Geography Of North America Research Articles

North of Carmel: Jeffers, Bringhurst, and the Ecological View

This article proposes that the works of the modern American poet Robinson Jeffers and those of the contemporary Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst are linked by an ecological ethos. Although specific instances of Jeffers’s influence occur here and there in Canadian literary history, the connection between Jeffers and Bringhurst is more substantial, if not immediately obvious. It consists in an aesthetic and intellectual affinity—in a shared poetic terrain that is a conceptual equivalent of the western North American geography they have in common. (Jeffers was a Californian poet; Bringhurst is often associated with the Pacific Northwest.) The poets are comparably concerned with wilderness, which in their works is not always remote or uninhabited but rather characterized by the peripheral place of humanity. In attending to parallels between the authors’ works, the article suggests that reading across the border between Canada and the United States brings into view significant literary connections.

A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History by Michael Hoberman

Reviewed by: A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History by Michael Hoberman Benjamin Schreier (bio) A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History By Michael Hoberman. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. xii + 183 pp. In one sense Michael Hoberman's short, smart, and pithy new book addresses a fairly straightforward topic: "The subject of this book is the historical relationship between the Jewish American literary imagination and the sense of place" (2). Accordingly, it sets itself a fairly straightforward task: namely, as he writes toward the book's close, "The essays in the book represent my best attempt to explore the role that the geography of North America has played in shaping the Jewish American literary imagination" (155), or, as he describes that attempt toward the book's opening, to explore "the ways in which Jewish subjects have engaged the long-standing American tendency to contemplate and experience geography as a crucible for the formation of cultural identity" (2). And yet, as we see in this last formulation, there's something more at work in Hoberman's work: critical energies more profound than merely parochially straightforward. The book's great strength—and its offering to the field—is to provide a way to de-exceptionalize Jewish American literary study; for once we recognize the role of geography in Jewish American writing, once we appreciate its "territoriality," we recognize that it shares its ground with other American writing and literatures. To understand "geography as a basis for literary and cultural continuity" is to understand Jews in America as neither "oppressed outsiders" nor "excessively complacent recipients of American privilege" (4), but rather as Americans actively engaged in experiencing and writing like other Americans. [End Page 299] This represents a critically significant—and salutary—departure from the way the field has heretofore conceptualized itself (though "taken itself for granted" is probably more accurate, at least if you ask me). One of the historicist side effects of multiculturalist pluralism in the humanities is that it's frequently easy to think of ethnicity- or identity-based literatures as more or less discrete entities—with African American literature indexed to something more or less knowable as African American experience, Queer literature indexed to something more or less knowable as Queer experience, and so forth—and it's easy as well to eschew theorizing how those various siloed experiences and symptomatic literary formations interact with, overlap, or interdetermine each other (other than, maybe, some gestures toward a minoritarian idea of oppression). In Jewish American literary study this thought-formation is often intimately bound up with, and indeed inextricable from, a foundational sense that immigration is the only real theory the field needs—that is, that Jewish American literature essentially tracks the chronologically progressive history of Jewish immigration to the United States (thus do scholars preoccupy themselves with talk of literary generations, for example, or with how temporal distance from the scene of immigration determines the contours of the literary imagination of identity). But with its focus on geography rather than immigration, A Hundred Acres of America explicitly challenges this often-unacknowledged immigration theory of Jewish American literature. As Hoberman succinctly claims in the Introduction, "This book argues that a rich and complex relationship with American geography itself, and not merely the immigrant experience, constitutes a central reference point and touchstone for the development, over the course of several centuries, of a Jewish literary consciousness in the United States" (4). In chapters on frontier writing by Jews in early America, on late nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-twentieth-century intellectuals who emphasized the Jewish presence in colonial American cities (and who therefore substantiated claims both to the "cosmopolitan and pluralistic origins of America's oldest cities" [46] and "Jewish participation in early American history" [53]), on early- to mid-twentieth-century middlebrow and middle-American Jewish writers (in which writers [End Page 300] like Edna Ferber challenge our preconceived romantic notions of regionalism by representing small towns as continuous with "other American environments" [78]), on late-twentieth-century Jewish writers' contestations of the pastoral mode, on turn-of-the-twenty-firstcentury literary returns to the shtetl...

Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada, Second Edition by John C. Hudson

