Alfred Thomas Grove

Alfred Thomas Grove (born April 8, 1924 in Evesham , Worcestershire , England ) is a British geographer and climatologist . He is an Emeritius Fellow at Downing College and was Director of the Center of African Studies at Cambridge University . Grove conducted research on environmental problems and landscape changes in southern Europe, climate change and desertification, with a focus on Africa and southern Europe.

Career and works

Grove was a lecturer in the Department of Geography at Cambridge University from 1949 to 1982 and head of the Center of African Studies there from 1980 to 1986. From 1963 to 1991 he was a fellow at Downing College, Cambridge. He has authored a number of books including Africa South of the Sahara and books on the Little Ice Age in Europe, including with his wife, glaciologist Jean Grove Little Ice Ages Ancient and Modern , 2004, and The Little Ice Age and its geomorphological consequences in Mediterranean Europe , with Oliver Rackham The Nature of Mediterranean Europe , which is seen as an important contribution to environmental history .

In consideration of the assumed tragedy of the commons and neo-Malthusian approaches z. B. from Garrett Hardin he described Hardin's interpretation of the tragedy of the commons as that of "an American without any knowledge of how the commons really work".

With regard to the alleged tragedy of the commons and neomalthusian approaches eg of Garrett Hardin he denounced Hardins interpretation of the failure of commons as the one of "an American with no notion at all how Commons actually work".

While Grove promotes the increasing evidence of man-made global warming, he considers definitive and implicit evidence of a cause in the area of ​​climate change to be virtually impossible. In considering the problem in the cited work, despite the inherent uncertainty, he concludes that human activity is a major cause of global warming and that it is therefore safer to act and limit climate-changing factors with the aim of slowing change . In his work on Mediterranean Europe, he doubts the legends of the "Lost Paradise", a formerly fertile region that increasingly deserted and karstified due to human mismanagement. The simple, geodeterministic perception of a Mediterranean paradise in antiquity, destroyed by later civilizations, dates back to at least the eighteenth century and has been debated in archaeological and historical circles for centuries since. Grove and Lopez-Gunn assume that the belief stems instead from the fact that the Mediterranean landscape did not fit the idealized image of the artists, poets, and scientists of the early Enlightenment. Trying to trace the evolution of the climate, vegetation and landscape in southern Europe from prehistoric times to the present, Grove points out that the climate was usually unstable and vegetation passed through various extremes before becoming resilient with the various forms of human activity . The authors assume that large parts of the Mediterranean landscape have been shaped by humans for 4000 years and up to the present day and that the "humanization of the landscape" overlapped with the development of today's Mediterranean climate. Therefore, humans would not be the cause of climate change, but would be responsible for the broad biodiversity of the Mediterranean landscape. The greatest man-made changes have occurred since the Second World War, when, with the urban exodus of the rural population, traditional subsistence economies and traditional land management were given up in favor of a tourism economy for vacationers, resulting in a monotonous, less small-scale landscape. Grove and his co-author see the overdevelopment of the coastal strip, the depopulation of the mountains and the loss of traditional land management as a real threat.

Life

Grove was married to Jean Mary Clark (1927-2001), a well-known glaciologist , climatic historian and sister of Margaret Spufford . The couple had six children, the eldest of whom is historian Richard Grove , who is also on the board of directors of the Jean Grove Foundation in Cambridge. The Catholic Foundation promotes the education of children in Ethiopia by directly supporting four schools in different parts of the country.

Selected works and publications

• Andrew S. Cohen, Bert Van Bocxlaer, Jonathan A. Todd, Michael McGlue, Ellinor Michel, Hudson H. Nkotagu, AT Grove, Damien Delvaux, "Quaternary ostracodes and molluscs from the Rukwa Basin (Tanzania) and their evolutionary and paleobiogeographic implications" , Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 392 (2013) 79-97.
• AT Grove and E. Lopez-Gunn (2010) Uncertainty in Climate Change, Real Instituto Elcano working paper, Madrid, Spain.

literature

• UNESCO. Secretariat: Social scientists specializing in African studies: directory. Africanistes spécialistes de sciences sociales; repertoire. École pratique des hautes études, Paris, 1963, p. 139.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Africa South of the Sahara Alfred Thomas Grove, Oxford UP, 1967
2. ^ The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History, by Alfred Thomas Grove, Oliver Rackham, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 88
3. ↑ also: Joachim Radkau : Nature and Power, A Global History of the Environment, by, 2008, p. 72
4. ^ The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History, by Alfred Thomas Grove, Oliver Rackham, Yale University Press, 2003, p. 88
5. ↑ supported by fellow environmental historian Joachim Radkau : Nature and Power - A World History of the Environment, 2008
6. ^ AT Grove and E. Lopez-Gunn (2010) Uncertainty in Climate Change, Real Instituto Elcano working paper, Madrid, Spain.
7. ^ ^{A b c d e} The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History, by Alfred Thomas Grove, Oliver Rackham, Yale University Press, 2003, review at Yale university press . Brian Fagan , The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History (review)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Volume 32, Number 3, Winter 2002, pp. 454-455  
8. ↑ Jean Grove Trust entry  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• Britannica entry
• University website by Alfred Thomas Grove