This paper presents a series of final assessment tests and activities designed for philological departments of foreign languages aiming at checking and evaluating second-year students’ (level B2 – C1) linguo-sociocultural competences in physical geography, history, political system and government, economy of Great Britain reflected in the corpus of culturally specific lexis.

ABSTRACT There are numerous studies about the effects of contamination on communities and environmental injustices that are associated with these impacts. While studies on contamination often highlight impacts to human health, ecosystem degradation, and calls for integration of social justice into research studies on communities, there is relatively sparse literature on how to integrate these methods, and especially on methodologies that demonstrate how to create reciprocal studies that center community voice. As complex and dynamic environmental injustices persist, more researchers are becoming aware that mixed-methods approaches, attention to power relations, and reciprocal scholarship are needed to address contamination in the environment. This paper provides an example of how researchers from two universities and an indigenous conservation group collaborated to share strategies for mitigating exposure to contamination in communities exposed to contamination from urban garden spaces, superfund sites, and from the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history to date. Many of these strategies are rooted in the discipline of Critical Physical Geography, which calls for critical attention to power relations while integrating biophysical and social methods.

Abstract This article examines the Museum of Zemlevedenie at Moscow State University as a late-Stalinist knowledge-production site in which an integrative yet conceptually heterogeneous vision of Earth sciences was made authoritative through spatial, visual, and pedagogical means. Located on the seven highest floors of the main MSU building, the museum—founded in 1951 by the geographer and writer Georgy K. Efremov and opened in 1955—was embedded in postwar triumphalist culture and in the monumental architecture of the Stalinist “skyscraper university.” Drawing on museum guidebooks (1955–1978; English edition 1973), the museum’s periodicals ( Zemlevedenie ; Zhizn Zemli, 1955–2011), catalogues of paintings and exhibition materials, institutional narratives, seven site visits (2020–2022), and interviews with directors and curators, the article analyses how Zemlevedenie —a weakly bounded, synthesis-oriented formation associated with physical geography and the study of interconnections within the geographical envelope—was operationalised in exhibitionary form. The analysis shows that the museum resolved conceptual plurality not through disciplinary texts, but by translating it into an experiential worldview organised “from cosmos to microcosmos.” Its durable vertical sequence structured Earth sciences into a hierarchical narrative spanning the origin and structure of the Earth, endogenous and exogenous processes, mineral resources, and landscape zones of the USSR and the world, while also projecting Soviet knowledge claims beyond national territory to a planetary and near-cosmic scale. A second argument concerns the museum’s distinctive visual regime: through nagliadnost’ and a carefully engineered synthesis of specimens, explanatory graphics, and socialist realist landscape painting—produced at scale by major artists under institutional coordination—the museum rendered scientific relations self-evident and politically legible. Situating these findings within scholarship on Soviet science, spatial imaginaries, and museum studies, the article demonstrates how late Stalinist institutions stabilised integrative natural-science projects through architecture, display, and visual authority, linking the ordering of nature to postwar narratives of mastery and global stature.

This paper exposes the latent but potent role of seemingly hidden spatial autocorrelation (SA) in all geographic theories, highlighting that it is everywhere, matters, and is a fundamental property of geotagged phenomena. This narrative examines and extends the literature about the inescapable nature of the SA paradigm and the near-universal mixing of positive and negative SA. This study summary transcends the widespread but often implicit treatment of SA within geographic theories that their assumptions help achieve when they embed spatial processes, shape geospatial expectations, and define independent areal units so that these theory-delineating constraints largely absorb SA, reducing residual spatial dependence/correlation and improving conjectural validity, masking its presence for decades if not centuries. This paper explores selected prominent human geography theories (spatial optimization, agricultural location, gravity-model-based spatial interaction, central place systems), cultural and humanistic geography, geohumanities abstractions, physical geography theories (plate tectonics, climatology, uniformitarianism, soil formation), cartographic theories (geometric projections, semiotic/communication, cognitive/perceptual, geographic information systems anchored spatial analysis), and basic geospatial data gathering methodologies (qualitative and quantitative spatial sampling). It demonstrates that across the discipline of geography, exposing masquerading SA deepens theoretical coherence and strengthens methodological integrity, encouraging integrated spatial reasoning that bridges interpretive and analytical traditions. This article concludes by providing exemplifications of bringing scholastically unrealized SA in geographic theories out of obscurity, together with certain salient benefits from doing so, affirming the magnitude of fulfilling its major objective: SA is poised for discovery in all geospatial theories, from those for human and humanistic geography, through physical geography, to those for cartography as well as methodologies concerning all georeferenced data collection missions.

