Geographical Landscape Research Articles

From an ‘Imagined Landscape’ to Iconic Destination: Bollywood Film and Its Impact on Tourism

Tourism destinations are a product of the ‘brand personality’ of the space and depend on the cultural influence and collective consciousness. The tourists look for the emotional connection with the destination and re-imagine the self as part of larger community. Thus people’s choice of travelling gets influenced by the representation of the landscape on the screen enveloped in symbolic connotation, narrative emotion and cultural nostalgia. Being one of the biggest film industries all over the world Bollywood, has its own impact over the audience of India and also cater to the global market with specific agenda. The constant construction, reconstruction and representation of space in Bollywood films through its production promote ideology of consumption. With its ever growing market Bollywood film makes an impact over Indian Diaspora. The search for root and identity inspire the NRIs to travel back to the ‘Homeland’. Their journey back to new modern India is a voyage from West to East, Modern to Tradition, ‘Others’ to ‘Self’. Each space on screen put forward interpretations, specific to the character, local and identity. Travelling to a geographical landscape gets attached with the process of self discovery. The onscreen emotion engages in a conversation with the off screen domain as tourist destination. The Bollywood stars become the face of tourism industry. This paper critically examines the impact of film on tourism. How the Bollywood promotes tourism, plays a huge role in constructing the collective identity and influence the economic and social development.

Conservation, transformation, and enhancement of Roman theatres and amphitheatres

The architectural heritage of the Classical age, present both in Italy and in the other Mediterranean countries, has been subject over the centuries to different phenomena that have caused either its abandonment or the continuation of its use, its transformation or the loss of its integrity. These processes have ensured the survival of these buildings through a continuous integration in urban and cultural activities. The paper presents the results of research aimed at the preservation of this heritage, suggesting strategies for its enhancement that proposes a project for tourist fruition according to theatres, amphiteatres and their cultural and geographical landscape.

Fluctuation of ecological niches and geographic range shifts along chile pepper's domestication gradient.

Domestication is an ongoing well-described process. However, while many have studied the changes domestication causes in plant genetics, few have explored its impact on the portion of the geographic landscape in which the plants exist. Therefore, the goal of this study was to understand how the process of domestication changed the geographic space suitable for chile pepper (Capsicum annuum) in its center of origin (domestication). C. annuum is a major crop species globally whose center of domestication, Mexico, has been well-studied. It provides a unique opportunity to explore the degree to which ranges of different domestication classes diverged and how these ranges might be altered by climate change. To this end, we created ecological niche models for four domestication classes (wild, semiwild, landrace, modern cultivar) based on present climate and future climate scenarios for 2050, 2070, and 2090. Considering present environment, we found substantial overlap in the geographic niches of all the domestication classes. Yet, environmental and geographic aspects of the current ranges did vary among classes. Wild and commercial varieties could grow in desert conditions, while landraces could not. With projections into the future, habitat was lost asymmetrically, with wild, semiwild, and landraces at greater risk of territorial declines than modern cultivars. Further, we identified areas where future suitability overlap between landraces and wilds is expected to be lost. While range expansion is widely associated with domestication, we found little support of a constant niche expansion (either in environmental or geographical space) throughout the domestication gradient in chile peppers in Mexico. Instead, particular domestication transitions resulted in loss, followed by capturing or recapturing environmental or geographic space. The differences in environmental characterization among domestication gradient classes and their future potential range shifts increase the need for conservation efforts to preserve landraces and semiwild genotypes.

Развитие учения В.Р. Вильямса по научным основам луговодства (к 160-летию академика Василия Робертовича Вильямса)

