Geographical Exploration Research Articles

Geographical trace of the Yenisei Expedition of 1905: historical and modern significance

The little-known Yenisei Expedition of 1905 led by I.S. Sergeyev, K.V. Ivanov, and I.I. Islyamov is examined and described. Based on the study of archival documents, the preparation of the expedition in the highest state institutions of the Russian Empire and the specific circumstances of its journey from European seaports to the Russian river port in Yeniseisk are demonstrated. The significance of the expedition is analyzed in connection with its contemporary realities. An assessment of the importance of the waterway along the Yenisei River is also provided, which connects not only the South and North but also the West and East of Russia. The special role of certain participants, particularly I.I. Islyamov, who played a notable role in the geographical exploration of Russia but remained little-known to the general public and even many specialists, is emphasized.

Mapping a Blank Spot and Making Empty Spaces Geographic and Cartographic Ontology in Italian Topographic Mapping of the Southern Libyan Desert in the 1930s

This study explores the ontological assumptions of mapping as active processes, rather than passive representations and discusses the need for pragmatic guidelines in map-making, as maps only acquire meaning through their users’ minds and bodies. The paper presents historical examples of Italian colonial topographic mapping of the southern Libyan Desert during the 1930s. It emphasizes the interconnected histories of geographical exploration, social and cultural contexts, and technical practices. The paper argues that the ‘empty spaces’ on maps reflect intentional choices made by cartographers, not insufficient data. The performative nature and diverse sociocultural conditions of maps need to be considered to understand their meaning and use.

A geographical exploration of Aotearoa album covers

AbstractMusic and place are linked through many different interrelationships. Album covers play a part in these connections, influencing the experience of the music within by frequently evoking place. In Aotearoa New Zealand a sense of place is significant in music, but academic attention to the role of album covers in this sense of place is overdue. This research note addresses this gap and introduces themes and examples from a survey of Aotearoa album covers. Future attention and lines of enquiry are warranted, aided by the durability and indeed resurgence of vinyl as a musical format.

Frequency of Euroglyphus maynei sensitization in respiratory allergies: a real-life study with bioinformatic analysis and geographical exploration of allergen prevalence.

Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus and Dermatophagoides farinae belong to the family Pyroglyphidae (subfamily: "Dermatophagoidinae") and have the respective allergenic proteins of Der p1, Der p2, and Der p23 and Der f1 and Der f2. Euroglyphus maynei, belongs to the family Pyroglyphidae (subfamily: "Pyroglyphinae") and its main allergenic protein is Eur m1, a source of sensitization. Sensitization to D. pteronyssinus and D. farinae is assessed through skin tests, while sensitization to E. maynei is assessed less frequently. This experimental work aims to analyze the prevalence of sensitization to E. maynei in patients with respiratory allergies treated at M. Albanesi Allergy and Immunology Unit in Bari, Italy, and the sequence homology of major allergenic proteins of E. maynei with D. farinae and D. pteronyssinus was analyzed. In this real-life study, 65 patients were enrolled. In particular, patients with respiratory allergy were subjected to skin prick tests for common respiratory allergens, including Euroglyphus maynei. The sequence homology analysis was performed between the major allergenic proteins of E. maynei and those of D. pteronyssinus and D. farinae. Sensitization to E. maynei accounts for 41.5% of patients. All patients with E. maynei sensitization had concomitant sensitization to D. farinae and D. pteronyssinus. The analysis of sequence homology of Der p1 and Der f1 proteins with the sequence of Eur m1 protein demonstrated an identity of 84.4% and 86%, respectively. Nearly 50% of house dust mites-sensitized patients have a concomitant sensitization to E. maynei. The cross-sensitization could be due to Der f1, Der p1, and Eur m1 similarity.

Disability and gender in the history of geographical exploration: Understanding Isabella Bird Bishop as a disabled geographer

AbstractStudying the life and travels of the Victorian explorer Isabella Bird Bishop offers important insights into the history of disabled people within the discipline of geography. Bird Bishop is an important figure within geography's disciplinary history, as one of the first women admitted to the Royal Geographical Society in 1892. She also had a long‐standing spinal condition that intermingled with psychological symptoms. In studying how her disability (and contemporary understandings of her body) shaped her travels, this paper shows how disability interacted with Bird Bishop's racial and gender identity in shaping where and how she travelled and how she wrote about her experiences. By drawing attention to the role that disability played in justifying her travels and the positive effect travel had on her health, this paper highlights her generally positive experiences of geographical travel as a disabled person.

