Geographic Community Research Articles

Landscapes and Inclusion: Examining Nature-Based Integration and Mountain Landscapes Among Oregon’s Slavic Community

Nature and landscapes are increasingly recognized as integral to human health, well-being, and sense of belonging. As such, nature and landscapes offer potential benefits for nature-based integration (NBI) efforts aimed at fostering a sense of inclusion among new residents. Although such linkages are recognized, NBI research remains limited with fruitful potential for place-based and immigrant-oriented community organizations or governments interested in fostering a sense of inclusion, belonging, identity, and even environmental responsibility among new residents. In this article, we demonstrate the application of a collaborative NBI study among Oregon’s growing Slavic immigrant community. This study, through a community geography and community-based participatory research approach, sought to gauge community interactions with and sense of place to Oregon’s natural environment, notably mountain landscapes. Although with limitations, this study demonstrates the potential of NBI to enrich nature-based programs, immigrant advocacy organizations, government engagement efforts, and landscape planning with opportunities to better understand and tools to potentially engage diverse populations.

Beyond the Campus: The Role of Social Media in Expanding Educational Horizons and Management Practices

This paper examines the transformative role of social media in education, which extends beyond traditional classroom boundaries to enhance teaching, learning, and management practices in educational settings. With the digital era reshaping educational processes, social media platforms have emerged as critical tools in redefining learning environments and expanding access to educational resources globally. These platforms facilitate multifaceted communication and interaction among students and educators and enable the creation and management of virtual academic communities. This study highlights how social media transcends geographical constraints, fostering connectivity and community, which are essential elements in modern education. It explores the implications of social media in broadening educational horizons and innovating management practices within educational institutions.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN CROSS-BORDER ENERGY TRADE: THE CASE OF THE KAZAKHSTAN – CHINA PIPELINE

The article delves into the nuanced realm of environmental sustainability in the context of the KazakhstanChina pipeline – a crucial conduit for oil and gas resources spanning borders. Rigorous methodologies, including Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping and community engagement, unveil the environmental challenges intrinsic to cross-border energy projects. From habitat disruption and pollution to the potential for oil spills, the negative impacts demand strategic mitigation. The article advocates for a multifaceted approach, recommending the incorporation of advanced technologies, strategic route planning, and diversified energy sources. Emphasizing community engagement, transparency, and international cooperation, the proposed sustainable practices aim to balance the imperatives of economic growth with ecological preservation. As the world grapples with increasing energy demands, the Kazakhstan-China pipeline stands as a poignant case study, prompting a collective reevaluation of our approach to global energy trade. Through proactive measures and collaborative efforts, it is possible to navigate the delicate equilibrium between energy security and environmental stewardship, fostering a future where sustainable practices underscore the foundation of cross-border energy endeavors.

Exploring dynamic urban mobility patterns from traffic flow data using community detection

ABSTRACT The rise of data from smart city services and the emergence of advanced algorithms have emphasized the need for a deeper understanding of the underlying patterns of urban mobility and the potential opportunities for more efficient urban planning and policymaking. By identifying communities with similar mobility patterns, researchers can gain better insights into how people move within and between different regions. Traditional community detection methodologies mainly focused on identifying geographic communities defined by shared locations. However, this perspective overlooks the broader definition of communities. Communities can also emerge from shared social interests, collective actions, and activity patterns. This implies that geographically disparate areas might exhibit similar patterns, which is particularly relevant in the study of mobility pattern similarity. Rather than focusing on regions with strong spatial interactions, this study aims to identify regions that show more similarity to each other than to other areas. Such similarities may indicate parallel urban functionalities, which are essential for effective urban planning and policymaking. To bridge this gap, our study introduces a customized community detection algorithm that employs Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to quantitatively assess the similarity in mobility patterns between different communities. This advanced approach not only improves the identification of comparable mobility patterns but also demonstrates remarkable flexibility, broadening its application to various other social phenomena. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model in capturing complex mobility patterns across different locations and days of the week.

