bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Irredentism
Authors: Storey David
Published: March 2017

Irredentism refers to claims made by a state to territory in a neighboring state. From a geographic perspective these claims suggest the territory is intrinsically linked to the claimant state by virtue of historical or cultural associations. There are numerous examples of irredentist claims, and while some remain in abeyance, others continue to fuel nationalist disputes in various parts of the world. Irredentist claims are of interest to human geographers because of the issues they raise about place‐identity connections, contested boundary disputes, and the cartographic depiction of territorial claims.
Literary Geography
Authors: Hones Sheila
Published: March 2017

The term “literary geography” is used to refer to an interdisciplinary subfield within human geography that takes a geographical approach to literary materials. A closely related field known as “critical literary geography” also exists within literary studies. In recent years, the geographical strand of literary geography has become more actively interdisciplinary in its engagement with literary studies and literary theory. It has as a result become more difficult to distinguish between literary geography as a subfield of human geography and work grounded in other disciplines that is also practiced at the intersection of literary studies, geography, and spatial theory. An important recent development in the field has been the establishment of an online bibliography for work in geography and literary studies, and the subsequent launch of the interdisciplinary journal
Literary Geographies
.
Emotional Labor
Authors: Entwistle Joanne
Published: March 2017

Emotional labor has come to light as a critical term within organizational studies of workers in service industries. It directs attention to the ways in which workers are called on to manage their emotions as part of their interactions at work.
Geoportals
Authors: Crompvoets Joep
Published: March 2017

Geoportals are a kind of web portal used to search and access geospatial data and related geographic information services via the Internet. As such, they are a key feature of spatial data infrastructures, facilitating the accessibility, exchange, and sharing of existing geospatial resources stored at numerous organizations. These electronic gateways make use of web services such as discovery and web mapping in order to facilitate search and access to geospatial data. Moreover, the application of appropriate standards is essential for describing (in terms of metadata) geospatial data transfer, visualization, and analysis and for using relevant services in a systematic, compliant, and coherent way. Geoportals are developed for different administrative levels ranging from global to local, as well as for different themes, sectors, and data types.
Neighborhood
Authors: Anderson Matthew B.
Published: March 2017

The neighborhood concept references the localized network of everyday social relations and senses of identity that form among local residents and businesses. Neighborhoods are, in short, local scale communities defined by the spatial extent of face‐to‐face interaction. Historically, humans have organized everyday social life and constituted local identity within geographically bounded areas, which are often identified as neighborhoods. There is also immense variation in the social and physical form that neighborhoods have taken both through time and across cultural contexts. As such, the concept of neighborhood is and has long been an important object of analysis among social scientists, particularly urban geographers, planners, sociologists, and historians.
Microsimulation
Authors: Holm Einar
Published: March 2017

Microsimulation models simulate the behavior of micro‐units over time. They are useful for exploring “what if” questions such as: What is the long‐term impact on the distribution over individuals and regions of population, employment, income, wealth, and health of changed taxes, of aging, of migration, of improved medical services, and nutrition habits? The simulation moves an observed start population of individuals with attributes forward in time, year by year, person by person, and event by event while updating their existence and attributes by help of rules and estimated transition probabilities. A microsimulation model maintains and projects heterogeneity between individuals. Each person is a main character, interacting with other individuals and the environment. Their individual choices and actions are different as constrained by their own properties, preferences, and abilities, and by resources and people in their vicinity. Estimated equations and postulated rules for all intertwined individual events are put to work together and the outcome further on for each person becomes contingent on the entire web of earlier life events and characteristics. Since its start half a century ago, a large number of dynamic microsimulation models all over the globe has been put in operation. Spatial microsimulation requires large start populations in order to give fine‐grained spatial resolution. Because of the reluctance to give analysts access to existing microlevel data due to privacy concerns, research has focused on developing “reverse engineering” methods for recreating microdata from available table and sample data. One obstacle for the development of microsimulations is that their construction requires extensive programming. That is about to change. Promising efforts have emerged to create generic software packages. This development will greatly enhance the possibilities for new generations of scientists in academia and in agencies to apply spatial, micro‐based dynamic modeling to urgent problems regarding people and their environment.
Hydrologic Flow Models
Authors: Howard Douglas A.
Published: March 2017

