Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Brief History Of Discovery, Settlement And Development, Tor Hundloe, Craig Page

Tor Hundloe

Extract: If we can rely on anecdotal data, the answers to what is truly Australian will start with mention of the koala, go to kangaroos and then include the rest of Australia's peculiar (to foreigners) fauna. The only exception might be that if we asked a male from the Asian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) what he identified Australia with, he might answer 'Cricket'. Putting that aside, the Gold Coast is very likely to be in the mix of Australian icons. To capture the essence of the Gold Coast, we need to talk about its history in more …

The Impact On The Gold Coast's Terrestrial Environments, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: We tend to think of the Gold Coast as a water environment. As tourists know, it sits on the shore of the vast Pacific Ocean. That is why most come. They have seen the magnificent photographs. If not perched on flattened dunes looking east to the ocean, a significant part of the urban Gold Coast environment is located around natural and human-made water environments. Of these we will say little here, other than to note their extent. The focus of this chapter is the city's terrestrial environments, reporting on and ultimately, after describing the environments, discussing what proportion of …

The Gold Coast Before Cook Named Mount Warning, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: We could and should ask, where does the Gold Coast sit on a scale from 'good' to 'bad' in environmental terms? Sustainable or unsustainable? Is it progressing or regressing? It is far too early in the book to attempt to answer this. Maybe at the end of the book you will feel confident to make your own assessment. What we do in this chapter is to make obvious a small number of seemingly irreversible changes that have occurred since the first escaped convicts walked the Gold Coast beaches. We know that indigenous Australians have lived on the Gold Coast …

The Gold Coast: A Snapshot, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: We know the city's boundaries as they are today (they have changed dramatically over time) and that is all we need to answer the question: what is the size of the city? The city's boundaries today are shown in Plate 3. As noted previously, the Gold Coast was a lot smaller in a geographical sense a couple of generations ago. When it was known as the 'South Coast' (or simply 'the Coast'), its northern boundary was at Lands End, north of Labrador. Coolangatta to Lands End established the south- north limits. Beenleigh in Logan City was considered the half-way …

State Of The Environment, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: What have we done? What have we learned? In this chapter we turn our attention to the people of the Gold Coast and their environmental impacts, as experienced in the 21st century. The past is gone. The damage is done. Dramatic change in landforms and ecological relationships are inevitable in building cities. From this we can only learn and do things better in the future. This is why there will never be another Gold Coast like the one we describe in this book.

Reducing The Ecological Footprint: The Prospect For Green Energy, Sophie Telfar, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract: In this chapter we ask the question: what scope is there for Gold Coast citizens, businesses and government agencies to play a proportionally appropriate role in replacing greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels (in the generation of electricity and for transport) by environmentally friendly energy sources? We could expect that a sunny coastal city caressed by waves, subject to diurnal tidal flows and noted for its sea breezes would have more than average potential to play a leading role in this cause. This we will explore after putting the question into perspective.

The Evolution Of Environmental Management As A Profession In Australia And New Zealand, E. Anderson, W. Haylock, Tor Hundloe, S. Molesworth, M. Morris, J. Roper-Lindsay, P. Skelton, J. Womersley

Tor Hundloe

Environmental management is a relatively new profession, having evolved since the rapid worldwide rise in environmental consciousness in the 1960s. This article, by past presidents of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, the inaugural editor of the Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, and collaborators, reflects on the establishment and development of environmental management as a profession, and the parallel development of the Institute as the focus for the profession. It concludes by considering future directions for the profession and Institute.

The Gold Coast Transformed : From Wilderness To Urban Ecosystem, Tor Hundloe, Bridgette Mcdougall, Craig Page

Tor Hundloe

Extract: This is the story of a unique city, Australia’s premier tourist city, a city cut out of coastal vegetation, including paperbark swamps, mangroves and rainforests of worldwide significance. The city has a relatively short history as until half a century ago (two human generations) it was but several relatively small villages, each with its own natural and social features. Two generations is a very short time for a city to grow to be the sixth-largest in population in Australia and to have global recognition as the country’s beach playground. The Gold Coast ranks with Honolulu in Hawaii, with Palm …