The ideas of academician V.R. Williams served as the basis for the development of meadow science and meadow farming in our country. He gave a comprehensive assessment of the meadow as an element of the geographical agricultural landscape. He was interested in studies of meadow flora, its habitat, soils, natural meadows, and ways to improve them. At the Department of Soil Science and Agriculture of the Moscow Agricultural Institute, Professor V.R. Williams taught courses on meadow farming and forage plant culture. Research on meadow science and meadow farming was the foundation for the creation of a demonstration farm, a station, and the State Meadow Institute in 1922. Throughout the history of the Institute's development, they have remained and remain among its most important areas of scientific research. V.R. Williams proved the leading role of perennial grasses in the vital activity of meadow communities, in the productive and soil-forming processes. He introduced the concept of the types of tillering of cereals — rhizomatous, loose and dense. In the conditions of cultivated grassland, due to the long-term preservation of the first and second stages of the development of the meadow (rhizome and loose shrub), stable productive longevity of phytocenoses is ensured. An important merit of V.R. Williams is the study of the sod-forming process — the interaction of meadow vegetation with soil. The teaching of V.R. Williams about the turf process was a prerequisite for the development of a grass-field system of agriculture, as well as for the creation of short-term sown grass stands in grassland crop rotations.

Undertaking wildlife surveys with unmanned aerial vehicles in rugged mountains with dense vegetation: A tentative model using Sichuan Snub-nosed monkeys in China

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have broad applications. However, their use for wildlife surveys in rugged mountains with dense vegetation is uncommon. Therefore, developing appropriately designed methods, selecting suitable facilities, establishing effective monitoring processes, and managing databases that align with a region’s distinctive geographic landscapes, environments, ecology, and habitats are essential. This study focuses on the Giant Panda National Park in China’s densely vegetated Qinling Mountains to carry out surveys using UAVs to assess the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey population size (Rhinopithecus roxellana) over an area of 30,000 ha. The results indicate that eight distinct groups were identified, totaling 648–755 individuals. Thus, this study offers proof-of-principle for using UAVs for surveying wildlife in remote mountainous regions with complex landscapes and dense vegetation and demonstrates how UAVs can be used in animal monitoring and conservation. Furthermore, the study highlights the broader potential application of UAVs in other remote mountainous regions, where animal demographic information is urgently needed to establish database-driven conservation strategies.

A mineral listening: digital soundscapes of geological time

Composed between 2020 and 2022 by Guillaume Malaret, Érodé is a musical piece created from field recordings at Eagles Nest, a tidal island in Australia’s Bunurong National Marine Park. Based on an interview with Guillaume Malaret, this article addresses several issues concerning digital representations, renderings, and ecologies of geological, hydrological, and sonic spaces, as well as the cultural geographies of landscape, embodiment, and affect. We explore the potentials of sonic composition and geophonic recordings for mediating bodily connections with difficult-to-imagine processes, such as environmental change over deep time. Our dialogue throughout this article contributes to emerging themes in digital ecological research by focusing on the materialities of digitization, digitally mediated creative practices in sonic geography, and the importance of different affective registers for comprehending environmental transformation.

“Topophrenia”: Emotional Shaping in Migrant Geographic Landscape: O Pioneers! and Peacock Cries at the Three Gorges as the Center

Immigrants, placed in the mixed space of the post-globalization era, are constantly undergoing geographical displacement, life transplantation and nonvisualized emotional experiences, embedded with strong “topophrenia”. They face the shackles of the new and old land. From Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! in the early 20th century to Peacock Cries at the Three Gorges by Hong Ying in the late 20th century, they depict segregated migrant geographical landscapes based on diverse forms of land and rivers respectively, giving rise to different forms of “migration lines”: the “dividing line” in Nebraska and the “water line” in the Three Gorges Dam area of the Yangtze River. Both double lines conceal the authors’ immigrant experience and their special anti-isolation, and finally complete social gender and identity confirmation. Through the counterpoint writing of geographical landscapes and the shaping of dual emotions, multicultural forms are continuously activated by immigrant communities. In this context, wishing to provide a novel perspective and interpretation path for immigrant literature, it will bridge the intersectional commonality between Chinese and foreign immigrants, and compose the immigrant song of the times.

A Study on Reasons for Tourist Visits in India

The advancements in travel and communication have brought distant countries and people closer than ever before it has resulted in a keen desire in people to travel different parts of the world. International tourism influence, their social contact impact enhances to quality of life of the local people. Consequently, there has been a considerable increase in the volume of traffic of tourists. Indian geographical, cultural and diverse landscape attracts travelers for a multitude of reasons. It refers to incoming foreign tourists entering to India to visit tourist destinations. Covid-19, has severely hit the entire economy wherein the travel and tourism being the worst affected all across the globe. Recovery measures are being taken in terms of lifting travel restrictions putting gradually recovered the situation from 2021. The paper is based on the based on the secondary data, particularly Government of India reports.