Community-based Social Protection for the Elderly in Werdha Coral Bimo Seno Cartoharjo Township Madiun

The elderly life stage is a stage of life that has risks in various aspects of life, however, elderly people still have the desire to maintain their independence and dignity in social life. Therefore, care and protection for the elderly must also pay attention to the social environmental conditions of the elderly's life. Social protection in the form of social assistance and social security for the elderly needs to continue to be improved so that it can bring benefits that can be felt directly by the elderly. This research was conducted using a qualitative descriptive approach, which aims to describe community-based social protection for the elderly through Karang Werdha Bimo Seno, Kartoharjo Village, Madiun City. The research results show that Karang Werdha Bimo Seno is a Geographical Community and a Functional Community and is an organization that emerged on the initiative of the community and stakeholders in Kartoharjo Village. Karang Werdha Bimo Seno's activities in providing social protection for the elderly include direct services such as; Elderly sports activities and health services for the elderly, as well as financial assistance provided every two weeks to the elderly in turn, can help overcome the vulnerability of the elderly. Indirect social protection for the elderly (indirect services), namely through health services with five Posyandu in Kartoharjo Village, assistance for the elderly with Wahana Kesejahteraan Sosial Berbasis Masyarakat (WKSBM), as well as various assistance and services for the elderly from both the regional and central government. Community-based social protection for the elderly implemented by Karang Werdha Bimo Seno in the form of direct services and indirect services in Kartoharjo Village, Madiun City contributes to supporting the lives of the elderly in their community environment.

Predicting state level suicide fatalities in the united states with realtime data and machine learning

Digital trace data and machine learning techniques are increasingly being adopted to predict suicide-related outcomes at the individual level; however, there is also considerable public health need for timely data about suicide trends at the population level. Although significant geographic variation in suicide rates exist by state within the United States, national systems for reporting state suicide trends typically lag by one or more years. We developed and validated a deep learning based approach to utilize real-time, state-level online (Mental Health America web-based depression screenings; Google and YouTube Search Trends), social media (Twitter), and health administrative data (National Syndromic Surveillance Program emergency department visits) to estimate weekly suicide counts in four participating states. Specifically, per state, we built a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network model to combine signals from the real-time data sources and compared predicted values of suicide deaths from our model to observed values in the same state. Our LSTM model produced accurate estimates of state-specific suicide rates in all four states (percentage error in suicide rate of −2.768% for Utah, −2.823% for Louisiana, −3.449% for New York, and −5.323% for Colorado). Furthermore, our deep learning based approach outperformed current gold-standard baseline autoregressive models that use historical death data alone. We demonstrate an approach to incorporate signals from multiple proxy real-time data sources that can potentially provide more timely estimates of suicide trends at the state level. Timely suicide data at the state level has the potential to improve suicide prevention planning and response tailored to the needs of specific geographic communities.

Community engagement in genetics and genomics research: a qualitative study of the perspectives of genetics and genomics researchers in Uganda

BackgroundGenerally, there is unanimity about the value of community engagement in health-related research. There is also a growing tendency to view genetics and genomics research (GGR) as a special category of research, the conduct of which including community engagement (CE) as needing additional caution. One of the motivations of this study was to establish how differently if at all, we should think about CE in GGR.AimTo assess the perspectives of genetics and genomics researchers in Uganda on CE in GGR.MethodA cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted at Makerere University and Uganda Virus Research Institute. Twenty-five individuals participated, the majority being male (sixteen). Participants included nineteen genetics and genomics researchers (researchers and research coordinators), two CE officers, three nurses and one nursing counsellor. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and analyzed in a thematic manner using NVivo version 12 Plus.Study findingsThirteen of the respondents had conducted CE in their GGR in either a geographical and disease-specific community. Some respondents said CE principles are the same and there is no need for special consideration for CE in GGR. Others gave ethical issues in GGR that require special consideration for CE in such research and these were categorized into six themes: GGR is new to communities, Difficulty in communicating GGR by the researchers, Genes are shared in communities, Cultural sensitivities against GGR, Community attitude toward GGR, Some GGR studies take long to end, and Negotiation of research benefits. Special considerations for CE when conducting GGR were suggested and categorized into seven themes: creating awareness of GGR in communities, obtaining both community acceptance and individual consent, CE team composition, involve communities in solving GGR challenges, prolong CE in some GGR, develop guidelines for CE in GGR, and legal considerations on GGR.ConclusionGGR was characterized by special issues that require special CE considerations for such research.

