bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Representation: Flows
Authors: Bothwell James D.
Published: March 2017

Flow is found where there is continuous movement of energy, inanimate matter, and biological entities. Flow can be of physical properties or intangible concepts. The representation of flow in geography has followed the discrete object or event‐oriented approach subject to the constraints of map‐making, user comprehension, and discrete digital signals. Map‐makers need to abstract to clarify the message they wish to communicate. Users can quickly understand maps with low levels of message information. Geographic information systems (GIS) have a propensity toward discrete representations due to data storage considerations and analysis limitations. The lack of continuous representations and analysis capability in GIS hampers the representation and analysis of real‐world spatiotemporal physical processes modeled with partial differential equations.
Frontiers
Authors: van Houtum Henk , Bueno Lacy Rodrigo
Published: March 2017

The frontier is one of the most fascinating concepts in geography. It is a border, yet not a well‐demarcated line but a fuzzy zone of transition, not a finished world but a world in sketch and a gate to the future. Because of its conceptual openness and relation to exploration, the frontier has been in partnership with imperialism and evokes the ancestry of an oppressive term. Arguably, however, the frontier is simultaneously a better allusion to the ceaseless flows that shape societies and thus a refined notion to analyze the transformations that are the concern of human geography.
Corporate World and Work:
I
ndian Women in the
IT
Sector
Authors: Raju Saraswati
Published: March 2017

Information technology has opened up virtual workspaces in India. These workspaces are modeled on Western, particularly US, corporate culture, offering relatively more liberal and nonhierarchical work conditions. But such processes are not without contradictions. Even as the global technical worker is being created by virtue of working across transnational borders, conflicting cultural images are being produced of a segmented workforce serving capitalist interests. Moreover, the supposedly global environment is not contextually isolated from the local trappings of culturally encoded behavioral norms, particularly as they relate to women workers.
Electoral Geographies
Authors: Forest Benjamin
Published: March 2017

The field of electoral geography comprises the study of spatial voting patterns, election campaigns and political parties, and electoral systems – particularly systems that use territorial constituencies. The three major approaches are the geography of voting (cartographic representation of votes), geographic influences on voting, and the geography of representation (the analysis of election systems). Most studies in electoral geography focus on the United Kingdom and United States, which partly reflects the dominance of a few extremely productive scholars.
Regional Geography
Authors: Jones Martin
Published: March 2017

Regions have been central to geography, and the discipline of geography can be traced through the different ways in which “the region” has been interpreted. Geographers have talked about traditional regional geography, the new regional geography, and the new regionalism. The current “new new regional geography” debate centers on whether regions can be seen as relational and networked and on territorial and scalar concerns. Thinking about region‐making can help to take regional geography forward.
Accessibility, Employment
Authors: Shen Qing
Published: March 2017

This entry first discusses the conceptualization and measurement of employment accessibility, focusing primarily on several operational accessibility measures that are commonly applied to urban planning and policy analysis. Depending on the application context, the appropriate measures may or may not need to account for the spatial distribution of job seekers. The entry then illustrates the usefulness of employment accessibility measures for understanding the spatial structure of metropolitan labor markets and for examining the employment outcomes of urban residents, especially the poor. Recent empirical studies, which applied these accessibility measures, demonstrated the critical importance of transportation, rather than residential location, in determining a low‐skilled job seeker's spatial advantage or disadvantage within a metropolitan labor market.
Fluvial Depositional Processes and Landforms
Authors: Hudson Paul F.
Published: March 2017

Fluvial depositional landforms are created from combinations of specific sedimentary processes and depositional environments. Two major categories of fluvial sedimentary processes are overbank and lateral accretion mechanisms, influenced by drainage basin and local hydraulic controls. Because of their connection to drainage basins, fluvial landforms provide linkages to a diverse range of Earth's surficial processes, including human–environment interaction. Active fluvial landforms include alluvial fans, terraces, deltas, and floodplains. The latter are often further subdivided into natural levees, channel bars, backswamps, infilled channels, and crevasse deposits. Fluvial terraces are relict floodplains perched above active river valleys, and provide key information to understand fluvial adjustment to past hydroclimatic regimes. Fluvial‐dominated deltas prograde into lacustrine or marine settings, as sandy river mouth deposits transported as bed load prograde over fine‐grained cohesive clay derived from suspended sediments. Fluvial depositional processes are of interest for a variety of reasons, including with regard to economics, flooding, and environmental management and restoration.
Uncertainty
Authors: Guptill Stephen C.
Published: March 2017