Genetic connectivity constrained by natural barriers in a key agricultural pest: insights from mitochondrial DNA analysis

In the context of anthropogenic global change, the study of landscape effects on species movement has garnered increasing attention. Landscape genetics offer indirect yet attractive means to capture species dispersal events across generations and their interaction with landscapes. However, landscape genetic patterns tend to exhibit significant variations across taxa and rely on the molecular makers adopted. Here, we investigated how landscapes influence population connectivity of an important tea pest, Empoasca onukii, using mitochondrial DNA sequences of 1,518 individuals from 57 locations in mainland China and offshore islands. We analyzed the inter-population genetic divergence and integrated multiple models to explicitly quantify their association with geographic distance, environmental heterogeneity, and landscape barriers. Analyses revealed a reduction in gene flow on islands, along the Yangtze River, and across mountainous regions of Western China. Models explicitly detected the predominant contributions of topographic complexity to population divergence and evidenced that mountains may serve as effective dispersal barriers for E. onukii. These results suggest that the limited gene exchange resulting from low population connectivity among mountains might generate the observed patterns of mitochondrial genetic variations, which contrasts the climate-related pattern previously observed on microsatellites. The findings enhance our comprehension of the evolutionary and epidemic dynamics of E. onukii, and highlight the demand of considering species-specific traits when studying population landscape genetic patterns. Moreover, the study emphasizes the necessity of employing multiple molecular markers to comprehensively elucidate landscape effects on population connectivity across diverse species for valuable insights into biodiversity conservation, pest control, and other management decisions.

The CAP (Common Agricultural Policy): A Short History of Crises and Major Transformations of European Agriculture

The purpose of this article is to study the development of EU agricultural policies from a historical reconstruction perspective. The 1957 Treaty of Rome, the basis of today’s European Union, gave birth to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in order to coordinate production across different European countries, to ensure food self-sufficiency and the certainty of supply to member states. Over time, several choices, as well as certain subsidies and policies (e.g. milk quotas) have been called into question as part of the liberalisation of the common agricultural market. Others persist, but continue to favour the unequal management of funds in favour of large companies specialised in intensive agriculture and livestock farming. These choices represent a loss in terms of both biodiversity and traditional farming knowledge and know-how. The decisive changes of the CAP at the institutional level have transformed the socio-economic as well as geographical landscape of Europe. It should be added that with the current crises—the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the ecological crises—the entire model is being called into question. Consequently, this article, after providing a brief overview, aims to reconstruct the common agricultural policies. It then provides an explanatory framework in quantitative terms of the French and Italian agricultural sectors to highlight what are, in the authors’ opinion, the limits of the CAP, even in the face of the crises mentioned above.

A Novel Integrated Spatiotemporal-Variable Model of Landscape Changes in Traditional Villages in the Jinshaan Gorge, Yellow River Basin

Spatiotemporal studies of landscape pattern evolution in traditional villages are beneficial for addressing complex urbanization and global climate change. Using the traditional villages of Jiaxian and Linxian in the Jinshaan Gorge of the Yellow River Basin, this study employed a three-dimensional (3D) analysis involving three spatial scales (macro, meso, and micro), temporal scales (past, present, and future), and variables (humanity, society, and nature) based on the methods of spatiotemporal data analysis (SDA), geographic information system, remote sensing, and landscape pattern index (LPI) by Fragstats. On the macro scale, a significant turning point in ecological conservation awareness was indicated by LPI and SDA. Urban and rural construction land continuously increased because of urbanization. Plowland, grassland, and woodland were the main influencing factors in the evolution of rural settlements, with a 0.42% cumulative transformation rate. On the meso scale, the interactions and mutual promotion of mountain and aquatic environments, aquatic facilities, agricultural production, and cultural heritage have shaped the socioeconomic dimensions of evolution. On the micro scale, with urbanization, some traditional humanistic spaces have lost their original functions. A novel spatiotemporal-variable quantitative model explored the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of human–land coupling, which can be used for the sustainable development of river basins worldwide.

