bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ethnophysiography
Authors: Mark David M. , Turk Andrew G.
Published: March 2017

Ethnophysiography studies how people conceptualize things in the landscape, especially entity types such as hills, rivers, and vegetation assemblages. Ethnophysiography aims to document in detail the terms in a language that refer to the landscape and its parts. It excludes the built environment and administrative units at landscape scale but includes toponyms and cultural and spiritual associations with landscape. Ethnophysiography relies heavily on ethnography as a method for obtaining information through language community participation in interviews and discussion. This entry includes the motivations, theoretical underpinnings, and history of the field. Results of key case studies are summarized. Relations with ethnoecology and with traditional environmental knowledge are reviewed. Research results from ethnophysiography should enable development of culturally specific geographic information systems (GISs). Implications of the research for various fields of geography are summarized, emphasizing cultural differences; conclusions are not necessarily universally applicable but must be recalibrated for each culture and language.
World‐Systems Theory
Authors: Engel‐Di Mauro Salvatore
Published: March 2017

Originally combining insights from the Dependency and Annales schools, world‐systems theory is an analytical framework that emerged in the late 1960s to explain long‐term, multiple‐scale social dynamics. Major principles unifying world‐systems approaches are the treatment of world‐systems as primary, historically delimited units of analysis, the emphasis on interconnections across societies, the unprecedented nature of the capitalist mode of production, and the identification of unevenly influential zones characteristic of world‐systems. Alleged to be, among other things, structuralist, functionalist, and/or deterministic, world‐systems perspectives have offered studies largely debunking such charges while expanding research horizons to include household processes, indigenous peoples' histories, and environmental degradation, among other areas. Though intrinsically geographical, world‐systems perspectives did not receive geographers' attention until the 1980s, mostly in economic and political geography. Nevertheless, geographers have made important contributions in shaping world‐systems perspectives through theoretical development and critique, particularly in the understanding of urban processes, states, and geopolitics.
Construction of Nature
Authors: Pollini Jacques
Published: March 2017

This entry presents the “construction of nature” idea and its articulation with various conceptions of nature. It presents the rich outcomes of scholarly work surrounding this idea and the epistemological limits of radical deconstruction efforts often associated with it. It shows that it is possible to escape the ontological dead ends of radical postmodern and constructivist views of nature while pursuing the deconstruction of nature, if a distinction is made between what can be called Nature (the reality “out there”), Kantian nature (the sum of intelligible phenomena in the world out there), and “natures” (human representations of Nature). It argues that retaining an essentialist conception of Nature is compatible with radical critiques about “natures,” and that the ontological confusion that fueled the so‐called science war can be explained by the overlooking of Kantian nature.
Time Geography and Space–Time Prism
Authors: Miller Harvey J.
Published: March 2017

Time geography is a constraints‐oriented approach to understanding human activities. Time geography highlights the necessary (though not sufficient) spatial and temporal conditions required for human activities. It also provides an elegant framework for incorporating these conditions into individualistic and ecological analyses and models of human behavior. Two central concepts in time geography are the space–time path and prism. The path represents actual mobility (real or simulated) and the prism represents potential mobility in space with respect to time. Developed as a conceptual framework in the 1960s by Torsten Hägerstrand, analytical time geography has emerged in response to growing capabilities to collect and analyze data on mobile objects and human activities. There is a rich collection of measures and procedures for analyzing space–time paths and prisms in planar space, constrained by networks and through velocity fields. There are also methods for representing virtual interaction via information and communication technologies. Emerging are methods for mobility data mining and knowledge discovery.
New Economic Geography
Authors: MacKinnon Danny
Published: March 2017

The term “new economic geography” refers to a range of approaches that have emerged in economic geography since the early 1990s that share a central concern with the links between economic action and social and cultural practices in different places. These approaches derive theoretical inspiration from various sources, including postmodernism, poststructuralism, cultural studies, anthropology, economic sociology, and institutional economics. In general, they have served to direct attention towards questions of agency, difference, identity, language, and performance that were previously marginalized and neglected within economic geography.
Environmental Racism
Authors: Pulido Laura
Published: March 2017

The concept of environmental racism emerged in the United States in the 1980s to refer to the socially uneven distribution of pollution and environmental resources along racial lines. The term “environmental justice” initially referred to the movement that arose to confront environmental racism, but has since expanded to encompass multiple forms of environmental inequities and problems. Environmental racism now refers to both a mobilizing framework and a field of scholarly research. Three strands of research can be identified under the category of environmental racism: research on questions of equity and the distribution of pollution and hazards; work on the politics and strategies of the environmental justice movement; and writing on the relationship between race and the environment more generally.
Data Structure: Spatial Data on the Web
Authors: Steiniger Stefan , Hunter Andrew J.S.
Published: March 2017