ABSTRACT The increasing presence of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT in higher education presents both opportunities and challenges for geography assessment. While these tools support learning, they also raise concerns about plagiarism and the authenticity of student work. This study investigates students’ use of ChatGPT for academic tasks and their perspectives on authentic assessment methods. Our survey revealed that 80% of students used ChatGPT, primarily for brainstorming (63%). To mitigate potential negative impacts, students favoured project-based assessments (70%) and fieldwork or internships (70%), citing benefits such as fostering creativity (70%) and learning process and skill development (67%). Student interviews revealed themes of academic support, integrity concerns, authentic assessment preference, and responsible AI integration in education. In response, we implemented a project-based learning (PBL) approach in the physical geography teaching, incorporating environmental data collection, analysis, and reporting. This was complemented by oral presentations and peer assessments to enhance assessment. The transition towards authentic assessment, integrating real-world applications, aims to cultivate deeper learning, originality, and self-reflection. Our findings highlight the importance of reassessing traditional evaluation methods in the context of AI advancements, ensuring both academic integrity and meaningful learning experiences in geography education.

ABSTRACT This paper presents the first long-term, multi-period analysis of riverine deposition within the Middle Thames, focusing on the period c. 2200 BC to 1100 AD. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset of 2,337 river finds, it investigates patterning in the selection and distribution of deposited objects, with particular emphasis on weapons, tools, and martial objects. This study identifies significant regional and chronological variation, as well as patterns of long-term behavioural continuity, including the dominance of spearheads across the Bronze Age and Early Medieval periods, and a restructuring of depositional practices, avoiding martial associations, in the Roman period. In addition to compositional changes, this paper highlights the variable physical and mental geography of the Middle Thames Valley, identifying an evolving relationship between key crossing points, socio-political authority and emerging religious ideas. Methodologically, the study applies a novel raster-based approach within GIS to integrate both high and low-resolution spatial data, offering a new framework for interpreting riverine assemblages recovered without precise provenance. In doing so, it demonstrates that while the underlying logic dictating riverine deposition in the past may remain elusive, patterns of change and continuity are clearly discernible, revealing the Middle Thames as a dynamic and enduring ritual landscape shaped by sustained, structured deposition.

Understanding how people perceive and value landscapes is essential for sustainable planning and conservation; yet, traditional methods remain limited in scale and scope. This study introduces artificial intelligence (AI)-Perceptual Landscape Mapping (AI-PLM), an integrated analytical framework that combines geospatial intelligence, machine learning, and natural-language processing (NLP) to model collective human perception from social-media data. Using nearly 29 000 geotagged Flickr photographs and 148 000 user comments from Romania, AI-PLM operationalizes perception through three components: (1) Data collection and processing (systematic collection and normalization of multilingual, multimodal content), (2) AI-Spatial Cognition (identification of perception hotspots via Head/Tail Breaks and DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise) clustering combined with viewshed analysis), and (3) Affective-Semantic Intelligence (sentiment and topic modeling using transformer-based NLP). Results reveal strong spatial hierarchies of landscape appreciation, with intensity peaks in the Carpathians, Braşov, Bucharest, Maramureş, and the Black Sea coast. Sentiment analysis shows predominantly positive emotions associated with nature-oriented regions, while topic modeling highlights the prevalence of themes related to photography, heritage, and recreation. Together, these multimodal insights demonstrate a clear relationship between visibility, spatial clustering, and affective tone. The AI-PLM framework, thus, bridges physical geography and emotional expression, providing a scalable and transferable methodology for assessing cultural ecosystem services. By translating unstructured digital traces into structured spatial and semantic indicators, it advances the understanding of human-landscape interactions and offers practical tools for data-driven landscape management, conservation, and tourism planning in Romania and beyond.

