Socio-Natural Environments

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“Magic Mirror on the Wall”: is Nordic Walking or Rambling better for your Mental Well-being?

There is accumulating evidence that walking has health benefits. While millions of people in the United Kingdom have long benefitted from rambling, Nordic walking is a relative newcomer to the shores of Britain. Which of these forms of walking is better for your mental wellbeing? This study set out to compare both forms of walking and measured their effects on mental wellbeing using the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS), through an on-line survey. In addition both groups of walkers were asked about socio-environmental influences on their walking. Some 508 participants completed the online survey, which assessed socio-environmental factors on participation in both walking activities and mental well-being. This study showed both walking groups had higher mental well-being scores than the “normal population” for the WEMWBS. However, there were no significant differences in contribution to mental well-being between the two walking groups. Socio-environmental analysis revealed that in Nordic walking the role of the instructor was critical, whereas in rambling friends’ support, weather conditions and the aesthetics of the environment were important factors for participation. This study diversified the concept of leisure walking by distinguishing between rambling and Nordic walking in terms of their differing contributions towards mental well-being.

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- by Marta Anna Zurawik and +1
  Robert Snape
- •
- 10
  Mental Health, Subjective Well-Being, Well-Being, Socio-Natural Environments

Changing Environments, Social Adaptations, Divergent Trajectories: The Application of Socio-Natural Systems Thinking and Geospatial Modeling to the Late Bronze/Iron Age Transition in West-Central Syria, ca. 1350-750 BCE

The transition for the Late Bronze to the Iron Age in the Eastern Mediterranean is still only incompletely understood, with explanations ranging from social disintegration to environmental degradation. Especially the idea of societal collapse has had a strong influence on this discourse and continues to be frequently invoked as an explanatory model, despite recent advances in the historical and archaeological understanding of this transitional period. Mediated by Classical Greek and biblical tradition, this ongoing appeal of collapse theory can be attributed to the (overt or subliminal) persistence of 18 th -20 th century CE intellectual paradigms, which are often enmeshed with ill-defined concepts of race, ethnicity, or social evolution. In the context of the Late Bronze/ Iron Age Levant, traditional applications of collapse theory reveal more about Western scholarly self-perceptions, than they contribute to an understanding of this critical period.

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Implicaciones socioambientales de la expansión del cultivo del agave azul en el municipio de Tonaya, Jalisco

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Modeling the Paleoclimate (ca. 6,000–3,200 cal BP) in Eastern Anatolia: The Method of Macrophysical Climate Model and Comparisons with Proxy Data

Both paleoenvironmental and archaeological data provide mounting evidence of increasing aridification in the Near East starting with the late Early Bronze Age (ca. 4,300 BP). Combining the methods of the Macrophysical Climate Model (MCM) and GIS, it is possible to obtain quantifiable values across landscapes at 100-year resolution. This research focuses on the methods of MCM, a synoptic paleoclimate model that applies statistical downscaling and compares the results with proxy data. The discussion addresses the divergent trends in precipitation and temperature in eastern Anatolia between 6,000–3,200 BP. The general climatic trends emerging from this research are then compared with those illustrated in various proxy data to verify the accuracy of the retrodictions for precipitation and temperature variables of the MCM. Results of this research are important as they may be integrated with the agent-based land use and landscape evolution models. These new approaches have great potential to demonstrate how multifaceted, long-term dynamic human-environment relationships can be defined and readapted according to the changing levels of social organization, which start a new cycle of social and economic responses with each ecological change.

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‘Relaxing way to spend a day’ or ‘Best way to keep fit and healthy’. Comparison of leisure experiences in rambling and Nordic walking and their contributions to well-being

The increasing academic interest in walking for heath has paid limited attention to Nordic walking. This paper investigates the similarities and differences in leisure experiences between Nordic walking and rambling and their contributions to well-being. Twelve Nordic walking practitioners and thirteen ramblers partook in semi-structured interviews at various locations in the United Kingdom. By employing the Seligman’s PERMA model and Stebbins’ concept of serious leisure, we found that leisure experiences in rambling related to well-being by creating a strong emotional bond between the members and the natural environments, developing and maintaining friendships, and facilitating mobility and vitality. In contrast the leisure experience of Nordic walking involved developing physical activity skills and fitness, encouraging leadership, and promoting positive emotions through the participation in the activity. The contribution of this research lies in addressing this significant gap in knowledge by diversifying the concept of leisure walking and identifying the potential social and environmental influences in the leisure walking activities that contribute to well-being

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Cultivating Salt: Socio-Natural Assemblages on the Saltpans of the Venezuelan Islands, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century

This paper discusses the socio-natural assemblages of salt cultivation involving humans, other organisms and natural phenomena on the Venezuelan islands of La Tortuga and Cayo Sal from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The research is based on archaeological, documentary and oral evidence marshalled to understand the dynamics of past solar sea salt production. In the past, a keen knowledge of the climatic conditions, the tides, and the effects of the microorganisms involved in the concentration of brine and the subsequent crystallisation of sodium chloride (NaCl) was indispensable to augmenting the quantity and quality of a salt harvest. These natural phenomena could be managed through anthropic intervention to the benefit of a saltpan enterprise by investing in infrastructure and tools such as dikes and pumps, thereby modifying the natural environment of a salt lagoon. This research indicates that the Dutch in the seventeenth, the Anglo-Americans in the seventeenth and eighteenth, as well as the Dutch Antilleans and a US American in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, approached the process of obtaining salt on the Venezuelan saltpans differently. This resulted in different configurations of the socio-natural assemblages on the saltpans and a variable final product conditioned by distinct market necessities.

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Implicaciones socioambientales de la expansión del cultivo de agave azul (1995-2002) en el municipio deTonaya, Jalisco, México

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AgModel V1

This is an agent-based model of a potential scenario for the forager-farmer transition. It is parameterized for a millet/deer ecosystem (east Asia), but could apply to any hunting/seed gathering system if parameterized accordingly. Rather than use an existing ABM or other modeling framework, I have written it in pure Python, both as a fun exercise for me, and with the hope of better integration to scientific Python (e.g., pandas, matplotlib) and the open-science movement.

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