The Internet is now the main source of information. Most human activities take spatial information into account, and spatial data over the web are prominent in our daily life. We look at spatial data when we want to know about weather conditions and forecasts, for travel directions when we are heading off on vacation, or for a better grasp of online news that can be mapped, for example, a map of average family income per county. Because geographic data are big, and users dislike waiting to see a weather map or a travel route, specific data structures for efficiently transferring spatial data have been developed. These data structures are implemented as web data formats in which the geographic data can be “stored, sorted and packed.” Examples of such formats include GML, KML, GeoJSON, GeoRSS, and so on, and web data service standards such as WMS, WCS and WFS.
Environment and the Media
Authors: Luedecke Gesa , T. Boykoff Maxwell
Published: March 2017

Media bridge different ways of knowing about the environment, and often mediate public perceptions, attitudes, perspectives, and behaviors related to environmental issues. From entertainment to news media, spanning television, films, books, flyers, newspapers, magazines, radio, and the Internet, media portrayals provide critical links between, on the one hand, formal environmental change science and policy decision‐making and, on the other, the realities of how people experience and interact with their environments on the ground. Media representations thereby influence the spectrum of perceived possibilities for different forms of environmental engagement across time and place and are in turn shaped by framings, journalistic norms, and the cultural politics of the media economy, including both macro‐ and microscale factors.
Glacier Mass Balance
Authors: Cogley J. Graham
Published: March 2017

The mass balance of a glacier is the change in its mass, over a stated span of time, due to accumulation (mass gain, mainly by snowfall) and ablation (mass loss, mainly by melting and calving). It is measured in situ by the so‐called glaciological method, or by geodetic methods relying on terrestrial, airborne, satellite surveys of elevation change, or gravimetrically by monitoring changes in the gravity field. Geodetic measurements require either modeling or in situ measurement of density in order to convert elevation change to mass change. In the gravimetric method the mass change is measured directly but with coarse spatial resolution. Nearly all glaciers have been losing mass since the culmination of the Little Ice Age and all projections by glacier–climate modeling agree that the losses will continue throughout the twenty‐first century.
Ecoregions
Authors: Olstad Tyra A.
Published: March 2017

Ecoregions are geographic units distinguished by their place‐specific ecological characteristics, including local climate regimes, physiographic features, soil types, ecological history, and, especially, communities of life. Unlike large, general biomes, ecoregions are classified into progressively smaller yet relatively homogenous units that are unique to their location. The inherent complexity and dynamism of ecosystems make them difficult to classify and regionalize, however. In particular, ecoregion mappers have struggled to account for microhabitats, ecotones, dominant processes or factors, and differences in methodology (mainly factor‐based or weight‐of‐evidence approaches). Governmental officials, conservation organizations, and independent scientists worldwide can choose from different ecoregion maps – most commonly those of the United States Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency, and the World Wildlife Fund and partners – to situate, integrate, ecologically synthesize, and geographically bound their work.
Cognition and Spatial Behavior
Authors: Montello Daniel R.
Published: March 2017

Geographers describe, predict, and explain human activity on the Earth. The concept of spatial behavior highlights the geographer's focus on the spatial and temporal aspects of this activity. An important way to understand spatial behavior is to understand the human thought and reasoning partially underlying it, including the subjective mental representations that people have about the world and themselves. This is known as cognitive geography. After reviewing basic concepts of cognition and empirical methods for studying cognition and spatial behavior, this entry discusses concepts, theories, and empirical research on cognitive maps and mapping, environmental spatial learning and development, navigation and orientation, distance and direction knowledge, cognition of cartographic maps and other geographic information displays, and natural language and space.
Water Rights
Authors: Matthews Olen Paul
Published: March 2017

Property rights are defined by relationships. A water right defines the ways a water right holder can use water and the relationships within the network of right holders who have an interest in the same water. The relationship between water and the user depends on the subset of the hydrologic cycle subject to the right, the nature/security of the legal entitlement, the rules for establishing a right, and the operational rules for using water. Water rights can be public, private, or common property. The interconnected system of water rights requires a system of rules to resolve conflicts. Conflicts occur because of water shortages, controlling water flow, and waste disposal. Many conflicts are difficult to resolve because of the fragmentation within the system.
World Cities
Authors: Pain Kathy
Published: March 2017