Analysis of spatial–temporal evolution trends and influential factors of desert-oasis thermal environment in typical arid zone: The case of Turpan–Hami region

As a typical geographic landscape unit in the arid zone of northwest China, the distribution of the thermal environment in the substratum of the desert-oasis is of great significance to the monitoring of the ecological environment and the quality of human habitat in the region. The purpose of this research is to reveal the spatial–temporal evolution pattern of the thermal environment of the desert–oasis in the Turpan–Hami region from 2005 to 2020 and its trend changes, and to investigate the relationship between natural and human factors and the thermal environment and to conduct a long time series analysis. Firstly, the accuracy of MODIS land surface temperature (LST) data combined with site data was verified. Secondly, the mean-standard deviation method is used to identify desert heat island and oasis cold island zones. Again, the spatial–temporal distribution and change trends of thermal environment are explored by using standard deviation ellipse and spatial autocorrelation combined with land use/land cover (LULC) types. Finally, based on the multi-source remote sensing data, the natural factors and human factors are selected to explore their correlation with the thermal environment using Pearson correlation analysis. The results show that (1) the desert heat island zones are distributed in the desert areas on the periphery of urban built-up areas in Gaochang District, Shanshan County and Yizhou District of Hami Region. The oasis cold island zones are concentrated in the urban built-up areas of Gaochang District and Yizhou District, mainly because the vegetation coverage of urban built-up areas is higher than that of the peripheral desert areas. (2) The spatial development characteristics of the extremely high temperature (EHT) zone and the high temperature (HT)zone from 2005 to 2020 are “southeast-northeast-northwest” and “southeast-northwest” respectively, and the area of construction land 16a increased by 0.31%. This indicates that the spatial evolution of the thermal environment is closely related to the LULC and the degree of urbanization development. (3) From a four–period image with P < 0.001 and Z > 2.58, the thermal environment displays a high positive spatial correlation with Moran's I values of 0.45, 0.54, 0.47, and 0.45. (4) Temperature (Tem), downward longwave radiation (LWdown), and nighttime light intensity (NPP) all exhibited positive correlations with the LST and are significant in the desert region (p < 0.05); The albedo exhibited negative correlations with the LST and is significant in the grassland and woodland regions (p < 0.05).

System-level feedbacks of active fire regimes in large landscapes

BackgroundClimate is a main driver of fire regimes, but recurrent fires provide stabilizing feedbacks at several spatial scales that can limit fire spread and severity—potentially contributing to a form of self-regulation. Evaluating the strength of these feedbacks in wildland systems is difficult given the spatial and temporal scales of observation required. Here, we used the REBURN model to directly examine the relative strengths of top-down and bottom-up drivers of fire over a 3000-year simulation period, within a 275,000-ha conifer-dominated landscape in north central Washington State, USA.ResultsWe found strong support for top-down and bottom-up spatial and temporal controls on fire patterns. Fire weather was a main driver of large fire occurrence, but area burned was moderated by ignition frequencies and by areas of limited fuels and fuel contagion (i.e., fire fences). Landscapes comprised of >40% area in fire fences rarely experienced large fire years. When large fires did occur during the simulation period, a recovery time of 100–300 years or more was generally required to recover pre-fire vegetation patterns.ConclusionsSimulations showed that interactions between fire weather, fuel contagion, topography, and ignitions manifest variability in fire size and severity patch size distributions. Burned and recovering vegetation mosaics provided functional stabilizing feedbacks, a kind of metastability, which limited future fire size and severity, even under extreme weather conditions. REBURN can be applied to new geographic and physiographic landscapes to simulate these interactions and to represent natural and culturally influenced fire regimes in historical, current, or future climatic settings.

Spatial distribution and influencing factors of high-quality tourist attractions in Shandong Province, China.