Children's geographies: Methodological approaches and inspiration not only for geographers

Children's geography, a rapidly developing subdiscipline of geography, paradoxically remains overlooked by the broader scientific geographical community. Despite its recognition in the Anglophone world, it lacks interest in other cultural-geographical regions. This article aims to introduce the Czech and Slovak scientific community to children's geography and demonstrate how this discipline can serve as inspiration for traditional geographic fields. One of the main focuses is on innovative methodologies and ethical considerations that permeate each study, particularly regarding minority groups. This contribution seeks to integrate children's geography into the mainstream of geographical research in both Czechia and Slovakia. The article presents the development of children's geography, its key ideas, and arguments that may enrich Czech and Slovak geography. It emphasizes its potential in exploring spatial aspects of childhood and society, leading to a better understanding of these issues. Emphasizing research ethics leads to a beneficial approach, enabling us to better respond to the needs and interests of children.

ЛИТЕРАТУРНЫЕ МАГИСТРАЛИ – НОВЫЙ КУЛЬТУРНО-ГЕОГРАФИЧЕСКИЙ ФЕНОМЕН14

The purpose of the article is to present to the geographical community a new cultural and geographicalphenomenon – a literary highway, identified by the author through empirical observations. Hence the tasks of the articleare to describe and define this phenomenon, to establish its typical characteristics, and to trace its functioning on theregional material.The author introduces and substantiates new concepts of literary geography – a literary polyhighway and transportgeographical discourse.A literary highway is understood as a historical road ‘covered’ with texts of literary journeys of different times. Inthose cases where literature develops polyhighways, i.e., historical roads running parallel within the transport corridor,literary polyhighways are distinguished.The interaction of travelogue texts with certain historical roads includes a range of transport issues in a broadcomparative geographical context, or transport-geographical discourse; among them are vehicles used, road features, trialsexperienced on the road by authors or literary heroes, perception of roadside landscapes, and transport vocabulary.In the article, geographical, historical, and literary properties of literary highways and polyhighways are shownthrough the example of the metropolitan polyhighway ‘Moscow – Petersburg’, Siberian, Dvina, and Chui literary highways.In applied t

Narrative Form and Forms of Truth

Within the last decade, it has been commonly claimed that societies in the United States and other countries, have entered a ‘post-truth-era’, a time when deception and falsehood have flourished, and the value of factual truth is diminished. Paradoxically, at the same time (1) concerns with truth have become more prominent in popular discourse and in the priorities of institutions, and (2) definitive empirical evidence of an unprecedented recent increase in false or misleading information is lacking. Therefore, how is it that the idea of post-truth earned such widespread acceptance? The possibility explored here is that the idea of a post-truth-era is symptomatic of a deepening commitment to increasingly compelling and divergent narrative truths (as opposed to factual truths). This process is related to the use of the internet and social media platforms and the opportunities they afford for individuals to co-construct their own narrative accounts of reality. While prevailing conceptions of a post-truth-era show some recognition of the challenges this divergence in realities poses—particularly for the geographical communities that most directly sustain infrastructure and institutions—because these conceptions are grounded in a correspondence view of truth and language, they are fundamentally unable to recognize and address the challenges at hand. The latter, we show, can only be adequately grasped and addressed by recognizing the role of the narrative form in the construction of reality.