Feral Deer In The Suburbs: An Emerging Issue For Australia?, Shelley Burgin, Mariama Mattila, Daryl Mcphee, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Deer are not endemic to Australia, but were introduced for game and aesthetics between the early 18th and 20th centuries. Until recent decades, most deer descended from these introductions. Before the 1970s when deer numbers and distribution expanded dramatically, farming was a modest enterprise. With the collapse of farming in the 1990s, large numbers of deer were deliberately released and translocated. Feral numbers and herds have subsequently expanded, and are increasingly encroaching on urban areas. As a new issue in Australia, views toward feral deer are polarized and span “welcome guest” to “major pest.” The emerging urban deer issues need …

Economics Of The Queensland Mud Crab Fishery, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

A series of analyses of catch-effort data from compulsory commercial logbooks and from the Department’s Long-Term Monitoring Programme (LTMP) were conducted after the Workshop. Although not part of the Project plan, these were initiated as a result of questions arising from the Workshop participants about the reliability of the data used in the simulation modelling. Exploration of the logbook data and results of the analyses suggest that biases in the data (from a variety of sources, but principally the widespread use of more than the permitted number of pots) may be giving an over-optimistic view of the status of the …

Introduction, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

ExtractAsk people to think of a catchment and they tend to think of large geographical areas and extensive communities, for example the Nile River and all the people who work on and around it and benefit from it. As the Nile catchment illustrates, many large catchments extend beyond the boundaries of one nation. For some of the world’s largest river basins, not just two, but many more countries can have some or all of their territory in the basin. National boundaries dissect catchments. A variety of different land uses and human occupations make diversity the norm of catchment economies and …

The Principles Of Sustainability And Economics, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

ExtractWe have already pointed out that in 1987 the United Nations’ four- year-long investigation of environmental and development matters, the Brundtland Report, came to its conclusions and put the concept of sustainable development on the agenda of governments worldwide. Five principles underpin the concept. Two are ethical constructs, rather than being science-based. The first, and best known, is the principle of intergenerational equity. At its simplest this requires us to manage the globe’s ecosystems and economies in a manner whereby future generations will be worse off than present generations. And for those presently living in poverty, it requires much improvement …

The Value Of Water, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

ExtractOur catchment is different from those that supply towns and cities with water for residential purposes and those that supply industry (for example providing cooling for power plants). It is a simple catchment, meeting simple needs - farming, oyster growing, and residential needs for drinking and washing water. We have already explained the controversy that has arisen over the proposal to change water allocation in the catchment by constructing a large dam in a corner of the upper catchment. Rather than to go immediately to the issue of the value of water if switched between users, we take the effort …

The People And Use Of Natural Resources, Tor Hundloe, Peter Daniels, Amy White, Christine Crawford

Tor Hundloe

Extract With the brief history behind us, we now start to develop our understanding of the Little Swanport catchment as it is today. While considerable time will be spent on description, never far from our mind will be the central issues and questions we have dealt with in the lead-up to our case study. If this river basin was a nation (obviously a tiny one, in the San Marino league), what would we make of its economy and society? As a river basin, could its economy and society be improved by changing its present use of water, the resource that …

The World's Great River Basins, Tor Hundloe, Amy White

Tor Hundloe

Extract All of us live, work, and manage our affairs in what we call a nation or country. We expect to find rivers and river basins, if only the most meagre ones, in all countries. The tiniest amount of rain needs to drain somewhere - unless the soil or sand is so porous that it disappears without trace. Draining water forms a rivulet. A number of rivulets fed by the same rainfall combine to form a proto-catchment or rivulet basin. Australia is a country containing many significant river basins, one large and dominant, plus hundreds of smaller ones. Our challenge, …

Introduction To Sustainability, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

ExtractWhat do we think when using the term sustainability? If we wish to sustain the ecology, the economy, and the social relationships in a river basin, what do we mean? I imagine we think of it in terms of sustaining our particular lifestyles, assuming they are enjoyable. We think of sustaining jobs - no one wishes to worry about losing paid work. This would apply regardless of how we view our work - even work we do not enjoy is valuable because it pays the bills. We want to sustain our incomes however they are earned, as profits, as wages, …

An Introduction To The Little Swanport Catchment, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract

From here on, the book deals in considerable detail with one small catchment. What goes on in the catchment is described, places of interest are identified and so are some individuals. Our research took us deep into the lives of people in a small catchment. Of course, we cannot, and do not, delve far into personal matters where they must remain personal. Our interests are the social, economic and environmental relationship in a tiny catchment. Historical facts and matters of community interest that residents shared with us, and are willing to share with the reader, are here to be …