Abstract We argue that scholars involved in debates on Kant’s writings on race and racism are deeply entangled with a tacit methodological debate about the use of a ‘priority principle’. We identify three variants of the priority principle in Kant scholarship. To illustrate, we focus on interpretations of Kant’s Physical Geography . The methodological approaches we analyse offer three opposite and mutually exclusive interpretative recommendations. We articulate a taxonomy of methods commonly employed and suggest that focusing on individual texts reveals value-laden methodological assumptions guiding the debate. To address substantive issues surrounding Kant’s raciology, we suggest commentators should carefully justify their methodological choices.

Over the past two decades, methods to measure and account for social vulnerability, or the ability of a community to prepare for, cope with, and recover from a natural disaster, have rapidly proliferated. Recognizing the multifaceted nature of vulnerability, researchers and practitioners now seek to combine social with locational (physical) vulnerability into singular indexes designed to identify areas of high risk. Central to such efforts are common demographic data sets (e.g., those provided by the U.S. Census) and spatially referenced environmental (locational) data sets specific to a hazard, such as historic flood plains or remotely sensed indicators of live fuel moisture for wildfires. There are inherent uncertainties, however, associated with both social and locational data. Examples are myriad and could include issues of scale, precision, and sampling. Although more thoroughly addressed in the physical geography domain, these uncertainties are largely ignored in many of the common constructions of social vulnerability indexes that dominate the literature. In this article, we make two contributions. First, from a theoretical perspective, we draw on the traditional error propagation framing and methods from physical geography and apply these to a human geography setting. Second, we use this method to propagate data uncertainties through a wildfire risk index and show how this error propagation destabilizes conclusions and common map interpretations, even in a simplified application. Our results suggest that ignoring the uncertainty could lead to misallocated resources for prevention, mitigation, and recovery efforts. We highlight the difficulties of index construction and make recommendations for different possible approaches.

The challenge in teaching Natural and Social Sciences (IPAS) in elementary schools often lies in the difficulty of visualizing abstract concepts, particularly regarding landscape diversity and its relationship to community professions. Preliminary observations at Dadaprejo 01 Public Elementary School revealed a critical issue: fourth-grade students exhibited low engagement, characterized by a lack of focus and visible boredom during conventional lessons that relied heavily on static worksheets. Consequently, this study aims to develop the "BENAPRO" (Bentang Alam dan Profesi) e-module, designed to meet the criteria of validity, practicality, and effectiveness, specifically to increase students' interest in learning. This research employs a Research and Development (R&D) approach based on the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation). The subjects in the field trial were 18 fourth-grade students. Data collection instruments included expert validation sheets, teacher and student response questionnaires using a Likert scale, and pre-test/post-test questionnaires to measure learning interest. The data were analyzed both descriptively and quantitatively. The results show that the e-module is "highly valid," with material experts providing an average score of 86% and product experts rating it at 96%. Practicality tests demonstrated excellent reception, with educators rating the module at 97.9% and students at 98.6%, citing the module's interactive features and ease of use. Crucially, the effectiveness test showed a significant surge in student interest, indicated by an N-Gain score of 0.82, which falls into the "High" category. It is concluded that the BENAPRO e-module is a valid, practical, and effective tool. By integrating Problem-Based Learning syntax with contextual visualization, this innovation effectively transforms passive learning into active engagement, making it a suitable alternative to the Independent Curriculum. Keywords: e-modules, natural and social sciences, diversity of landscapes and community professions, learning interests.