Understanding the Spatial Narratives of Puzzle Films Using Cognitive Maps

Spatial narratives are becoming increasingly significant in contextualizing geographical phenomena. Whereas many studies focus on spatial narratives of real spaces projected from the Earth’s surface, this article examines the imaginary spaces in the narrative of Hollywood puzzle films, arguing that cognitive maps are more effective in understanding and navigating these spaces. Through an analysis of well-known puzzle films, the article demonstrates how cognitive maps can encode imaginary spaces, draw the audience’s attention to key landmarks, and guide both the filmmaker and the audience through the film’s narrative. Beyond films, this study underscores the potential of cognitive maps in decoding complex space–time relationships in real-world context. By bridging the gap between cinematic imagination and geographical exploration, this article aims not only to inspire filmmakers but also to encourage geographers, cartographers, and GIScientists to look beyond their own fields and draw inspiration from other areas, such as cinematography, to envision a terra incognita that extends beyond the real world.

Prison geographies: Nine disciplinary approaches

AbstractMotivated by a critical concern for state‐sanctioned coercion, control, and containment across “free society,” geographers have extended Foucault's concept of “the carceral” to more and increasingly diffuse spaces and processes. In this paper, however, we aim to re‐center the prison in the carceral geographies literature, reasserting it as the sine qua non of the subfield. In doing so, we organize geographers' analysis of prisons into nine conceptual categories based on this journal's areas of geographical exploration: cultural, development, economic, environment, geographic information systems & quantitative, historical, political, social, and urban. In addition to providing a review of existing prison research in geography, we illustrate the diversity of disciplinary approaches to that most “complete and austere” of institutions.

Speaking Racism – Raciolinguistic Frontiers, Worth and Belonging in the Governing of Refugees in Norway

ABSTRACT This article explores the role that language requirements for residence and citizenship play in delineations of worth and belonging in the governing of refugees in Western Europe after 2015. In the past two decades residence and citizenship rights for migrants have increasingly become conditional on formalised language requirements. While language requirements embed promises of inclusion and opportunity, this framing skirts the ways in which they legitimate and reproduce racially charged inequalities. Based on rich ethnographic data from Norway, this article investigates how refugees encounter, perceive, and contest language requirements. By mobilising Kamran Khan’s notion of ‘raciolinguistic borders’ alongside Ann Laura Stoler’s notion of ‘interior frontiers’, I explore how language requirements are heard to ‘speak racism’. I argue that a political geography of language provides a timely and needed contribution to the geopolitical toolbox, and more specifically, to geographical explorations of the racial taxonomies of contemporary European border regimes.

Studying the Geographical explorations of the Portuguese and the Spanish in the 15th century

This article explores the dynamics of domination and subordination during the mid-15th century, marked by the Arab and Ottoman Empire's dominance in the Middle East, posing obstacles to European relations with China and India. In response, Western European nations, particularly Portugal and Spain, emerged as leaders in exploration, seeking alternative routes to bypass the challenges of the Middle East. Liberated from Muslim influence, these nations focused their efforts on discovering new sea routes to India and beyond. The narrative centers on Portuguese sailor Henry's role in planning expeditions to the Canary Islands, aiming to identify novel commercial routes for Portugal's development in Africa. Subsequently, the Spanish, influenced by Portugal's efforts, discovered new lands by employing Christopher Columbus. Columbus initially proposed his plan, "The Way to India," to the King of Portugal, but it was rejected. Turning to Spain in 1484, he secured the Queen's consent with the help of his shipbuilder brother, ultimately discovering America. Employing a descriptive-analytical research method, this article utilizes library research to delve into the historical background and explore the intricacies of European exploration during this transformative period.

European Journal of Geography (Year 2023): Reviewer Appreciation & Publication Recap

European Journal of Geography (Year 2023): Reviewer Appreciation & Publication Recap

Exploring the geographies of transnational higher education in China

AbstractThis paper contributes to debates about the globalisation of higher education by providing a pioneering geographical exploration of Chinese–foreign cooperation in running transnational higher education, or TNHE, programs. Departing from widespread neoliberal and postcolonial critiques of TNHE, which tend to emphasise liberal market forces and Anglo‐American hegemony in the circulation of academic knowledge, our study examines how the Chinese state’s developmental targets, strategic policies, and political–ideological considerations have shaped the evolutionary trajectory, geographical distribution, and cross‐border connections of China’s TNHE programs. We demonstrate that the place‐based development of TNHE is mediated by governments’ interventionist policies and embedded in existing higher education regimes, especially in the context of East Asian developmental states. By maintaining a higher education system dominated by public universities and by being the ultimate examination and approval authority, the Chinese government both determines the status of TNHE in the national higher education system, constrains the typologies and sources of knowledge flows, and shapes the national landscape of TNHE development. The territorial geographies of TNHE thus reflect complicated interactions between the state and the market, the global and the local, and economic and political/cultural forces.