Differences in perceptions of community stigma towards opioid use disorder between community substance use coalition members and the general public

IntroductionTo examine differences in perceptions about community stigma towards individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) between community members involved in the opioid response (i.e., coalition members) and the general public, and how community geography may moderate this relationship. MethodsThis study administered identical cross-sectional surveys about perceived community opioid-related stigma to two distinct populations in 66 communities participating in the HEALing Communities Study prior to the intervention period (i.e., coalition members, November 2019–January 2020; residents, March–April 2020). Linear-mixed models compared survey responses of populations, including the moderating effect of community rural/urban location. ResultsA total of 826 coalition members and 1131 residents completed the surveys. The study found no differences between the coalition members and residents for general perceived community opioid-related stigma. In both urban and rural communities, coalition members reported greater perceived community stigma than residents reported towards medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD), naloxone, and drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration. ConclusionOur findings suggest similar perceived community opioid-related stigma between coalition members and residents, yet differences emerge related to evidence-based practices (i.e., MOUD, naloxone, and drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration) to reduce opioid overdose deaths. Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04111939.

ROLE OF PLACE AS A DETERMINANT OF PARENT–ADULT CHILD GEOGRAPHIC PROXIMITY AND CAREGIVING

Abstract While research has shown that the need for care impacts how close parents and adult children live, the relative importance of various factors shaping parent-child geographic proximity remains unclear, especially as it relates to characteristics of their geographic locations and communities. We explore variation in and determinants of the geographic proximity of older parents and adult children, conditional on parents needing care. Using pooled 2004-2014 data from the Health and Retirement Study on respondents age 65 years or older and their children, alongside detailed county-level contextual information from various sources, we analyze the importance of various determinants of parent-child geographic proximity, including parental health, age, and other personal characteristics, children’s personal characteristics, parent-child dyad characteristics, and place-specific characteristics that relate with availability of different health and aging services, housing affordability, and labor market opportunities. Preliminary regression results show that coresidence is substantially less likely in areas with higher availability of nursing care and continuing care options. Among non-coresidents, living in close proximity (distances under 10 miles) is less likely if parent’s area has more nursing care options, but more likely if health services that support living in place are available. Additionally, local economic and housing conditions play a role, with higher median household income associated with children living closer to parents and higher cost of rent with living further. Place-specific characteristics are important determinants of parent-child coresidence and proximity, and policymakers and care providers should consider them when determining the most effective ways to support older adults who need care.

Effects of Cascade Reservoirs on Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Sedimentary Bacterial Community: Co-occurrence Patterns, Assembly Mechanisms, and Potential Functions.

Dam construction as an important anthropogenic activity significantly influences ecological processes in altered freshwater bodies. However, the effects of multiple cascade dams on microbial communities have been largely overlooked. In this study, the spatiotemporal distribution, co-occurrence relationships, assembly mechanisms, and functional profiles of sedimentary bacterial communities were systematically investigated in 12 cascade reservoirs across two typical karst basins in southwest China over four seasons. A significant spatiotemporal heterogeneity was observed in bacterial abundance and diversity. Co-occurrence patterns in the Wujiang Basin exhibited greater edge counts, graph density, average degree, robustness, and reduced modularity, suggesting more intimate and stronger ecological interactions among species than in the Pearl River Basin. Furthermore, Armatimonadota and Desulfobacterota, identified as keystone species, occupied a more prominent niche than the dominant species. A notable distance-decay relationship between geographical distance and community dissimilarities was identified in the Pearl River Basin. Importantly, in the Wujiang Basin, water temperature emerged as the primary seasonal variable steering the deterministic process of bacterial communities, whereas 58.5% of the explained community variance in the neutral community model (NCM) indicated that stochastic processes governed community assembly in the Pearl River Basin. Additionally, principal component analysis (PCA) revealed more pronounced seasonal dynamics in nitrogen functional compositions than spatial variation in the Wujiang Basin. Redundancy analysis (RDA) results indicated that in the Wujiang Basin, environmental factors and in Pearl River Basin, geographical distance, reservoir age, and hydraulic retention time (HRT), respectively, influenced the abundance of nitrogen-related genes. Notably, these findings offer novel insights: building multiple cascade reservoirs could lead to a cascading decrease in biodiversity and resilience in the river-reservoir ecosystem.