Hydrologic flow models are simulations or representations of natural hydrologic systems. Through the use of conceptual, physical, or numerical hydrologic flow models hydrologists may predict or forecast flooding events, better understand how to manage water resources, and test hypotheses about unknown flow conditions. With the advances in computer technology, sophisticated numerical hydrologic flow models can be run on modern desktop computers. The most common hydrologic models use numerical methods such as finite difference and finite element techniques where discretization enables the solution of partial differential equations that accurately model natural flow conditions. Hydrologic models for groundwater flow have been standardized by the government for regulatory use and have been adapted by hydrologists and software providers. Examples of the most common hydrologic flow model applications are: snowmelt, infiltration, interception, evapotranspiration, groundwater flow, open‐channel flow, and runoff.
Existentialism
Authors: Mels Tom
Published: March 2017

Existentialism insists that human experience, awareness, and everyday life need to be a fundamental part of scholarly engagement. Within geography, this strain of thought is most strongly associated with humanistic geography and its development for an understanding of the lifeworld, experiences of place, and spatiality as a mode of being‐in‐the‐world. While of seminal importance to contemporary understandings of the situatedness of knowledge and embodied experience, existentialism has also been criticized for underestimating processes and relations of social power and inequality.
Global Cities
Authors: Short John Rennie
Published: March 2017

Global cities are the command centers of the global economy and major hubs in the transnational flow of capital, people, ideas, and practices. The architecture of the global urban network is structured by these various flows. Global city status is maintained and attempted through hosting international events, marketing campaigns, and urban makeovers. Global cities are sites of cosmopolitanism and increasing social polarizations.
Commodification of Nature
Authors: Gunderson Ryan
Published: March 2017

The commodification of nature refers to the process of incorporating biophysical entities and/or information about them into economic systems for the purpose of exchanging the good or service for a profit. Current emphases in the literature include examinations of (i) the way commodification processes function and adapt in different domains of nature; (ii) the socioecological consequences of, and barriers to, nature's commodification; and, more recently, (iii) the limitations of neoclassical environmental economic valuation models and their applications. Studies examining the commodification of nature across time and space reveal capitalism's historically unique relation to nature based on generalized and specialized commodity production and the different manifestations of this often antagonistic relationship. These studies stress that nature may not conform to the laws of the market and the market may not conform to the laws of nature.
Home
Authors: Blunt Alison
Published: March 2017

From homemaking practices on a domestic scale to broader ideas about belonging, privacy, and security, the home is a rich and diverse subject for geographical research. While humanistic geographers celebrate home at the center of human life, feminist geographers have foregrounded the home as a site of power relations and inequalities, and have explored the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality in shaping lived experiences and normative values associated with home. A “critical geography of home” focuses on the ways in which material and imaginative geographies of home are closely intertwined; the intimate relationships between home, power, and identity; and the multi‐scalarity of home.
Urban Managerialism
Authors: Kujawa Richard S.
Published: March 2017

Urban managerialism developed as a research framework to examine the influence of so‐called gatekeepers or controllers of certain government and nongovernmental services at the urban scale. Emerging from the work of British urban sociologist Ray Pahl, this approach guided many specific investigations but it also engendered debates about the authority and autonomy of individuals in urban governance. While initially focused on the provision of housing, researchers applied variants of the framework to urban processes in a wide array of contexts in the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries. Scholars using the lens of urban managerialism contributed to the evolution of theoretical and empirical explorations of urbanization in the period of transition to the forms of postindustrial or late capitalism that came to be dominated by neoliberal policies.
Glaciers
Authors: Haeberli Wilfried
Published: March 2017

Glaciers are perennial masses of ice, firn, and snow, which flow down slopes in cold regions. Their shrinking in most parts of the world is a key indication of rapid if not accelerating climate change at a global scale. More than a century of systematic research and observation in combination with modern technologies – especially digital terrain information and satellite images – provide a basis for model projections of their future development. Even with moderate scenarios of global warming, many glaciers are already likely to shrink dramatically if not even vanish within this century. This process will substantially reduce landscape diversity and change hazard conditions in high mountains; it will also contribute to sea level rise and change the seasonality of water supply in large areas. Strategies for adaptation and mitigation must be developed with high priority.
Externalization
Authors: Richard Goe W.
Published: March 2017

Externalization refers to the use of market contracting by a business firm to procure a good and/or a service from another independent firm as opposed to producing that good or service internally within the former's organizational hierarchy. Geographic research on externalization has predominantly focused on the spatial structure, causes of, and forms of economic organization resulting from market contracting between: (i) manufacturing firms and their suppliers, and (ii) the headquarters of corporations and firms in the producer services sector.
Water: Drinking
Authors: Rajagopal Raj , Wichman Michael , Brands Edwin
Published: March 2017

