Environmental Geography Research Articles

Afford to paddle, afford to swim: exploring the affordances of the outdoor environment at a coastal community in affecting young children’s play behaviour

ABSTRACT In children's geographies of the rural milieu, little is known about the geography of the outdoor environment in coastal areas, especially in rural fishing villages. This study explores affordance levels of the outdoor environment in a rural coastal area, with specific reference to young children's play behaviour. This study used an ethnographic approach together with direct participant observations, auto photographs, go-along interviews, and focus group interviews, to elicit the numbers of affordances experienced by 45 respondents, aged 3–13, in Bum Bum Island, Sabah, Malaysia. Hot Spot (Getis-Ord Gi*) spatial statistical and content analyses revealed that perceived affordances are the highest levels of affordances accumulated, followed by utilized and shaped affordances. The most frequent hot spots for the perceived, utilized and shaped affordances occurred in the transitional zone compared to the land and sea zones. This zone was the nucleus for actions of daily play-based experiences for the children in the coastal community based on the natural phenomena of the tides.

A comprehensive review of quantitative research on crime, the built environment, land use, and physical geography

AbstractThis paper provides a comprehensive review of space‐ and place‐based criminology, with a focus on the relationship between crime, the built environment, land use, and/or physical geography, through sociological and critical geography lenses. An historical overview of major criminological and spatial theories and contributors is presented before examining the current state of the field. In honor of critical geography's goal to be “a people's geography,”1 this paper aims to be an accessible overview of space‐ and place‐based criminological research, especially for readers who are unfamiliar with these topics.

Content analysis of the K to 12 Junior High School Geography curriculum in the Philippines

This study is a content analysis of the K to 12 Junior High School Geography curriculum of the Department of Education in the Philippines. The First Quarter competencies of Grade 7–10 were categorized and coded to determine the orientation of the curriculum in terms of curricular approaches. Then, themes from evidence of curricular approaches were used to align approaches with sub-disciplines and allied disciplines of geography. Findings show that Grade 7 and 8 have traditional orientation due to the domination of anthropocentric, factual, and determinist approaches into the curriculum. Grade 9 and 10, on the other hand, have contemporary orientation as these are dominated by the issues-based approach. This means that students have low-level thinking skills and have probably developed negative attitudes toward human, physical, and environmental geography in Grade 7 and 8. Students are then ill-prepared to appreciate complex concepts in political ecology when they proceed to Grade 9 and 10. This implies the need to have a stand-alone geography subject in the Junior High School that employs an issues-based approach, which emphasizes concepts and processes in political ecology. This is to provide students with extensive knowledge and critical understanding on the dynamics of human–environment relations.

Linking morbillivirus exposure to individual habitat use of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) between geographically different sites.

Dolphin morbillivirus (DMV) is a virulent pathogen that causes high mortality outbreaks in delphinids globally and is spread via contact among individuals. Broadly ranging nearshore and open-ocean delphinids are likely reservoir populations that transmit DMV to estuarine populations. We assessed the seroprevalence of DMV antibodies and determined the habitat use of common bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus truncatus, from two estuarine sites, Barataria Bay and Mississippi Sound, in the northern Gulf of Mexico. We predicted that risk to DMV exposure in estuarine dolphins is driven by spatial overlap in habitat use with reservoir populations. Serum was collected from live-captured dolphins and tested for DMV antibodies. Habitat use of sampled individuals was determined by analysing satellite-tracked movements and stable isotope values. DMV seroprevalences were high among dolphins at Barataria Bay (37%) and Mississippi Sound (44%), but varied differently within sites. Ranging patterns of Barataria Bay dolphins were categorized into two groups: Interior and Island-associated. DMV seroprevalences were absent in Interior dolphins (0%) but high in Island-associated dolphins (45%). Ranging patterns of Mississippi Sound dolphins were categorized into three groups: Interior, Island-east and Island-west. DMV seroprevalences were detected across Mississippi Sound (Interior: 60%; Island-east: 20%; and Island-west: 43%). At both sites, dolphins in habitats with greater marine influence had enriched δ13 C values, and Barataria Bay dolphins with positive DMV titres had carbon isotope values indicative of marine habitats. Positive titres for DMV antibodies were more common in the lower versus upper parts of Barataria Bay but evenly distributed across Mississippi Sound. A dolphin's risk of exposure to DMV is influenced by how individual ranging patterns interact with environmental geography. Barataria Bay's partially enclosed geography likely limits the nearshore or open-ocean delphinids that carry DMV from interacting with dolphins that use interior, estuarine habitats, decreasing their exposure to DMV. Mississippi Sound's relatively open geography allows for greater spatial overlap and mixing among estuarine, nearshore and/or open-ocean cetaceans. The spread of DMV, and likely other diseases, is affected by the combination of individual movements, habitat use and the environment.