This study examines how Canada’s varied physical geography influences patterns of settlement, regional economies, environmental pressures, and long-term development trajectories. Spanning a wide range of landforms and climatic zones—from the rugged terrain of the Western Cordillera to the Arctic’s polar environment—Canada’s geographical structure shapes both human activity and resource utilization. Adopting a qualitative descriptive framework, the research integrates evidence from scholarly sources, governmental publications, and spatial data analyses. The findings highlight pronounced regional contrasts in population density and economic function, with extensive regions such as the Canadian Shield supporting limited settlement due to physical constraints, while southern corridors and the Prairie provinces sustain intensive agriculture, urban concentration, and industrial growth. The analysis further reveals that climate-related risks are most severe in northern regions, where environmental change disproportionately affects Indigenous communities and fragile ecosystems. Major metropolitan areas have expanded largely as a result of favorable geographic positioning that facilitates trade, transportation, and economic connectivity. Overall, the study emphasizes the central role of geography in shaping Canada’s national development and advocates for region-specific policy approaches that prioritize environmental resilience, infrastructure planning, and Indigenous land governance.

To support conservation-focused research and management we developed a new 30-m resolution polygon data layer of the nonlacustrine and nonriverine islands of the United States, with associated attributes describing key physical and conservation geography characteristics. Islands were grouped into a three-tiered hierarchy of island regions (twelve), island provinces (twenty-eight), and individual islands (19,023). Islands were classified as either continental or oceanic based on their physiographic position relative to the North America continental shelf, and estuarine versus nonestuarine depending on their location within or external to estuaries. For each island we assessed the diversity of terrestrial and coastal ecosystems, the number of threatened and endangered (T&E) species listed under the Endangered Species Act, the number of T&E species critical habitats, the number of migratory bird species listed under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the number of Key Biodiversity Areas, and the number of and management responsibility for protected areas. We conclude that the conservation importance of islands is disproportionate to their total area as, for example, islands contain 52 percent of the T&E species yet their total area is only 2 percent of the area of the continental mainland. Similarly, of the global total of 431 World Terrestrial Ecosystems, 201 (47 percent) occur on U.S. islands compared with 286 (66 percent) that occur on the U.S. continental mainland.

Urban expansion alters hydrology and impacts nutrient export and runoff retention, but understanding the effects of these processes requires consideration of local context and physical geography. Toward this end, this study spatially examines ecosystem services and tradeoffs linked to land use changes over 20 years (2001–2021) in five sub-watersheds in Greenville, North Carolina. Using the InVEST® modeling suite, specifically the Nutrient Delivery Ratio (NDR) and Urban Stormwater Retention (USR) models, this study explores how urban growth and land use change affect nutrient delivery and stormwater runoff. The NDR model estimates nutrient loads based on land cover and USR assesses stormwater retention and avoided nutrient loads. Results indicate increased impervious surfaces reduce stormwater retention and amplify nutrient export, leading to greater flood risks and water quality degradation. These effects are particularly pronounced in rapidly urbanizing regions where natural retention features are diminished or removed. Findings highlight the importance of ecosystem-based retention services, such as wetlands, forests, and green infrastructure, in mitigating urban hydrological impacts. They also emphasize the need for integrating these features into sustainable land-use planning and urban design. Additional data collection and further refinement of biophysical inputs would enhance the translational value of InVEST modeling.