Nature dominates in shaping the availability and distribution of fresh water. Only a fraction of 1% of all water on the Earth is available for human use. Over centuries, societies have devised physical, biological, and chemical treatments to transform available water and make it fit for human consumption as drinking water. An adequate supply of drinking water is essential for human life. Currently, available drinking water per capita varies from 500–800 L/day in developed nations to 60–150 L/day in developing nations, and in some cases is as low as 20 L/day. Lack of availability poses a significant burden on women and children who often carry heavy loads of water over long distances. Mismatches in distribution of populations and resources, coupled with large‐scale industrial and agricultural consumption and pollution, and global climate change impacts, will test the resilience of our economic, regulatory, and governance systems from the local to the global.
Grounded Theory
Authors: Knigge LaDona G.
Published: March 2017

Grounded theory is an inductive approach to research discovered by sociologists Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss in the late 1960s as a way of systematically collecting and analyzing qualitative as well as quantitative data. Grounded theory involves successive iterations of data collection, coding, comparative analysis, and verification to reveal categories and their properties in order to build theory grounded in empirical realty. Grounded theory has been widely used in sociology, anthropology, geography, and other disciplines. Since the development of grounded theory, there has been a divergence between the originators as well as adaptation by others, including constructivist grounded theory developed. Additionally grounded theory has been used and integrated into mixed‐methods approaches in geography. This includes an iterative, reflexive method of analysis referred to as grounded visualization that combines grounded theory with GIS, exploratory data analysis and visualization and a novel computer‐aided qualitative GIS (CAQ‐GIS) approach.
Ancient Geography
Authors: Mathewson Kent
Published: March 2017

Ancient geography conventionally refers to the geographic theory and practice developed and elaborated by the Greeks and Romans during the millennium from about 500
bce
to about 500
ce
. Many notable figures of classical Antiquity including philosophers, poets, merchants, military men, and travelers contributed to the geographic arts and sciences. Recent scholarship suggests that Greek and Roman geography's antecedents can be found in earlier Afro‐Asiatic civilizations and that all pre‐civilizational cultures possess and utilize geographic knowledge and practices. The study of ancient geography and the actual geography of the classical world enjoyed a florescence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but has been in decline since the 1920s.
Built Environments
Authors: Knox Paul L.
Published: March 2017

Built environments are an important expression of human geographies, reflecting cultural, economic, political, and social forces. In many subdisciplines they have been treated as an independent variable, leading to criticisms of environmental determinism. More appropriately, built environments can be seen as an important element of the sociospatial dialectic, having reciprocal and recursive relationships with cultural, economic, political, and social phenomena at scales ranging from individual buildings to the global.
Geographies of Death
Authors: Maddrell Avril
Published: March 2017

Geographies of death have traditionally addressed patterns of epidemiology and mortality within population and development geographies. Building on work on spaces and forms of memorialization in the 1990s, burgeoning scholarship has now led to an emerging subdiscipline addressing the universal issues of death, mourning, and remembrance which draws on and threads through epidemiology, cultural, socioeconomic, political, and environmental geographies to address such issues as the social cost and carbon footprint of death, the geopolitics of killability, and the emotional‐affective geographies of mourning.
Cartography: History
Authors: Monmonier Mark
Published: March 2017

With ancient roots as instruments of navigation and spatial understanding, maps have changed markedly since the fifteenth century in information content, graphic symbols and format, and societal impact. The most recent changes reflect the emergence of overhead imaging and dynamic displays. In addition, the scholarly study of map history has evolved from its late nineteenth‐century fascination with famous firsts and artistic embellishments to the critical analysis of mapping as a useful but sometimes problematic tool for scientific investigation, territorial conquest, economic development, and governmental administration. These changes are reflected in the emergence of
history of cartography
as a rubric for both a vigorous interdisciplinary scholarly endeavor and the series of comprehensive reference books initiated by J.B. Harley and David Woodward and published by the University of Chicago Press.
Sports
Authors: Gilchrist Paul , Browne Kath
Published: March 2017

Sports geographies deal with the social and spatial dynamics and impacts of sport. Research and scholarship have engaged with many established areas of geographical investigation – landscape, place, environment, nature, colonialism and imperialism, nationalism, globalization – and have intersected with and catalyzed the study of sport in other fields.
Environmentalism, Grassroots
Authors: North Peter
Published: March 2017