Reviewed by: Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada, Second Edition by John C. Hudson Paul N. McDaniel Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada, Second Edition . John C. Hudson. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2020. 530 pp.; maps, diagrs., photos, ills., notes, bibliog., and index. $69.95 paperback (ISBN 9781421437583). Regional geography presents a framework to explore ways in which the diverse thematic/systematic processes of physical and human geography construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct dynamic characteristics of particular places and regions. In the second [End Page 362] edition of Across This Land: A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada, Professor John C. Hudson provides a welcome update to his original sweeping North America regional geography tome first published in 2002. In the preface, Hudson notes that “this book is a long-overdue revised edition of a regional geography of the United States and Canada developed over almost a half a century teaching the subject at Northwestern University” (p. xv). As Hudson observes, regional geography is a way of applying knowledge from various geography topics and interpreting their relevance for distinct regions. Learning to read the landscape about such processes in particular places is part of the process of gaining a sense of place about locales and the broader forces fostering regional change over time. As such, regional geography is an important tool in the cultivation of a well-rounded geography education. As with many books about the history and geography of North America, Hudson’s metaphorical “road trip” proceeds generally from east to west across the continent. Specifically, Hudson guides readers on a journey across North America through ten major regions (the separate “parts” of the book)—beginning with Atlantic Canada and Quebec (Part I) and concluding with the Pacific Realm (Part X)—and 27 sub-regions (each a distinct chapter). His book differs from other texts about North America in that it takes a highly place-specific approach, with vivid narratives about particular geographic processes as they occur on specific local landscapes within each chapter sub-region. Throughout the book, readers will find physical and human geography themes described within the context of specific places. Each of the 27 sub-region chapters focuses on ways in which the natural environment shapes human activity, with particular emphasis on physical, historical, and political geography as lenses through which to examine sub-regions. While much could be said about the book’s ten major regions, how does Across This Land represent, portray, and engage with the southeastern United States? Readers first venture into areas of the Southeast with Part III about the Upland South. Here, the narrative proceeds into the sub-regions of the Southern Appalachians, the Interior Low Plateaus, and the Ozarks and the Ouachitas. In Chapter 7 about the Southern Appalachians, for instance, readers learn about human-environment interactions in the South via the physical geography processes that led to certain industrial activities in Appalachia, such as the Appalachian coal fields, and the particular physical geography of central Alabama that led to the founding and growth of Birmingham. Essays in this chapter also illustrate the physiography of the Great Valley of Appalachia, the Smoky Mountains, and the Tennessee Valley. Readers engage with aspects of cultural geography in the Southeast via an essay on Appalachian folk culture. Subsequently, Chapter 8 about the Interior Low Plateaus discusses such sub-regions as the Nashville Basin, the Pennyroyal Plateau, the Bluegrass of Kentucky, the Lower Ohio Valley, and the Middle Mississippi Valley. The journey through the southeastern US continues with “The Lowland South” (Part IV), including the Southeastern Piedmont and the Coastal Plain, the Florida Peninsula, and the Alluvial Mississippi Valley. In Chapter 10, for instance, covering the Southeastern Piedmont and the Coastal Plain, readers engage with the historical geography of the region’s early settlement, human-environment interaction related to the tobacco industry, [End Page 363] and urban and economic geography of urban-industrial growth in the Southeast. Other essays further explore land use patterns of the coastal plain, the Low Country and the Sea Islands, and the piedmont and coastal plain cotton industry. Meanwhile, Chapter 12, about the...

Benchmarking and Beyond: CLAG's Role in Evaluating Research Agendas, 1970–2020

Benchmarking and Beyond:CLAG's Role in Evaluating Research Agendas, 1970–2020 Gregory Knapp introduction The Conference of Latin American Geography (CLAG; originally, Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers) began as an actual conference in 1970, convened to assess the current state of research themes on the region. The resulting proceedings were published as a Benchmark volume in 1971 (see Carmin, Martinson, & Lentnek, 1971). Many organizations have produced benchmark or inventory and prospect volumes to stimulate future research (James & Jones, 1954), but CLAG went further than most by starting with one and producing them on a regular basis. After the end of that conference it was decided to create an organization by the same name, which went on to organize many additional meetings and publications that have continued through the present. The idea of benchmarking continued in decadal meetings in 1980 and 1990, resulting in special publications. A final effort took place in a publication in 2002 (Knapp, 2002), but after that interest in systematic evaluations waned, as the new Journal of Latin American Geography (JLAG) was published more frequently, covering diverse topics, sometimes in themed issues such as this one. What was accomplished by the Benchmark meetings and volumes? What were their strengths and weaknesses? Critical research of academic and scientific organizations is important for evaluating organizational effectiveness and best practices, and also issues of inclusion and diversity. Organizations often do a good job of celebrating their successes but may not do so well at diagnosing problems (Lutz & Collins, 1993). CLAG has recently changed its name from Latin Americanist Geographers to Latin American Geography as one gesture to enhance inclusion. How does the trajectory of benchmarking relate to issues of diversity? the first benchmark: challenges of diversity As is well known, the idea for a conference on Latin America was discussed at a private meeting of fifteen geographers during the 1969 meeting of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History in Washington, D.C. The meeting was held at the Cosmos Club at the invitation of Preston James; participants were all from the United States, and included mostly U.S. faculty (including John Augelli, president of the Latin American Studies Association), but also geographers from the Organization of American States (Wolfram Drewes) and the State Department (Arthur Burt) (Martinson, 1996). Founded by John Wesley Powell [End Page 38] in 1878, the Cosmos Club was also where the National Geographic Society was founded. This members-only club became racially integrated in 1962 and open to women in 1988, due to public pressure. While CLAG itself never formally refused participation to women and minorities, or Latin Americans, their participation was similarly limited in its early years. This is something the organization needs to continue to recognize as it broadens its commitment to diversity. The preface to the 1970 Benchmark volume (Carmin et al., 1971) provides a discussion of the context of the first conference. Originally the conference was to be small and restricted to a few North American participants, due to funding and timing concerns, as well as to the vision that the conference would be national and primarily for North American geographers. However, as funding was obtained (from the National Science Foundation [NSF] and the Social Science Research Council [SSRC]), interest expanded until it grew to 150 total participants, including fiftyone invited presenters and eight discussants. Planning meetings were held at Michigan State University (chaired by Barry Lentnek) in October 1969, and at Ohio State University in January 1970, and the first conference was held in Muncie, Indiana, funded by the NSF and SSRC with cochairmen Tom Martinson and Robert Carmin of Ball State University, from April 30 to May 3, 1970 (Martinson, 1996). At this point Martinson was not a board member, but would later join the board and become executive secretary from 1978 to 1992. Invited, funded observers from Latin America at the 1970 meeting included Pedro Pinchas Geiger (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica, Brazil), Silvana Levi de López (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico), and Carlos Merida (Guatemala) (Carmin et al., 1971). The final published volume—Volume 1 of the CLAG Publication Series—included forty articles, among them twelve on urban, spatial, and...