Application of GIS technology in cross-border tourism cooperation planning. Taking the analysis of the spatial pattern of cross-border eco-tourism cooperation in the Altai Mountains region as an example

Since the 1960s, the application of GIS technology in the field of geography has led geography to the devel-opment path of informatization and digitization. GIS technology, which focuses on spatial information analysis and spatial data management, has become an important spatial system for geographic exploration. GIS technology has extremely important advantages in collecting, processing, simulating, analyzing and expressing geospatial data. Object: This paper takes the spatial pattern of cross-border tourism cooperation in the Altai Mountains region as the research object. Methods: The research methods are: the terrain analysis, three-dimensional scene simulation, data statistics, suitability analysis, visual domain analysis, transportation network analysis, and project site selection of GIS technology in tourism planning. Results: The presented research is analytical in nature. The specific application of GIS technology in tourism planning is discussed. Also, 7 types of GIS applications were considered in the paper. In summary, GIS is mainly composed of data input system, data management system, spatial analysis system and data output system. It has very important application value in tourism management and development.

The ‘deer‐men’ and the ‘bowhead‐men’: The colonial co‐optation of Arctic Indigenous knowledge within the ‘origins of the Inuit’ debates

AbstractDrawing on recent literatures that explore the complicated role of ‘Indigenous intermediaries’ within histories of geographical exploration, and bringing these into dialogue with research exposing the colonial nature of geographical knowledge, this article studies the ways in which information extracted from an Indigenous Arctic informant named Nocum was crucial in the formation of troubling geographical understandings regarding Inuit ‘origins’ and migration. The article analyses the extractive nature of the intellectual contributions offered by the American traveller and scholar William Healey Dall, and situates them amidst their troubling imperial and racialised context. The article concludes by arguing that geographers must continue to identify and reflect critically on the role of indigenous peoples within the historical (co)production of geographical knowledge, but that they must be equally attentive to the ways this knowledge was regularly used to inform and justify various forms of imperial intervention and colonial violence.

Diversifying the historical geography of exploration: Subaltern body work on British-led expeditions c.1850–1914

Knowledge production on Victorian and Edwardian expeditions depended on the embodied labour of subaltern individuals. Explorers frequently mention such work in their accounts, but they also manage their dependence on others through a variety of rhetorical techniques. I show that focusing on body work can foreground the contributions of subaltern individuals to the history of British geographical exploration. I do so through a critical reading of the published and private accounts of explorers as well as their visual sources. In focusing on these labour practices, this paper offers a new perspective on the historical geographies of exploration, attentive to subaltern contributions. More broadly, the paper encourages geographers to reflect on the embodied and caring labour on which geographical research depends and the devaluation of certain bodies and their labour. These issues are examined through new readings of three otherwise familiar case studies: Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke's Nile expeditions (1856–59 and 1860–63); Isabella Bird Bishop's travels in the Middle East, Japan, China, and Lesser Tibet (1878–1896); and Captain Scott's two Antarctic expeditions (1901–04 and 1911–13).

Geographical Exploration of the Underrepresentation of Ethnic Minority Cyclists in England

Cycling is encouraged as a means of sustainable urban transport, yet its uptake rate is uneven between different ethnic groups. The ethnic minority population in England is underrepresented as cyclists, but the reasons for this are unclear. Through linear regression and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), this research investigates the spatial distribution of the propensity to cycling among the ethnic minority population and the white population across England with the aim to identify the contributing factors toward the discrepancy of cycling rates between both groups and how these factors vary geographically. Results from OLS regression suggest that cycle rates are generally affected most by hilliness, the presence of school-age children, and income, with the presence of school-age children affecting the ethnic minority group and hilliness affecting the white group the most. The use of GWR revealed that income generally reduces cycle rates but has a positive impact in London for both groups. The length of cycleways and the length of 20 mph speed limit roads per unit area were statistically insignificant, but their local coefficients in GWR showed strong regional variations for both groups. The study also found that, with the exception of the level of income, ethnic minority cyclists are less sensitive to contributing factors than the white cyclists.

Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus as a Supreme Archetype of Renaissance Man

The paper assumes that the character of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus represents most of the characteristics of the Renaissance. After a short introduction, the paper starts reviewing some features of the Renaissance which are applicable to the character of Doctor Faustus, just like the revolt against religion and medieval standards; then, the researcher shifts to other essential features of Renaissance which are: spirit of adventure, geographical exploration and colonialism. Later, he continues exploring other properties of the Renaissance man which can be applied to the character of Faustus such as the lust for knowledge, the interest of Classic culture and the appearance of the earlier thoughts of nationalism and individualism.