Uncertainty measures, taken in the context of geographic information, are used to characterize various aspects of the quality of a given set of data. As geographic information permeates more aspects of daily life, data users' requirements for knowledge about quality in geographic information continue to increase. A complicated framework exists in which uncertainty measurements can be applied to the various components of a geographic dataset; however, very few of these are calculated or supplied by the data producers. At the consumer level, little information is provided to the user regarding the level of uncertainty in the data they are viewing or using. Lack of information about the uncertainty in underlying datasets raises questions about the validity of any analytical results calculated using those data.
Social Geography
Authors: Del Casino Vincent J.
Published: March 2017

Social geography is a field of inquiry with a complex history. It has been strongly influenced by scholars within and beyond the broader discipline of geography. This entry examines the ways in which social geography aligns itself with social theoretical trends and how those trends are interpreted through social geography as a subdiscipline.
Behavioral Geography
Authors: Argent Neil
Published: March 2017

Behavioral geography encompasses a broad field of human geography that became influential during the 1960s and 1970s. It emerged in reaction to the “quantitative turn” associated with the spatial sciences paradigm of the 1950s and 1960s. A fundamental goal of behavioral geography is to understand how and why people perceive environments in the way they do, and how these perceptions influence actual spatial behavior. Behavioral geography, which was largely responsible for introducing behavioralism to human geography, is best thought of as an approach rather than as a separate subdiscipline, given the breadth of philosophical perspectives, research foci, and methodologies that it fostered. Behavioral approaches in human geography were applied to a range of topics, including natural hazards, urban and rural residents' cognition of their built and natural environments, and people's affective belonging to place. Although segments of the approach were criticized for their, inter alia, positivism, lack of scientific rigor, and failure to challenge the status quo of society, the behavioral approach to human geography facilitated a greater engagement with philosophical and epistemological issues, forged productive interactions and relationships with cognate disciplines, and helped lay the conceptual and methodological groundwork for human geographers to engage with contemporary social, environmental, and political issues of public policy relevance.
Representation: Complex Objects
Authors: Clementini Eliseo
Published: March 2017

Geographic objects are complex. In field‐based representations, objects are not directly represented but can be reassembled as those field parts that share a common property. Entity‐based representations allow for a direct representation of objects but are not always able to deal with complexity: for example, in single‐value maps, only very simple vector data types are admitted. The representation of complex geographic objects is related to the development of object‐oriented representations in information science. The definition of complex objects in point‐set topology was the first step in that direction before their integration into international standards took place. The research on complex object representation continues to incorporate various levels of complexity, such as those related to multiple representations, compound parts, aggregations of other objects, complex many‐to‐many relationships, integration of semantic properties, the temporal component, and uncertain boundaries.
Everyday Geographies
Authors: Skelton Tracey
Published: March 2017

Geographies of everyday life focus on the everyday spaces where humans live out their lives. Theoretical insights are derived from de Certeau and Lefebvre, both of whom worked to develop critical insights of the everyday as problematic and to analyze the spaces and places of everyday life. Geographers pay attention to the mundane and banal aspects of the everyday but recognize the possibilities and potentiality of the extraordinary and the spectacular. In this way geographers attempt to understand and be aware of the commonplace in order to enhance a geography that is human‐centered.
Patterned Ground
Authors: Sawyer Carol F.
Published: March 2017

Patterned ground refers to a suite of surficial features formed and maintained primarily through frost‐related processes and typically associated with periglacial environments. The features range in size from miniature (>20 cm) to over 3 m in diameter. The features can take the appearance of circles, polygons, nets, steps, and stripes. The landforms can be further distinguished on whether the material is sorted from smallest to largest sizes of clasts within each geometric shape. Researchers continue to study the processes related to the initial formation and continued movement of patterned ground.
Innovation and Regional Development
Authors: Yang Chun
Published: March 2017

In the globalizing economy, innovation has been widely recognized as a major driver of sustainable economic growth in both developed and developing countries. Regions have become key actors shaping the generation and diffusion of new knowledge and economic evolution. The past decades have witnessed the changing scales and space of innovation, the conceptualization of which involves national innovation systems, sectoral innovation systems, regional innovation systems, and global innovation networks. The significance of proximity for innovation has been changing in the context of open innovation. The empirical experience of innovation and regional development in the West's advanced countries and emerging economies such as China has demonstrated divergent trajectories and patterns.
Lake Climates
Authors: Kristovich David A.R.
Published: March 2017