Deep Learning is blowing in the wind. Deep models applied to wind prediction at turbine level

Wind Energy generation depends on the existence of wind, a meteorological phenomena intermittent by nature, with the consequence of generating uncertainty on the availability of wind energy in the future. The grid stability processes require continuous forecasting of wind energy generated. Forecasting wind energy can be performed either by using weather forecast data or by projecting (or regressing) the past time-series data observations into the future. This last method is the statistical or time series approach. Wind Time Series show non-linearity and non-stationarity properties, and these two properties increase the complexity of the forecasting task using statistical methodologies. In this paper we explore the use of deep learning techniques, which can represent non-linearity, to the wind speed prediction using the largest public wind dataset available, the Wind Toolkit from the National Renewable Laboratory of the US. Several deep network architectures like Multi Layer Perceptrons, Convolutional Networks or Recurrent Networks have been tested on the 126,692 wind-sites and with the results obtained valuable comparisons and conclusions have been obtained. The distribution of the wind sites across the North American Geography has allowed to include in the analysis relationships between terrain, wind forecast complexity and deep methods. With the developed testing workbench and with the availability of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center new architectures are being developed. This work concludes with the feasibility of deep learning architectures for the wind and energy forecasting.

Letter From the Editor

Letter From the Editor Christopher Gaffney 親愛的同事們, A few years ago I was wandering through the Saara region of Rio de Janeiro in the late afternoon and stopped to have an esfiha in a traditional Syrian eatery. The young girl behind the counter was clearly Han Chinese and spoke just enough Portuguese to facilitate our transaction. As I was happily munching away, I looked down a row of stores selling the myriad shimmering and feathery things necessary for Carnaval. The stores were closing and each metal curtain was pulled down by a young Chinese person. From the parking garages emerged a series of rather expensive cars driven by Chinese patresfamilias, the new dons of the Carnaval trade in Rio. This insignificant moment in Rio's vibrant commercial district got me thinking about the ways in which Latin America and China are interconnected beyond the production and consumption of consumer goods. The retreat of the United States fro the region has opened opportunities for Chinese investment in infrastructure, technology, and political interaction. A number of academic journals have produced special issues that explore the relationships between Latin America and China but none have taken the explicitly geographic perspective that we offer in this Special Issue on China and Latin American Relations. Our guest editors Julie Klinger and Tom Narins have worked closely with Associate Editor Jorn Seemann to bring together a wonderful array of stories, perspectives, and ideas that give us ample food for thought about this enduring and dynamic interchange. As part of our ongoing efforts to modernize and expand the reach of JLAG, we have included Chinese abstracts for the first time. We hope that this will allow the journal to reach new audiences and stimulate interchange between Latin American and Chinese geographers. Additionally, we continue to direct ever more resources to editing and production and continue to seek avenues for innovation and engagement with geographers throughout the Americas and beyond. It is fitting, therefore, that this is the first issue of JLAG that will be published under the aegis of the "new CLAG." The removal of the "ista" nomenclature from CLAG was an overdue recognition that the organization is not only a home for North American geographers who study Latin America, but rather a place of encounter and exchange between and for all Latin American Geographers regardless of origin or residence. As the Conference of Latin American Geography approaches its 50th year, the editorial team at JLAG would like to renew our call to all of our Latin American colleagues to contribute to the growth of the journal through which we can foster debate, promote change, and develop lasting relationships. 好利潤! [End Page 5] Christopher Gaffney Editor-in-Chief Copyright © 2018 Distributed by the University of Texas Press

Development of population geography from antropogeography to spatial-analitical approach

