scholarly journals Emerging Patterns of Mountain Tourism in a Dynamic Landscape: Insights from Kamikochi Valley in Japan

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Abhik Chakraborty

This article analyzes the emerging contours of mountain tourism in a highly popular destination in the North Japan Alps by reporting the findings of a two-year long study at the Kamikochi Valley. The main aim was to understand the dynamic character of the biophysical landscape and the perceptions of tourism service providers and visitors. The study was conducted using a qualitative design and involved in-depth interviews, observations, and a questionnaire survey for visitors. It was found that while different stakeholders held different perceptions of the landscape, there was a general lack of understanding among tourism service providers and visitors regarding the relationship between long-term processes and fine-scale heterogeneity of the landscape. The prevalence of an engineering approach has led to sweeping changes of key landscape interaction pathways over the years, threatening the heterogeneity and resilience of the natural environment. The findings also indicate a general visitor demand of information on the biophysical environment, and therefore it is of urgent need to address the biophysical integrity of such landscapes, and raise visitor awareness through the provision of relevant information.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwa Ghanem ◽  
Ibrahim Elshaer ◽  
Samar Saad

Purpose This study aims to address the absence of a thorough understanding of commitment in tourism public-private partnerships (PPP) by exploring antecedents of PPP commitment and their underpinning relationships in regard to the destination management system (DMS). Design/methodology/approach An empirical investigation of the case of the Egyptian DMS, a PPP which was forsaken by the government partner and which subsequently failed. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are used for a comprehensive overview of the researched phenomena pertaining to external and internal stakeholders. Findings The results indicated that stakeholder management, relational capital, perceived benefits and stakeholder capabilities could influence intentions to commit to a tourism PPP project. Also, the latter three factors were found to mediate the relationship between stakeholder management and long-term PPP commitment. The results also shed light on the important aspects of non-contractual, interpersonal relationships between internal and external PPP stakeholders. Originality/value This research pioneers inquiries on the commitment of Tourism PPP/DMS projects and its possible drivers in a non-Western context. Also, this study contributes to knowledge by exploring the relationship within and between internal (partners) and external (e.g. local service providers) stakeholder groups and provided evidence on the crucial role of both on long-term PPP commitment and success. The current study has a few significant contributions to the PPP literature regarding the commitment and success of PPP in the complicated environments in which tourism PPP projects are operated. Moreover, this study offers essential information and practices for improving partner relationships with external stakeholders.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136943322110480
Author(s):  
Yan Wang ◽  
Dong-Hui Yang ◽  
Yu-Zheng Zhou ◽  
Ting-Hua Yi

The cables of long-span cable-stayed bridges are subjected to substantial tension during long-term service and are more susceptible to corrosion and fatigue failure than concrete structures. Most existing structural health monitoring (SHM) systems do not have monitoring equipment to directly measure cable length, and long-term monitoring of the change in cables is less involved. The displacement response of a bridge is induced by the combination of dynamic effects (wind and highways) and quasi-static effects (temperature). In this paper, the dynamic responses were eliminated by averaging the displacement data for 10 min, and the relationship between temperature and displacement was studied. Based on the monitoring data, the distribution of the thermal field for the bridge was studied and the time variability of the tower displacement was investigated. The correlation was analyzed to study the relationship between the temperature and the tower displacements, the north tower–south tower distance and the tower–girder distances. A strong linear relationship between the temperature and quasi-static responses of the displacements was observed. The thermal expansion coefficient of the effective length of cables was proposed as a quantitative index for long-term cable monitoring. The error in the cable effective length is proposed as the warning index for performance warning research. The results show that the proposed performance warning method can monitor cables and perform warnings when the cable is damaged.