Lakes can greatly modify the climate conditions in a region, resulting in cooler summers and warmer winters. The primary reason for this local climate modification is that, for several reasons, the diurnal and annual temperature cycles of lake surface temperature are delayed behind those for the air in regions upwind of the lakes. A second important factor is that there is a surface roughness difference between the lakes and nearby land areas. In this entry, the multiple cool‐season and warm‐season impacts of these differences, such as lake‐effect snow storms and lake breezes, on lake climate regions, and the reasons for these, are discussed.
Multilevel Governance
Authors: Beer Andrew
Published: March 2017

Multilevel governance refers to the ways in which government and nongovernment agencies interact at a number of spatial scales to shape the social, political, and economic landscape. It acknowledges that the decisions of governments can be the product of the interactions between national governments and governments operating at the provincial or state level, and that they can also be a product of interconnecting interests between governments and supranational organizations (such as the European Union or the United Nations). In addition, multilevel governance can be an outcome of the confluence of concerns amongst nation‐states, local or provincial governments, and nongovernment organizations.
Environmental History
Authors: Pawson Eric , Christensen Andreas Aagaard
Published: March 2017

Environmental history is an interdisciplinary pursuit that has developed as a form of conscience to counter an increasingly powerful, forward‐looking liberal theory of the environment. It deals with the relations between environmental ideas and materialities, from the work of the geographers George Perkins Marsh, Carl Sauer, and Clarence Glacken, to more recent global‐scale assessments of the impact of the “great acceleration” since 1950. Today's “runaway world,” paradoxically, embraces risk management in an attempt to determine its own future while generating a whole new category of “manufactured risks.” These are exposed by environmental history's focus on long‐run analysis and its narrative form which identifies the stories that we tell ourselves about nature. How a better understanding of past environmental transformations helps to analyze society and agency, and what this can mean for solutions and policies, are the agenda for an engaged environmental history from now on.
Visibility Analysis
Authors: Domingo‐Santos Juan M. , de‐Villarán Rubén Fernández‐
Published: March 2017

In land‐use management and spatial modeling more broadly, visibility analysis aims to determine the portions of the landscape that can be seen from one or more vantage points, as well as the importance of each landscape element in view. This entry describes the main factors influencing visibility: the visual acuity of the human eye; the color contrast with the background, modified by atmospheric extinction (or the absorption and scattering of light); and the surface area covered by the image of objects on the retina, described here as visual exposure, as well as intervisibility, leading to the concept of viewsheds. It also outlines some approaches to calculating visibility factors and integrated computation of visibility using geographic information systems (GIS). Finally, some limitations are highlighted regarding viewshed and visual exposure calculations based on GIS.
Volunteered Geographic Information
Authors: Sui Daniel , Cinnamon Jonathan
Published: March 2017

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to geographic information that is acquired and made available to others through the voluntary activities of either individuals or groups. The growth of VGI in the past 10 years is a result of several related technological advances and scientific practices, such as Web 2.0, Geoweb, mobile technologies, neogeography, citizen science, crowdsourcing, and open science. VGI often differs from conventionally produced forms of geographic information, including the types of information produced and the approaches used to acquire it, the methods and techniques for working with it, and the social processes that mediate its creation. As VGI is rapidly merging with the stream of big data, issues regarding its quality assurance, methodology of use, and legal/ethical implications have been raised. As an alternative data source that in many ways complements traditional sources such as those produced by national mapping agencies and cartographic corporations, VGI has been shown to be a valuable data source for a variety of applications, especially in low‐resource areas and time‐sensitive situations.
Remittances
Authors: Kelly Philip F.
Published: March 2017

Remittances are financial transfers sent by migrants to their place of origin. Although measurements are problematic, it is clear that remittances have grown dramatically in volume since 2000. International financial institutions and national governments have hailed remittances as a source of development financing and poverty reduction. Critical researchers, however, point out the varied costs associated with migration as a development strategy and the ways in which money transfers also carry significance for social relations and cultural landscapes.
Queer Geographies
Authors: Johnston Lynda
Published: March 2017

Queer is a contested concept. It can be utilized as an all‐embracing term for sexual dissidents, yet queer theorists have argued against identity categories of all kinds. Queer theories are used to engage critically with gender and sexual normative categories. Queer geographical scholarship has examined the active production of spaces and places as heterosexual, as well as critiquing the geographical discipline as heteronormative. Geographers have also been engaging in critical debates about homonormative spaces, places, and bodies. Such queer geographies celebrate difference, but they may also dissolve identities, and in so doing remove the political platform from which to engage in social justice demands and equality debates.
Digital Divide
Authors: Kleine Dorothea , Poveda Sammia
Published: March 2017