Population geography is a subdiscipline of Human geography and studies the distribution, concentration and density of population over the terestrial surface, as well as differences in population size, changes and characteristics, like structures, migrations, activity etc, among some places present compared to others. Population geography has had a perscientific stage as long as human history. First modern scientific treatis of population in geography was the F. Ratzels book Antropogeography in 1882. During the first half of the XX century, French geographer Vidal de la Blanche gave a capital importance of population studies in his work Principes de Geographie Humaine. In interwar years, various aspects of population were studied. After The Second World War started the renovating movement of geography and new tendencies appear in human geography and, consequently in population geography. Attempts were made to define population geography as a separate sub-discipline. The world wide trend of treating population geography as separate discipline was expressed by publishing monographs, bibliographies and textbooks. The most significant authors who worked on defining population geography were French geographers P. George (1951, 1959), Beaujen-Garnier (1965, 1966); North-american geographers: G. Trewarta (1953, 1969), W. Bunge (1962), J. Clance (1965, 1971), W. Zelinski (1966); in Great Britain: J.I. Clarke (1965); in USSR: Ju.G. Sauskin i D.N. Anucin (1950), V.V. Poksisevskij (1966), D.I. Valentej (1973); in Poland V. Ormotski (1931), L. Kosinski (1967) A. Jagelski (1980). Those authors and their works had the significant influence on the development of population science in the world and also in Serbia. Although the development of population geography was different in different countries and scientific research centers, we can clearly defined four stages. First stage lasted untill 1960s and was characterised by works of G.Trewarta, H. Doerres Ju.G. Sauskin, D.N. Anucin, J. Beaujeu-Gariner. G. Trewarta argued that the population is the point of reference from which all other elements are observed and from which all derive significance and meaning. This view was adopted and shared by authors dealing with population items, explicitly or implicitly. Second stage lasted from 1960s till 1970s and the most significant authors dealing with population problems were W. Zelinsky, W. Bunge; H.Bobek, W. Hartke, K.Ruppert, F.Schaffer; D.I. Valentej, K.Korcak. This phase was characterized by the application of quantitative methods and efforts for understanding the spatial structure of the population. Many scientists see this development phase as a particularly prosperous period, because it carried more intensive relations of geography and demography through the introduction of statistical, mathematical and demographic methods and techniques in studies of population geography. Third phase lasted from 1970s to 1980s, and was characterized by close relations between population geography and formal demography. Development and application of GIS and computer data, have made population studies more complex and applicable in practice, through population policy and population projections. The most significant authors in this period were L. Kosinski, A. Jagelski, H?gerstrand. And at last, fourth stage started in 1980s and in many countries lastes untill present days. In population geography appeared new tendencies associated with the critique of positivism, the establishment of humanistic approaches and modifications of general geographic concepts. In this period, spatial analysis and quantitative scientific methods were reaffirmed, and because of that some population studies were redefined in spatial demography, a time dimension advocated in historical demography. In this context, we emphasize the work of D. Plane and P. Rogerson. Population geography is viewed differently from one country to another. Its definition differs from too narrow to overly broad. But two research areas were of particular interest to geographers - population distribution and migration. Both items acquired an international dimension. Recently, eminent population geographers exchanged various view points in an attempt to provoke new thinking on subject and define the answers of new fields research in population geography. Population geography in the XXI Century is no longer a field comprised of spatial applications of fertility, mortality and migration only. Contemporary population geography is theoretically sophisticated, integrating spatial analysis, GIS and geo-referenced data. Future progress in the field of population geography will derive from more research at the intersections of population processes and societal issues and concerns. Major themes of future empirical researches in population geography should be: global population growth, studies of migration, transnationalism, human security issues, population-health-environment nexus, human-environment sustainability, economic development and poverty issues.

Australian Geographers and Geographical Information Science

AbstractGeographical Information Science (GIScience) has become an important sub‐discipline for North American geographers but in Australia few geographers are engaged in this ‘research in GIS’ area. Australian geographers seem more concerned with ‘research using GIS’ which has become absorbed into the geographical tradition of thinking and communicating with diagrams, images, and maps. The breakdown of disciplinary boundaries in Australia makes it difficult to be sure, but most of those engaged in GIScience in Australia seem to identify with disciplines other than geography.

Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been? by D. Bar-el & R. Maté

Bar-el, Dan, and Rae Maté. Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been? Vancouver: Simply Read Books, 2011. Print. In this superbly illustrated book, the pussycat of the classic nursery rhyme continues from his royal visit in London on to more distant and exotic adventures. He sails down the Seine in France, visits with “one of a kind” animals in Australia, kayaks with a pod of whales in the North, and discovers the mysteries of the Egyptian pyramids. North American geography is subtly evoked as he meets a fisherman in a coastal community and takes shelter from a Prairie thunderstorm in a “soft golden” wheat field. Many elements of the book convey nostalgia and the simple joys of childhood. It features a storybook-like font and extra-large capital letters at the beginning of each stanza. The hand-painted illustrations are magnificent and have a vintage fairy-tale like appeal. However, the complexity of the ideas conveyed in the simple rhyme scheme hints at more mature life lessons and ideas. For example, when the Pussycat encounters a parade of pageant performers, his owner asks, “Did you join in?” he responds with: “If life is a circus/ Why wait to begin?” The sense of adventure is tempered with reality; he is, on occasion, fearful, sad, or in need of assistance in his travels. He always reveals to the reader what helped him through those times: “What stopped your sorrow?” “I sang to the stars as I rode to tomorrow”. He also explains that he was able to take the “road less travelled” due to the generosity of fellow travelers: ‘…Did you get lost?’‘I strayed from the pathAt whatever the cost.’‘Pussycat, PussycatBut were you alright?’‘The kindness of strangersGave warmth to my night.’ Pussycat also talks about missing loved ones back home, in this case his owner. The adventure concludes with him inviting her to join him on his next series of imaginary adventures: “Come travel with me/ My partner, my friend.” According to the publisher’s website, this book is recommended for ages to 4-8. It would be an excellent addition to any home, library, or school book collection. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Kim Frail Kim is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. Children’s literature is a big part of her world at work and at home. She also enjoys gardening, renovating and keeping up with her two-year old.

