Jan Wijck.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

For many historical climatologists cold, wet and stormy weather worsened life for most European people and harmed the economy during the early modern period. Warmth on the other hand is generally regarded as a beneficial thing but too much of it is also harmful. This all seems to make sense if one ignores the Dutch economic miracle which transformed a small piece of land on the edge of Europe into the first modern economy just as the Little Ice Age entered its coldest phase. How is this possible in the face of climatic stress?

This is one of that questions that Dagomar Degroot, a PhD Candidate in environmental history at York University in Toronto, Canada, addresses on this episode of the podcast. His research explores the issue of how the changing climate of the Little Ice Age influenced the cultural, military and economic histories of the Dutch Republic during the early modern period. In addition, Dagomar will discuss the pitfalls of determinism and indeterminism in historical climatology, the sources available to historian’s researching climate and the relevance of historical climate research for present day debates about global warming and climate change. Finally, he will talk about the importance of blogging for the historical profession as a tool to communicate research outcomes to a wider audience.

Relevant websites
HistoricalClimatology.com
Climate History Network
CLIWOC

Further reading
Dagomar Degroot, “Does tree ring data reflect global cooling?“, HistoricalClimatology.com, 9 July 2012.
David D. Zhang et.al., “The causality analysis of climate change and large-scale human crisis“, PNAS, October 18, 2011 vol. 108 no. 42, pp. 17296-17301.

Related podcasts

Music credits

Where You Are Now” by Zapac
Available from ccMixter

Flowing Water” by Pitx
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 45: Medicinal plants in New Zealand: bridging the gap between medical and environmental history

New Zealand flax

New Zealand flax or Harakeke
(Phormium tenax) flowers and
native tui on stalk. Used medicinally
by Maori to kill intestinal worms,
and as a purgative.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Medical historians often presume that 19th century European settlers of New Zealand and other parts of the world relied on the emerging inorganic medicines and colonial doctors to maintain their health. However, there is also another story that seems to be overlooked: that of the use of medicine plants by settlers. For these medicinal purposes settlers introduced many new plants from overseas. The guest on this edition of the podcast is Joanna Bishop, a PhD student at the university of Wiakato in Hamilton, New Zealand. She is working on a study uncovering the story of the introduction and use of medicinal plants in New Zealand and their botanical, medical as well as environmental histories.

Music credits
Where You Are Now” by Zapac
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 44: Silent Spring at 50: a comparison perspective

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson ca. 1944.
Credit: USFWS

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”. This publication is often regarded as the beginning of the modern environmental movement, in particular in the US. Silent Spring documents the effects of pesticides on the environment, and in particularly on birds. In addition, Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and government officials of accepting industry claims uncritically. Silent Spring had a profound impact on the development of environmental consciousness and led to the regulation of the use of pesticide in North America and Europe.

In order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring this episode of the podcast explores the significance of this book with Mark Wilson, a PhD candidate at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, England. Mark has written a study which compares the response to Silent Spring in the US and Britain. He also agues that Silent Spring is a typical product of its time that was closely connected with the Cold War and the rise of the counter culture at both sides of the Atlantic.

Relevant Websites
The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, http://www.rachelcarson.org/
Wikipedia page Rachel Carson

Further reading
Graham Jr., Frank, Since Silent Spring (London, 1970)

Hamilton Lytle, Mark, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring & the Rise of the Environmental Movement (New York, 2007)

Mellanby, Kenneth, Pesticides & Pollution in Britain (London, 1967)

Rome, Adam, ‘“Give Earth a Chance”: The Environmental Movement & the Sixties’, Journal of American History, 90 (2003), pp. 525-554

Sheail, John, Pesticides & Nature Conservation: The British Experience, 1950-1970 (Oxford, 1985)

Smith, Michael B., ‘“Silent, Miss Carson!”: Science, Gender & the Reception of Silent Spring’, Feminist Studies, 27 (Autumn 2001), pp. 745-746.

Walker, Martin J., ‘The Unquiet Voice of Silent Spring: The Legacy of Rachel Carson’, The Ecologist, 29 (1999)

Music credits
Where You Are Now” by Zapac
Available from ccMixter

2012Piano” by snowflake
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 43: A transformed landscape: the steppes of Ukraine and Russia

Sea of grain

Sea of grain: agricultural landscape on former steppe land resembling the colors of the Ukranian flag. Source: Wikipedia.

