Ecosystems provide us with countless benefits, such as material resources, regulation of environmental processes, and opportunities for recreation. These benefits, known as ecosystem services (ES), support our daily welfare and well-being. ES arise from ecological, sociocultural, and economic interactions, and are influenced by both ecosystems’ capacity to provide services and society’s demand for them. ES are unevenly distributed across space, and their supply and demand change over time. Understanding the patterns of ES provision and consumption facilitates the evaluation of their sustainable use. Therefore, comprehensive assessments of ES production and consumption across spatial and temporal scales are essential to deepen our understanding of the ES concept and its role in natural resource management. In this thesis, I exemplify the use of the ES framework by assessing the spatial and temporal patterns of ES potential, supply, and demand. Overall, I demonstrate how to select and interpret indicators of ES potential, supply, and demand and address them using spatial and statistical methods. I study the provisioning services of forests (wood resources) and the cultural services provided by urban and peri-urban areas through three separate case studies. Each article examines ES aspects across distinct scales, ranging from continental to local. Two articles are at the European level, one of which also includes a temporal scale, and one is at the urban level. The results regarding wood ES show that the potential, supply, and demand for wood have all increased across Europe. Compared to demand, Europe has a substantial supply surplus, and the analysis of mismatches between the supply and demand indicates that, on average, Europeans have good spatial accessibility to wood resources. However, the growing trend of exploiting wood ES might affect the state of forest ecosystems and their capacity to provide high-quality ES other than wood. The findings regarding cultural ES suggest that subjective spatial characteristics of green spaces, such as perceived accessibility, play a bigger role in more frequent interactions with nature than the biophysical features of these spaces or the consumption of cultural ES itself. This indicates that urban residents demand better access to green spaces in order to fully enjoy and recognize the capacity of urban ecosystems to deliver high-quality cultural ES within close proximity to their homes. My thesis exemplifies the application of the ES framework in ES mapping, incorporates ES spatial flow into supply and demand mismatch evaluation, and highlights the importance of subjective human needs and perceptions regarding ES demand as vital parts of the ES framework. The evaluation of the distribution and trends in the potential, supply, and demand of the provisioning ES of wood, alongside the produced maps, supports resource monitoring of European forests. The same applies to the maps of wood ES supply–demand mismatches, which integrate the ES spatial flow through spatial accessibility analysis. These results can inform European forest management strategies, providing spatial insights into wood potential, supply, and demand, and their mismatches. Furthermore, the evaluation of the characteristics of green spaces’ use patterns emphasizes the importance of spatial perceptions in interactions with urban and peri-urban nature. This information can be communicated to decision-makers in the studied cities and used to enhance access to green spaces that provide vital cultural ES for urban populations.

Tourism is widely recognized for its economic and developmental potential, but its capacity to facilitate socio-political transformation, particularly in authoritarian and theocratic contexts, remains relatively underexamined. This thesis focuses on the role of tourism in such transformation, analyzing how it interacts with state ideology that regulates bodily autonomy, mobility, gender roles, and public behavior. In these settings, tourism can create subtle spaces for negotiation, adaptation, and the quiet reordering of norms. This study examines how tourism contributes to socio-political, cultural, and gendered transformations through the frameworks of evolutionary economic geography and resilience thinking. The analysis is based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on Qeshm and Hormuz islands in Iran, utilizing participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Findings reveal that tourism can reconfigure both vertical (state–society) and horizontal (intra-community) power relations. Tourism helps women and youth to gain visibility, economic independence, and new forms of social legitimacy by creating gray zones where social norms can be contested without direct confrontation. Local inhabitants, particularly women, use the emergence of tourism as tool for direct income, reclaim public space, and challenge traditional gender power relations. The study demonstrates that resilience in these settings involves not only adaptation but also transformation, enabling communities to shape new socio-economic and cultural equilibria. The thesis offers several theoretical contributions. It aims to advance evolutionary economic geography by proposing path inclusivity as a critical dimension of regional development. By focusing on transformative resilience, this thesis seeks to reframe resilience as a political force capable of reshaping both ideological constraints and social hierarchies. The study also aims to expand cultural resilience discourse, and at the same time conceptualizes co-created authenticity to describe how cultural expressions emerge through dialogical interaction between locals and tourists. The research, therefore, positions tourism as a space of social transformation and contributes to broader debates on power, culture, and agency by showing how tourism-induced change, though incremental and uneven, can erode ideological controls and support gradual, culturally grounded shifts toward gender equality and social change.