Wither Physical Geography: 100 Volumes of the Geographical Review*

The centennial volume of Geographical Review marks a distinct milestone for the discipline of geography in North America. Great editorial leadership, landmark articles, recognition as a flagship journal: all traditions tagged to the Geographical Review. It has been my privilege, as a member of the Editorial Board, to have been part of that enterprise for most of the last quarter-century. I have worked with inspirational editors--Doug McManis (still my favorite, with apologies to), Paul Starrs, Douglas Johnson and Viola Haarmann, and Craig Colten--and learned much from them. But, a la Christopher Keylock (2007), I already knew the difference between whither and wither. Many of the legendary physical geographers and several leading geologists of the twentieth century published in the Geographical Review. The honor roll includes such luminaries as William Morris Davis (both in the Geographical Review and in its predecessor, the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society; see, for example, Davis 1919, 1934), Harlan Bretz (1928), Richard Joel Russell (Russell and Howe 1935), John Hack (1941), Warren Thornthwaite (1948), Luna Leopold (1951), and Kenneth Hare (Hare and Ritchie 1972). However, the work of physical geographers, as the central focus of a research article, has been virtually missing from the pages of the Geographical Review for the last several decades. By my quick count, using titles or abstracts, only 19 of the 382 articles in volumes 86-99 (1986-2009) are on physical geography. Surprisingly, even in the special issue on Doing Fieldwork (DeLyser and Starrs 2001), only one of the fifty-six essays deals primarily with physical geography. Slightly more contributions by physical geographers appeared in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, as Doug McManis supported a thematic issue on Coastal Geomorphology in 1988 and a short-lived series of essays on philosophy and concepts in physical geography (Sherman 1988; see, for example, Nordstrom 1993). And for most of the last twenty-five years only one or two physical geographers at a time have served on the Editorial Board, which currently comprises thirteen members, not including the editor, the two associate editors, and the book review editor, all of whom are human geographers. So the modern circumstance raises several questions that I will attempt to address here: Was there once a stronger presence of physical geography in the Geographical Review? If so, why has that presence waned? And what might the answers to the preceding questions portend for the journal's future? Much of the change of content in the pages of the Geographical Review is reflected from larger disciplinary forces that altered the landscape of North American geography through the mid-twentieth century. This stems from the disciplinary autophobia espoused by Richard Hartshorne in 1939 under the guise of chorography and regional geography (neatly, but unfortunately not fatally, taken to task in Sauer 1956, 294-295). The decades-long focus on regionalism did great damage to the discipline as a whole (see, for example, Hartshorne 1962), but it dramatically undermined physical geography in general and geomorphology in particular (Butzer 1989). For instance, Hartshorne rejected the study of geomorphological processes as being nongeographical ([1939] 1961, 423-424), and many geography departments in the United States endorsed that rejection via their hiring policies. Therefore, that part of the physical geography community that might have been especially well poised to exploit the quantitative revolution was largely absent from academic geography. It is noteworthy that Hartshorne considered both climatology and biogeography--plant geography in the original--to be safely in the realm of his systematic geography ([1939] 1961, 78-79). Nevertheless, the middle of the twentieth century must be considered a dark period for physical geography in general. Certainly there was a marked distinction in the content of academic geography journals, including the Geographical Review and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, as physical geography appeared less and less often in their pages. …

