Human-environment Geography Research Articles

Making the energy connection: A review of the geographies of high-voltage transmission

Energy is a resurgent topic in geography and cognate fields, but its theoretical development and empirical exploration have been uneven. I argue that centering transmission as an analytical lens — rather than treating it as incidental to extraction, generation, and consumption — brings the multi-scalar spatial politics of energy systems into the foreground through attention to circulation. This article reviews work on transmission from energy geographies, science and technology studies, and the histories of energy, technology, and the environment, identifying four main themes. First, transmission is used as a lens to examine larger energy metabolisms and how the circulation of electricity entrenches spatial relations. Second, transmission is an instrument of state territorialization, both within and across borders. Third, transmission, as a particular form of electricity capital, is subject to specific regimes of accumulation and regulation. Finally, transmission lines can become objects of social contestation that entangle multi-scalar politics of energy transition, electrification, and development. The article concludes by identifying areas for further research — empirical, theoretical, and policy-oriented — through which scholarly attention to transmission can inform energy geographies, energy studies, and human-environment geography more broadly.

Impact of open educational resources on student performance in an introductory Geography course

ABSTRACT There is a growing body of evidence that Open Educational Resources (OERs) are a viable alternative to traditional “for cost” teaching materials. This paper provides a reflection on the process and outcomes of developing and implementing OER within an introduction Human-Environment Geography lecture-laboratory course. Evidence is further provided in support of improvements to the academic performance and completion rates of students enrolled in the course after the implementation of OERs over a period of 4–6 years. Results of the study indicate students’ academic performance significantly increased once OERs were incorporated into the classroom compared to the use of traditional materials purchased by the students. The rate of student withdrawal also was significantly less once OERs were implemented. The improvements to students’ academic performance and retention occurred despite OER being only used in the laboratory component of the course, suggesting that even a partial implementation of OERs can still have significant positive effects. The use of OERs can be considered as a legitimate option to increasing retention and student academic success in the Geography classroom.

Unsettling Race, Nature, and Environment in Geography

What might it mean to “unsettle” our disciplinary understanding of race, nature, and the environment? In this introduction to the 2023 Special Issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers—focused on Race, Nature, and the Environment—we reflect on the meaning and practice of unsettling in a time of climate crisis, toxic legacies, uneven development, state violence, mass extinctions, carceral logics, and racial injustices that shape—and are shaped by—the (re)production of nature. We note the ascendancy of critical scholarship on race and racialization in Anglo-American geography; its uneven diffusion and unmet challenges; and the unstoppable force of insurgent thinking, abolition geography, critical race theory, Black and Indigenous geographies, scholar activism, and environmental justice praxis in taking hold and transforming the discipline. The sixteen articles in this special issue embody different ways to “unsettle” disciplinary thought across the vibrant fields of political ecology and human–environment geography. We discuss how the articles collectively grapple with timely questions of land, water, territory, and place-making; render visible the spatial and socioecological reproduction of power and violence by capital and the state; and make space for the enduring politics of struggle on multiple registers—body, home, classroom, park, city, community, region, and world.

Infectious addictions: Geographies of colliding epidemics

Medical geography and health geography have made significant contributions to studies of human health by addressing the spatial patterns of disease exposure, location of health care services, and place-specific processes producing health and wellbeing. Human geography and human-environment geography have also contributed with emerging attention to the body, uncertainty, and health and environment interactions. What remains understudied are the co-occurrence of multiple disease patterns, including the relationships between infectious disease and addiction. We review geographic research on infectious disease and addiction to advance a theoretical framework that emphasizes the centrality of complexity, uncertainty, difference, and care in shaping human health.

Human-Environment Thinking and K-12 Geography Education

Pollution issues, anthropogenic climate change, and biodiversity declines, formerly local in scope, accumulate to threaten crossing planetary boundaries and tipping Earth’s system to an uninhabitable state. The human-environment identity is an unsung cornerstone of geography that can educate upcoming generations of citizens about trends over time, current conditions, and pathways to a more desirable future. The geography education community should develop and apply human-environment thinking through tools like timelines and big ideas. We hope the geographic thoughts presented herein will provide a scholarly rationale for K-12 educators to consider as they design curricula to share human-environment geography with students.