As the climate crisis is worsening, we have witnessed a re-emergence of the authoritarian and racist far-right. The interdisciplinary scholarship on political ecologies of the far-right has shown that the far-right has found an array of different responses to the global ecological crisis. The far-right obstructs climate politics by disputing humans’ role in causing it and proposes border walls in the name of environmental protection of the ‘homeland’. Whilst studies have made a significant contribution to our understanding of the far-right’s role in the Anthropocene, the questions of race and racism have become the elephant in the room for a significant part of the scholarship. The role of race as an analytical focus is understudied and underconceptualised, and racism is either treated as ancillary to nationalism or as something that will happen in the fascist future. Building on theories on race and space and the racial Anthropocene, this doctoral dissertation advances research on the political ecologies of the far-right by investigating how the far-right reproduces and shapes racial ideologies and structures that underpin the climate crisis. In doing so, the dissertation analyses two far-right groups, the Finns Party in Finland and the Izborskii Club in Russia. Consisting of three independent research articles and a synopsis, this doctoral dissertation analyses how race is produced in their ecological and climate change-related politics by focusing on whiteness and fossil imperialism (Article I), racial ecologies (Article II), and climate obstruction and coloniality (Article III). By focusing on racism in the study of three examples of the far-right’s engagement with climate change and the environment, the doctoral thesis shows that through racist ecologies, such as environmental determinism and populationism, the far-right obstructs climate policies and reproduces the meaning of race by naturalising the uneven impacts of the climate crisis as an outcome of racial difference.

This dissertation is situated at the intersection of geography, education and youth studies. It examines the transitional stage between lower and upper secondary education among 15–16-year-old young people in northern Finland. The decisions made during this stage are increasingly consequential in youth educational paths. In Finland, like elsewhere, youth education has become a central cog in the push to keep up with global competition and knowledge-based economization. However, concerns have been voiced over increasing spatial inequalities in and between different Finnish regions in terms of educational accessibility and educational attainment levels. To address the complexity of these spatial dynamics and tensions, this inquiry approaches youth educational paths as spaces of education. Drawing on relational theories of space and particularly the work of Doreen Massey, these spaces are considered as dynamically constituted across multiple sites and scales. The material used in the study comprises state education policy documents as well as materials generated during school visits in urban and rural northern Finland in 2019, including interviews with young people and ethnographic fieldnotes. The three sub-studies included in the dissertation explore how spaces are constituted at the intersection of policy, everyday life, and emotion. The study shows how the spaces of educational paths are constituted through state policies that dictate what kind of education is available and where. It brings to the fore how young people in northern and sparsely habited regions often face the expectation to be mobile when navigating their educational choices. The study also shows how these spatialities extend from policy spatialities to relations with and between different places at the site of young people’s everyday life. The study also highlights how spaces of youth educational paths entwine with emotions, discussing how the entwined emotional and spatial dimensions of youth educational paths entail a strong orientation toward futures – and how these futures pertain to imaginations about the state, northern regions as well as young people. This dissertation contributes to the rethinking of spaces of education via a multi-sited and multi-scalar approach that enables a nuanced understanding of the spatialities of youth educational paths. The study underlines that youth educational paths are not merely linear transitions from one educational stage to another but involve complex and dynamic spatialities at the nexus of policy, everyday life, and emotion. Such a spatially attuned reading highlights how spaces of youth educational paths and related inequalities are not fixed or uniform but are actively produced and thus open to change.

As 21st Century anthropogenic carbon emissions increasingly perturb Earth’s atmospheric composition, an accessible understanding of how greenhouse gas driven climate change manifests on natural and human systems becomes crucial to public awareness. Here, we investigate the contemporary causes and consequences of global sea level rise (SLR), focusing on the impacts of coastal flooding on Morecambe Bay, Northwest England. We review and summarize current literature regarding terrestrial ice loss and ocean thermal expansion, delving into the uncertainties and assumptions. We define three SLR scenarios through to 2100 AD: 1) the Green Road (GR: 0.44m SLR), 2) Business as Standard (BS: 0.77m SLR), and 3) Impending Doom (ID: 1.55m SLR). We adjust these SLR scenarios for regional isostatic and gravitational effects, and map them to local flood projections for Morecambe Bay. Even under the most optimistic – GR – scenario, we find permanent flooding is inevitable by 2100, necessitating adaptation strategies. Under BS and ID scenarios, significant inundation of industrial and residential areas is projected, with permanent displacement of up to 15,000 homes and moderate to severe disruption to national transport networks, including the UK’s West Coast rail-link. Moreover, national power and industrial infrastructure at Heysham Nuclear Power Station and BAE Systems, Barrow would be impacted under our worst-case scenario. Directed mitigation and informed decision-making are crucial for minimizing economic and social impacts, emphasizing a need for public awareness of the future impacts of environmental change and its local manifestation.