Grassroots environmentalism is that element of the wider environmental movement that engages in forms of contentious politics to develop knowledges about environmental issues, challenge examples of environmental destruction, and, from below, construct alternative visions and examples of ways of living that grassroots environmentalists argue are superior to, or potentially superior to, unequal or oppressive ways of organizing society. Grassroots environmentalism works from the grassroots, from ordinary people and activists who develop forms of contentious politics that they put into action themselves, using the resources and skills they have to hand and guided by strategies they develop themselves. Grassroots environmentalism assumes contentious politics, a feeling that something is not right, and that something must be done about it. This may be direct action, creating alternative visions and knowledges, or creating alternative institutions.
Grassland Ecosystems
Authors: Brown Dwight A.
Published: March 2017

Each region of the world's grasslands is unique. Although many grass genera often occur on more than one continent, the occurrence of dominant species on more than one continent is rare. Above the taxonomy, grasses differ regionally in the chemistry they use in photosynthesis. These differences result in different tolerances and response differences to global climate change. The fauna of grasslands also differs greatly regionally, but all have species of grazers, carnivores, and decomposing organisms.
Social Constructionism
Authors: Hsu Szu‐yun , Huang Tsung‐yi Michelle
Published: March 2017

Social constructionism, the social construction of reality, is an umbrella term accentuating difference, situatedness, and positionality in knowledge production, which has had a far‐reaching influence on the contemporary social science and humanities fields, geography included. Contentions surrounding the theoretical validity and political potential of social constructionism are extensively associated with the notion of discourse variously adopted in a broad range of scholarship, from critical realism and Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, to Butler's performativity theory. A non‐anthropocentric, nondiscourse‐centered approach, focused in geography on actor‐network theory and nonrepresentational theory, has further arisen as an ontological reflection on the prevailing debates of social constructionism. These various adaptations and modifications have contributed to a range of new avenues of research in human geography that stem from, yet seek to transcend, the limits of social constructionism.
Mountain Biogeography
Authors: Shen Zehao
Published: March 2017

The status of mountain in biogeography can be traced back to the origin of the discipline of biogeography and linked with the model of island biogeography. The physiographic and environmental properties of mountains are reviewed with regard to biogeographic patterns and processes. The features of mountain biogeographic patterns include three major aspects, that is, altitudinal vegetation zonation, altitudinal pattern of species richness, and the isolated distribution of organisms. The mechanisms for mountain biogeographical patterns are summarized based on temporal scale, with six factors in the contemporary mechanisms, and three processes in the historical mechanisms. Climate change, human disturbance, and species conservation are the primary challenges for mountain biogeography in theoretical and practical aspects.
Children and Environment
Authors: Hayward Bronwyn , Collins Rebecca , Nissen Sylvia
Published: March 2017

Interdisciplinary studies of children and the environment have progressed rapidly in recent years, offering new understanding of the experiences of approximately half of the planet's 7 billion people who are now aged 25 years or younger. Children first emerged as a distinct subject of study in contemporary human geography in the 1950s in relation to research into human spatial awareness and map‐making. By the 1990s, children and the environment had taken an interdisciplinary turn, reflecting the growing interest in children's everyday environmental experiences across a number of social science disciplines from feminist studies and sociology to education, psychology, economics, anthropology, and politics. These studies moved from research initially largely concerned with the structural circumstances of childhood to the meaning of social and physical spaces for children and children's rights to space and place in a changing world.
Energy Security
Authors: Bradshaw Michael J.
Published: March 2017

With energy supplies being central to human wellbeing, secure and affordable supplies of energy are a key concern of the state. Traditional conceptions of energy security have focused on physical security of supply. This represents the dominant interests of the Western industrialized economy. However, the rise of new centers of demand is resulting in a more globalized and complex energy system. At the same time, the need to decarbonize the energy system to reduce the threat of climate change is adding new dimensions to conceptions of energy security that can now be seen as relating to four dimensions: availability, reliability, affordability, and sustainability. Finally, the need to ensure universal access to modern energy services means that issues of equity must also be integrated in contemporary definitions of energy security.
Sea Level Rise
Authors: Leatherman Stephen P. , Leatherman Stephen B.
Published: March 2017

A significant portion of the world's population lives within the coastal zone, with many buildings and facilities located at elevations only a few meters above mean sea level. These structures are presently subject to damage during major storms, and this hazard has grown increasingly worse as sea levels have risen during the past century. Global warming is expected to raise water levels at historically unprecedented rates, resulting in large‐scale land loss through increased beach erosion and loss of coastal wetlands. The most vulnerable landforms are small island nations and deltas, with each having its distinctive problems associated with sea level rise. The socioeconomic responses include fortification of the shore through construction of seawalls to hold back the sea, nourishment of beaches through the introduction of new sand supplies to sustain these recreational areas, and retreat from the coast, which is the preferred alternative for natural and sparsely populated areas.
Disability
Authors: Hall Edward
Published: March 2017