This paper examines the historically significant yet understudied geographical dimensions of Hadhrami Sayyid and Sufi migration to Panthalayini near modern-day Quilandi, analyzing how physical geography shaped both settlement patterns and subsequent religious-cultural developments. Panthalayini's distinctive promontory hills and protective rock formations extending into the sea created an ideal natural harbor that positioned it among Malabar's premier ports. This geographical advantage established it as a crucial intermediary station for diverse pilgrimage routes, including those to Adam's Peak in Ceylon and for ships traversing from Iraq to China during the Abbasid era. Drawing upon Fernand Braudel's longue durée approach and Yi-Fu Tuan's concept of topophilia, this study explores how Panthalayini's sacred geography attracted and sustained over thirty Hadhrami Sayyid clans, including the Bafaqeeh, Haddad, Jifree, Saqaaf, and Aidroos families. The research elucidates how monsoon wind patterns—what Pliny the Elder in his Natural History identified as the Western Hippalos winds—functioned as natural mechanisms facilitating migration, with ships from Cape Diyagroos targeting Panthalayini as their destination. These environmental factors created what might be termed "monsoon bridges" that facilitated the continuous transfer of people, ideas, and practices between the Arabian Peninsula and Malabar Coast. The paper further investigates how geopolitical transformations, particularly the Portuguese intrusions into both Yemeni and Malabar ports, accelerated Hadhrami migration while reshaping settlement hierarchies along the coast. Through critical analysis of genealogical texts including Shamsuddaheera and Koukabudduriyya, supplemented by Badeeb's recent genealogical research and the well- preserved Aidroos Ratheeb documents, the study reconstructs migration patterns and their geographical determinants. Beyond migration mechanics, the research examines how Hadhrami settlers utilized local topography to establish spiritual centers that attracted disciples from across the Indian Ocean rim, creating nodes in an extended network reaching Gujarat, Aceh, and Bombay. Methodologically, this work combines qualitative approaches—including architectural analysis of local monuments, archival research, and interviews with clan members—with spatial analysis techniques to map the distribution of Hadhrami-influenced mosques and sacred sites. This interdisciplinary approach reveals how geographical features influenced not only initial settlement choices but also subsequent cultural production, exemplified by the Hadhrami supervision of hookah manufacturing that leveraged local craftsmanship traditions.The study ultimately contributes to historical geography by demonstrating how physical landscape features and maritime connections created conditions for Panthalayini's emergence as Kerala's foremost center of Hadhrami Sayyid presence, while illuminating broader patterns of religiously-motivated migration within the Indian Ocean world.

In 2024, the Working Group on Marine and Coastal Geography (Arbeitskreis Geographie der Meere und Küsten, AMK) looked back on 40 years of exchange and collaboration between coastal scientists and professionals. Since its foundation in 1983 as a working group of the German Society for Geography (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geographie, DGfG) (Paffen & Kortum 1984; Zimmermann 1984), the AMK has developed into a central platform for research on coastal geographical research in German-speaking countries, fostering a dialogue across physical and human geography as well as many neighbouring disciplines. This special issue marks the anniversary by highlighting both contemporary research perspectives in marine and coastal geography based on global examples and the practices of coastal observation and protection along the German coasts.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of border disputes between Serbia and Croatia from historical, legal, and political perspectives. The main focus of this research is the status of both the de facto and de jure of the Vukovarska and Gornja Šarengrad islands located on the Danube. These disputes stem from the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the legacy of Tito’s border policy. This study analyses the tensions between effective control and the principles of international law in border delineation. In this context, the thalweg principle and the uti possidetis juris doctrine are comparatively assessed through historical documents and existing international agreements. The research is theoretically grounded in border analysis theory, which posits that borders should not be viewed merely as geographical demarcation lines but rather as reflections of political sovereignty, identity construction, and regional power relations. This theoretical framework demonstrates that borders are continuously reproduced within historical and social contexts, emphasising their nature as dynamic sociopolitical constructs that extend beyond physical geography. The findings reveal that borders are shaped through the interaction of political, ethnic, and social forces, rather than existing solely as geographical lines. The results further indicate that disputed borders often possess the characteristics of so-called “frozen boundaries” – territories under de facto control but lacking full legal resolution. Consequently, the study concludes that, in the context of the Balkans in general and Serbia–Croatia relations in particular, the resolution of border disputes requires a holistic approach that integrates historical, social, political, and theoretical dimensions, rather than relying solely on cartographic or legal instruments.