The steppes of Ukraine and Russia were once a sea of grass on rolling plains on which pastoral nomadic peoples grazed their herds of livestock. From the eighteenth century, the steppes have been transformed into a major agricultural region. This process started after the region was annexed to the Russian Empire and settled by migrants from forested landscapes in central and northern Russia and Ukraine and also from central Europe. By the twentieth century, the former steppe landscape had almost disappeared, save a few remnants protected in nature reserves (zapovedniki).

Map Ukraine

Map of the steppe region showing Ukraine and location of Askania Nova Biosphere Reserve. Modified from Pontic/Caspian vegetation zones map. Source: Wikipedia.

In this podcast episode, David Moon, Anniversary Professor in History at the University of York, UK, talks about his recent visit to the Ukrainian steppes. In addition to conventional historical research in archives and libraries in Odessa, he travelled through the steppes, visited nature reserves, and met scientists to help him understand how the landscape had been transformed over time. This episode provides fascinating insights into the environmental history of the steppes and the way that environmental historians go about studying the history of landscapes and environments.

 

Relevant web links
Guest blog on OUP website by David Moon
Book by David Moon: The Plough that Broke the Steppes Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700-1914 (Oxford: OUP, 2013)
Wikipedia page Askania Nova.

Music credits
“Echo of the Steppe” by Julian Kytasty on the Bandura, Link Media, Inc. From: Internet Archive,http://www.archive.org/details/linktv_world-music-blog-videos20090504.

Where You Are Now” by Zapac
Available from ccMixter

Sooner or Later” by Geert Veneklaas
Available from ccMixter

The production of this podcast episode was supported by theAHRC

Podcast 42: Teaching and discovering environmental history online

From 27 June to 2 July 2011 the sixth conference of the European Society took place in the city of Turku in Finland. The meeting consisted of many parallel sessions on a wide range of topics exploring the interactions between human societies and nature in the past. This podcast will report on a paper discussing the results of a novel experiment in environmental didactics involving the web and e-learning technologies carried out by Martin Schmid of the Institute of Social Ecology, Alpen-Adria University Vienna and Rogerio Ribeiro de Oliveira of Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They used web technologies to teach an intercontinental course in urban environmental history involving classes in Rio de Janeiro and Vienna.

The second part of the podcast reports on a roundtable entitled “Towards an online environmental history of Europe”. This panel discussed the technical, structural and thematic issues of an online environmental history of Europe which is under development by the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society in Munich. The project, dubbed “Arcadia”, will be an encyclopedia-like resource with articles in the form of localized histories and each entry will include time, theme and location metadata as well as information about relevant organizations, people and species in order to visualize it on a map and make the material searchable. The site will provide visitors with exploratory tools to aid the discovery of material. The Arcadia online environmental history will be launched in early 2012 as part of the umbrella Environment and Society Portal.

Websites mentioned
Environment and Society portal
ESEH 2011 conference website

Podcast 41: Energy utopia or dystopia? – A historical perspective on nuclear energy

Fukushima plant

Satellite image showing damage after an Earthquake and Tsunami at the Fukushima I nuclear power plant, Japan, 16 March 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons

For the past decade nuclear energy has been increasingly promoted as a carbon neutral source of energy. By 2010 governments around the globe were seriously considering the construction of new power plants. The Japanese Tsunami of March 2011 threw a spanner in the works when the Fukushima One nuclear power plant was flooded destroying its cooling system. This resulted in a partial core meltdown, hydrogen explosions and venting of nuclear contaminated steam. The accident highlighted the potential hidden risks of nuclear technologies and fuelled fear of radiation and contamination of the environment with nuclear materials among the general public. It is also likely to stall the enthusiasm of a nuclear revival for the foreseeable future.

Considering past nuclear incidents it is doubtful if the Fukushima emergency will prevent the construction nuclear plants in the long run. On this episode of the podcast Horace Herring of the Open University in Britain will explore the utopian origins of nuclear energy and how it became a dystopian illusion. He argues that economics and distrust in science and big government undermined nuclear energy more than environmental or health concerns.

Literature cited
Horace Herring, From Energy Dreams to Nuclear Nightmares: Lessons for the 21st century from a previous nuclear era (Charlbury, Oxon: Jon Carpenter, 2005).