Geography has a long‐standing engagement with disability studies. Three approaches have been adopted, reflecting broader social science and, to an extent, popular constructions of disability: a medical model, involving studies of the spatial distribution of medically‐defined conditions, such as multiple sclerosis; a social model, focused on the identification of physical, institutional, and attitudinal barriers to society; and an embodied model, attentive to the corporeal and emotional geographies of disabled people. An emerging contextual model places material embodied experiences of impaired bodies within the landscape of social, cultural, and political constructions of disability. Geography has made a significant contribution to the theoretical and methodological development of the study of disability, including the importance of social context and social relations to the construction and experience of disability, the broadening of the disability concept to include other “non‐normal” bodies, and the application of participatory methodologies to work with disabled people to convey their experiences and to devise empowering responses.
Soil Erosion and Conservation
Authors: Vanwalleghem Tom
Published: March 2017

Soil erosion is the detachment, transportation, and deposition of soil particles. Natural erosion is generally slow, keeping pace with soil formation rates. However, human‐induced land use change results in much faster net erosion rates, of the order of 1 mm year
−1
under conventional agriculture. Accelerated erosion on agricultural land is mainly due to water and tillage. Soil conservation is the practice of minimizing soil loss while maximizing agricultural production. It includes agronomic or mechanical practices aimed at reducing erosion to natural, geological rates, in equilibrium with long‐term soil formation rates.
Interviews
Authors: Bosco Fernando J.
Published: March 2017

Interviews are a people‐oriented research methodology for data collection in which participants answer questions and prompts. In an interview, participants construct their own accounts of experiences and raise issues that researchers may not have anticipated. Interviews are a useful method to investigate issues in‐depth in a variety of settings and are used by geographers across many subdisciplines. There are different types of interviews; the type of interview conducted is driven by the conceptual framework and research design of a project. Regardless of interview type, there is recognition that interviews are subjective and that it is not possible to collect unmediated, unbiased, or completely objective data. In analyzing interview data, geographers pay increasing attention to issues of representation and consider both verbal/textual data obtained as well as the embodied experiences and negotiations of power and identity that take place during the interview process.
Water Budget
Authors: Earl Richard A.
Published: March 2017

The analysis of the source of the Earth's waters has long been a subject of first speculation, and, since the scientific revolution, a source of scientific inquiry. The components of the hydrologic cycle were commented upon in classical times and put into a cyclical model of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius circa 0
bce
. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, actual measurements of precipitation, stream flow, and evaporation demonstrated that no mysterious processes were required to account for the waters in the Earth's hydrologic cycle. Improved measurement of precipitation and stream flow permitted calculation of the first water budgets for surface basins. Accurate modeling of water budgets for specific areas has been hindered by the difficulty in measuring evapotranspiration and groundwater input, storage, and release. The work of C.W. Thornthwaite was fundamental in developing models to estimate potential and actual evapotranspiration. Groundwater models were initially developed from solving for the residual from other components of the water budget, including precipitation, evapotranspiration, and surface runoff. Since the 1960s data on aquifer characteristics and measurements of groundwater flow have produced more accurate assessment of groundwater inputs, storage, and outputs. The increasing demand on water supplies has led to legal mandates to develop computer‐based water budget models to assess and manage both surface water and aquifers.
Sexualities
Authors: Lewis Nathaniel M.
Published: March 2017

Geographers of sexualities have highlighted the ways in which human sexualities and the ways in which they are performed can shape and are shaped by place. Their research examines explicitly spatial topics, such as the formation and evolution of urban gay villages, as well as theoretical questions about how sexual identities, behaviors, and performances are inscribed, valued, and regulated in particular places. This field maintains a strong commitment to critical social theory, and queer theory in particular, asserting that sexualities are not fixed or innate, but contingent on the places where they are performed and on the intersecting identities of those performing them.
Soils of Wet and Hydric Landscapes
Authors: Bedard‐Haughn Angela
Published: March 2017

Wetland soils experience prolonged saturation. This situation causes persistent anaerobic conditions that affect soil biogeochemistry and a suite of common features and processes, including accumulation of soil organic matter, development of redoximorphic features, and redox reactions contributing to emissions of greenhouse gases. Wetland soils, also known as hydric soils, are at the interface between food security and water security and as such, need to be carefully considered in efforts to model effects of land‐use and climate change.
Gender
Authors: Longhurst Robyn
Published: March 2017