Health belief model approach in reducing worm infections in elementerary school in North Aceh, Indonesia

Link of Video Abstract: https://youtu.be/xwXNgnCdD_g Introduction: The prevalence of worm infections in Indonesia is still relatively high, about 2.5% - 62%, depending on geographical conditions, education, economics, environmental sanitation and community hygiene. Elementary school students have an increased risk of worm infections due to personal hygiene and environmental factors which cause high levels of worm infections in students. Implementing the health belief model (HBM) will be a model for identifying public understanding regarding preventive and promotive efforts to reduce the risk of worm infections. This study aims to determine the application of the HBM for reducing worm infections in elementary school students in Lapang sub-district in North Aceh. Method: This type of research is a purposive sampling with a cross sectional design. A number of 120 respondents are from elementary school in Lapang sub-district, HBM was measured by using a questionnaire. Worm infection was determined from the results of fecal examination using the direct slide method. Results: The results found that 45.8% students experienced worm infections, majority's perception of susceptibility to worm infections (67,3%), perception of seriousness (65,5%), and perception of benefits (65,5%) were in low category but perception of barriers was in high category (58,2%). HBM Assessment Analysis on perceived vulnerability shows a p-value of 0.020, perceived seriousness shows 0.034, perceived obstacles show 0.021, and perceived benefits shows 0.022. The four HBM concept assessments have a value of p<0.05. Conclusion: The results concluded that the Ho meaning was accepted which there was a relationship between HBM and the reduction of worm infections.

Local Wisdom in Indonesia: Assessing its Legal Status and Role in Forest Protection

This study delves into an examination of the role played by local wisdom in the protection of forests. The recognition and acknowledgment of local wisdom, enshrined in customary law within the environments of indigenous peoples, encounters challenges, particularly when the legitimacy of customary law itself is in question, especially concerning forest protection. In addressing these concerns, a normative juridical approach was employed to scrutinize legal source materials. The findings of this research affirm that the recognition of indigenous peoples as legal entities, particularly under international law, necessitates collective consideration. Through this conceptual framework, indigenous peoples can assert their aspirations autonomously and even advocate for international policies aimed at safeguarding and upholding the rights of indigenous peoples globally, with predetermined terms and conditions. The study underscores the contribution of local wisdom to forest protection, exemplified by the formulation of customary forest concepts applicable to indigenous communities. Local wisdom has demonstrated efficacy in averting and mitigating forest damage, particularly within customary forest areas, owing to the steadfast adherence of indigenous peoples to the principles encapsulated in their customary law. Moreover, the effectiveness of local wisdom in forest preservation is bolstered by the intrinsic characteristics of traditional indigenous communities, fostering wise and sustainable forest management practices. The study posits that the normative nature of customary law, as a living legal entity, may face ineffectiveness, potentially jeopardizing its own existence. Nonetheless, it contends that the state should formally recognize the exclusivity of customary law through constitutional and legal frameworks, thereby fortifying the application and viability of customary law within predetermined geographical areas and communities designated by the government

‘We have big ideas, but only small words’: The post-war geographies of civil society and community in Karen State

Scholars have argued for understanding the post-war as a liminal condition in which the war appears to be over, but where the legacies of war remain contested in everyday spaces and social relations. This article draws from and seeks to make two interrelated contributions to the literature on post-war development and civil society. First, whereas critical development scholars often portray civil society as a Western imposition on local contexts, this article advances a relational approach to post-war civil society as embedded within the local and extra-local power relations created by conflict and violence. Second, drawing from war ethnographies, this article discusses the production of positive socialities amidst war. In particular, this article proposes that warscape biographies – or how subjects narrate their lives as situated within specific times and places of war – can help scholars grasp subjects’ aspirations for redefining community through civil society. These also shed light on the tensions between donors and civil society; the former of which had a decontextualised and aspatial conception of war that did not reflect the heterogeneous and localised ways in which war had been experienced on the ground. This article draws from ethnographic research on mixed-authority in Karen State (2012–2021), shaped by a protracted conflict between the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Myanmar government. There, civil society actors sought to envision community in a way that transcended the KNU’s ethnonationalism and the Myanmar state’s ethnocentrism.