Low levels of genetic differentiation with isolation by geography and environment in populations of Drosophila melanogaster from across China.

The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a model species in evolutionary studies. However, population processes of this species in East Asia are poorly studied. Here we examined the population genetic structure of D. melanogaster across China. There were 14 mitochondrial haplotypes with 10 unique ones out of 23 known from around the globe. Pairwise FST values estimated from 15 novel microsatellites ranged from 0 to 0.11, with geographically isolated populations showing the highest level of genetic uniqueness. STRUCTURE analysis identified high levels of admixture at both the individual and population levels. Mantel tests indicated a strong association between genetic distance and geographical distance as well as environmental distance. Full redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that independent effects of environmental conditions and geography accounted for 62.10% and 31.58% of the total explained genetic variance, respectively. When geographic variables were constrained in a partial RDA analysis, the environmental variables bio2 (mean diurnal air temperature range), bio13 (precipitation of the wettest month), and bio15 (precipitation seasonality) were correlated with genetic distance. Our study suggests that demographic history, geographical isolation, and environmental factors have together shaped the population genetic structure of D. melanogaster after its introduction into China.

P. Beckouche, (ed.), Europe’s Mediterranean Neighbourhood. An Integrated Geography (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2017)

A review of the book: P. Beckouche, (ed.), Europe’s Mediterranean Neighbourhood. An Integrated Geography (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017)

Case study: Using a codesign process as an opportunity and to increase assessment literacy and integrate the Sustainable Development Goals into learning and teaching.

Abstract: This article first describes the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals to learning and teaching, both specifically for SDG 4 Quality Education, and the relevance of all 17 SDGs across subject areas. It then describes how these became the focus to increase assessment literacy and engagement with feedback using Level 5 BSc Environmental Science and Geography students taking the Environmental Management module. The benefits and challenges of using curriculum and assessment co-design are presented and the benefits for student engagement and assessment literacy evaluated.

Cavernous politics: Geopower, territory, and the Kurdish question in Turkey

This article expands upon recent attempts to shift focus to the material and earthly aspects of power to explore territorial politics and state power in Turkey's Kurdish-populated southeast or Turkish Kurdistan. It focuses on the limestone caves scattered along the Upper Tigris Valley as a locus of geopower, examining the sociopolitical life of limestone caves in relation to the environmental geographies of oil extraction, development, and counterinsurgency. Examining three historical segments where the limestone caves of the Upper Tigris Valley have become objects of the Turkish state's attempts to govern Kurds and territorialize Turkish Kurdistan, this paper demonstrates the shifting configurations of geopower in Turkey vis-à-vis the Kurdish Question. As geological formations fundamental to the Turkish state's attempts to exert and secure territorial power, the caves of the Upper Tigris Valley have also been central to the ways in which Kurds in Turkey have attempted to unsettle state power and territorial politics. Surveying the workings of geopower through caves in Turkish Kurdistan, the article reveals the uneven and violent ways in which geological formations are entangled with hegemonic territorial politics and counter-hegemonic politics.