Gender refers to the socially constructed, rather than biological, differences between men and women. The concept was introduced into the discipline of human geography in the 1970s via feminist geography. Initially the focus was on gender roles but in the 1980s it shifted to gender relations in an attempt to not just describe but explain patriarchal relations. In the 1990s, inspired by feminist poststructuralism, geographers came to understand gender as a repeated performance that takes on the appearance of the “natural.” Differences rather than similarities among women came to be highlighted prompting an examination of issues such as “race” and ethnicity, the Anglo‐American hegemony of feminist geography, masculinities, sexualities, embodiment, and intersectionality.
Glacier Changes
Authors: Bolch Tobias
Published: March 2017

Glaciers are naturally subject to changes in line with the Earth's climate variability. Area and length changes of glaciers which are not influenced by debris cover, calving, or dynamic instabilities show a filtered and delayed climate signal while the glacier mass balance can be more directly linked to climate. Glaciers retreated on average strongly since the end of the Last Glacial Maximum about 19 000 years ago with several periods with glacier advances especially during the Holocene. Clearly visible moraines of the Little Ice Age indicate the maximum glacier extent occurring between the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. The glaciers retreated again strongly and lost mass since then with an accelerated rate since the 1980s. However, glacier changes are not homogeneous throughout the globe but local deviations and even regions with stable glacier conditions exist. Further significant reduction of glacier mass is projected for the twenty‐first century.
Mountain Geomorphology
Authors: Slaymaker Olav
Published: March 2017

Mountain geomorphology is considered under the headings: definitions, historical, functional, regional, and applied. Historical mountain geomorphology is concerned with evolution over geological time scales. Functional mountain geomorphology examines ways in which contemporary mountain geomorphic systems respond to the major drivers of change, such as relief, hydroclimate, and human activity. Regional mountain geomorphology is exemplified by three typologies which emphasize respectively relief type, hydroclimate, and human activity. Applied mountain geomorphology attempts to understand, predict, and mitigate the impacts of mountain geomorphic processes and to recommend adaptation strategies where appropriate.
Information Technology and Mobility
Authors: Schwanen Tim
Published: March 2017

Both analytically inclined geographers and mobilities scholars have examined the interrelations of transportation and information technology (IT) use. Over time research interests have broadened from a strong focus on substitution of physical movement by IT use to the myriad ways in which IT use and travel practices have become integrated into mobile lives, thereby reshaping experiences of mobility and place, social relations and social hierarchies.
Environment and Waste
Authors: Barr Stewart
Published: March 2017

This entry explores the emergence of one of the most iconic aspects of environmental management in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries: the challenge of dealing with “waste” in consumption‐based societies. Linked to broader social and political discourses on the environment, understanding, defining, and dealing with waste have become a preoccupation for researchers and governments seeking to address a range of environmental goals. This entry will examine the emergence of waste as a sociopolitical discourse and will situate waste within the context of broader political ecologies in developed nations. The entry will then examine the key intellectual approaches that researchers have developed to examine the challenge of waste management before examining the policy responses to what many have termed the “throwaway society.”
Humanistic Geography
Authors: Seamon David , Lundberg Adam
Published: March 2017

First formalized by geographer Yi‐Fu Tuan in 1976, humanistic geography refers to a wide‐ranging body of research emphasizing the importance of human experience and meaning in understanding people's relationship with places and geographical environments. Recognizing that human involvement with the geographical world is complex and multidimensional, humanistic geographers interpret human action and awareness as they both sustain and are sustained by such geographic phenomena as space, place, home, mobility, landscape, region, nature, and human‐made environments. Humanistic geography was most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. Over time, it was largely superseded by more focused conceptual approaches, including phenomenological geography, existential geography, feminist geography, poststructural geography, critical geography, and relationalist geography. Today, there is a renewed interest in a humanistic approach to geographical topics, though much of this momentum arises from outside geography via phenomenological research that emphasizes “lived emplacement.”
Geography Education, Workforce Trends, Twenty‐First‐Century Skills, and Geographical Capabilities
Authors: Solem Michael
Published: March 2017

