Charcoal in unlaminated sediments dated by 21"Pb was analysed by the pollen-slide and thin-section methods. The results were compared with the number and area of forest fires on different spatial scales in the area around Lago di Origlio as listed in the wildfire database of southern Switzerland since AD 1920. The influx of the number of charcoal particles > 75 pkm2 in pollen slides correlates well with the number of annual forest fires recorded within a distance of 20-50 km from the coring site. Hence a size-class distinction or an area measurement by image analysis may not be absolutely necessary for the reconstruction of regional fire history. A regression equation was computed and tested against an independent data set. Its use makes it possible to estimate the charcoal area influx (or concentration) from the particle number influx (or concentration). Local fires within a radius of 2 kn around the coring site correlate well with the area influx of charcoal particles estimated by the thin-section method measuring the area of charcoal particles larger than 20 000 gum2 or longer than 50 jim. Pollen percentages and influx values suggest that intensive agriculture and Ca.stanea sativa cultivation were reduced 30-40 years ago, followed by an increase of forest area and a development to more natural woodlands. The traditional Castanea sativa cultivation was characterized by a complete use of the biomass produced, so abandonment of chestnut led to an increasing accumulation of dead biomass, thereby raising the fire risk. On the other hand, the pollen record of the regional vegetation does not show any clear response to the increase of fire frequency during the last three decades in this area.

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The internationally shared belief that higher education has a role to play in delivering graduates with an ability to contribute to the knowledge-based economy is one of the main driving forces behind the`employability agenda' that has emerged in UK higher education in recent years. For a variety of reasons, including the genuine desire to meet the needs of its graduates, geography is responding to the employability agenda through curriculum change and innovation. However, it is important that any employment-related developments and initiatives are informed by the opinions and experiences of present and former students. This paper addresses this need by comparing the undergraduate career expectations and post-graduation career experiences of geography students from the University of Plymouth. The study allows comparisons to be made between two cohorts and reveals which aspects of their degree the graduate cohort found to be most and least useful in their current employment.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore employability in the context of higher education (HE) from the students’ perspective. Limited attention has been paid to student understandings of their own employability in a Sport Science context and Tymon (2011) refers to them as “the missing perspective”. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents the findings of a study of Marine Sports Science students (n=63) at a post-1992 HE institution which through the qualitative element of a mixed methods survey explored their changing articulations of their employability as they progressed through their studies. The students surveyed were in receipt of a comprehensive programme of enterprise and employability activities embedded within their programme. Findings Qualitative results showed that Marine Sport Science students’ articulations of employability expanded in vocabulary as the students progressed through their studies. Definitions also shifted from those that centred on what employers want (extrinsic) to what the student had to offer the employer (intrinsic). Originality/value There are very few examples of studies that explore employability from the students’ perspective and this paper adds understanding on this “missing perspective”. It also addresses a specific discipline area; Marine Sport Science, which has yet to feature in any literature on employability.

Abstract. Recent observations and model simulations have highlighted the sensitivity of the forest-tundra ecotone to climatic forcing. In contrast, paleoecological studies have not provided evidence of tree-line fluctuations in response to Holocene climatic changes in Alaska, suggesting that the forest-tundra boundary in certain areas may be relatively stable at multicentennial to millennial time scales. We conducted a multiproxy study of sediment cores from an Alaskan lake near the altitudinal limits of key boreal-forest species. Paleoecological data were compared with independent climatic reconstructions to assess ecosystem responses of the forest-tundra boundary to Little Ice Age (LIA) climatic fluctuations. Pollen, diatom, charcoal, macrofossil, and magnetic analyses provide the first continuous record of vegetation-fire-climate interactions at decadal to centennial time scales during the past 700 years from southern Alaska. Boreal-forest diebacks characterized by declines of Picea mariana, P. glauca, and tree Betula occurred during the LIA (AD 1500-1800), whereas shrubs (Alnus viridis, Betula glandulosa/nana) and herbaceous taxa (Epilobium, Aconitum) expanded. Marked increases in charcoal abundance and changes in magnetic properties suggest increases in fire importance and soil erosion during the same period. In addition, the conspicuous reduction or disappearance of certain aquatic (e.g., Isoetes, Nuphar, Pediastrum) and wetland (Sphagnum) plants and major shifts in diatom assemblages suggest pronounced lake-level fluctuations and rapid ecosystem reorganization in response to LIA climatic deterioration. Our results imply that temperature shifts of 1-28C, when accompanied by major changes in moisture balance, can greatly alter high-altitudinal terrestrial, wetland, and aquatic ecosystems, including conversion between boreal-forest tree line and tundra. The climatic and ecosystem variations in our study area appear to be coherent with changes in solar irradiance, suggesting that changes in solar activity contributed to the environmental instability of the past 700 years.