Geography of environment and nature management in toponymy of Kyiv

Geography of environment and nature management in toponymy of Kyiv

México: Ambiente, cultura y sociedad. Un análisis desde la perspectiva del modelo RECREA

In the Mexican territory the cultural diversity is associated with the environmental diversity, this is demonstrated by the presence of native groups that inhabit the regions of the country, which are characterized by the management of various natural resources that they obtain from the terrestrial and aquatic environments of each of the regions. Through the RECREA Model: complex thinking, information and communication technologies and research-action, complemented with fundamentals of geography, environmental geography, cultural ecology, field work and cartographic information, we explained and analyzed the association between environmental diversity and cultural diversity to demonstrate that in Mexico there are still links between the environment, society and culture, a situation that determines the existence of human groups that subsist in the context of a global capitalist system that extracts in an unsustainable way natural resources. Based on these results, an instructional model is made to put it to practice with international students, in this case from Japan and South Korea, to allow the observation of its functionality in transmitting the aforementioned results on environmental and cultural diversity in Mexico during the teaching-learning process.

Geography and the Covid-19 Crisis in Ireland

In the few short months since the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world had paid more daily attention to maps, charts, rates and locations than ever before; the function and value of a wider geographical imagination, research and education has never been more apparent. Geography and its concerns with place, locations, networks, mobilities and impacts are central to critical reporting on the management, analysis and potential future impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the leading journal for geographers it would be remiss for Irish Geography not to identify and promote the different ways in which geographers, both in Ireland and globally, inform, shape and reflect on the current global pandemic. For contemporary geographers, understanding and tackling spatial inequality is effectively a mission statement. In the current crisis, a relational geographical understanding of how we tackle inequalities and how relations; social, spatial and political, work themselves unequally in and between places, are central. In this short editorial, I focus on several sub-themes; medical/health, urban, social & cultural, online and environmental geographies to suggest ways in which ongoing and future work by geographers will matter. A short analytical report on publicly available spatial data has already been made available1; a longer piece with invited first wave responses (under the ‘Contemporary Critical Geographies’ banner) is planned for the next issue of this journal.

A pandemia e a "ambientalização" da Geografia Um desafio epistêmico-político

The purpose of this article is to extract from the COVID-19 pandemic a lesson for geographers: although without intending (or being possible) to simply go back to the past, it is necessary to re-value, nevertheless, the very quintessence of the identity of the geographical discourse, which has been characterised by a way of building epistemic objects that is committed to a dialogue between social research (represented by what we usually call‘human geography’) and natural research (represented by what we usually call ‘physical geography’). This project, presently called ‘environmentalisation,’ does not aim at anything overly ambitious: there is no case here for an exclusionary thesis in the style ‘geography should be this, and nothing else’; in fact, it just defends the idea that an approach such as that of environmental geography, resulting from an attempt at ‘environmentalisation,’ must have its place assured. Environmental geography, being committed to the construction of hybrid epistemic objects, allows us to mobilise the interfaces and knowledge necessary to deal with complex tasks such as the analysis of the short and long-term effects of the pandemic (among many other issues). However, the environmental geography project not only has to deal with intellectual challenges (integrating what knowledge, how and for what purpose?), but, in the end, it must also face political obstacles: the concrete power relations in the academic world and the zeal with which ‘borders’ and ‘territories’ are patrolled and defended, not to mention the resistance of many researchers to leave their thematic and theoretical-methodological comfort zones.