The term “digital divide” has evolved from being seen as a binary to a continuum of access to and use of digital technologies. Dimensions of access include availability, affordability, necessary skills, and access to meaningful content in a relevant language, as well as times and spaces of access. Frequently, digital divides trace existing social divides; however, the work of the Information and Communication Technologies for Development community supports marginalized groups in particular to make use of, for instance, mobile phones, the Internet, computers, and applications. While mobile Internet access opens up new possibilities, the conflicting trends of increased commercialization of online space, Internet rights, and the Open Access, Open Data movement mean that the contours and nature of the Internet in the future are highly contested and uncertain.
Labor Geography
Authors: Brogan Peter , Tufts Steven
Published: March 2017

The emergence of labor geography in the 1990s was received enthusiastically as an alternative to capital‐centric readings of economic landscapes. Over the last decade there have been several challenges to the insertion of labor agency into contemporary accounts of capitalist development. Critiques range from the accusation of an unsophisticated analysis of class from more traditional Marxists to the limits of labor geography's focus on institutionalized capital‐labor conflict, which excludes other actors and social relations. We trace labor geography's development, discuss key areas of inquiry, and conclude with some possible engagements and future trajectories for the geographical study of work, workers, and workplaces.
Cultural Politics
Authors: Woods Orlando
Published: March 2017

Postcolonial and poststructural ways of thinking have radically changed scholarly approaches to the understanding and interpretation of culture, and have revealed ways in which power is embedded within the production of cultural knowledge itself. They have also precipitated new approaches to understanding the politics of group and individual cultural identities, and the cultural politics of landscape. The development and uptake of nonrepresentational theory has focused attention on how culture is represented by the academy, and on how such representations provide yet another facet of cultural politics.
CyberGIS
Authors: Wang Shaowen
Published: March 2017

CyberGIS represents an interdisciplinary field that synergizes advanced cyberinfrastructure, geographic information science and systems (GIS), spatial analysis and modeling, and a number of geospatial domains to improve research productivity and enable scientific breakthroughs. It has emerged as a fundamentally new GIS modality based on holistic integration of high‐performance and distributed computing, data‐driven knowledge discovery, visualization and visual analytics, and collaborative problem‐solving and decision‐making capabilities. This integration requires a bridge across the digital divide between the cyberinfrastructure and geospatial communities. CyberGIS is well poised to enable advances in digital and spatial studies and to nurture emerging digital geospatial ecosystems; it holds great potential for revolutionizing many areas of scholarship, ranging from engineering and science to the humanities.
Neighborhood, Conceptual
Authors: Freksa Christian , Kreutzmann Arne
Published: March 2017

In the abstract space of concepts, certain relations are semantically closer than others. This is comparable to concrete geographic space, where certain locations are spatially closer than others. This entry presents the notion ofconceptual neighborhood, a neighborhood structure defined over relations between concepts. Due to their relative semantic similarity, conceptually neighboring relations may be confused more easily than conceptually distant relations. Knowing about conceptual neighborhood of relations therefore is highly relevant for error detection and recovery, as well as for robustness, as it drastically reduces the search for meaningful alternatives. It also supports correct interpretation of structured subjective concepts. Exploitation of conceptual neighborhood structures can reduce computation from nontractable exponential to tractable polynomial complexity classes.
Realism, Critical
Authors: Cox Kevin R.
Published: March 2017

Critical realism is a philosophy of science that generated considerable interest among human geographers during the 1980s. A critique of the positivism of the spatial‐quantitative revolution, it posited structures of social relations as the necessary conditions of events. Part of its attraction was that it seemed to offer a methodology for radical geography. Such hopes may have been misplaced. Attention shifted away from it toward the various “posts.” Little is now heard of it, but it did have some enduring impacts, not least a greater sensitivity to the geohistorical conditions necessary to the production of particular geographies.
Sensor Networks, Wireless
Authors: Liu Xiaohan , Gong Peng
Published: March 2017

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained worldwide attention since the 1990s and are an important part of the Internet of Things (IoT). Sensing and wireless communication are two important components for both WSNs and the IoT. A WSN sensor node is a low‐power device equipped with multifunctional sensors, a processor, memory, power supply, radio, and actuators. A WSN system includes a server, a sensor node, communication protocols, and a database. The sensor network platform, communication protocols, and network services constitute major research subjects in WSNs. Major application areas of WSNs include environmental monitoring and target tracking; it is an important technology for networking field observations and development of integrated earth observation systems.
Migration: Skilled International Labor
Authors: Beaverstock Jonathan V.
Published: March 2017