The world cities concept has been the subject of vigorous debate in a prolific interdisciplinary literature for nearly a century. Generally understood to refer to leading global centers of economic and political power, it has been associated with internationally competitive urban concentrations of business, and with specialized expertise, knowledge, and finance. But specification of the dynamics of this major manifestation of global capitalism has been subject to controversy. World cities have been theorized variously as: basing points for global capital in a complex spatial hierarchy; strategic centers for globalizing advanced producer services in a new space economy; a process generating a space of flows that is superseding the mosaic space of places; a system of interconnected nodes in a world city network; or an expanding space for economic globalization in functionally interlinked, polycentric megacity regions. In an increasingly integrated and territorially competitive global economy, the power geometries and ethics of the world cities phenomenon remain contentious.
Natural Resources Development
Authors: Gunton Thomas
Published: March 2017

This entry examines the role of natural resources in achieving sustainable development. Dependency, resource curse, and comparative advantage paradigms are assessed and environmental issues associated with resource development are analyzed. The entry concludes that natural resources can provide a significant benefit, stimulating sustainable development, or be a curse, retarding development. Resource development can also generate significant adverse environmental impacts such as climate change that need to be mitigated by strict environmental policies. The key research priority is to identify optimal resource policies to collect resource rents, develop economic linkages, and mitigate environmental impacts to ensure that natural resources provide a benefit to society.
Quaternary Science
Authors: Yang Xiaoping
Published: March 2017

Quaternary science comprises the multidisciplinary studies focusing on the Quaternary period that covers the last 2.6 million years according to the geological timescale updated in 2009. The Quaternary science studies the processes, impact, and triggering factors of Quaternary environmental changes in all parts of the world using terrestrial and marine evidence. Over the last decades a great amount of knowledge of Quaternary science has become available due to improvements in research methods and its significant role for understanding the trends of global change both during the past and in the future.
Coastal Depositional Processes and Landforms
Authors: Jackson Nancy L.
Published: March 2017

Coastal depositional landforms include barrier islands and spits, and associated beaches, dunes, and marshes, as well as salients and tombolos. The spatial and temporal scales of processes and landform adjustments range from broad‐scale evolution of barrier islands in response to long‐term sea level and sediment supply variation, to small‐scale adjustment of beaches and dunes in response to episodic storm and nonstorm conditions. In many locations, human processes have a direct influence on the evolution and adjustment of these depositional features.
Mainstream and Shadow Banking
Authors: Zhao Simon Xiaobin , Kim Nam Hee
Published: March 2017

This entry explains the principal functions and actors in mainstream banking, and introduces the geographical literature that examines banking on both local and global scales. It summarizes the wide‐ranging financial activities that fall outside of the definition of mainstream banking and are referred to as shadow banking. Interconnections between mainstream and shadow banking and the potential for concentrations of risk to spread from one banking sector to the other, and then to firms and households nationally and across borders are discussed in the context of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The roles and challenges of regulatory bodies at the national, international, and supranational level are explored. Finally, some areas for future research are suggested.
Modeling Uncertainty in Categorical Fields
Authors: Cao Guofeng
Published: March 2017

Categorical spatial data, such as maps of land‐use classes and socioeconomic statistics, are very common and important information sources in geographic information science. As in other types of spatial data, uncertainty is unavoidable in categorical spatial data. New sources of uncertainty can arise in every step of the complex data derivation process, and parts of the process are rather subjective and often based on definitions that are necessarily vague (e.g., definition of soil types or land‐cover classes). Consequently, categorical spatial data are particularly problematic in terms of uncertainty modeling. As categorical spatial data are more and more involved in scientific research and decision‐making, it becomes critical to properly model the uncertainty and assess the consequences it could cause.
Environment, Democracy, and Public Participation
Authors: Devine‐Wright Patrick
Published: March 2017

Public participation involves enrolling lay people into policy formulation and decision‐making, and has become increasingly important in recent years. Methods of participation include communication (one‐way), consultation (two‐way), and deliberation (dialogue leading to opinion change). Public engagement is a broader term encompassing awareness raising and education. Public participation is advocated for substantive (better outcomes), normative (morally right), and instrumental (facilitate desired ends) rationales and can occur at early or late stages in policy or decision‐making. Public participation, when done well, leads to better quality decisions and to increased trust among the parties involved.
GIS
for Transportation
Authors: Shaw Shih‐Lung
Published: March 2017