Morphological variability of cushion plant Lyallia kerguelensis (Caryophyllales) in relation to environmental conditions and geography in the Kerguelen Islands: implications for cushion necrosis and climate change

In recent decades, climate change has been faster in various parts of the world. Within species, to counter rapid climatechanges shift of geographical area, individuals’ plastic responses or populations’ genetic adaptation might occur. The sub-Antarctic islands are subject to one of the most rapid climate changes on earth, with already visible impacts on nativevegetation. Such might be the case of Lyallia kerguelensis a cushion plant strictly endemic to the Kerguelen Islands. In L.kerguelensis, necrotic parts were observed in cushions these last decades and possibly related to water stress. We analysedmorphological variability of L. kerguelensis, including necrosis extent, across 19 populations spanning a wide range ofenvironments across the Kerguelen Islands. Inter-population variations in the cushion surface area, shape and compactnesswere well explained by topography, degree of wind exposure, slope aspect, proportions of coarse sand and bare soil, andgeographical distance between populations. All these variables are related to wind intensity and water availability. Moreover,in cushions with less than 10% necrosis in surface area, necrosis extent was positively correlated to soil sodium. Sodiumavailability might reduce the plant’s capacity for osmotic adjustment in face of other abiotic stresses, such as water stress. Weconclude that cushion morphology may have the capacity to adjust to environmental variation, including aspects of climatechange, but that cushion necrosis may be accelerated in the driest and most saline environments.

‘Toxic worldings’: Introduction to toxic flows

In the course of recent world history, humans have permanently changed the chemical composition of the planet, as human‐made chemical substances become part of the air, water and soil, pervading human and non‐human bodies and upsetting linear imaginaries of past and future. The slow violence of toxic exposure associated with industrial activity and economic growth is a particularly insidious dimension of inequality and exploitation, woven into global and post‐colonial relations of race, class and gender. Yet industrial chemicals underlie and support modern forms of life, and livelihoods, as well as our unsustainable economic system. Such tensions shape how toxicity may be located or ignored, resisted or made habitable, how it may congeal into matters of concern or dissipate into modes of ‘unknowing’. In this introduction, the authors review how recent scholarship imagines and engages with toxic flows. Inspired by research in environmental humanities, geography, history and science and technology studies, as well as scientific disciplines such as eco‐toxicology, anthropologists are searching to grasp the ambivalent ways in which humans ‐ and our non‐human companions ‐ recreate, inhabit, make use of, are exposed to and resist toxic worldings.

Creating Object-Based Learning for the Anthropocene: A Critical Reflection

The Anthropocene is the human age. Its undeniable significance has been ascribed across disciplines from geology, to cultural studies, to fine art. Through reflective analysis, this paper explores the role and significance of creative practice, the found object, and the use of object-based adventures in teaching the Anthropocene. It also considers the role of virtual object-based learning in a digital age through a “Gallery of Late Humanity”, through the reflexive lens of a lecturer who teaches both environmental sciences and cultural geography. These methods successfully encouraged learning across and beyond the disciplinary boundaries of geography and fine art, providing creative re-imaginings, visualisations and understandings of the Anthropocene. These approaches illustrate how the quotidian materialities of home can be reconfigured as a field site for the late Anthropocene.

Model Spasial Level Dasar Bangunan Kota Tepian Air (Studi Kasus: Kota Makassar)

Flooding is a threat to coastal cities such as Makassar City. To Avoid the threat of flooding, it is necessary to determine the ground level of the building. This study aims to develop a spatial model for determining the ground level of buildings for Makassar City based on climate change data and environmental geography. Prediction of sea level rise using MAGICC/SCENGEN application, GIS-based satellite image analysis, rainfall analysis using Thiessen polygon method, surface runoff coefficient value determined by Cook method, and design flood discharge analysis with HSU Nakayasu method. The spatial model of the ground level of Makassar City building for 2030 is a function of sea tides, sea level rise due to climate change, alluvial floods and inflow floods that can occur simultaneously. The model produces a spatial map with attributes of geographic coordinates (x,y,z).