Skilled international migration within producer service firms is an essential organizational strategy for deploying highly skilled, professional and managerial, and knowledge‐intensive human resources around the globe. This form of skilled international migration is mainly corporate assignments, mostly intercompany transfers and secondments to clients or subsidiary firms (often encompassed in distinctive expatriation programs). Such movements are often short‐ or medium‐term in duration, lasting from three months to a year; from one to two years, or up to four years on average. But, as the international business environment has become more globalized and complex, multinational producer service firms have made international assignments and secondments a normalized practice for strategic management and training purposes. Recently, such skilled international migration has been referred to as global talent mobility as firms organize their internal labor markets and client relationships on a worldwide scale, prompting greater flexibility in the mobility of highly skilled staff.
Ecosystem
Authors: Malanson George P.
Published: March 2017

The term ecosystem is examined in terms of its varied usage. Ecosystems can imply a specific place or type of environment, a particular scientific approach to the study of environment, or general connectedness in the environment. The fluidity of usage can be confusing, but all varied uses serve varied, legitimate purposes.
Mixed‐Method Approaches
Authors: Hawthorne Timothy L.
Published: March 2017

Geographers increasingly recognize the value of and need for multiple methods to explore complex geographic research questions, constructs, datasets, and phenomena. Scholars often argue for a mixed‐method approach since it is clear that no one method alone can fully explain the complexities or intricacies of a research topic. Proponents of mixed‐method research demonstrate and celebrate the complexity involved in understanding the nuances of a geographic study and advocate that such complexity can best be explored through a combination of qualitative and quantitative datasets and methods.
Regional Science
Authors: Thill Jean‐Claude
Published: March 2017

Regional science is a social science that is concerned with the socioeconomic workings of human societies within the context of a region. This entry introduces the fundamental concepts of regional science, including region and territory, distance, place, location and space, and interactions; it underscores its specificities with respect to other spatial sciences and other social sciences from which it draws. It is argued that regional science espouses the scientific research approach and is data‐centric, problem‐driven, and inspired by relevance to public policies. Several core research traditions are presented, including environmental and resource analysis, location analysis, regional analysis, urban analysis, and transportation and mobility analysis. Finally, the entry recognizes the considerable methodological legacy of regional science, which is particularly notable in spatial econometrics, spatial optimization, spatial interaction modeling, and regional and multiregional input‐output and computable general equilibrium modeling.
Hybridity
Authors: Driessen Clemens
Published: March 2017

Hybridity indicates the combining and mixing of entities or domains that conventionally are thought of as separate or even opposed. Hybrid geographies involve attempts to theorize and engage with the social and natural world as intertwined and impossible to disentangle. Work under the banner of hybridity aims to break down the dualisms that structure life in modernity, such as subject/object, mind/body, material/symbolic, human/nonhuman, and science/politics. Looking at the world as a hybrid place has implications for politics and ethics, since science is no longer accorded a pure objective status and normative benchmarks associated with naturalness are lost when we acknowledge the coevolving character of our combined natural and social world.
Domestic Workers
Authors: Silvey Rachel
Published: March 2017

Domestic workers are the focus of a sizable body of research within geography and in other social science disciplines. Studies of domestics grew initially in the 1990s, alongside the discipline's growing understanding of feminist theory, as well as in response to increasing numbers of domestic workers migrating internationally, particularly since the 1970s. Scholars have explored the persistent devaluation of domestic workers' labor in the global labor market in terms of the material, discursive, gendered, racialized, and ethnicized dynamics shaping this labor niche. They have also attended to the artistic, activist, embodied, and subjective dimensions of domestic workers' experiences. They have found that domestic workers commonly participate in additional employment sectors and that marriage and entertainment migration frequently overlap with domestic workers' migration. In recent years, organizers working on behalf of the rights of domestic workers have celebrated a number of legal and governance advances that are opening up new avenues for research on and with domestic workers.
Sorting Spatial Data
Authors: Samet Hanan
Published: March 2017

Sorting the underlying spatial data enables the efficient execution of operations on it in geographic information systems (GIS). The entry differentiates the discussion on the basis of the type of the spatial data, which in this case fall into raster and vector. The raster data are sorted via the use of a number of different space‐filling curves, which are mappings from 2‐D to 1‐D. The motivation comes from the fact that the data are extremely voluminous and thus all of them cannot be fit into memory at once. Therefore, external storage must be used. The sorting is applied in order to enable efficient execution of operations. In the case of vector data, two methods are discussed. The first is based on an object hierarchy and distinguishes between occupied and unoccupied space, while the second sorts the data with respect to the space that is occupied and, in essence, sorts the regions comprising the underlying space so that the number of spatial objects that they contain is within the same range. In both cases of the vector data, the sorting is implicit, whereas in the case of the raster data the sorting is explicit.
Fractal Analysis
Authors: Lam Nina S.N.
Published: March 2017

