Patrick Nunn

Covering almost one-third of the earth’s surface, the region of the Pacific islands is subject to a range of environmental stressors—including those deriving from volcanoes and earthquakes, and of course those attributable to atmospheric and oceanic processes. Most people living on the islands, peppered across this vast ocean, occupy island coasts, where food and water are generally most readily obtainable but where the impacts of many hazards focus. While popularly viewed as particularly vulnerable to disasters and climate change, Pacific Islanders have evolved formidable bodies of traditional and local knowledge (TLK) that have enabled their survival on comparatively small islands often thousands of kilometers from continental shores. While it is largely place-specific, this TLK is wide-ranging. It includes ensuring water and food security (especially in the aftermath of disasters), predicting and surviving extreme events (especially tropical cyclones), creating traditional pharmacopoeias, learning how to sail across thousands of kilometers of open ocean, and developing cultural resilience that could be adapted to changing circumstances. Detailed accounts are given of the use of Pacific TLK in disaster management and in climate-change adaptation. While much TLK has been lost and has suffered from being overwhelmed by a flood of outsider (science-based) solutions, it remains a potent force among many rural communities in the Pacific islands. Owing to its demonstrable effectiveness, its place-based nature, and its ability to accommodate change, Pacific TLK should be at the heart of future plans for helping Pacific Islanders cope with future climate change.

Archaeological and paleo-landscape records from the Pacific Islands offer material examples of how people have sustained themselves through several centuries or millennia of fluctuating sea level affecting their island habitats, access to freshwater sources, resource ecology, and capacity to sustain growing populations. The lessons from the past bear relevance for understanding future management challenges around sustainable livelihoods in the face of unprecedentedly rapid climate change. The factual records have revealed what was successful or unsuccessful about how people in the past responded to the changing sea-level conditions over a long time span. These records invariably transcend periods of different sea levels and climates that affected the entire Pacific region, and therefore they are suitable for identifying cross-regional correlations between specifically attested natural processes and cultural behavioral responses.

Geoarchaeology is the archaeological subfield that focuses on archaeological information retrieval and problem solving utilizing the methods of geological investigation. Archaeological recovery and analysis are already geoarchaeological in the most fundamental sense because buried remains are contained within and removed from an essentially geological context. Yet geoarchaeological research goes beyond this simple relationship and attempts to build collaborative links between specialists in archaeology and the earth sciences to produce new knowledge about past human behavior using the technical information and methods of the geosciences. The principal goals of geoarchaeology lie in understanding the relationships between humans and their environment. These goals include (1) how cultures adjust to their ecosystem through time, (2) what earth science factors were related to the evolutionary emergence of humankind, and (3) which methodological tools involving analysis of sediments and landforms, documentation and explanation of change in buried materials, and measurement of time will allow access to new aspects of the past. This encyclopedia defines terms, introduces problems, describes techniques, and discusses theory and strategy, all in a format designed to make specialized details accessible to the public as well as practitioners. It covers subjects in environmental archaeology, dating, materials analysis, and paleoecology, all of which represent different sources of specialist knowledge that must be shared in order to reconstruct, analyze, and explain the record of the human past. It will not specifically cover sites, civilizations, and ancient cultures, etc., that are better described in other encyclopedias of world archaeology. [Book Synopsis]

The Fiji Islands are composed of a group of some 350 islands (around 90 inhabited) in the tropical southwest Pacific. The character of particular coasts depends on several factors, including aspect, island geology and lithology, island size (particularly whether large rivers are present or not), island tectonics, and offshore coral-reef configuration (important for the supply of calcareous sediment). Add to these natural factors a highly variable degree of human impact, ranging from the negligible on sparsely inhabited islands to the severe along coasts which have been intensely developed for tourism, for example, and you find an almost bewildering diversity of coasts and coastal dynamics which make coastal management very challenging. This chapter looks at each of the above-mentioned factors, with examples given, before going on to a systematic account of the Fiji coastline.

Islands have captured the imagination of scientists and the public for centuries-unique and rare environments, their isolation makes them natural laboratories for ecology and evolution. This authoritative, alphabetically arranged reference, featuring more than 200 succinct articles by leading scientists from around the world, provides broad coverage of all the island sciences. But what exactly is an island? The volume editors define it here as any discrete habitat isolated from other habitats by inhospitable surroundings. The Encyclopedia of Islands examines many such insular settings-oceanic and continental islands as well as places such as caves, mountaintops, and whale falls at the bottom of the ocean. This essential, one-stop resource, extensively illustrated with color photographs, clear maps, and graphics will introduce island science to a wide audience and spur further research on some of the planet's most fascinating habitats. [Book Synopsis]

Islands have captured the imagination of scientists and the public for centuries-unique and rare environments, their isolation makes them natural laboratories for ecology and evolution. This authoritative, alphabetically arranged reference, featuring more than 200 succinct articles by leading scientists from around the world, provides broad coverage of all the island sciences. But what exactly is an island? The volume editors define it here as any discrete habitat isolated from other habitats by inhospitable surroundings. The Encyclopedia of Islands examines many such insular settings-oceanic and continental islands as well as places such as caves, mountaintops, and whale falls at the bottom of the ocean. This essential, one-stop resource, extensively illustrated with color photographs, clear maps, and graphics will introduce island science to a wide audience and spur further research on some of the planet's most fascinating habitats. [Book Synopsis]

The Oxford Companion to Global Change is an up-to-date, comprehensive, interdisciplinary guide to the range of issues surrounding natural and human-induced changes in the Earth's environment. In one convenient volume, the Companion brings together current knowledge about the relations between technological, social, demographic, economic, and political factors as well as biological, chemical, and physical systems. It is an essential reference work for students, teachers, researchers, and other professionals seeking to understand any aspect of global change. [Book Synopsis]