bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Political Geography
Authors: Agnew John
Published: March 2017

Political geography is that part of human geography most directly involved with studying politics. It is a field of inquiry concerned with the geographical organization of governance, the ways in which geographical imaginations figure in world politics, and the spatial basis to political identities and associated political movements. The geopolitical context of the time has been crucial to the making of academic political geography over the past one hundred years. The field has not evolved simply as the result of an internal intellectual dynamic, as one “paradigm” has simply replaced another because of intellectual fashion or academic competition. At the same time, the empirical scope of the field has widened from the original focus on the spatial attributes of statehood and global geopolitics to consider questions, for example, about the origins and spread of political movements, the links between places and identities, and geographies of nationalism and ethnic conflict.
Irrigation
Authors: Doolittle William E.
Published: March 2017

Irrigation is the watering of soils to enhance crop production in arid environments. It relies on various sources of water, delivery methods, extracting, lifting, and storage techniques, and field surface configurations and application devices. Originating in the ancient past and holding much promise for future development, it involves environment, technology, and society, and is therefore fundamentally geographic.
Distance
Authors: Gatrell Anthony C.
Published: March 2017

While modern communications technologies have diminished the “friction” of distance that has constrained movement and flow, the spatial separation of locations and the activities that take place at such locations still matter. Seen as a relation between places or locations, distance can be measured quantitatively or thought of in qualitative terms. It can be defined formally as a metric, most simply as the straight‐line distance between two locations. But it can be conceived in terms of the time taken to get from one place to another or the cost incurred in traversing space, and such measures do not necessarily relate simply to geographic distance. In addition, people's judgments of distance vary, while both people and places can be separated by sociocultural distance. Examples are given that demonstrate the ways in which such measures of spatial separation have been used in geographic inquiry.
Agricultural Environments
Authors: Blumler Mark
Published: March 2017

Agriculture arguably has been the major cause of ecological and evolutionary change on the Earth during the 10 000 years since its inception. Much of the Earth's terrestrial surface is agricultural today. Although originally based on renewable resources, most agriculture today is utterly and unsustainably dependent upon fossil fuels. The degree to which soil erosion and land degradation have resulted is debated, while negative impacts on biodiversity seem to be proceeding rapidly.
Sea Ice, Ice Drift, and Oceanic Circulation
Authors: Thomas David N. , Cottier Finlo R. , Brandon Mark A.
Published: March 2017

The episodic freezing over of the surface waters is arguably the most striking feature of the Southern and Arctic Oceans as well as some subarctic oceans such as the Baltic and Okhotsk Seas. Millions of square kilometers are covered by ephemeral layers of ice that are on average less than 1 m thick. This pack ice is highly dynamic, drifting on the underlying ocean currents, and its distribution is greatly influenced by prevailing winds. The ice is not simply an impervious layer of frozen water, but does in fact provide a variety of habitats to create a productive biome which is pertinent in the biogeochemical processes in the surface waters and at the air–ocean interface.
Desert Ecosystems
Authors: Drezner Taly Dawn
Published: March 2017

Deserts cover large areas of the globe, but their plant and animal life are not always well understood. This entry covers a variety of topics including the basics of primary production and food chains, and the seminal pulse‐reserve paradigm which has shaped our ideas about ecosystem function in arid lands. Also discussed are positive plant interactions, facilitation and nurse plant associations, and the stress gradient hypothesis (SGH). Keystone species are reviewed, as are invasive species in deserts, seed dispersal and dormancy, and plant and animal adaptations to the temperature and rainfall extremes and convergent evolution (convergence) in deserts.
Gender, Work, and Employment
Authors: Jarvis Helen
Published: March 2017

The unequal distribution and embodied performance of “work” are intimately bound up with everyday sites and activities of production, consumption, and domestic social reproduction. It is important to differentiate between work and employment and to qualify these terms with the concept of gender. This is because the prevalent notion of work as employment overlooks a wide variety of unpaid work without which any society could not reproduce its working population. Persistent inequalities are evident in the nature and extent of work performed by women and men around the world and in how different jobs are rewarded and afforded social status. Work and employment can be viewed in a number of ways: as structured events in people's lives, as flows of income and social capital, and as enduring sites of identity formation. Understanding the multidimensional world of work is central to our wider appreciation of global social justice, inequality, and uneven development.
Soil Fertility and Management
Authors: Grant Cynthia A.
Published: March 2017

Soil fertility is the quality of a soil that that allows it to provide adequate amounts of nutrients in the proper balance to support plant growth, but without toxic concentrations of any element. It is related to the ability of the soil to support a healthy plant community, whether in a natural or managed ecosystem. Soil fertility involves the complex interactions of physical, chemical, and biological factors that influence nutrient availability and plant growth. A fertile soil contains adequate soil organic matter, lies within a pH range that supports growth, and has a vibrant community of micro‐organisms that participate in nutrient cycling. It lacks constraints that limit the ability of the plant to accumulate nutrients, such as compaction, poor aeration, toxic materials, and excess salts. Practices that sustain or improve soil fertility are critical in ensuring the long‐term productivity of managed ecosystems.
Geospatial Metadata
Authors: Cowen David J.
Published: March 2017