Transportation plays a critical role in facilitating economic, social, and many other activities in our daily lives. Since transportation is closely related to locations, places, flows, and interactions, geographic information systems (GIS), which are designed for managing geographic data, performing geographic analyses, and visualizing geographic relationships and patterns, are well suited for transportation applications. Geographic information systems for transportation (GIS‐T) refers to the application of geographic information technologies in managing transportation systems and solving transportation problems. This entry presents the past development, current status, and future directions of GIS‐T.
Subjectivity
Authors: Noxolo Patricia
Published: March 2017

The term “subjectivity” is looked at in two closely interrelated ways: as the antithesis of objectivity in research; and as a way of locating the individual in their social and political context. The entry begins by setting out the Cartesian subject as centered and rational: for the researcher‐subject it was assumed that, given rigorous application of methods, they could obtain objective data. However, there were always tensions between subjectivity and objectivity, and the entry argues that over the past century or so it has become gradually more difficult to locate the subject and their subjectivity. Subjectivity has become increasingly understood as diverse, as fragmented, and as relational, bringing researchers to a point where they now interpret the research encounter as an intersubjective experience, rather than simply engineering it as a means to optimize objectivity.
Qualitative Data, Acquisition
Authors: Herbert Steve
Published: March 2017

This entry reviews some of the central challenges that a qualitative researcher faces in acquiring useful data. The focus is upon the two key modes of qualitative data gathering – ethnography and interviews. The entry reviews the key strengths and weaknesses of each of these methods, and considers when each might be employed most productively. As will be clear, gathering high‐quality qualitative data is neither quick nor easy, yet such data enable geographic analyses of great depth and insight.
Niche Theory and Models
Authors: Miller Jennifer A. , Holloway Paul
Published: March 2017

Predicting potential and actual distributions of species has become an active research area in biogeography. Recent debate about the appropriate term for these models – “niche models” or “species distribution models” – stems from confusion over the original niche theory on which they are both based. While niche theory itself has evolved in ecology, there are three main niche concepts that have remained the most relevant for niche models. These concepts and how they inform the development and practice of niche modeling are summarized.
Regional Development Models
Authors: Dunford Michael
Published: March 2017

Considered as a whole, models of regional development identify and examine a range of centripetal and centrifugal forces, whose relative weight drives relative development. The process of development is dialectical: the cause of what happens at one point in time is in part a consequence of what happened earlier. In the light of these observations, this entry surveys some competing models of regional development. After an account of neoclassical models of regional convergence and related models of modernization and stages of development, attention is paid to models of uneven development, including models of circular and cumulative causation, dependency and unequal exchange, and exogenous and endogenous development. More recent neoclassical models of endogenous growth are also considered along with some of the core ideas of the new economic geography.
Famine
Authors: Devereux Stephen
Published: March 2017

This entry first reviews operational definitions of famine, then tracks the shifting geography of famine over time, from Asia and Europe to sub‐Saharan Africa. The analysis of causes of famine is dominated by two sets of factors: bad weather and bad politics. Theoretical approaches add demography, economics, and human geography to environmental and political explanations, illustrating the complexity of famine processes. In the twenty‐first century, famines have already occurred in Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, and Somalia, all triggered by a combination of weather shocks and conflict. Despite being more preventable than at any time in history, famines are likely to persist in the future, unless stronger accountability mechanisms are introduced that increase incentives to prevent them.
Race, Work, and Employment
Authors: Mullings Beverley
Published: March 2017

The practice of race‐making – assigning social meaning to specific physical traits in order to differentiate, separate, and exercise control over particular groups of humans – is inextricable from the social, economic, and political forces that converged to create the modern world economy. Tracing how different constructions of race have functioned as rationales for a range of systems of labor management across different historical periods, this entry outlines how individuals and whole populations come to be incorporated into local and global labor markets in ways that reproduce broader marginalizing racial orders.
Ecological Imperialism
Authors: Pawson Eric
Published: March 2017

The term “ecological imperialism” comes from Alfred Crosby's 1986 book of the same title. In it he argued that the “neo‐Europes,” those temperate lands thousands of kilometers from Europe, were successfully colonized because Europeans were accompanied by their “portmanteau biota” of plants, animals, and diseases. Although a landmark text in environmental history, it stood apart from earlier work in ecology and historical geography. It has since been criticized for its employment of a spatial imagination that is essentially asymmetrical and Eurocentric. It is suggested that a more realistic representation is of worlds comprised of complex sets of networked relationships, with material, ideas, and practices flowing in multiple directions. This is consistent with current work in biogeography and imperial history and leaves open for discussion questions about the nature of change in global landscapes that are more complex than Crosby allowed.
Interface Modalities
Authors: Edsall Rob
Published: March 2017

