New cosmogenic 10Be exposure ages and a proglacial lake sediment archive provide the first record of local ice cover following the deglaciation of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet (CIS) in southeast Alaska. Exposure ages from Necker Bay corroborate existing evidence for a CIS deglaciation age of ∼15–14 ka from the outer coast of Baranof Island. We date retreat farther inland on the western and eastern flanks of the island to the Early Holocene, providing evidence for an ice cap persisting on Baranof Island ∼3 ka after CIS retreat. Baranof Lake sediment cores document continued local ice cover until ∼10.4 ka, after which glaciers receded to their Holocene minima until ∼8 ka. Glaciers grew through the remainder of the Holocene, reaching their maxima during the last millennium before retreating rapidly during the last century. Remote sensing analysis of glacial change around Baranof Lake from 1948 to 2023 CE shows that the rate of glacier area loss increased by an order of magnitude after 1986 CE, from −0.03 km2/yr to −0.29 km2/yr. This trend in glacier area loss is reflected across Alaska and western Canada, highlighting the sensitivity of Beringian glaciers to climate changes and the significant contribution they will make to sea-level rise this century.

The Kovrizhka sites are some of the most studied and highly informative for the entire northern Cis-Baikal region of Siberia and illustrate the history and development of ancient cultures in the Vitim area during the Late Upper Paleolithic to Early Neolithic. To better understand human settlement practices during this time, we constructed a model of Late Quaternary landscape formation and human occupation in the Vitim River valley based on a geomorphological study and radiocarbon dating of archaeological sites Kovrizhka I–VI in the Baikal-Pathom Highlands. The model reconstructs human habitation of the valley from 19.9 to 6.7 ka and connects settlement patterns to general landscape features, stone (mineral) and food resources, the flood regime of the Vitim River, and dynamics of landscape formation. A secondary focus of this study is to assess the timing and geomorphological remnants of megafloods originating from breakthroughs of the Muya (Vitim) glacial paleolake in Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 3 and 2, and their impact on human settlement. The last megaflood could not have been later than the earliest settlement on Kovrizhka II (19.9 ka). However, erosive flood activity is observed at all stages, especially a shift in floods at the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary.

The 7.7-m loess–paleosol sequence in Trzebnica records a short (ca. 3 ka) but intense phase of loess accumulation that preceded the onset of the Weichselian Late Glacial (MIS 2). The stratigraphy contains a well-defined erosional unconformity, marking a hiatus prior to the deposition of the youngest loess unit (L1LL1). The Trzebnica loess contains numerous signals of slope redeposition, as evidenced by lithological indicators. In this paper, we present optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon data for the Trzebnica site, as well as granulometric analyses and end-member modeling of grain-size data. Our findings refine the regional loess stratigraphy and challenge an earlier hypothesis regarding the age of the Trzebnica 2 archeological site, which pointed to its evolution beginning around MIS 11. Limitations of 14C dating and its comparison to OSL dates are discussed.

Low optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) sensitivity is commonly observed in quartz from tectonically active catchments, suggesting limited or short-lived conditions favorable for sensitization. We characterize the OSL sensitivity of quartz sand within a small, tectonically active catchment in Sicily using modern fluvial samples and a hillslope soil sample. We investigate how OSL sensitivity varies with bedrock lithology, weathering proxies, and topographic metrics. OSL sensitivity spans three orders of magnitude (60–2800 counts/Gy/mm3) with no clear linkage to bedrock source. The soil sample exhibits the highest OSL sensitivity, and positive relationships between OSL sensitivity, magnetic susceptibility, and weathering intensity suggest that pedogenic hillslope processes enhance quartz OSL sensitivity. In contrast, fluvial sediments show low OSL sensitivity and a modest inverse relationship to channel steepness and hypsometry. OSL sensitivity decreases downstream, suggesting that highly sensitized grains from hillslope soils are progressively diluted by low OSL sensitivity sediment likely generated by rapid bedrock erosion in the catchment. These results highlight a hierarchy of controls: bedrock lithology sets the initial OSL sensitivity, hillslope processes enhance it, rapid erosion dilutes it, and fluvial transport modulates it through mixing, explaining why tectonically active catchments rarely preserve quartz with high OSL sensitivity.

Political engagement in highland Peru has changed over the past half century along with the economic, policy, and institutional environment, as demonstrated through this case study. Allpachico, a legally recognized peasant community (comunidad campesina), participated in a national peasant association that actively defended shared livelihood interests based on small-scale farming in the 1970s. Political and economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s undermined both protests and organizations. In the current neoliberal era, the state has promoted large-scale mineral extraction and municipal government while sidelining peasant farming and the comunidad. With few local jobs and scant returns to agriculture, Allpachiqueños have migrated to Lima, but many maintain their houses in the community. Despite the increasing diversity among Allpachiqueños, they continue to unite for projects for the common good, now manifesting in lobbying the local municipal government for improvements to urban structure. A communal habitus persists even though the scope of what is possible to demand has shifted from livelihood to lifestyle concerns.

Why do governments engage in public negotiations with criminal groups, which can be politically costly? I argue that three conditions are necessary for elected authorities to support public negotiations. First, elected authorities support negotiations when the relative conditions of criminal power make it easier to portray negotiations as superior to repression (repression failure frame) or as means to support disaffected youth (marginalisation frame). Second, dialogue brokers – that is, key individuals within government and civil society with know-how about criminal groups – shape government support by inserting concrete negotiation proposals into these frames. Third, electoral security for executive authorities incentivises them to support negotiations. I substantiate this argument by comparing cases in cities with contrasting state capacity and criminal sophistication, Belize City and Medellín.