Migration matters: How migration is critical to contemporary human–environment geography

AbstractHuman migration plays a critical role in numerous contemporary environmental concerns including global climate change and environmental justice. This review characterizes the ways migration is critical to contemporary human–environment geography. We delineate four themes from the literature based on (a) how migration affects the environment; (b) how the environment and/or environmental events affect migration; (c) how migration produces uneven environmental benefits and burdens; and (d) how environmental displacement/dispossession produces migration and vice versa. We articulate five recommendations for a research agenda that integrates migration processes, recognizes migration as a heterogeneous process, and approaches human–environment interactions holistically and non‐deterministically.

An introduction to human-environment geography: local dynamics and global processes

Notes on the Authors ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi Part I: Fundamentals of Human Environment Geography 1 1 Introduction: A Geographic Perspective on Human Environment Interactions 3 2 The Politics of Nature 31 3 The Biophysical Environment 47 Part II: Contemporary Perspectives in Human Environment Geography 87 4 Cultural and Political Ecology: Local Human Environment Interactions in a Global Context 89 5 Environmental History 111 6 Hazards Geography and Human Vulnerability 137 7 Environmental Justice: The Uneven Distribution of People, Pollution, and Environmental Opportunity 157 Part III: Thematic Issues in Human Environment Geography 189 8 Climate, Atmosphere, and Energy 191 9 The Population Consumption Technology Nexus 227 10 Agriculture and Food Systems 255 11 Biodiversity, Conservation, and Protected Areas 285 12 Water Resources and Fishing Livelihoods 309 Part IV: Bridging Theory and Practice 341 13 Geographic Research 343 14 Conclusion: Making a Difference 375 Index 389

Migration, Acculturation, and Environmental Values: The Case of Mexican Immigrants in Central Iowa

Human–environment geography and geographic research on migration have largely been treated as separate scholarly spheres. Meanwhile, even as recent immigration exerts dynamic changes on American culture, relatively little scholarly work addresses immigrants’ attitudes toward environmental issues. In this article, we address the following questions: How do Mexican immigrants perceive and understand the environment and environmental problems? How do environmental values shift or become modified during the process of acculturation in the United States? To answer these questions, we use the results of surveys conducted with Mexican immigrants and their kin in central Iowa. We develop an interdisciplinary theoretical framework based on a modified concept of “environmentality” that incorporates insights from research on environmental values, immigration and acculturation, political ecology, and environmental justice. Based on this analysis, we find that immigrants become socialized to new norms, in part, through environmental practices. They are readily accepting of some U.S. norms around environmental thought and behavior (especially with respect to maintaining public spaces) but critical of others (e.g., the excessive materialism of American consumerism and its impacts on the environment and society). Immigrants draw on their experience of life in Mexico as they acculturate to find the right balance between protecting the environment and looking after human needs.

Beyond Knee-Jerk Environmental Thinking: Teaching Geographic Perspectives on Conservation, Preservation and the Hetch Hetchy Valley Controversy

Attention to scale, use of space and connections between places and regions are general, yet distinctive, geographical concepts that may be employed in introductory level human-environment geography courses to distinguish them from other environmental studies offerings. This article demonstrates how attention to the aforementioned concepts provides fresh insight into the notions of exploitation, conservation and preservation for many environmental studies students. Furthermore, it is suggested that the Hetch Hetchy Valley controversy, commonly used in many US environmental studies textbooks to demonstrate the difference between conservation and preservation, is actually quite problematic when critically assessed from alternative geographic perspectives.

Whither Parity? The Need for a Comprehensive Curriculum in Human-Environment Geography

If human-environment geography is central to the discipline, then human-environment courses should be a sizable segment of the undergraduate curriculum. Undergraduate educational offerings are inadequate, however, meaning that geography departments are shortchanging their majors, missing opportunities to attract and inform the general student body, and failing to meet the needs of future K–12 educators. Unless geography provides satisfactory human-environment education, it will likely have much less impact on twenty-first-century environmental science.

Contested Identities: Human-Environment Geography and Disciplinary Implications in a Restructuring Academy

(2002). Contested Identities: Human-Environment Geography and Disciplinary Implications in a Restructuring Academy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Vol. 92, No. 1, pp. 52-74.