“Lessons from the past”, Nature, 471 (2011), p. 547.

Mark Peplow, “Chernobyl’s legacy”, Nature 471 (2011), pp. 562-565.

Music credit
LOVELESS” by Caster Seven
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 40: Reframing a vision of lost fens

Wicken Fen

The landscape of Wicken Fen
(Photo: Jan Oosthoek)

Wetlands were once common over a large part of eastern England. Of these so-called fens only two percent survives today and most of it is now situated in nature reserves. One of these reserves is Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire. It represents a landscape that was once common in the region, combining sedge fens, reed beds and woodland, and was once a major source of food and fuel for local communities. Wicken was one of the very first properties to be bought by the National Trust in 1899. Today Wicken Fen is the focus of a controversial proposal to radically expand the area of managed wetland around the reserve and to return arable land to its former wetland condition. On this podcast we interview Stuart Warrington, Nature Conservation Advisor for the National Trust at Wicken Fen, about these proposed changes and the role of history in recreating the wetlands.

Map Wicken fen

Map of Wicken fen and location.
Source: Ordnance Survey, One-inch
to the mile maps of England and Wales,
New Popular Edition, 1945-1947,
sheet 135.

The second half of the podcast is devoted to a talk delivered by Ian Rotherham of Sheffield Hallam University at a two-day workshop organised by the Histories of Environmental Change Network in November 2010. In his talk Ian analyses the attitudes towards the fens over the centuries and how these influenced the desire to drain thousands of square kilometres of wetland. He also considers the rich wild life in these wetlands and what a rich resources these provided for its inhabitants.

Website mentioned
Histories of Environmental Change

Literature cited
Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology (Edinburgh University Press, 1996)

T. C. Smout, Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600(Edinburgh University Press, 2000)

Music credit
Mechanics in Love (Cue 3) flac Stems” by boomaga
Available from ccMixter
 

Podcast 39: Slavery, fossil fuel use and climate change: past connections, present similarities

What is the connection between the abolition of slavery, the Industrial Revolution, the use fossil fuels and climate change? Jean-François Mouhot of Birmingham University recently discussed this question in an article in the journal Climatic Change. In this episode of the podcast Mouhot presents his idea that that slaves in the past and fossil-fuelled machines at present play similar economic and social roles: both slave and modern societies externalised labour and both slaves and modern machines freed their owners from daily chores. Consequently, modern society is as dependent on fossil fuels as slave societies were dependent on bonded labour. Mouhot also suggests that, in differing ways, suffering resulting (directly) from slavery and (indirectly) from the excessive burning of fossil fuels are now morally comparable. The pocast concludes with some suggestions of the lessons which may be learned from the abolition of slavery in the 19th century for dealing with modern climate change and the associated energy transition.

Literature cited
D.B. Davis, Inhuman bondage, the rise and fall of slavery in the new world (Oxford: University Press, Oxford, 2006)

Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery by (Macmillan, 2005)

J.R. McNeill, Something new under the sun. An environmental history of the twentieth century (London: Penguin, 2000)

J. R. McNeill and William H. McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s Eye View of World History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003)

Jean-Francois Mouhot, “Past connections and present similarities in slave ownership and fossil fuel usage”, Climatic Change, Published online, 25 November 2010,http://www.springerlink.com/content/w310wk5g49w83650/ (freely accessible until 31 December 2010).

Relevant links
Jean-François Mouhot, “Slavery and Climate Change: Lessons to Be Learned”History & Policy (2009)

Jean-François Mouhot, “Cancun Summit: The True Reasons for the ‘Failure’ of the Green Movement”, ActiveHistory.ca (2010).

Podcast 38: The draining of the East Anglia Fens: social unrest, design flaws and unintended environmental consequences

This episode of the podcast examines the history of the Fens, a region of wetlands in East Anglia in England. The Fenland primarily lies around the coast of the Wash in the Northern top of East Anglia.

The Fens are at or just above sea-level and, as with similar areas in the Netherlands, much of the Fenland originally consisted of wetlands which have been artificially drained since the Middle Ages and continue to be protected from floods by a system of drains, dams and pumps. Much of this work was carried out during the 17th century. With the support of this drainage and coastal protection system and because of its fertility, the Fens have become a major agricultural region in Britain for grains and vegetables.