Geography education is important preparation for work in a broad array of private and public sector organizations. Career opportunities are growing and diversifying internationally for geographers as demand rises for geographic expertise and skills. At the same time, geography students will encounter challenges, initially from the job search and then in securing a position and learning how to practice geography in varied workplaces with markedly different cultures and expectations of professional work. To gain a better understanding of the requirements of the modern world of work, researchers have begun to define and measure the competencies of academic and nonacademic professionals in geography. Beyond employment, geography education provides people with the intellectual, moral, and existential capabilities necessary for lifelong learning, economic and social agency in citizenship, and the pursuit of personal wellbeing. Such geographic capabilities may well be shared internationally despite the considerable differences in the content of geography in schools and universities.
Posthumanism
Authors: Ginn Franklin
Published: March 2017

Posthumanism is a mode of analysis highly skeptical of the centrality afforded the human in Western philosophical and political thought. Where humanism holds that the human is defined by unique properties such as language or culture, posthumanism emphasizes that, just like other beings and objects, humans are continually and differentially produced through biological, technological, and other more‐than‐human forces. Posthumanism can be approached as an historical epoch, as a matter of epistemological style that deconstructs the universal claims of humanism, and as an ontological condition that argues we have never been human.
Transportation Planning
Authors: Morris Eric A.
Published: March 2017

Transportation planning is primarily concerned with the public provision of resources such as roads, sidewalks, airports and air traffic control systems, ports, and mass transportation. It focuses on issues such as politics, policy, administration, finance, economics, and the transportation/land‐use nexus. It relies on mathematical models to predict future travel patterns and then attempts to accommodate and shape this travel. In recent decades transportation planning has been increasingly focused on using political and economic tools to manage travel, on promoting alternatives to the automobile, on the relationship between transportation and land use and urban structure, on qualitative concerns such as livability, on reducing transportation's harmful impacts on the environment, on enhancing safety and promoting public health, and on fostering public participation in the planning process.
Quantitative Geomorphology
Authors: Piégay Hervé
Published: March 2017

Quantitative geomorphology developed as a school of thought during two main periods: the 1950–1960s and the 2000s. During the first period, pioneer researchers introduced process‐based thinking supported by measurements to explain land form evolution and characteristics. Quantitative geomorphology was founded on the idea that objectivity should be reinforced by quantification using instruments that provide reliable and precise data. It contrasts with qualitative (visual) observation, which is limited to observable facts (although many processes are not directly perceptible) and is biased by the acuity of the observer, his/her experiences, memories, beliefs, or attachment to a given theory. In the second period, larger geographic datasets and new computer capacities led to a more integrative understanding of Earth system complexity. This new methodology widened our spatial and temporal vision and has begun to reconcile holistic and reductionist approaches by engaging multiple‐scale perspectives and improving linkages between historical and functional geomorphology.
Water Quality
Authors: Tong Susanna T.Y.
Published: March 2017

Water is a vital resource. Not only its quantity, but also its quality is of fundamental importance to life. The quality of water is dependent on the biogeochemistry of the catchment and the water body, but it can be impacted by anthropogenic activities. In the United States, water quality is regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency under the auspices of the Clean Water Act. But the Act is focused on controlling point source pollution from industries and sewage treatment plants. Consequently, nonpoint source pollution is prevalent in American waterways, and many surface water bodies are contaminated. Remote sensing, rapid bioassessment, and water quality modeling are useful tools to monitor and evaluate water quality. In the face of future global changes, these tools can be instrumental for analyzing future water quality conditions, establishing mitigation and adaptation strategies, and deriving sustainable water resources management plans.
Qualitative Data
Authors: Hay Iain
Published: March 2017

Against the backdrop of mounting skepticism about scientism in the social sciences over the past thirty years, qualitative data has achieved a new prominence in human geography. Geographers have become increasingly attentive to the ways people make sense of the places they inhabit and to their understandings of the meaning of action. After first defining qualitative data and setting out some of the forms it takes, a variety of issues surrounding qualitative data collection, trustworthiness and analysis in human geography are discussed. Also discussed are some of the powers and liabilities of qualitative data, including consideration of the crisis of representation. The entry concludes by pointing to future challenges that new work on areas such as affect, performativity, and nonrepresentational theory in human geography present for the understandings of qualitative data collection, analysis, and communication.
Environmental Uncertainty
Authors: Shackley Simon J.
Published: March 2017

Environmental uncertainty (e.g., uncertainty in understanding, representing, and predicting environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity, nutrient and water cycle changes, etc.) is endemic across many complex systems. While uncertainty is frequently regarded by scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders as a “problem,” it can also be a useful aide in leveraging resources and in shaping perceptions of appropriate policy responses. Environmental uncertainty covers a sufficient range of possible states that distinctive value‐laden perspectives emerge all claiming convergence with “the facts.” The intermingling of (uncertain) facts and values has normative implications, including an argument for greater transparency and awareness through use of more participatory and deliberative approaches.
Resource Curse
Authors: Auty Richard M.
Published: March 2017