Because digital maps are dynamic in their output and responsive to user input, a central yet relatively recent concern in modern cartography and visualization is the design of the user interface that connects the user to the map (and thus to the information contained within the map). Digital maps are primarily driven by point‐and‐clicks of a mouse and primarily display the results of the interaction visually on a screen. However, there exist several other modalities that can be employed to interact with a digital map. While visual output and mouse input will likely endure, novel approaches for haptic and audio feedback, gesture and speech input, and other modalities have been developed, particularly in response to the demands of diverse uses, and needs of diverse users of maps. These comprise the multiple
interface modalities
associated with cartography and geographic visualization.
Reflexivity
Authors: Sultana Farhana
Published: March 2017

Reflexivity is the practice of critical consciousness of one's location and positionality in a research process and how this influences research outcomes and the production of knowledge. It accounts for power relations, subjectivities, epistemology, interpretation of text, and conduct of research methods. Reflecting upon and assessing how one is positioned can enable more conscientious and ethical engagement, be it with people, institutions, or texts. Reflexivity has become increasingly important in research processes in geography. However, it is not without criticism as reflexive acts can be reduced to self‐indulgent narratives of the researcher's experience and thus reassert relations of dominance and representation. Reflexivity, however, has the enormous potential to foster ethical research and collaborative research engagement with meaningful impact beyond the academy. Collaborative endeavors can emerge from reflexive research and writing and new avenues of collectivization and empowerment can result.
Unfree Labor
Authors: McGrath Siobhán
Published: March 2017

The persistence and reproduction of unfree labor challenge our understanding of labor relations under capitalism. Some of those concerned with this phenomenon label it “new slavery,” but this implies that it had ended and has since returned. An analysis which instead takes into account different mechanisms by which unfreedom can be imposed in labor relations reveals otherwise. Unfreedom in labor relations, understood as an exercise of power, has taken a variety of forms that vary over time and space. This entry discusses the definitions of unfree labor, forced labor, new slavery, and trafficking. It reviews debates around each of these within policy‐oriented literature, the new slavery school of thought, Marxian perspectives, and a new
critical studies of unfree labor
school of thought. It notes that there is room for labor geography to bring additional insights to the study of unfree labor and unfreedom in labor relations.
Migration: Forced
Authors: Yea Sallie
Published: March 2017

Forced migration has commonly been understood as relating primarily to refugees fleeing ethnic cleansing and religious persecution. Since the mid‐1990s, however, there has been recognition of a greater diversity in types of forced migrations, where environmental refugees and trafficked persons constitute increasingly significant groups. In geography, scholars have been preoccupied with questions of intervention and of what exactly constitutes force in a person's experience of mobility. There are four particularly significant directions in which geographers may productively extend their analyses of forced migration, namely: the possibilities offered by transnationalism, the value of postcolonialism as a theoretical lens, the meaning of home, and methodological impasses. In particular, methodological issues present challenges to both geographers and others researching forced migration, but overcoming these will prove of great value in enhancing insights into the lives of forced migrants.
Precarious Work
Authors: Strauss Kendra
Published: March 2017

The concepts of precariousness and precarity are multivalent, with different conceptual and political traditions reflected in different disciplinary approaches. In geography, the notion of precarious work has been utilized by economic geographers exploring the flexibilization of labor markets, changing relations of employment, and the conditions of low‐paid and migrant workers in the Global North. This research has focused on economic restructuring, changing policy and regulatory regimes, and new employment norms at a variety of scales – often in relation to macro‐economic changes associated with evolving relations of capitalist production and the rise of neoliberalism. These approaches overlap, however, with articulations of precarity and precarious life that explore, on one hand, generalized political and social conditions of existence and, on the other, microlevel material and embodied ways in which insecurity and vulnerability are experienced and understood.
Riparian Ecosystems
Authors: Bendix Jacob
Published: March 2017

Riparian ecosystems encompass the portion of the landscape that borders rivers and is affected by them. Their characteristics are largely determined by the interaction between the river and riparian vegetation. Fluvial and hydrological processes affect vegetation by destroying plants, by determining the characteristics of the landforms on which they grow, and by transporting propagules. In turn, riparian vegetation affects rivers by contributing to hydraulic roughness, with a concomitant impact on the geomorphic effectiveness of floods.
Daily Mobility
Authors: Wenglenski Sandrine
Published: March 2017

Daily mobility has become a major geographical issue, as it plays an increasingly important role in spatial and social organization. Each day, people travel to access different and distant locations in order to conduct their regular, or less usual, activities. Over time, easy travel and car ownership have made it possible for most people to travel faster and further, and to settle away from dense areas, which has contributed to urban sprawl. Depending on the social, economic, and technological context, daily mobility not only derives from ways of life and spatial forms but also influences them.
Firms
Authors: Zhang Jun
Published: March 2017