The Test of Time: Using Historical Methods to Assess Models of Ecological Change on California’s Hardwood Rangelands

Geographers and environmental scientists use conceptual models to understand ecological processes and support management decisions. Most of these models are based on short-term experiments and field observations, which might not account for longer term forces that shape ecosystems over decades to centuries. How can scholars use historical sources and methods to improve conceptual models of ecological change? In this article, we present the results of a study that employed methods from environmental history and historical geography to assess three conceptual models that researchers have used to study ecological changes on California’s hardwood rangelands: the succession and climax, state and transition, and cyclical replacement models. The succession and climax model fared poorly at all spatial scales. The historical record contained substantial evidence to support the predictions of the state and transition model at the small spatial scale of the plot or field (0.1–100 ha) and the very large spatial scale of the hardwood rangeland bioregion (4 million ha). The cyclical replacement model performed well at the intermediate scale of the landscape or typical cattle ranch (100–10,000 ha). Historical data and methods hold considerable untapped potential for assessing, building on, and improving conceptual models of ecological change in geography and the environmental sciences.

Reflections on 100 years of geography at Stellenbosch University: the role of physical and environmental geography

ABSTRACT The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Stellenbosch University boasts a long history of geography teaching and research. Notably, physical geography only gained traction in research only in the 1960s at Stellenbosch University and would again all but disappear from the research agenda of the department in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to be, in a sense, replaced by environmental geography. This continued until the mid 2010s, where efforts have been made to strengthen the sub-discipline once more. This paper attempts to trace the history and growth of physical and environmental geography in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, acknowledge the contributions made by individuals to the subject area and concludes by highlighting some implications for the future growth, teaching and research of physical and environmental geography.

Environmental change and the informal plastic recycling networks of Kolkata

This article introduces plastic recycling networks in Kolkata, India, as a case to illustrate the contradictory entanglement of economic and environmental change in urban informal contexts of the Global South. In light of the prevailing environmental critique of informal plastic recycling in India, this article discusses plastic recyclers’ environmental impact and contribution as well as the potential to enhance the environmental and economic performance of their business. Network and chain approaches in the emerging field of Environmental Economic Geography are combined with the notion of social metabolism to conceptualize the entanglement of environmental and economic processes as well as socio‐environmental inequalities entailed in recycling networks. The analysis reveals the impact that the heterogeneity and fluctuation of plastic waste supply has on the economic organization of recycling networks, giving rise to distinct forms of governance in its intermediate and down‐stream segments. Such an integrated perspective also serves to explain why environmental upgrading is hard to achieve under prevailing circumstances by plastic recyclers in Kolkata. Based on an assessment of the social and political conditions of informality under which plastic recyclers operate, the adoption of common assumptions about ecological modernization imbuing parts of Environmental Economic Geography is called into question.

Preface

The Second International Conference on Environmental Geography and Geography Education (ICEGE) 2019 Sumardi Editor in Chief of International Conference on Environmental Geography and Geography Education 2019E-mail: sumardi.fkip@unej.ac.idWe would like to express our gratitude to all participant who were joining “The Second International Conference on Environmental Geography and Geography Education” (ICEGE). It is the 2nd International conference held by the Department of Social Science Education held by FKIP-University of Jember on 28–29 September 2019. This conference becomes a dissemination forum for scientists who are working on theoretical and empirical research of environmental geography, transportation geography, geography education, social science and its application. The mission of this conference is to become an annual internationalforum in the future, where civil society organization and representative research students, academics and researchers, scholars, scientists, teachers andpractitioners from all over the world could meet and exchange an idea toshare and discuss about research. The aim of the second conference is to present and discuss the latest research that contributes to the new ontological,epestimological and axiological knowledge and to a better understanding in the area as follows:(1) Environmental Geography; (2) Geography Information System and Remote Sensing; (3) Geomorphology; (4) Natural Disaster;(5) Economics; (6) History; (7) Education; (8) Humanities; (9) Social Sciences and (10) Global Science and Studies.The participants of this ICEGE 2019 were 310 participants consisting research students, academics and researchers, scholars, scientist, teachers and practitioners from many countries. The selected papers to be published on IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science are 151 papers.On behalf of the organizing committee, finally we gratefully acknowledge the support from the FKIP-University of Jember of this conference. We would also like to extend our thanks to all lovely participants who have been joining this unforgettable and valuable event.Assoc. Prof. Sumardi, M.Hum