Since Mandelbrot developed fractal geometry in the 1970s to overcome the difficulty in describing complex forms, applications of the fractal model have been numerous and diverse. Fractal applications in geography fall into two groups. The first group uses the fractal simulation model to generate real‐world‐like curves and surfaces for testing geographical models and algorithms. The second group of application uses the fractal dimension as an aid in describing the complexity of spatial patterns and processes. Extension of the basic fractal model into multifractals and local fractals has made the fractal model more flexible and applicable. The fractal model is a fantastic model of complexity, and its potential uses in current cutting‐edge scientific issues such as complex natural–human dynamics modeling, agent‐based simulation, and resilience system analysis should be further explored.
Interpolation: Kriging
Authors: Wu Changshan
Published: March 2017

Kriging is a group of geostatistics‐based interpolation techniques that attempt to give an unbiased estimate of the value of a variable on a surface. This entry introduces the concept of kriging and its three major steps: (i) deriving the experimental variogram, (ii) fitting the experimental variogram into a mathematical model, and (iii) interpolating the variable value through solving a least squares function. Further, the variations of kriging, and its advantages and disadvantages over other spatial interpolation techniques, are discussed.
Evolutionary Economic Geography
Authors: Schamp Eike W.
Published: March 2017

Evolutionary economic geography has recently emerged as an alternative approach to explaining the dynamics of uneven spatial development. The concept draws heavily on Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species, focusing on evolutionary principles of variety creation, selection between varieties, and retention of the selected varieties in the emergence and development of populations. Mainly based on understanding micro processes, evolutionary economic geography targets the dynamics at the meso level of sectors and regions. There is an ongoing debate in economic geography as well as the social sciences in general about the use of Darwin's concept and the implications of its further development in economic geography. The evolution of technologies and industries in regions is differentiated from the evolution of regions, each referring to different interpretations of Darwin's theory. The role of agency, institutions, and political economy in evolution also has to be clarified. To put it in a nutshell, evolutionary economic geography is still a young, ambiguous, and vigorously debated research field.
Migration: International
Authors: Preston Valerie , Ray Brian
Published: March 2017

International migration, movements of people who leave one country to settle in another, has stimulated a voluminous and growing geographical literature that examines the volume and diversity of migration flows, their meanings for migrants and the societies where they settle, and representations of migration. Contemporary international migration is characterized by increasing spatial variegation and complexity that extend its historical foundations in colonization and imperialism. Globalization, in particular, has encouraged the growth of temporary migration, the feminization of migration, the rise of environmental migrants, and the challenges of increasing ethnoracial diversity. Geographical analysis has been particularly significant in explaining international migration flows and how state representations of migrants are linked to recent efforts to secure national borders.
Census Geography
Authors: Friesen Wardlow
Published: March 2017

The census has a long history, although the modern census is only about 250 years old. It serves many functions within population geography and beyond. These include enumeration and analysis to establish political boundaries, estimate population growth and distribution, and determine changes in the characteristics of a population. Especially important is the use of census data by academics and policymakers to assess human wellbeing. The future of the census is now in question in some countries, however, with alternative approaches being proposed.
Tobler's First Law of Geography
Authors: Waters Nigel
Published: March 2017

Tobler's first law (TFL) of geography was introduced into the geographical literature in an article that Waldo Tobler published in the journal
Economic Geography
in 1970. In this article, which described a simulation of population growth in Detroit, Tobler stated that to make his model operational he would “invoke the first law of geography: everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.” This entry considers whether TFL is an accurate description of the real world. Specifically, it considers the following questions: Is TFL really a law and, if so, is it the most important law in Geography? Do modern spatial interpolation techniques allow the model to be operationalized? How can “near” and “distant” be measured? Is it true for Euclidean and network space? Do classic models of human and urban geography conform to TFL?
Geography Education, Primary and Secondary: International Perspectives
Authors: Solem Michael , Tani Sirpa
Published: March 2017

This entry highlights and compares international patterns in geography education at primary and secondary levels, focusing especially on the United States, Europe, and Asia. The authors consider regional similarities and differences in the structure, content, and aims of geography in schools and teacher education systems. The entry concludes with a discussion of research issues and emerging frameworks for international collaboration and dialogue aimed at advancing the status and quality of geography in primary and secondary education.
Map Generalization
Authors: Mackaness William A. , Burghardt Dirk , Duchêne Cécile
Published: March 2017