A Short History Of The Catchment Settlement, Tor Hundloe, Michelle Wenner

Tor Hundloe

Extract

As already noted, our catchment has a human history of some significance – feeding approximately one-tenth of the Indigenous Tasmanian population for millennia. Of this we know little, and so it will remain indefinitely. There are no history books to read. However, it is for our research, at the very least, to sketch the available history of the catchment, because history does matter, and there is invariably what economists call ’path dependence’ - what occurs today can be traced to what happened yesterday, the day before and the day before that, going back to some earlier ’tipping point’ in …

Economic Values Of Nature, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

ExtractIn this and the next chapter, we take up the challenge of how we might formally link the economy to the environment. First some background which follows on from our previous discussion. It has become increasingly obvious during the past 50 years that nature is being degraded through the release of pollutants and widespread over-use of natural resources, both finite and renewable. It costs polluters nothing to use and abuse the rivers, the oceans, and the atmosphere. Thor Heyerdahl, in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean more than 60 years ago, was astounded to find large blobs of pollutants …

Practical Measurements: Water As An Ecosystem Good, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract

We started with the proposition that catchments (or river basins) would form ideal national boundaries. Although a river can wind through myriad sub-ecosystems (from mountains, to grasslands, to wetlands), it is the life blood of the system, falling water, running water, underground water and evaporating water, that captures our attention and presents both the opportunities and constraints that define our natural economy. If a catchment (presumably a large one) was a nation, the first thing we would do is construct a comprehensive model of its economy. Our treasury departments, in particular, and our governments in general, could not operate …

The Catchment Regional Economy, Tor Hundloe, Peter Daniels

Tor Hundloe

Extract

A catchment’s surrounding environment is not limited to towns and cities on the periphery of the catchment. It is likely that a far wider, much larger economy is associated with the catchment community and its economy. That wider economy could be the state, province or nation in which the catchment sits. Recall our discussion of the Nile River basin - the basin is Egypt, the rest is desert. Egypt would not be a country without the Nile. The Mississippi-Missouri River basin in the United States is not all of the United States, but nevertheless a great slice of it. …

Conclusions, Christine Crawford, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Extract We have come to understand the human-environment dynamics of a small Tasmanian catchment. Our focus throughout the extended period we spent in the field (and sitting in front of computer screens) was to explore the relationships between the use of water by farmers and the needs of oyster growers. The relationship between upstream catchment activities and the quality and quantity of water downstream (in estuaries and off-shore lagoons) is the fundamental issue in catchment management. It necessitates an analysis of the value of water in different, and often competing, uses. On the face of it, that might seem a …

The Impact Of Fresh Produce Specifications On The Australian Food And Nutrition System: A Case Study Of The North Queensland Banana Industry, Amy White, Danielle Gallegos, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

Objective: To use the north Queensland banana industry as a case study to examine the extent to which cosmetic standards set by retailers influence the amount of edible waste generated on-farm and the effect of this on the sustainability of the Australian food and nutrition system.Design: Waste audits were performed on-farm at a banana packing shed to quantify the amount of fruit discarded due to cosmetic imperfections. These data, together with production records provided by the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries and interviews with growers, were used to inform a nutritional analysis, a life cycle assessment and an economic …

Fishing For Sustainability: Will Your Grandchildren Have The Option To Eat Seafood?, Tor Hundloe, Julian Morison, Kate Brooks, Andrew Sullivan

Tor Hundloe

Many of the world’s fisheries are threatened by over-exploitation or fish kills from run-off of industrial, agricultural and urban pollutants. The latter tends to be localised; however, over 50 years ago the explorer Thor Heyendall discovered the unexpected in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean in his ’Kon Tild’ expedition -- large globules of congealed pollutants. While the pollution of our rivers, seas and oceans has only taken on dramatic dimensions since the rapid industrialisation and human population growth of the twentieth century, over-fishing has known no boundaries for much longer. However, only in recent times have the consequences …

The Planet Of The Thinking Animal: Surviving The 21st Century, Tor Hundloe

Tor Hundloe

"Tor Hundloe presents us with two options: change the way we live, or find two more planets to support the world's burgeoning population. With the powerful energy of clever optimism he points the way for this Earth-only option to succeed" (Senator Bob Brown). "We humans are capable of brilliant ideas and inventions, but we have yet to learn the lessons that will prove that we deserve our place on the planet as the thinking animal." (Backcover). The Planet of the Thinking Animal looks to particular countries and groups of countries and examines their economic and environmental policies and activities. It …