Optimizing the spatial layout of high-quality tourist attractions is of great significance in the sustainable development of the tourism industry. This work employs the ArcGIS spatial analysis tool to study the form, equality, and density of the spatial distribution of the 892 3A+ tourist attractions (high-quality tourist attractions hereafter) in Shandong Province, China. It also examines the factors influencing the spatial distribution of tourist attractions from the perspectives of geographic features and landscapes, culture and heritage, socioeconomic development, and transportation. We therefore find the following: 1) High-quality tourist attractions in Shandong Province have obvious clustering in spatial distribution with the high-density areas mainly concentrated in Qingdao, Jining, Jinan, Tai'an and other cities. Influenced by resource endowment and economic development, the two major geographical areas in Central Shandong and Jiaodong Peninsula have the most concentrated distribution of high-quality tourist attractions. 2) The distribution of high-quality tourist attractions shows a southwest‒northeast clustering direction; Qingdao is a high-high clustering area, and Heze is a low-high clustering area with low uniformity of spatial distribution and obvious spatial divergence. 3) Tourist attractions show an obvious "N" type high-density distribution belt and nuclear density distribution across the three existing agglomeration centers in the Jining-Tai'an intersection, Binzhou-Dongying intersection, and Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay coast. 4) Topography, climate conditions, history and culture are intrinsic factors affecting the spatial distribution of tourist attractions, while socioeconomic and transportation conditions are external requirements for the development thereof; collectively, they constrain the spatial distribution of high-quality tourist attractions.

Geographic disparities of cardiovascular and cancer mortality in the USA: 1981-2019.

Cardiovascular and cancer mortality are the two leading causes of death in the developed world including the USA. However, mortality trends for these diseases are highly dynamic, and the geographic landscape is in transition. We analyze patterns of mortality improvement at county level during recent decades focusing on mortality decline and geographic diversity. We grouped age-adjusted mortality rates of cardiovascular and cancer diseases from CDC WONDER for 2959US counties into 3-year time periods to improve reliability. We calculated percent mortality decrease between 1981-83 and 2016-19 for both causes to quantify mortality improvements for counties. Using standard deviation as an index of disparities, place-based cancer mortalities were 68% larger than cardiovascular disparities. Significantly, 566US counties had same or higher rates of cancer mortality in 2019 as in 1981. The geographic distribution of mortality improvement in either cause tends to favor largely populated areas along coasts. Less-populated, rural places in the interior and southeastern regions were experiencing less improvement. At the county level, large place-based disparities exist for both causes of death with the magnitude of disparities being substantially larger for the reduction in cancer deaths. Put differently, place matters, more for cancer than cardiovascular mortality.

Advance Care Planning in Indonesia: Current state and future prospects

Indonesia is a low-middle income country in Southeast Asia, as well as the world's fourth most populous and largest archipelagic nation. Indonesia has approximately 1,300 ethnic groups that speak 800 different languages and are typically collectivist and religiously devout. With an aging population and an increasing number of cancer patients, palliative care in the country remains scarcely available, disproportionally distributed, and underfunded. All of these factors (economic level, geographical and cultural landscapes, and palliative care level of development) pose a considerable impact on the adoption of advance care planning in Indonesia. Nonetheless, recent advocacy initiatives promise some hopes in advance care planning in Indonesia. Furthermore, local studies suggested opportunities to implement advance care planning, particularly through capacity building and a culturally sensitive approach to it. This article describes the present situation of advance care planning in Indonesia, including its challenges and opportunities.

An evaluation of isolation by distance and isolation by resistance on genetic structure of the Persian squirrel (Sciurus anomalus) in the Zagros forests of Iran

AbstractFor the conservation of wild species, it is important to understand how landscape change and land management can affect gene flow and movement. Landscape genetic analyses provide a powerful approach to infer effects of various landscape factors on gene flow, thereby informing conservation actions. The Persian squirrel is a keystone species in the woodlands and oak forests of Western Asia, where it has experienced recent habitat loss and fragmentation. We conducted landscape genetic analyses of individuals sampled in the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran (provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Ilam), focusing on the evaluation of isolation by distance (IBD) and isolation by resistance (IBR), using 16 microsatellite markers. The roles of geographical distance and landscape features including roads, rivers, developed areas, farming and agriculture, forests, lakes, plantation forests, rangelands, shrublands, and rocky areas of varying canopy cover, and swamp margins on genetic structure were quantified using individual‐based approaches and resistance surface modeling. We found a significant pattern of IBD but only weak support for an effect of forest cover on genetic structure and gene flow. It seems that geographical distance is an important factor limiting the dispersal of the Persian squirrel in this region. The results of the current study inform ongoing conservation programs for the Persian squirrel in the Zagros oak forest.