Map generalization is concerned with the optimal display of geographic information in map form. It involves the careful selection of data and the use of a range of abstraction techniques that seek to give emphasis to what is important, while still including sufficient contextualizing information. If geographic phenomena are stored at fine levels of detail, the goal of automated map generalization is to derive maps at coarser (smaller) scales. Traditionally, the focus has been on paper maps, but increasingly map generalization services are available via the web, and accessible to users with relatively little cartographic knowledge who wish to integrate data from multiple sources (including their own). These high levels of automation require us to make explicit the relationships and behaviors among geographic phenomena, in order that we can reason about the complex decision‐making process that is cartographic design.
Flexible Labor Markets
Authors: Vinodrai Tara
Published: March 2017

As the structure of the economy in advanced economies has shifted from one primarily based on manufacturing to one based on services, the labor market has also shifted toward greater levels of flexibility. This flexibility is expressed in a number of ways. First, labor market flexibility is embedded in government policy, and employment regulation and standards that govern how labor markets operate. Second, organizational practices such as project‐based work, teamwork, teleworking, homework, and nonstandard scheduling have become more widespread. Third, there has been an increase in nonstandard work, including self‐employment and part‐time, casual, contract, and temporary labor. At the firm level, this is viewed as advantageous as it allows firms to respond more easily to changing market conditions, as well as reducing their overhead costs. While there may be some benefits to individuals through the use of these various arrangements, many forms of flexibility in the labor market impose greater risks, as these forms of work are often precarious and uncertain. These risks are often felt unevenly across geographic space, industrial sectors, and gender, ethnicity, class, and immigration/citizenship statuses.
Spatial Decision‐Support System
Authors: Runck Bryan C.
Published: March 2017

Spatial decision‐support systems (SDSS) combine the spatial capacities of geographic information systems with additional analysis, modeling, and scenario evaluation tools to support a single user or group of users in spatial decision‐making processes. SDSS have followed the general trajectory of geographic information systems (GIS) and information communication technologies (ICT) of decreased costs, and increased usability and adoption. Domains as diverse as transportation engineering, city and regional planning, water resources management, agriculture, and forestry have adopted SDSS. Currently, academic, government, and industry bodies are advancing SDSS through high‐performance, web‐based, and distributed computing applications that support decisions at greater data volumes.
Landlocked States
Authors: Diener Alexander C.
Published: March 2017

The term “landlocked” is commonly applied to politico‐territorial entities lacking coastal frontage or direct access to navigable waterways connecting to the sea. While one may argue that interior districts of states have no choice but to transit the territory of another district or province to reach the sea, their condition of “locked‐ness” differs profoundly from that of states. The key difference is “sovereignty” and the capacity of “transit states” (those countries between a noncoastal state and the sea) to tax, impede, curtail, and/or suspend the transport of people, goods, and resources to and from landlocked states. Recognizing the pervasiveness of this trend and the challenge it presents to development of landlocked states, the United Nations has established various international conventions to mediate the negative effects of mobility dependence.
Geography and the Study of Human–Environment Relations
Authors: Zimmerer Karl S.
Published: March 2017

Human–environment geography is characterized by focused integration and synthesis of the in‐depth analysis of
both
the multifaceted human conditions of interactions with the environment
and
the active dynamics of the biogeophysical world. The nine topical and thematic areas currently comprising human–environment geography are (i) human–environment interactions in hazards, risk, vulnerability, and resilience; (ii) land use, land systems, land change, and biodiversity; (iii) social‐ecological and coupled human–environment systems; (iv) political ecology and human–environment relations; (v) human–environment relations in livelihoods and agricultural landscapes; (vi) resource political economy, management, and politics; (vii) food, health, and bodies in relation to the environment; (viii) environmental landscape history and ideas; and (ix) knowledge concepts in environmental management and policy. Finally, new trends are identified in order to understand the ongoing diversification and potential future expansion of human–environment geography.
Overlay, Topological
Authors: Kim Changjoo
Published: March 2017