Geographers and the theory and practice of return fieldwork

Fieldwork, especially in lands, is one of the time-honored hallmarks of professional geography, yet as Felix Driver (2000, p. 267) and others have noted, little attention has been paid to the specifically geographical dimensions of field-work [sic] or to its history within the discipline. In this article I will explore pieces of this history through the practice of return visitation to particular places, with an emphasis on the record of North American geographers' engagement with Latin America. In turn, Carl Sauer's Mexican research, together with that of some of his students and others inspired by his example, appears to be the most tightly woven net of repeat visitation. Here, one finds multiple strands of crisscrossing lines of reconnaissance and research, and complicated proxy relations involving individuals from later generations pursuing topics initiated by individuals from earlier ones. Space here does not permit more than sketching the outlines of this history, but it does illustrate some of the salient aspects of repeat visitation, and points to a neglected topic in the history of geography. Viewed from the broad perspective of geography's historical record, the practice of return or repeat visits appears to be a more recent development than a time-honored tradition. Various factors can be proposed as contributing to this apparent trend toward repetition. Perhaps the foremost is geography's shift from a spatial-descriptive exploratory enterprise to a modern discipline with a premium placed on deriving generalizations through replicable results. Although few of the human geographers in the past century engaging in foreign area research have been self-conscious devotees of approaches involving nomothetic, spatial analytical science, the ascendancy of a scientific human geography in the post-WWII period can be implicated in the decline of chorology and geographic description for its own sake. A second impetus also might be seen as more influence from outside geography than from within. Along with the rise of a more analytic, scientific human geography, geographers began to interact more with other social scientists, and borrow from their theory and practice. For field-oriented geographers working abroad, especially cultural geographers, the paths most often crossed or followed were anthropological. Increasingly archaeologists and ethnologists were digging in and making long investments in discrete study sites, rather than mounting wide-ranging surveys and broad collecting ventures. A variant of this development, especially for geographers, is repeat visit research at intervals to measure change (or lack of it) in places, landscapes, or regions (Vale and Vale 1983; Works and Hadley 2000; Walker and Leib 2002; McSweeny 2008; Brady 2009). Elements of the mobility and transience of the older survey and collection mode is carried forward, but with an emphasis on demonstrating familiarity rather than novelty. A fourth influence that began to emerge by the 1960s and was accelerated by that decade's ferment, involved ethical questions and issues. Anthropologists, followed by other social scientists including geographers, generally came to see and accept that not only their research had varying impacts on their subjects, but also that forms of reciprocity might be part of a researcher's protocol and practice. Among other modes, this has taken the form of extended ties to individuals or communities, often spanning decades since the initial research was conducted (Richardson 1998). In varying degrees, all of these underlying factors may play a part in the decisions and the designs that have led geographers to return at intervals, often multiple times, to favored sites, landscapes, or regions. I suspect, however, that most returnees would simply say that the main rationale or attraction is that they have come to identify strongly with their adopted site or region and feel a need or obligation to return. …

Tundra to Tropics: the Floristic Plant Geography of North America

Tundra to Tropics: the Floristic Plant Geography of North America

Commentary: Special issue of GeoJournal on Amenity Migration, Exurbia, and Emerging Rural Landscapes

The series of sessions at the 2007 AAG in Chicago and this special issue of GeoJournal that they have spawned reflect a growing excitement surrounding rural dynamics among North American geographers. When I initially began exploring rural restructuring in the early 1990s, I was forced to draw heavily on theorizations of rural change derived from the UK context, and this was especially true for theorizations of class dynamics implicated within processes of rural change. Rural spaces and the processes that transform them are geographically heterogeneous, so this exciting and excited group of young scholars working within rural North America is particularly encouraging given the need to explore these topics in different geographic contexts. The series of papers presented in these sessions sparked many thoughts, but my comments below are limited to three substantive themes that I see as needing further clarity and/or exploration: better definitions of ‘amenity’ and ‘exurbia’; greater connections between work conducted at varying spatial scales; research on amenity migration with a greater sensitivity to racial/ethnic differences. First, the terms ‘amenity’ and ‘exurbia’ require definitions with greater clarity and breadth. I particularly like Peter Walker’s (Walker et al. 2006; Walker 2009) typology of exurbia (considering the varied impacts of the transition from resource use to ruralresidential use). His typology acknowledges that exurbia is a spatially moving target. Exurban growth in the Western United States is considerably different from exurban growth in New England, because the urban landscapes are so different in those places. Geographers are particularly well-suited to provide this needed clarity because of our sensitivity the spatial variations. In a similar vein, ‘amenities’ is poorly defined. A large volume of empirical work has employed the USDA’s natural amenities index, yet this index leaves many regions, such as New England, void of any natural amenities. However, if you ask most residents of New England about their region’s natural landscape, they would celebrate the fall foliage, the four-season climate, and access to public lands and mountains. For many residents across any number of regions, natural amenities are in the ‘eye of the beholder.’ Furthermore, we too quickly shift from a discussion of amenities to a discussion of ‘natural’ amenities. Amenity migrants are likely to be simultaneously responding to perceptions of natural as well as social amenities when they move to the countryside and contribute to exurban growth. Therefore, we need more robust and nuanced understanding of these terms. My second comment revolves around the importance of geographic scale in work examining issues of P. B. Nelson (&) Department of Geography, Middlebury College, McCardell Bicentennial Hall 313, Middlebury, VT 05753, USA e-mail: pbnelson@middlebury.edu

Latitudinal Range Variation of Trees in the United States: A Reanalysis of the Applicability of Rapoport's Rule*

In 1975 E. H. Rapoport described a pattern of increasing latitudinal range sizes for organisms with increasing latitude, a pattern that is now known as Rapoport's rule. The universal applicability of Rapoport's rule has been long contested, making it one of the more controversial biogeographic “rules.” This study aims to reassess the applicability of Rapoport's rule to U.S. tree species. Data presented here suggest that Rapoport's rule does indeed apply to most tree taxa within the United States, but may be taxon specific. In addition, data presented here suggest that tree range patterns consistent with Rapoport's rule in the United States are not restricted to high latitudes and are not the result of a “boundedness effect” but may be intimately linked with the glacial history and physical geography of North America. The analyses conducted here are intended to emphasize the utility of such biogeographic rules even if they are not universally applicable and should, in turn, only be considered biogeographic patterns.