The resource curse, whereby resource‐rich economies do not thrive, is more complex than initially thought. First, the curse has not only economic causes but also institutional and political ones. Second, the risk of resource curse symptoms varies by commodity: it is higher the larger and more volatile the commodity revenue, and the greater its concentration on a few economic agents. Third, policy matters: the global incidence of the resource curse changes over time, reflecting major shifts in development policy. Finally, resource‐poor economies may exhibit symptoms of the resource curse due to large revenue inflows from foreign aid, worker remittances, and government manipulation of prices. Nevertheless, models of resource‐driven development can help explain this more nuanced perspective.
Climate Change and Health
Authors: Curtis Sarah , Oven Katie J.
Published: March 2017

Expert bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2013) report increases in prevailing average temperatures as well as likely increases in the frequency of extreme weather‐related events such as heat waves and floods associated with climate change. These changes have implications for physical and mental health, the outcomes of which will depend on processes of mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. Important research in health geography is being carried out with a focus on local health impacts of climate change, which are dependent on varying combinations of conditions, including local climate and topography, as well as the vulnerability and resilience of the population and physical and social infrastructures that are important for health. Health issues associated with climate change also lead geographers to consider the links between wider debates about global health and environmental justice.
Ecological Modernization
Authors: Gibbs David
Published: March 2017

Ecological modernization is an approach to addressing environmental problems that suggests ecological crisis can be resolved politically, economically, and technologically in the context of existing institutions and power structures and continued economic growth. Political institutions and processes can be modernized in order to change the direction of the economy toward environmental improvement. It places considerable emphasis on the roles of technology, innovation, and market dynamics as drivers for change. Ecological modernization is both a theory of, and a practical program for, change. Despite incorporation into policies in a number of nation‐states, ecological modernization has been criticized for its poor theorization of the state and power relations, as well as its co‐option by vested interests.
Measurement Theory
Authors: Chrisman Nicholas R.
Published: March 2017

In many presentations, measurement is reduced to the classic levels of measurement presented by Stevens in 1946. While this scheme has its uses, it does not provide a complete model for geographic measurement. Any scheme to handle geographic measurement must deal with relationships between attribute and location, and eventually with time. Often we measure each one of these components by reducing our resolution in the others. A system of “measurement frameworks” reorganizes the treatment of geographic measurement in the context of axioms required and relationships preserved. The frameworks provide stronger connection to interpretation and meaning, as well as clearer guidance for the appropriate choice of procedures.
Biogeomorphology
Authors: Coombes Martin A.
Published: March 2017

Biogeomorphology is the scientific study of interactions and feedbacks between living and nonliving parts of the landscape. Straddling the disciplines of geomorphology and ecology, biogeomorphological research is inherently interdisciplinary. Micro‐organisms, plants, and animals contribute to the development of landforms and landscapes in many different ways, both actively and passively, through processes of bioconstruction, bioweathering, bioerosion, and bioprotection. Equally, geomorphological processes create and alter habitat, and influence environmental conditions for organisms. As an overarching field of environmental study, the scope and diversity of biogeomorphological research is immense, ranging from the scale of interactions between individual mineral grains and micro‐organisms, up to global biogeochemical cycling and climate change over geological time. Not only of academic interest, biogeomorphology is proving highly useful to many applied fields, particularly environmental management and conservation.
Holocene
Authors: Borisova Olga K.
Published: March 2017

Holocene is the most recent interval of Earth history which lasted approximately 10 300 radiocarbon years, or 11 700 calibrated (calendar) years and extends to the present day. Despite a relatively short duration of the Holocene, significant changes in climate and landscape occurred during this interglacial epoch. Multiple studies of globally distributed high‐resolution climate proxy records indicate that a rapid warming developed at the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. A subsequent slower rise of the mean global temperature reached its maximum (the Holocene climatic optimum) approximately 6–5.5 
14
C kyr
bp
, or 6000–7000 cal year ago. The early Holocene warming was followed by approximately 0.7°C cooling through the Middle to Late Holocene, culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, between 1350 and 1850
ce
, when the lower summer insolation in the Northern Hemisphere due to orbital forcing coincided with minimum solar activity and several strong tropical volcanic eruptions.