2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thu Huong ◽  
Umemoto Katsuhiro ◽  
Dam Hieu Chi

This paper discusses the knowledge transfer process in offshore outsourcing. The focus is a case study of software offshore outsourcing from Japan to Vietnam. Initial results confirm that willingness to cooperate and good impressions facilitate the knowledge transfer process. In addition, communication barriers, cultural differences, lack of equivalence in individual competence, and lack of common rules slow down the transfer process. The study also identifies the Bridge System Engineer (Bridge SE)-a type of coordinator who mediates and enhances the relationship between Japanese clients and Vietnamese service providers. Employing a Bridge SE is an effective way to fill the communication gap, the cultural gap, and generally improve the business relationship. Bridge SEs use their background of higher education and long-term residence in Japan to give advice to Vietnamese software teams on Japanese cultural characteristics, such as the apology culture and the separation between work and private time. In other situations, Bridge SEs use their IT background and communication skills to verify and adjust communication contents before information is sent from one side to another.


Author(s):  
A.H. Adzhiev ◽  
G.V. Kupovykh ◽  
R.A. Gyatov ◽  
Z.M. Kerefova

For study the relationship between number of days with a thunderstorm recorded by weather stations and duration of thunderstorms in hours for these days, instrumental observations of the thunder direction-finding network of High-Mountain Geophysical Institute were used. We used data on thunderstorms in the North Caucasus for a long-term observation period in 2008-2019. Based on these data, they are grouped for various territories for analysis: the number of days with thunderstorms per month, per year, and the duration of thunderstorms per month and per year. A correlation analysis was performed between the number of days with thunderstorms and the duration of thunder-storms in hours according to LS 800 data. Thus, the dependence of the number of days with thunderstorms on the duration of thunderstorms is clearly traced - with an increase in the number of days with thunderstorms per year, the observation point increases in direct proportion to the duration of thunderstorms per year. With an increase in the number of days with thunderstorms on a given territory by one day, for the month in question, the duration of thunderstorms increases by 3.89 hours.


Author(s):  
A. J. Southward

The inshore fishery for the pilchard in Cornish waters has existed for several hundred years, and such records as are available concerning fluctuation in catches and market conditions have been reviewed by Couch (1865), Cushing (1957) and Culley (1971). Although pilchard have been landed from Lyme Bay, from the eastern half of the Channel, and from the southern North Sea (Couch, 1865; Furnestin, 1945; Cushing, 1957; personal communications G. T. Boalch) the catches have usually been incidental to other fisheries and more sporadic than in Cornish waters. Traditionally there are three areas fished for the Cornish pilchard: on the north-west coast around St Ives; in Mounts Bay and towards the Scillies; and between the Lizard Pt and Bolt Tail in Devon (Couch, 1865; Culley, 1971). The latter region, constituting the inshore waters of south-east Cornwall and south Devon, effectively forms the eastern limits of the regular occurrence of commercial shoals. Knowledge of the breeding and life-history of the fish in this region has always been scarce and subject to much hearsay evidence (reviewed in Southward, 1963). Up to quite recently it was thought that the main spawning area lay well to the west of the entrance to the Channel, and it was not until the investigations reported by Corbin (1947,195°) a nd Cushing (1957)tnat it was conclusively shown that extensive spawning can occur within the English Channel from May to October. The relationship of the spawning in the western Channel to the other areas of spawning off the entrance to the Channel and in the northern Bay of Biscay is illustrated in a recent series of reports (Arbault & Boutin, 1968; Arbault & Lacroix-Boutin, 1969; Arbault & Lacroix, 1971; Wallace, P. D. & Pleasants, C. A., duplicated ICES meeting paper CM 1972/J: 8), and is further demonstrated by Demir & Southward (1974) in discussing the results of a study of small scale seasonal changes in spawning intensity in inshore waters.


2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 672-685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margreet van der Cingel

This article describes compassion as perceived within the relationship between nurses and older persons with a chronic disease. The aim of the study is to understand the benefit of compassion for nursing practice within the context of long-term care. The design of the study involves a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with nurses and patients in three different care-settings. Results show the nature of compassion in seven dimensions: attentiveness, listening, confronting, involvement, helping, presence and understanding. Analysis of the data also shows in what way opinions of participants relate to issues raised in a previous literature study, for example the difference between pity and compassion. The conclusion states that compassion is a valuable process which motivates patients as well as nurses to cooperate in achieving relevant outcomes of care. The discussion involves some methodological issues. For one thing, further confirmation of the dimensions found is recommended.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuang Zhang ◽  
Wenxu Dong ◽  
Kiril Manevski ◽  
Wenpei Hu ◽  
Arbindra Timilsina ◽  
...  