Alexander Von Humboldt's Image and Influence in North American Geography, 1804–2004

ABSTRACT. Alexander von Humboldt is universally identified as a key figure in laying the foundations for modern geography. His main sites of research and scholarly production were centered on Europe, Latin America, and Russia. He drew on global sources of geographical data and knowledge in constructing and producing his voluminous works. Although he only briefly knew North America firsthand—at the outset of his career, in the late spring of 1804—he maintained a lifelong interest in the realm, especially in the United States. In turn, many North American scholars were admirers and followers of his perspectives, practices, and publications. Although geography did not emerge as an institutionally based discipline in the United States until the late nineteenth century, Humboldt's influence and impact on its antecedents were considerable. Contrary to conventional wisdom, his authority and influence in geography persisted well beyond Humboldt's death in 1859. His vision of demonstrating nature's unity in diversity and his enlightened views on social issues have continued to appeal to select sectors and actors in North American geography, especially Latin Americanists, historians of the discipline, and, more recently, proponents of an engaged, critical geography.

A century and counting: Geographical research on Guatemala in historical perspective

In his recent book Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (2004), David Livingstone challenges historians of geography to locate that history in space and places, as well as time. Using the national/cultural space that is Guatemala, this paper plots some of the co-ordinates, contours, and questions that such a geographic history might entail. Particular emphasis is placed on providing a first approximation of the contours the history of geographic research in, and on, Guatemala. The main focus is on the work of self-identified geographers, though many scholars in cognate fields, especially historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists have made important contributions to this history. Clear phases in this history are evident, starting in the late 19th century with the work of the German geographer Karl Sapper. North American geographers came to dominate the record in the post-WWII period. The current phase promises not only a new generation of researchers, but also new directions as well as some continuities with topics and questions with a century-old time-depth. This paper seeks to contribute to the largely inchoate project of producing histories of geography at the regional, national, and continental scales for Latin America.

Representation of Appalachia in North American Geography College Textbooks

The geographical analyses and descriptions of Appalachia “not only reflect reality, but they help to constitute this reality.” This work first analyzes the status of the North American (United States and Canada) regional courses in the 210 geography degree-granting institutions listed in the Association of American Geographers Guide to Geography Programs in North America. Next, the four leading geography textbooks on North America are compared with respect to topics used to analyze and describe (represent) Appalachia. Finally, suggestions are made with respect to additional topics and areas of concentration which will hopefully aid in a more accurate representation and regional geography of modern Appalachia. The better understanding of Appalachia gives better insight not only to the land and people of this region, but to North America as a whole.

Potential Contributions by the Canadian Armed Forces to the Defence of North America against Terrorism

The contents of this paper are the product of discussions held by a study group on North American Security, organized by the National Capital Branch of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. Most of the 15 group members are retired, after long service in the Department of International Affairs and International Trade, or in the Department of National Defence. Members include (BGen) Clay Beattie, Bob Cameron, (Col) Ron Cleminson, Bob Edmonds, Ross Francis, Dwight Fulford, George Grande, (BGen) Keith Greenaway, John Hadwen, Hugh Henry, David Kirkwood, George Lindsey, Blair Seaborn, Ken Williamson and Gerry Wright.THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS PAPER is to investigate how modern technology and the geography of North America can determine the most suitable roles for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in protecting the continent against terrorism in the 21st century. A useful background, however, can be assembled by considering how the geography and technology of the 20th century influenced the roles played by the CAF in the defence of North America against the threats presented during the Cold War, and how some of the experience, organizations, and equipment provided for the Cold War can be exploited for the defence against terrorism.DEFENCE OF NORTH AMERICA DURING THE COLD WARBackgroundFor more than a century before the Cold War, neither Canada nor the United States faced a serious threat of attack on their territory from outside the North American continent. This came to an end, however, with the Soviet Union's acquisition of long-range bomber aircraft, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs). All were armed with nuclear payloads.The shortest and most direct routes for the Soviet bombers and ICBMs to reach the US's central 48 states would be to travel across the Northeast Pacific, the Arctic or the Northwest Atlantic Oceans. These routes were all either close to, or directly over, Canadian territory.(1) Most of the SLBMs likely would have been launched from Soviet submarines patrolling in zones off the East Coast of the United States.To counter these three threats, a reliable early warning system was required. Its primary purpose was to enable the bombers of the US Strategic Air Command (SAC) to become airborne before their bases were destroyed, and, later, to allow American ICBMs to be launched before they were destroyed on the ground. If the SAC bombers of the 1950s and 1960s were to be launched from bases in the central US, and ordered to deliver retaliatory strikes, they would need to refuel before beginning the long flight to the Soviet Union. There were two refueling options: one was to land at one of the six Canadian bases manned partially or wholly by USAF personnel;(2) the other was to receive fuel in the air from US tanker aircraft deployed in Canada.Countermeasures against the air threat: the creation of NORAD(3)In addition to its role in preservation of the American offensive forces needed for deterrence, early warning was providing information that was essential for active defence units--both American and Canadian. Against the bomber threat, these included air defence control centres, radar stations and bases for fighter aircraft, as well as anti-aircraft missiles, and guns, deployed for the interception and destruction of the bombers before they could reach their targets in the United States or Canada.The key system installed for early warning against bomber attacks was the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, consisting of a chain of manned radar stations following the 70[Symbol Not Transcribed] [degree] north parallel of latitude along the northern coasts of Alaska and mainland Canada (and across Baffin Island). Until 1965, another warning system, the Mid-Canada Line, was in place. Using elementary unmanned radars, it spanned the whole of Canada, along latitude 55[Symbol Not Transcribed] [degree] north, and formed a tripwire that was able to confirm if bombers were coming south. …