Geographic Exploration of the Driving Forces of the NDVI Spatial Differentiation in the Upper Yellow River Basin from 2000 to 2020

Meteorological factors and human activities are important factors affecting vegetation change. The change in the Upper Yellow River Basin’s (UYRB’s) ecological environment greatly impacts the ecological environment in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. The purpose of this study was to evaluate remotely sensed imageries and vegetation indices as tools for accurately quantifying the driving forces of vegetation distribution. To accomplish this, we utilized the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to examine the temporal and spatial variability of the vegetation distribution in the UYRB between 2000 and 2020. Based on the geographic detector method, the spatial differentiation, driving force, interaction, and suitability of the NDVI were detected. From 2000 to 2020, the estimated annual NDVI value of the UYRB was 0.515, with notable geographic variation in the distribution. The NDVI showed an obvious upward trend with a rate of 0.038 per 10 years. The vegetation coverage significantly improved. However, the vegetation coverage at the source area of the Yellow River marginally deteriorated. The primary driving factors affecting the spatial distribution of the NDVI were yearly precipitation, elevation, soil type, vegetation type, and annual average temperature, with a predictive power of 47%, 46%, 44%, 41%, and 40%, respectively. The interplay of the components had a stronger impact on the NDVI, and the interaction between the yearly precipitation and the soil type had the highest predictive power, reaching 61%. Natural factors and human activities influence NDVI change, with natural factors playing a significant role. Therefore, we should continue to implement the project of returning farmland to forest (grass), increase the efficiency of vegetation precipitation use, and promote the growth of vegetation so that ecological restoration continues to be effectively improved.

Determination of Essential Element and Titanium Contents in Rocks using Flame Atomic and Molecular Absorption Spectrometry

Rocks contain a large number of elements such as Na, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, and Ti. The determination of those element contents is important in geological and geographical exploration as well as the original identification and classification of rocks. Currently, the analysis of the elemental composition of rocks can be carried out on equipments such as ICP-OES, ICP-MS,... However, in some laboratories with limited conditions, the analysis has many difficulties. In the present study, we analyzed rock samples after being treated by microwave using flame atomic and molecular absorption spectroscopy. The results showed that the content of elements in the range of Na (0.31 – 2.46%), K (1.38 – 3.71%), Ca (0.08 – 0.23%), Mg (0.16 – 0.69%), Fe (2.38 – 5.19) %), Mn(0.08 – 0.1%) and Ti(0.12 – 0.36%). The study provides a simple and cost-effective method for rock analysis.

EcoPhyloMapper: An r package for integrating geographical ranges, phylogeny and morphology

Abstract Spatial patterns of species richness, phylogenetic and morphological diversity are key to answering many questions in ecology and evolution. Across spatial scales, geographical and environmental features, as well as evolutionary history and phenotypic traits, are thought to play roles in shaping both local species communities and regional assemblages. By examining these geographical patterns, it is possible to infer how different axes of biodiversity influence one another, and how their interaction with abiotic factors has led to the spatial distribution of species assemblages—and their attributes—that we observe in the present. Although there has been interest in this area of research for some time, it has recently become more tractable to include multivariate shape data in such analyses. Shape information has the potential to provide a more direct measure of the functional morphology of species as compared to individual trait measurements and might be more relevant to understanding community composition. However, few tools currently exist to explore geographical patterns of both phylogenetic and shape diversity. We present the EcoPhyloMapper r package (epm) that aims to streamline the handling of geographical range polygons or point occurrences and integration of resulting species metacommunities with phylogenetic trees and morphological shape. Geographical maps can be generated that demonstrate spatial patterns in diversity metrics pertaining to phylogenetic similarity, multivariate shape similarity and disparity, and combinations of the two. Patterns of taxonomic, phylogenetic and shape disparity turnover can also be visualized. Biodiversity indices summarized across grid cells can easily be exported to GIS software as well as to other r packages that specialize in community assembly or geospatial statistics. This r package will facilitate the geographical exploration of multivariate shape data in concert with phylogenetic diversity, which will, in turn, support macroecological research exploring how species assemblages are structured. Furthermore, this r package should prove useful across a wide range of macroecological applications that extend beyond the study of morphology.

Knowledge and power: the role of astronomy in the territorial expansion of Chile, 1883-1890

The article analyzes the role played by the National Astronomical Observatory (Observatorio Astronómico Nacional) in the territorial expansion of Chile at the end of the nineteenth century, through the relationship with three geographical explorations associated with this process. It is proposed that the Observatory played a central role in these geographic explorations, helping to obtain precise geographic coordinates to produce accurate maps of the territories annexed to the north and south of Chile. The results allow us to affirm that the National Astronomical Observatory provided strategic services during territorial expansion, and geography was an important part of its institutional scientific work.