Among the geomorphological processes determined by meteorological conditions, topography, and geological factors, floods and various mass movements have an extreme origin. In the High Arctic, which is the domain of cryogenic processes, extreme events can reach a scale and intensity never before observed, considering the exceptionally rapid environmental changes caused by global warming. It is widely believed that the frequency of extreme events will increase. However, knowledge about their past activity is limited due to the low population density in high-latitude areas and the deficit of adequate observations before the digital era. They are recorded in sediments and landforms, which require comparative analysis. This paper gives two examples of landforms resulting from extreme geomorphological events occurring in Wedel-Jarlsberg Land on the western coast of Svalbard (approx. 77°N). A basic description of an alluvial fan with an area of 0.067 km² was provided, resulting from mud-debris flows from the Steinvik Valley, likely due to water being pushed out of a shallow lake with an area of 0.022 km². The possibility of a landslide occurring in the postglacial period on the slopes of the Jens Erikfjellet massif was also indicated. The timing of the events is discussed based on the existing dating of raised marine terraces. The presented data come from preliminary studies, such as field observations, simple measurements, and GIS analysis of available digital materials. The outcomes can introduce a better understanding of the scale of extreme processes and the search for similar landforms. Such inventory has not yet been comprehensively conducted on Svalbard, even though extreme events commonly occur during the Holocene climate fluctuations in this area. Their frequency and scale remain unknown.

Seasonal snow and ice play a key role in the hydrological regimes of Arctic and sub-Arctic river catchments that differentiate them from their lower latitude counterparts. Against a backdrop of assumed reduced spring flooding due to ongoing Arctic warming resulting in shorter winters with less snowfall, we examine the prevailing conditions that led to spring-melt flooding, its impact and mitigation management strategies across Northern Ostrobothnia in April 2024. We find that sustained freezing temperatures in early 2024, combined with thicker than average snowpack in March, preconditioned the region’s catchments to two episodes of flooding driven by abrupt warm events and widespread snowmelt in early March and April. Due to their predominantly shallow, east to west long-profiles, the region’s rivers received large fluxes of snowmelt runoff simultaneously along their entire courses, responding rapidly with rising levels and discharge. Thick river ice formed during the colder than average winter, causing ice jams at constricting pinch-points including bridges, dams and where rivers naturally shallowed or narrowed, leading to backup and flooding. Numerous effective civil interventions – including the release of discharge into managed agricultural areas – prevented extensive flood damage and major disruption to infrastructure other than temporary closure of some roads. We conclude that the event was pragmatically managed, precluding significant material damage and disruption. However, projected long-term climate scenarios indicating increased temperature fluctuations and extreme precipitation – including snowfall – events associated with intense warm air intrusions, coupled with potential meter-scale relative sea- and base-level rise could act in consort to increase the region’s winter and spring flood risk, rather than mitigate it.

The concept of geodiversity is gaining recognition in many scientific fields, as well as in practical applications such as conservation and tourism. Although the importance of geodiversity is now widely accepted, its precise definition, scope and broader applicability continue to be debated and discussed. In this paper, we explore the variety of viewpoints that relate to geodiversity and scrutinize the importance of geodiversity for different audiences. These viewpoints include definitions, assessment, research fields, terminology and its applications. To help explore and convey the different viewpoints and values commonly attributed to geodiversity, we invoke the Rokua UNESCO Global Geopark in Finland as a specific case study. Finally, we present potential future directions for geodiversity research, including key knowledge gaps, and highlight the vulnerability of geodiversity to increasing human pressures that threaten its integrity and long-term sustainability.

Depression is, at its worst, a fatal disease and a significant factor threatening work ability. Recent studies have suggested physical activity as an effective treatment for depression. Scientific evidence on the beneficial association between physical activity and depressive symptoms is strong. Recently, studies have also highlighted the residential environment’s importance for both mental health and physical activity. Due to accelerating urbanisation, it is increasingly important to understand how our living environment affects our physical movement behaviour and mental health. This study’s aims were to I) compare the prevalence of depression symptoms in different countries, II) investigate how characteristics of the residential environment and physical activity are associated with depressive symptoms, and III) study how 24-hour movement behaviours (physical activity, sedentary time and sleep) are associated with depressive symptoms in urban and rural residents. The main data for the study were collected from individuals born in Northern Finland in 1966 when they were 46 years old (n=5,860). In addition, the first substudy utilised previously published research articles to compare the prevalence of depressive symptoms between different countries. The characteristics of the residential environment, based on the participants’ home coordinates, were examined using geographic information system methods. Physical activity was measured using both a questionnaire and accelerometer-based activity monitors that the participants wore for 2 weeks. Depressive symptoms were assessed in all studies based on the second version of the Beck Depression Inventory. The results indicated that depressive symptoms vary between countries. Higher urbanicity and population density of the residential environment were associated with a higher odds of more severe depressive symptoms, while higher greenness was associated with a lower odds of severe depressive symptoms. More time spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity or sleep at the expense of light activity or sedentary behaviour within a 24-hour day was associated with lower depressive symptoms in those living in rural areas. According to this study’s results, preserving and increasing green spaces in urban planning and taking into account all the movement behaviours of the 24-hour day, for example in health care and physical activity recommendations, could be ways to decrease depressive symptoms at the population level. It is also important to consider the differences in movement behaviours between those living in urban and rural areas. Future research in longitudinal settings is needed to confirm causal relationships, in particular, between residential environment and depressive symptoms.