A topological overlay is the most required and common GIS technique in spatial data processing. In GIS, questions on spatial relationships (e.g., on top of or within) among features can be answered with the use of a topological overlay. It allows users to combine two or more layers to intersect, erase, or modify datasets resulting in a new feature with the updated attributes of the input and overlay dataset values. The logic behind how a topological overlay works is based on the rules of Boolean logic. Exemplary methods of a topological overlay include erase, identity, intersect, symmetric difference, union, update, and so on. A topological overlay is different from a graphical overlay (image overlay), which neither requires any attribute updates nor creates a new dataset. Topological overlay among different feature types is possible: a point‐in‐polygon, a line‐in‐polygon, and a polygon‐on‐polygon overlay. Although overlay works in both vector and raster domain, a topological overlay is mainly applied to vector formats because it requires the rebuilding of topologic structure for arc, node, and polygon.
Energy Resources and Use
Authors: Brown Marilyn A. , D'Arcy Daniel
Published: March 2017

Since the Arab oil embargo of 1973–1974, a growing number of geographers have applied their disciplinary skills to examining the spatial distribution of energy resources and use. Geographical analysis of the costs and benefits of alternative energy policies has also grown in scope and sophistication.
Environmentalism
Authors: Whitehead Mark
Published: March 2017

This entry introduces the recent history and geography of environmentalism, a term which encompasses the range of political arguments and personal actions that are taken to justify and enable the protection and transformation of the environment. Attention is given here to the metaphysical, ethical, and political dimensions of environmentalism and to the key ideas that have informed its emergence and diversity, including ecocentrism, technocentrism, bioregionalism, organicism, and sustainable development. However, environmentalism is not a singular metaphysical, ethical, or political position but a series of competing understandings of the nature of the relationship between humans and the environments in which they live.
Critical Geography
Authors: Raju Saraswati , Jeffrey Alex
Published: March 2017

There is little consensus about the characteristics of critical geography. The term emerged in the 1970s to refer to Marxist‐influenced geographical works that sought to highlight – and confront – inequalities stemming from the operation of the capitalist system. The theoretical and practical lens of the field widened in subsequent years as feminist, postcolonial, antiracist, and anarchist geographers developed critical perspectives that could illuminate various forms of oppression and marginalization. These moves required a twin focus on the forms of representation through which powerful agencies mask the operation of power while also pointing to the embodied and situated nature of human experience – insights that may provide the basis for forms of resistance. Contestation remains, however, as scholars challenge the extent to which critical geography operates as a distinct field of inquiry and whether academic inquiry can bring about the kinds of transformative politics that critical perspectives desire.
Discrete Global Grid Systems
Authors: Peterson Perry R.
Published: March 2017

Discrete global grid systems (DGGS) are spatial references that use a hierarchical tessellation of cells to partition and address the entire globe. DGGS are designed to portray real‐world phenomena by synthesizing digital values on a common discrete geospatial data structure. DGGS provide an organizational structure that permits fast integration between multiple sources of large and variable geospatial data sources sufficient for fast web‐based visualization and analysis. They are commonly used to create virtual globes. The adoption of an optimized DGGS is considered a favorable choice for the establishment of distributed Digital Earth information systems. A DGGS is designed to be an information grid, not a navigation grid. DGGS provide a reference frame for repeating the location of measured earth observations, feature interpretations, and extrapolated predictions. Information integration, decomposition, and aggregation can be optimized in the hierarchical structure, which can be exploited to support data processing, storage, discovery, transmission, visualization, computation, analysis, and modeling.
Geocoding
Authors: Goldberg Daniel W.
Published: March 2017

Geocoding is most commonly considered to be the process of converting postal address data into geographic coordinates, for example converting text such as “123 Main Street, AnyTown, Texas 12345” into the latitude/longitude representation “−118.23, 32.01.” The purpose of this entry is to describe the past, current, and future of geocoding technologies. The entry begins by describing the internal processes of a geocoding system. It next describes the means by which users can interact with geocoding systems to process their data in secure and convenient manners. It concludes with current and future issues related to geocoding technologies and the use of these tools for scientific, business, and administrative purposes.
Surveillance
Authors: Koskela Hille , Mäkinen Liisa A.
Published: March 2017

Surveillance has become an important topic in many academic fields, including geography. Surveillance is usually understood as observing people's behavior for the purpose of managing them. Surveillance can be visual, biometric, or based on personal data. Furthermore, surveillance can take place online or focus on physical space or location. Current research understands surveillance not only as a top‐down mechanism but also as a social experience. In surveillance context, academic geographers are particularly interested in border control and monitoring public urban space. Political geography of surveillance focuses mainly on boundary‐producing practices and border control strategies. Research on urban space control focuses on surveillance cameras, the marginalizing effects of urban control and the feelings of being under surveillance in urban space. Surveillance no longer operates in a single direction: people are increasingly involved in surveillance in their everyday lives. Societal and personal forms of resisting surveillance are termed counter‐surveillance.