Understanding what is meant by the firm is crucial to economic geography. A diverse spectrum of conceptualizations of the firm linking to behavior, entrepreneurship, learning, resources, evolution, competency, and governance have already been introduced into economic geography, but their tensions and discrepancies have yet to be adequately dealt with. Place, space, and scale need to be more systematically incorporated into the conceptualization of the firm, taking into account both the competence and governance dimensions, and integrating the micro behavior of firms with macro institutions and structures as a multiscalar construct.
Restructuring
Authors: Siemiatycki Elliot
Published: March 2017

Restructuring is defined as a change in the way that a system or structure is organized. In economic terms, it refers to the ways that sectors, industries, cities, and corporations are transformed from one state to another. Urban and economic geographers have been particularly interested in restructuring because of its inherently spatial dimensions. The dramatic shift in the orientation of city‐regional and national economies since the 1970s has been one of the most compelling economic geography storylines of the twentieth century. This entry tracks how geographers have studied economic restructuring while intimating some of the key areas of research for understanding restructuring in the twenty‐first century.
Trade and Regional Development
Authors: McCombie John S.L.
Published: March 2017

Early work on trade and regional development drew largely on the pure theory of international trade, notably the theory of comparative advantage and the Heckscher–Ohlin theory. The new economic geography emphasizes the role of increasing returns, broadly defined, and trade (with transport costs) and provides an explanation for the spatial concentration of production. Export‐led growth theory also emphasizes the role of increasing returns to scale, but explains the growth of regions and their development in terms of the structure of production from a long‐run Keynesian perspective. It also includes monetary factors, such as the regional balance of payments, as an important explanation.
Newly Industrializing Economies (
NIEs
)
Authors: Chien Shiuh‐Shen , Chen Liang‐Chih , Hong Dong‐Li
Published: March 2017

Newly industrializing economies (NIEs) are those regions and countries that have undergone rapid economic growth via export‐oriented industrialization since World War II. This entry discusses three different, but interrelated, approaches to explain the rise of NIEs: the liberal market approach, focusing on international trade and cross‐border investment; the developmental state approach, emphasizing the role of state interventions behind development; and the technological upgrading approach, concerned with the means by which NIEs catch up technologically.
Geographic Data Mining
Authors: Zhang Chao , Han Jiawei
Published: March 2017

Geographic data mining (or spatial data mining) is the process of discovering novel, interesting, and useful patterns and knowledge from massive collections of geospatial data. It lies at the confluence of multiple disciplines related to geographical data analysis, including geographic information systems, database systems, data mining, machine learning, and spatial statistical modeling. Geographic data mining is playing an increasingly important role in scalable analysis of massive geographic and geocoded datasets.
Migration: Internal
Authors: Elmhirst Rebecca
Published: March 2017

Internal migration refers to the movement of people within the boundaries of a nation‐state. Compared to international migration, this field has been relatively neglected, despite its numerical importance worldwide. While there are difficulties in quantifying the extent of internal migration precisely, there is a growing body of case study research on this subject, which draws on a range of theories to illuminate its economic, social, and cultural dimensions. Emerging topics include the links between internal migration and life course transitions; the role of migration in fostering development, war, conflict, and internally displaced people; and the links between climate change and migration.
Ice Sheets
Authors: André Marie‐Françoise
Published: March 2017

Ice sheets are dome‐shaped continental glaciers up to several kilometers thick and covering at least 50 000 km
2
. The two current ice sheets are located in Greenland and Antarctica. Two additional ice masses existed 20 000 years ago, the Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets, which left their imprint on Nordic landscapes. Ice sheets contain a unique record of the Earth 's climate history provided by air bubbles trapped in the ice during the last 800 000 years. According to emission scenarios and mass balance estimations, models suggest that the current accelerated ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica will continue and probably cause a sea level rise of 12 cm and 5 cm respectively by 2100. Geomorphological evidence, the marine sediment record, and glaciological modeling indicate a long‐term stability of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Mountain Climatology
Authors: Mark Bryan G.
Published: March 2017