The story of the reclamation of the fens is one of social unrest, design flaws, money problems and unintended environmental consequences. The guest on this episode of the podcast is Julie Bowring, a PhD candidate at Yale University and she is in the final stages of writing up a dissertation on the so-called Great Level of the Fens in Cambridgeshire, England.

Map Great Level

Development of the Great Level, 1503-1658. Map: Julie Bowring/Wikipedia

Website mentioned 
Histories of Environmental change

Literature cited
H.C. Darby, The Draining of the Fens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940)

Music credit
The Pond ” by Chuck Berglund
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 37: The First World War and the transformation of forestry in British Columbia

Canadian Forestry Corps

Canadian Forestry Corps in France
unloading timber during World War I.
Source: National Library of Scotland

During the First World War thousands of foresters left the logging camps of British Columbia and other parts of Canada to serve in the Canadian Forestry Corps in Europe. The Forestry Corps was set up to help European allies producing sufficient amounts of timber from their forests for the war effort. In Europe, these Canadian foresters were confronted with intensive forest management practices, unknown to them back home.

After the War the British and other European governments appealed to Canada for tree seed to replant the devastated European forests. To meet this demand the British Columbia provincial government established a system for fir cone harvesting, seed extraction and overseas shipment. Although this was deemed appropriate for forests in Europe, the hand planting of tree seedlings was considered neither economically feasible, nor desirable as a method of forest regeneration in Canada. In this podcast episode David Brownstein of the University of British Columbia explains how the coincidence of the exposure of Canadian foresters to European forestry management practice and the post-war seed collection were to transform Canadian forestry, leading to the abandonment of the policy of natural regeneration.

Website mentioned 
AAC2010: Environments

Music credit
The Way” by Pitx
Available from ccMixter

Podcast 36: Island Environmental Histories: the Ogasawara Islands

Ogasawara Islands

Location of the Ogasawara Islands.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Islands are complex ecological objects produced through flows of flora, coral polyps, human migration, and global capital.  They are places that are constantly being changed through human and non-human action.  Therefore, they are wonderfully rich sites for environmental historians, not to mention cultural, economic, and historians of science, to examine.  They are less miniature worlds than they are places made by the convergence of worlds. In this podcast Colin Tyner, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, examines the Ogasawara Islands group and it environmental histories.

The Ogasawara Islands are situated one thousand kilometres south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean. They were first settled in the 19th century and went through distinct phases of exploitation, military use and nature conservation during this period reflecting changing attitudes to the natural world. Colin will illustrate how different social, cultural and natural worlds converged on the Ogasawara Islands.

Blogs mentioned 
Colin Tyner, The Labour of Nature and Island Life
Place and Placelessness virtual workshop

Music credit
Aerofonia” by Mario Mattioli
Available from ccMixter

Literature cited
Anderson, Jennifer, “Nature’s Currency: The Atlantic Mahogany Trade and the Commodification of Nature in the 18th Century”, Early American Studies, 2:1 (Spring 2004).

MacArthur, Robert H., Edward O. Wilson, The Theory of Island Biogeography (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967).

Ponting, Clive, A green history of the world (London: Penguin, 1991).

Podcast 35: Mountains, the Asiatic Black Bear and conservation in Japan and New Zealand

The guest on this episode of Exploring Environmental History is Japanologist and environmental historian Cath Knight. In her spare time she maintains the blog Envirohistory NZ which explores the environmental history of New Zealand. On the podcast Cath briefly talks about the origins and topics of the blog before exploring her work on Japanese environmental history. She will discuss Japanese conservation history, in particular in relation to the Asiatic black bear and the conceptualisation of uplands and mountains in Japanese and Maori folklore. In many cultures, cosmologies define attitudes towards nature and the way that people interact with their environment. Cath also considers why the trajectory of Japanese conservation history is quite different from the European and North American perspective.

Blog mentioned 
Envirohistory NZ

Music credit
Time Decay ” by morgantj
Available from ccMixter

Older posts Newer posts

THIS WEBSITE USES SOME COOKIES.

Please confirm, if you accept our tracking cookies. You can also decline the tracking, so you can continue to visit our website without any data sent to third party services.

Read our Privacy Policy for more information about the cookies used.