Contenu du sommaire

Abstract. - In Central Kalimantan, Dayak tribes are losing their individuality : Islam, permanent crops and tree felling are rapidly progressing.

Abstract. - Gaming and bargaining are still alive in this example of a Saïgon market, despite the socialist system.

Abstract. - Water and geothermal resources of the Flores Island (Little Sunda Islands) : Vulcanicity and seismicity.

Abstracts. - The Western and Eastern lowlands of Ceylon, although characterized by the same lithological topics, reveal geomorphic features without any analogy. The study of those features do reveal a close relationship between the topography and the climate pattern, the island being divided in a wet and a dry zone. The only doubtful point in this sequence is the stability of the climate in the past. The author emphasizes the fact that the monsoon contrast in South Asia should have been active since miocene times.

Abstract. - The relations between the growth of industry and the extension of area of towns (in the same territory) are pratically unknown. Some aspects of the relations, replaced in a more general problematic, are considered here.

Abstract. - The study of the labour market areas of large industrial production plants gives a clear knowledge of the recent changes affecting the relation between employment and residence, a relation which has a great influence in the general industrialization-urbanization process. - During the high growth rate period, many factors have strengthened the extension and structural dispersion of labour market areas, in contrary to former trends which were more favourable to concentration in both industrial and urban growth. Economic recession and a voluntary reaction against too a great diffusion, participating in urban crisis, interfere since a short time to put-on-the-brakes a movement whose implications are decisive in the organization of social space.

Abstract. - From the particular case of West France, the author describes the processe that have linked the evolution of the geographic distribution of industrial employments and the one of the shape of the urban framework over the past twenty five years. The main conclusion of this paper is that the process of growth has above all favoured the durability of the urban framework in existence. On the contrary, the recession might turn out to be much more disruptive for the urban system.

Abstract. - From the study of the series of several meteorological stations in Mauritius, Saint Denis and Antananarivo, it is pointed out that the variations in the rainfalls in the S. W. of the Indian ocean are more the fact of local causes than that of regional causes and that, in spite of the appearances due to the use of the mobile means, there is no periodicity, as it is shown by the use of the tests of Kiveliovitch and Vialar. Hence, it is absolutely vain to search for any concordancy with the solar cycle.

Abstract. - On the western side of the Orinoco delta, some patches of quartz sands, which have been leeched from their ironoxydes, cover irregularly the Mesa Formation, of Upper Pliocene age. Most patches don't have any typical eolian land- form, but some of them are associated with longitudinal dunes. These sands are typically eolian well sorted sands (fig. 2 and table). They are fossilised on the edge of the Orinoco delta, by holocene and contemporary alluvium. They have been deposited before the end of the Flandrian transgression, during a low sea level stage. These observations suport and complete a previous paleoclimatic reconstruction of the Northern part of South America. Further W, in the Apure and Colombian Llanos, an extensive dune field has been shaped during the last andean cold period (Wurm, Wisconsin). At the end of it, the climate being wet again, the rivers have flooded the dune field and excavated their valleys through it, reaching again the Orinoco. In Eastern and Central Amazonia, the relatively dry conditions changed to the humid present ones during the begining of the Flandrian transgression. The present rain forest took the place of a former xeric vegetation. Climatic changes have been very broad in Northern South America, as broad as in Western Africa, but their pattern is quite different, as a result of a different structural frame, clearly visible in the distribution of sea and land. In Africa, the distribution of present and past climates is clearly zonal. In America, on the contrary, the zonal influence is strongly obliterated by orography and N-S atmospheric circulation.

Abstract. - Compared with the geomorphology of other equatorial countries (Amazony, Borneo and Guyanas), the one of Gaboon shows a great variety of forms. Field-observations and numerous heliborne missions allowed us to appreciate varied landscapes.