Mountain climatology is the study of processes and atmospheric phenomena caused by protrusions of the lithosphere into the atmosphere. The nature and scale of these processes varies, as do the effects, depending on the type of mountains involved and location relative to prevailing winds. Fundamentally, mountains have vertically heterogeneous climatic zones, often capped by snow and ice. The diversity of mountain climates preside over Earth's most biodiverse ecosystems that are also most sensitive to change. Mountain climatology remains a relatively small and specialized subject area within geography that faces inherent challenges for data gathering, but it has a rich history and growing multidisciplinary relevance. Ongoing research includes monitoring high‐altitude climatic change, extracting archives to document changes from paleoclimate proxies, and integrating new technologies of observation and measurement with modeling studies to better connect dynamics across scales.
Social Vulnerability and Environmental Hazards
Authors: Cannon Terry
Published: March 2017

Social vulnerability is the likelihood that people and the way they live will be harmed by a natural hazard because of the influence of economic, political, and social factors. It requires that there be a defined entity that is vulnerable (people and human systems), a hazard that can potentially cause harm to them, and an explanation of the causes of that vulnerability that is rooted in society. Social vulnerability is the terminology in relation to human systems used by many authors to indicate that they identify people as the focus of analysis (e.g., rather than infrastructure or built environment) in the context of political, economic, and social factors. Since the 1970s, understanding of disasters has moved away from widespread acceptance that they are “natural” toward the analysis that identifies socioeconomic and political phenomena as the main determinants, with social vulnerability as the prime explanatory concept. Vulnerability varies across social groups, including gender, class, caste, ethnicity, and age.
Public Space
Authors: DeMuynck Erin
Published: March 2017

Public space is conceptualized as an urban commons. It is space within the city that is open and accessible to all and, as such, is identified as a vital site of democracy. Public gatherings and protests take place, ideas are debated, and freedoms of speech and assembly are played out in public space. In this way, public space has been instrumental in the fight for the rights of marginalized groups. Another important role public space plays in the democratic city lies in the everyday, unplanned encounters it allows for. As people of different backgrounds come into contact with each other, awareness and understanding of a range of beliefs, values, and desires can be cultivated; however, in cities today, privatization, commercialization, and securitization prompt social exclusion, threatening the democratic capacity of public space.
Urban Elites
Authors: Gyuris Ferenc
Published: March 2017

Urban elites consist of the actors in the city who have a decisive influence on urban policies and programs. Urban elites are fragmented but are kept together by a shared interest in advancing a particular political agenda. This desire is served by a multitude of institutional means aimed at keeping other social strata under control and indoctrinating them with views legitimizing prevailing conditions. Urban elites are highly genderized, racialized, and segregated in urban space. Since they are embedded in multiscalar power hierarchies, urban elites can be conflicted, or even justified, by actors at higher or lower scales while they themselves are increasingly becoming part of a transnational elite. The existence of urban elites is unavoidable and not necessarily undesirable, but the way they sustain themselves and promote their own aspirations may be at odds with the interests of other social groups and is often the focus of ongoing normative debates.
Imaginative Geographies
Authors: Desbiens Caroline
Published: March 2017

The postcolonial critic Edward Said originally formulated the concept of imaginative geographies in his analysis of Orientalism. Imaginative geographies are representations of peoples and places that express the perceptions, desires, fantasies, fears, and projections of their authors, who are generally external observers. The dramatization and reification of the distance between self and other, or between home and abroad, is an integral part of imaginative geographies. In their use of the concept, geographers have been particularly attentive to the material effects of the cultural‐political performances of imaginative geographies, notably the geopolitics of the “war on terror.”
Artificial Neural Networks
Authors: Zhu A‐Xing
Published: March 2017

Artificial neural networks (ANN) are a form of computing for predicting a set of outputs from a set of input patterns (a set of variables). This machine learning method is motivated by the functioning of biological neural networks that consist of neurons and links (nerves). The neurons serve as the processing units and links serve as the connections between neurons. A commonly used form of ANN is a multiple‐layer feedforward network in which neurons are organized into layers: one input layer, zero, one or two hidden layer(s), and one output layer. The links connect the neurons from the different layers (input to hidden and hidden to output). Most ANNs just have one hidden layer. The neurons in the input layer receive input patterns and send those inputs through the links to the neurons on the hidden layer, which then process the inputs and send the results to neurons in the output layer for processing and presentation. The application of ANN consists of two general steps: network training and network application. Network training uses samples, each of which contains an input pattern and the expected output pattern for that sample, to develop associations between a set of input patterns and a set of output patterns. The network application step uses the trained network to predict an output pattern for a given input pattern whose corresponding output pattern is unknown.
Historical Settlement:
A
sia
Authors: Miksic John N.
Published: March 2017