Tourism has become a vital catalyst for regional progress, contributing to economic diversification, cultural enrichment, and environmental stewardship. Thane District in Maharashtra holds considerable promise in this regard due to its varied natural settings, historic monuments, religious landmarks, and expanding urban infrastructure. This paper evaluates the tourism prospects of Thane District by examining its physical geography, major attractions, and spatial distribution of tourist sites, transportation linkages, and future development opportunities. This paper uses the secondary qualitative and quantitative data. Key destinations including Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary, Masunda Lake, Mahuli Fort, and the culturally significant Ambarnath Shiv Mandir, an outstanding example of 11th-century Hemadpanthi architecture which illustrate the district’s broad tourism portfolio. Findings suggest that although Thane’s tourism assets are rich and diverse, development across destinations is inconsistent, largely influenced by accessibility and promotional efforts. With strategic interventions focusing on sustainable infrastructure, conservation, and integrated planning, Thane District can strengthen its position as a leading regional tourism hub while maintaining ecological balance and cultural integrity.

Alastair Dawson was a physical geographer and interdisciplinary Earth scientist who made outstanding contributions to understanding the development of the Scottish landscape and to Quaternary environmental change. His thoughtful and innovative research has had a lasting influence, particularly on glacial and periglacial geomorphology, interactions between ice-sheets, palaeoclimate and sea-level change, and the recognition and interpretation of Holocene tsunami deposits. His scientific and educational achievements are summarized in his publications, which include over 100 peer-reviewed research articles and six books.

The article provides an overview of narrative works written in Oriental languages from the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century, containing information on the historical geography of the Central Asian region. Alongside Russian and Western written sources, Arabic-script and Chinese texts represent an important foundation for researching the historical geography of this region during the modern period. Oriental sources provide diverse information about the places of residence of various ethnic groups, administrative systems, cities, roads, and economic activities of local populations, as well as details about the climate, wildlife, and natural resources of the region. Official chronicles and private works by Kokand, Bukharan, and Khivan authors contain data on state organization, ethnic composition, and administrative-territorial changes in the Uzbek Khanates and Desht-i Kipchak during the modern period. Travel notes offer historical and ethnographic insights into local populations in border areas with Russia and China. Valuable information on the historical toponymy of Kazakhstan, caravan trade routes, and river crossings is presented in the memoirs of the 19th-century officials and travelers. Numerous written monuments from Mawarannahr and Qing China contain original materials on the physical, political, and socio-economic geography of the Central Asian region in the modern centuries, many of which still await further study, scholarly incorporation, or re-translation in accordance with contemporary academic standards. Acknowledgments: This article was prepared as part of the research program Historical Geography of Central Asia, funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (grant No. BR21882416).

The family Telmatobiidae consists of a single genus, Telmatobius, with 60 species distributed along the Andes of South America. Commonly known as water frogs, telmatobiids inhabit different types of mountain freshwater environments, with species ranging semi-aquatic to fully aquatic lifestyles. This study expands current knowledge of Telmatobius pisanoi by reporting two newly identified populations from the northern and northeast regions of the Calchaquí Valley, in the Eastern Cordillera of Salta province, north-western Argentina. We provide detailed morphological descriptions of adults, juveniles and tadpoles—including osteology and morphometric data—and compare them with previously known, geographically distant populations from the southern Calchaquí Valley and other species from Argentina. Based on the analysis of morphological variation and other biological aspects, we discuss the implications in the taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography, natural history, and conservation of the species. Although intraspecific traits were consistent, the observed morphological variation suggests a historical fragmentation of populations. Additionally, we provide a distribution map integrating physical geography with both new field records and historical information contributed by local residents.