Monitoring of the daily printed newspapers of the Western Balkans for the coverage of the events in the Russia-Ukraine war with special emphasis on their cover page

The coverage of the war in Ukraine has become an important aspect in understanding global politics and the new world order. Given the heightened interest in coverage among regions directly affected by this war, this paper offers a regional overview of events in the Russia-Ukraine war over a four-month period. The paper examines daily printed newspapers in the Western Balkans, providing a comprehensive analysis of the geographic landscape. The data was collected from equivalent functional media through a strict and systematic selection of news related to the war in Ukraine. Media sources were selected using the snowball sampling method, beginning with Albanian newspapers and expanding to include all the Western Balkans countries. The study analyzed cover page headlines from two daily print newspapers in five Western Balkans countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. In these newspapers, the headlines were analyzed in terms of the space they occupied, their objectivity, subjectivity, and bias toward one of the parties in war. The main findings of this paper reveal that a significant number of news headlines are presented in a sensational manner. In terms of objectivity and subjectivity, five newspapers published objective headlines while the other five published subjective ones. However, the percentage of objectivity and subjectivity varies from country to country and from newspaper to newspaper. As for bias, the majority of newspapers lean towards Ukraine. Our findings are comparable and can be proven at any time.

Geopoetics of Belozerye in Book ‘Journey to Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery’ by S. P. Shevyrev

The article analyzes S. P. Shevyrev’s book ‘Journey to Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery’ and focuses on the geopoetics of the Belozerye region. The novelty of the study lies in its use of geopoetic paradigm as a tool for analysis and its examination of a relatively understudied work. The relevance of the study is due to the growing interest in literary geography. The article presents an exploration of the spatial and sacred imagery of Belozerye as a local text of Russian North. It argues that Shevyrev’s geopoetic image of Belozerye is characterized by two distinctive features: ‘frontier’ and ‘sacredness’. The former highlights the region as a cultural and territorial ‘frontier’ of Russia, while the latter portrays it as a spiritual center, the ‘heart’ of Russian spiritual and religious culture. The authors of the study emphasize that this antinomic pair constitutes a characteristic feature of Belozerye as a local text of Russian culture. The article also examines the poetics of geographical (landscape) and sacred (monastery, church) objects in Shevyrev’s book, emphasizing how the discovery of the value-laden content of geocultural imagery contributes to the formation of artistic generalization.

Structural and semantic characteristics of the names of military facilities (based on the names of the barracks of the German Armed Forces)

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of one of the subdivisions of the onyms of the military sphere - the names of the barracks of the Armed Forces of Germany. Due to the topographical relevance of these military facilities, it is proposed to qualify these names as a subtype of military toponyms - military oikodomonyms. With the help of a structural morphological analysis, the basic models of the names of the barracks of the Bundeswehr have been established. The structure of the onyms of this type (compound word or phrase) contains the obligatory component “Kaserne”. As an attribute in their composition are both common nouns and proper names with an extensive associative-cultural background. Common names in this case most often turn out to be military terms. Proper names are represented mainly by toponyms (khoronyms, oronyms potonyms, limnonyms) and anthroponyms, more rarely mythonyms, ethnonyms. Anthroponyms, as a rule, are memorials that refer to the memory of individuals significant to the Bundeswehr tradition. In connection with a critical rethinking of the historical heritage in the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany, the process of re-checking and renaming the names of the barracks has been initiated: the barracks named after the Wehrmacht and Reichswehr officers receive distinguished names or the names of the German soldiers who died in the line of duty. As a result of the analysis of the onomastic functions of the names of the barracks of the Bundeswehr, the functions specific to them have been identified: the educational, the ideological and the advertising. An analysis of the names of the barracks of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany leads to the conclusion that these names reflect the diversity of the geographical landscape and the history of culture, science and technology, as well as the German Armed Forces themselves. The functional and structural originality of military oikodomonyms states the necessity of further study of military onyms, which may be the subject of study of military onomastics research.