Sustainable land management and development: the role of the chartered surveyor

Despite the growing intensity of the debate about environmental management, it is only recently that rural practice surveyors have become aware of its significance and potential. Consequently, few surveyors are yet in a position to offer professional advice, despite evidence from the RICS's client needs survey that nearly half of all existing clients require more advice on environmental matters. As a prerequisite to becoming involved in environmental management, it is clear that chartered surveyors have to develop new skills alongside new perceptions of their work. Rather than being conterminous, however, the alignment of these attributes reflects a fundamental tension. This is focused on the dichotomy between the strategic construction of the environment as a basis for realigning corporate policy and the more limited evocation of environmentalism as potential new business. This paper seeks to explore the nature and policy context of sustainable development, in the process examining its significance for rural chartered surveyors. In doing so, the paper will seek to contrast the essentially anthropocentric utilitarianism of surveyors' current attitudes with the radical agenda inferred by a more ecocentric, sustainable development approach to professional management and advice. The paper will conclude with a discussion about how far the principles of sustainable development can be incorporated into the management of surveying businesses, and what this implies for the future of the rural practice chartered surveyor as land manager.

Transient teleconnection event at the onset of a planet-encircling dust storm on Mars

We use proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) to study a transient teleconnection event at the onset of the 2001 planet-encircling dust storm on Mars, in terms of empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs). There are several differences between this and previous studies of atmospheric events using EOFs. First, instead of using a single variable such as surface pressure or geopotential height on a given pressure surface, we use a dataset describing the evolution in time of global and fully three-dimensional atmospheric fields such as horizontal velocity and temperature. These fields are produced by assimilating Thermal Emission Spectrometer observations from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft into a Mars general circulation model. We use total atmospheric energy (TE) as a physically meaningful quantity which weights the state variables. Second, instead of adopting the EOFs to define teleconnection patterns as planetary-scale correlations that explain a large portion of long time-scale variability, we use EOFs to understand transient processes due to localised heating perturbations that have implications for the atmospheric circulation over distant regions. The localised perturbation is given by anomalous heating due to the enhanced presence of dust around the northern edge of the Hellas Planitia basin on Mars. We show that the localised disturbance is seemingly restricted to a small number (a few tens) of EOFs. These can be classified as low-order, transitional, or high-order EOFs according to the TE amount they explain throughout the event. Despite the global character of the EOFs, they show the capability of accounting for the localised effects of the perturbation via the presence of specific centres of action. We finally discuss possible applications for the study of terrestrial phenomena with similar characteristics.

Building the web: the Internet and the property profession

The report examines the development of the Internet and Intranets in the world of business and commerce, drawing on previous literature and research. The new technology is explained, and key issues examined, such as the impact of the Internet on the surveyor's role as 'information broker' and its likely effect on clients' property requirements. The research is based on an analysis of 261 postal questionnaire responses and eight case study interviews from a sample of general practice and quantity surveying practices and corporates. For the first time the property profession is examined in detail and the key drivers, barriers and benefits of Internet use are identified for a range of different sized organisations.

Assessment of the CMD Mini-Explorer, a new low-frequency multi-coil electromagnetic device, for archaeological investigations

In this article we assess the abilities of a new electromagnetic (EM) system, the CMD Mini-Explorer, for prospecting of archaeological features in Ireland and the UK. The Mini-Explorer is an EM probe which is primarily aimed at the environmental/geological prospecting market for the detection of pipes and geology. It has long been evident from the use of other EM devices that such an instrument might be suitable for shallow soil studies and applicable for archaeological prospecting. Of particular interest for the archaeological surveyor is the fact that the Mini-Explorer simultaneously obtains both quadrature (‘conductivity’) and in-phase (relative to ‘magnetic susceptibility’) data from three depth levels. As the maximum depth range is probably about 1.5 m, a comprehensive analysis of the subsoil within that range is possible. As with all EM devices the measurements require no contact with the ground, thereby negating the problem of high contact resistance that often besets earth resistance data during dry spells. The use of the CMD Mini-Explorer at a number of sites has demonstrated that it has the potential to detect a range of archaeological features and produces high-quality data that are comparable in quality to those obtained from standard earth resistance and magnetometer techniques. In theory the ability to measure two phenomena at three depths suggests that this type of instrument could reduce the number of poor outcomes that are the result of single measurement surveys. The high success rate reported here in the identification of buried archaeology using a multi-depth device that responds to the two most commonly mapped geophysical phenomena has implications for evaluation style surveys. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The solsticial pause on Mars: 1. A planetary wave reanalysis

Large-scale planetary waves are diagnosed from an analysis of profiles retrieved from the Thermal Emission Spectrometer aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft during its scientific mapping phase. The analysis is conducted by assimilating thermal profiles and total dust opacity retrievals into a Mars global circulation model. Transient waves are largest throughout the northern hemisphere autumn, winter and spring period and almost absent during the summer. The southern hemisphere exhibits generally weaker transient wave behaviour. A striking feature of the low-altitude transient waves in the analysis is that they show a broad subsidiary minimum in amplitude centred on the winter solstice, a period when the thermal contrast between the summer hemisphere and the winter pole is strongest and baroclinic wave activity might be expected to be strong. This behaviour, here called the ‘solsticial pause,’ is present in every year of the analysis. This strong pause is under-represented in many independent model experiments, which tend to produce relatively uniform baroclinic wave activity throughout the winter. This paper documents and diagnoses the transient wave solsticial pause found in the analysis; a companion paper investigates the origin of the phenomenon in a series of model experiments.