Metatranscriptomic responses and microbial degradation of background polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the coastal Mediterranean and Antarctica

Although microbial degradation is a key sink of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in surface seawaters, there is a dearth of field-based evidences of regional divergences in biodegradation and the effects of PAHs on site-specific microbial communities. We compared the magnitude of PAH degradation and its impacts in short-term incubations of coastal Mediterranean and the Maritime Antarctica microbiomes with environmentally relevant concentrations of PAHs. Mediterranean bacteria readily degraded the less hydrophobic PAHs, with rates averaging 4.72 ± 0.5 ng L h−1. Metatranscriptomic responses showed significant enrichments of genes associated to horizontal gene transfer, stress response, and PAH degradation, mainly harbored by Alphaproteobacteria. Community composition changed and increased relative abundances of Bacteroidota and Flavobacteriales. In Antarctic waters, there was no degradation of PAH, and minimal metatranscriptome responses were observed. These results provide evidence for factors such as geographic region, community composition, and pre-exposure history to predict PAH biodegradation in seawater.

Coyote Killing: Where Species and Identities Collide

Abstract Although predator killing is a global phenomenon, few studies interrogate the individual and societal drivers of choosing lethal versus non-lethal actions towards coyotes. Results here derive from 48 in situ, semi-structured interviews conducted during 2015–2017 with rural residential and agricultural landowners in the Foothills Parkland Region of Alberta, Canada. Interviews recorded landowner experiences with coyotes, and their perceptions, values, beliefs, animal husbandry practices, and actions towards coyotes. Invoking a critical geography perspective and grounded theory methods, we found the practice of coyote killing and anti-coyote sentiments to be deeply entangled with and mutually reconstituted by constructs of “masculinity,” “rurality,” and colonial settler identity. Coyote killing also appeared as a form of discursive power, arising from urban-rural tensions. Finally, geographies of local history, family, and community intersected with identity, gendered-labor, and power – placing coyotes in a vicious and ongoing cycle of oppression and violence.

Wealth of Tongues: Why Peripheral Regions Vote for the Radical Right in Germany

Why is support the radical right higher in some geographic locations than others? This article argues that what is frequently classified as the “rural” bases of radical-right support in previous research is in part the result of something different: communities that were in the historical “periphery” in the center–periphery conflicts of modern nation-state formation. Inspired by a classic state-building literature that emphasizes the prevalence of a “wealth of tongues”—or nonstandard linguistic dialects in a region—as a definition of the periphery, we use data from more than 725,000 geo-coded responses in a linguistic survey in Germany to show that voters from historically peripheral geographic communities are more likely to vote for the radical right today.

The effects of race and class on community-level stigmatization of opioid use and policy preferences.

With opioid use and overdose rates continuing to plague minority communities in the U.S., we explored whether a geographic community's racial composition and social class affect how opioid use in the community is stigmatized and what policy preferences arise in response. We use case vignettes in a randomized, between-subjects study (N=1478) with a nation-wide survey. The vignettes describe a community where opioids are harmfully used, varying whether the community was (1) wealthy or poor, (2) predominantly Black or White and (3) facing prevalent use of painkillers or heroin. We tested how these variables affect public stigmatization of opioid use (measured with ratings of responsibility, dangerousness, sympathy, concern, anger, and disappointment) preferred levels of social distance from communities with opioid use (measured with responses to questions about living, working, and interacting in the community), and policy preferences for responding to opioid use (measured with levels of support for providing a safe-consumption site in the community, treating drug use in the community punitively, treating drug use in the community as an illness, and funding drug treatment in the community through income redistribution). Compared to wealthy communities with opioid use, poor communities with opioid use were less stigmatized in terms of responsibility, sympathy, concern, anger, and disappointment; they were also met with less support for punitiveness, more support for treating drug use as an illness, and preferences for greater social distance. Compared to White communities with opioid use, Black communities with opioid use were less stigmatized in terms of responsibility, and they were met with stronger preferences to not live and work there and with reduced support for using income redistribution to provide drug treatment for people in the community. Poor-Black communities with opioid use were also perceived to be more dangerous than both poor-White and wealthy-Black communities with opioid use. These results point to class- and race-based territorial stigma affecting how communities with opioid use are judged and whether policies for providing communities with treatment are supported.