Settlement patterns increase in complexity in all cultures, from an original condition in which all settlements are of approximately the same size to a situation in which settlements of different sizes and functions come to exist. The first complex settlement systems in the world appeared in southwest Asia. Clusters of settlements with similar characteristics arose in different parts of Asia. The regions of South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia can be defined as analytical units for the purpose of generalization and comparison. Settlements in these regions evolved through different pathways and as a result of different sequences of factors, through a process of convergent evolution, to form cities which today look superficially similar but arose from different origins. The term “settlements” is preferable to “cities” because the word “city” is not universally applicable; it is culture‐bound.
Disturbance in Biogeography
Authors: Veblen Thomas T.
Published: March 2017

Ecological disturbances, both natural and anthropogenic, are inherent components of all ecosystems that fundamentally affect their structure and function. At landscape and regional scales, differences in the types and spatiotemporal attributes of disturbances profoundly influence coarse‐scale biogeographic patterns and the evolution of the component biota. Modern research on disturbances such as wildfires and tree‐killing insects in ecology and biogeography began in earnest in the late nineteenth century, but since the late 1970s interest in such disturbances has risen steeply. Current research interest in ecological disturbance reflects and has driven the development of nonequilibrium conceptual frameworks in ecology and biogeography. Research frontiers in biogeography and global ecology are focused on disturbance mechanisms and their impacts in the context of climate warming and disturbance‐mediated feedbacks that may constitute tipping points for rapidly accelerated biogeographical and climate change.
Surface Water
Authors: Allan James L.
Published: March 2017

Fresh surface water is a physical and socioeconomic phenomenon that can best be understood from an integrated or geographic perspective. The global water system delivers and stores water in key renewable reservoirs with strong spatial patterns. Surface water behavior at the soil–atmosphere interface is highly sensitive to human alteration, and urbanization greatly exacerbates flooding. Simple comparisons of water use between agricultural, industrial, or thermoelectric sectors must consider contrasting factors such as consumptive losses or in‐stream use. Global water use is directly linked to food security through growing irrigation demand and is not sustainable now or in the foreseeable future. Water scarcity metrics indicate large‐scale spatial patterns of dire shortages tied to socioeconomic development. Integrated water resources management can address the pressing need for planning such a diverse resource.
Data Model, Moving Objects
Authors: Nara Atsushi
Published: March 2017

A data model for moving objects is a blueprint that describes data of interest related to movements of objects and a set of operations represented in an information or database management system. Designing an appropriate data model fosters conceptual understanding of the dynamic phenomena of moving objects, yields efficient data storage and retrieval, and further facilitates spatiotemporal analytical processes. Various data models have been proposed to efficiently and effectively store, manage, query, and analyze data about moving objects. This entry starts with the description of fundamental elements of moving objects and their abstract data types. Then it reviews data modeling approaches for representing moving objects, including conventional spatiotemporal data model, constraint model, moving object data model, semantic trajectory data model, event‐based data model, and models for handling big moving object data.
Surveying
Authors: J. S. Hunter Andrew
Published: March 2017

Surveying has a very long history, with evidence of surveyors' work dating back to the Egyptian pharaohs and the construction of the pyramids, and to landownership systems in early Mesopotamia (the region covered by the Tigris–Euphrates river system). Today, surveying, also referred to as geomatics, continues to develop the science and technology used to determine the location of natural and man‐made features on the surface of the earth. New survey technologies have made it possible to map large tracts of land quickly and accurately, and to process and disseminate the data in a variety of formats to clients and individuals/groups interested in the planning and administration of land and sea, and the resources that they contain.
Soil Development: Numerical Indices
Authors: Sauer Daniela
Published: March 2017

Numerical indices of soil development provide highly useful tools for comparing soil profiles or soil horizons in terms of the degree of pedogenesis that has taken place in them. In this way, numerical indices may also help to establish chronologies of the age of different land surfaces. Common indices used in soil sciences, and the pedogenic processes associated with them, comprise the theme of this entry. Indices based on field data include the redness rating and the profile development index, or PDI. Clay formation can be evaluated by the clay accumulation index (CAI), and pedogenic iron oxides by ratios of iron fractions. Various ratios of mobile versus immobile elements are used as indices that reflect silicate weathering and leaching of released mobile elements. Indices of profile anisotropy are based on the concept that pedogenesis increases anisotropy in soils over time. Some indices reflecting specific processes (carbonate accumulation and podzolization) are also described. Appropriate use of any soil development index requires that the soil‐forming processes which the index was designed to reflect match with the processes that take place in the soils under investigation. Hence, knowledge on both the concepts of the indices and the processes taking place in the soils is needed, including variations in soil‐forming processes in both space and time (especially over time spans that include major climatic shifts).