Doing Fieldwork: Editors’ Introduction

The Geographical Review 91 (1-2):iv-viii, January- April 2001 Copyright[copyright symbol] 2001 by the American Geographical Society of New York Field-work is essentially personal observation and recording; it brings reality to geographical study; it helps the geographer to acquire his all-important understanding eye for country; and thus it enriches his descriptive and explanatory powers. I would say that an essential part of the training of a young geographer is for him to choose some small accessible unit area that attracts him; acquire a pair of stout boots, perhaps the geographer's first item of equipment; study in the area itself the association of physical and human conditions which there prevail, and in fact give the area its individuality; and record the information which he collects in a series of original maps. --F. J. Monkhouse, 1955 Geographical fieldwork, as the following collection suggests, has roamed well beyond Monkhouse's avowedly stout-booted past. Fieldwork in geography is just not like that any more (Rose 1993; PG 1994; Katz 1996; Sparke 1996; Driver 2001). Interviews and children, laptops and urban settings, local collaborators and researcher reflexivity--and of course women--are integral to the world of geographical field studies. We can nowadays relish more nuanced strains of field behavior, and with reason: The realm of geography is broader, and that makes the study of field practice itself an interesting task. This thematic issue of the Geographical Review, in part a sesquicentennial celebration of the 1851 founding of the American Geographical Society, lauds fieldwork as an undertaking while also examining its varieties and its sometimes-suspect practices. The vehicle for this tour d'horizon is a series of short articles--truthfully, personal essays--highlighting the diverse array that is contemporary fieldwork in geography. Together they capture a range of work from established to emerging scholars, in academic geography and well beyond, and the authors present us with challenging and interesting situations that bear on practices and experiences of the field. Here colleagues share insights and trials, and relate lessons and advice we all wish we might have had before decamping to the field. The collection is not intended as the kind of rollicking self-excoriation that anthropology and other disciplines have put themselves through and that has tended to constrain, if not actively bottleneck, fieldwork in those disciplines. For various reasons, geographers have concentrated on different problems, done so critically only relatively recently, and been perhaps less inclined to identify behavior that other disciplines might find exceptional. Evident in these fifty-s ix essays is the breadth and depth of geographers' engagement with fieldwork in all its forms, showcasing a diversity of geographical viewpoints and experiences along with bountiful creativity and demonstrating to the broader community the strength of geographers' commitment to fieldwork. Collected by invitation from a working roster of considerably more than one hundred active scholars, this series of essays, or indeed any finite list, despite our concerted attempts to make it otherwise, cannot truly be inclusive of all that is fieldwork in contemporary geography. Representing mainly North American (and to a lesser degree British and Continental) geography, most of the authors here (like most of those who attend meetings of the Association of American Geographers) are white and North American; nearly half are women. Yet the ambit of these scholars' work is global: Spain to India, Sri Lanka to Kenya, Russia to Peru, Morocco to Macedonia, Canada to Thailand, China to Montserrat, the United States to the United Kingdom. Others outside the academy make use of fieldwork practices, in literature and journalism, marketing and government. The line between truly accomplished fieldwork in academia and these other fields can be porous. …

Whatever happened to the social? Reflections on the ‘cultural turn’ in British human geography

This paper focuses on the 'cultural turn' which has taken place in British and to a lesser extent North American and Australian human geography in the last decade. It begins by exploring what constitutes the cultural in what has been dubbed 'new cultural geography'. It then explores contemporary claims that cultural geography has eclipsed or marginalised social geography. The final section evaluates these claims about the demise of the social, arguing that the social has not been evacuated but rather has been redefined. While this paper tells a specific story about a particular tradition and geographical frame of reference, it nonetheless has wider relevance because it provides an example of the differential development of particular sub-disciplinary areas, of the way subdisciplinary knowledges shape each other, and of the way understandings of disciplinary trends are contested.