AbstractThe enzymatic activities and ratios are critical indicators for organic matter decomposition and provide potentially positive feedback to carbon (C) loss under global warming. For agricultural soils under climate change, the effect of long-term warming on the activities of oxidases and hydrolases targeting C, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) and their ratios is unclear, as well as whether and to what extend the response is modulated by long-term fertilization. A 9-year field experiment in the North China Plain, including an untreated control, warming, N fertilization, and combined (WN) treatment plots, compared the factorial effect of warming and fertilization. Long-term warming interacted with fertilization to stimulate the highest activities of C, N, and P hydrolases. Activities of C and P hydrolase increased from 8 to 69% by N fertilization, 9 to 53% by warming, and 28 to 130% by WN treatment compared to control, whereas the activities of oxidase increased from 4 to 16% in the WN soils. Both the warming and the WN treatments significantly increased the enzymatic C:N ratio from 0.06 to 0.16 and the vector length from 0.04 to 0.12 compared to the control soil, indicating higher energy and resource limitation for the soil microorganisms. Compared to WN, the warming induced similar ratio of oxidase to C hydrolase, showing a comparable ability of different microbial communities to utilize lignin substrates. The relationship analyses showed mineralization of organic N to mediate the decomposition of lignin and enzyme ratio in the long-term warming soil, while N and P hydrolases cooperatively benefited to induce more oxidase productions in the soil subject to both warming and N fertilization. We conclude that coupled resource limitations induced microbial acclimation to long-term warming in the agricultural soils experiencing high N fertilizer inputs.


2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. N. Khokhlov ◽  
A. V. Glushkov ◽  
I. A. Tsenenko

Abstract. In this paper, we employ a non-decimated wavelet decomposition to analyse long-term variations of the teleconnection pattern monthly indices (the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Southern Oscillation) and the relationship of these variations with eddy kinetic energy contents (KE) in the atmosphere of mid-latitudes and tropics. Major advantage of using this tool is to isolate short- and long-term components of fluctuations. Such analysis allows revealing basic periodic behaviours for the North Atlantic Oscillations (NAO) indices such as the 4-8-year and the natural change of dominant phase. The main results can be posed as follows. First, if the phases of North Atlantic and Southern Oscillations vary synchronously with the 4-8-year period then the relationship between the variations of the NAO indices and the KE contents is the most appreciable. Second, if the NAO phase tends to abrupt changes then the impact of these variations on the eddy kinetic energy contents in both mid-latitudes and tropics is more significant than for the durational dominance of certain phase.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 665-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Cortesi ◽  
R. M. Trigo ◽  
J. C. Gonzalez-Hidalgo ◽  
A. M. Ramos

Abstract. Precipitation over the Iberian Peninsula (IP) is highly variable and shows large spatial contrasts between wet mountainous regions to the north, and dry regions in the inland plains and southern areas. In this work, we modelled the relationship between atmospheric circulation weather types (WTs) and monthly precipitation for the wet half of the year (October to May) using a 10 km grid derived from a high-density dataset for the IP (3030 precipitation series, overall mean density one station each 200 km2). We detected two spatial gradients in the relationship between WTs and precipitation. The percentage of monthly precipitation explained by WTs varies from northwest (higher variance explained) to southeast (lower variance explained). Additionally, in the IP the number of WTs that contribute significantly to monthly precipitation increase systematically from east to west. Generally speaking, the model performance is better to the west than to the east where the WTs approach produce the less accurate results. We applied the WTs modelling approach to reconstruct the long-term precipitation time series for three major stations of Iberia (Lisbon, Madrid, Valencia).


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