An important part of the maturation of the geospatial industry has been the ability to discover and share data and services. This process has been facilitated by the adoption of standard methods for documenting specific resources through the creation of metadata. These metadata records serve as entries in a library's card catalog. Since the mid‐1990s, the formats for metadata records have evolved from national to international standards. Backed by software developers and governmental mandates, the generation of metadata has become a critical geographic information system (GIS) best practice. XML‐based metadata has enabled the creation of web‐based clearinghouses to discover and acquire geospatial data and services. The adoption of a specific multinational profile for North America is a further sign of the increased importance of geospatial data and services for commerce, logistics, and policy.
Environmental Discourse
Authors: Mels Tom
Published: March 2017

Environmental discourses are frameworks of meanings about the biogeophysical world and its natural and social qualities. Drawing on a range of intellectual positions in the humanities and social sciences since the 1980s, environmental discourse has come to describe the social process of mediation in the construction of knowledge through which the world is rendered recognizable and meaningful, but also acted upon. This engages with the social and spatial situatedness of environmental knowledge, its earthly connection, and associated issues of materiality and nonhuman capacities to act. Environmental discourse features in different ways on the research agendas of political ecology, environmental justice, ecological Marxism, and new materialism. While these agendas diverge in empirical focus and theoretical diagnosis, they share the vision of knowledge as always entangled in a wider range of material practices and uneven power relations and reject scientific approaches that see environmental knowledge production as the process of unbiased, disinterested examinations of reality.
Models and Simulation in Biogeography
Authors: Perry George
Published: March 2017

Models are routinely used by ecologists and biogeographers to learn about and to predict ecosystem dynamics. Models may be classified in many ways but a key criterion in doing so is their purpose, as it is what should guide any model's conceptualization, technical development, and, ultimately, its evaluation. Increases in computational power and data availability have enabled the development of increasingly detailed models, but this realism carries an inferential cost. Partly as a response to such concerns, modelers are adopting a more synthetic approach to modeling, with a broader focus than just prediction.
Growth Machines
Authors: Jonas Andrew E.G.
Published: March 2017

Growth machines are coalitions of business and local government interests which strive to generate growth around the intensification of land use in the city. The activities of developers or rentiers are central to the behavior of growth machines. The growth machine thesis provides an argument about how urban growth can be sustained even under conditions of neoliberal fiscal austerity. However, its continuing influence is challenged by the emergence of relational approaches that look beyond the boundaries of the city in order to understand urban political agency and power.
Spatial Feature Classes
Authors: Usery E. Lynn
Published: March 2017

Geographical phenomena exist as spatial feature classes defined by natural physical and human‐constructed geographical entities, human cognition, and a combination of these. Throughout history, geography has sought to define sets of geographical entities that have meaning to human discourse. There has been a rapid proliferation of methods of developing concepts of spatial feature classes as science and technology have progressed. The definition of spatial feature classes relies on physical geography, human engineering and technology, and human cognition. This entry explores concepts of spatial feature classes from the earliest conceptions of the Earth's figure and surface to the latest incarnations currently used in geographic information science and semantic modeling on the Semantic Web.
Health Inequalities
Authors: Cairns Joanne‐Marie , Curtis Sarah
Published: March 2017

Health inequalities are differences in human health associated with sociogeographical position and environment, and are observed at various spatial scales. Health inequalities represent a significant challenge for societies globally, and could be reduced if the determinants of health were addressed for populations that are relatively disadvantaged. Particular concerns related to the determinants of health inequality include, but are not limited to, varying access to medical health care and disparities in individual behavior. Also important for health are aspects of the natural environment, built environments, and social relations. The literature on health inequality between geographical areas has also given rise to debates about how to interpret these differences and the complexity of the processes that may lead to health inequality.
Religion
Authors: Hopkins Peter
Published: March 2017

The study of religion in geography focuses on the ways in which matters of faith, belief, and spirituality interconnect with, and shape, everyday landscapes, identities, practices, and spaces. Labeled as depleted and marginalized in the early 1990s, the field has now developed considerably, particularly as a result of the cultural turn and the ongoing development of social and cultural geography as a significant subfield of the discipline. Building on early work about patterns of religious affiliation and segregation, coupled with contestations over the location of places of worship, research has diversified to include debates about gender relations, children's geographies, and political geographies and geopolitics. The most recent debates to find their way into geographies of religion focus on the place of emotions and the currency of discussions about postsecularism for understanding contemporary engagements with matters of faith.
National and Regional Integration
Authors: Agnew John
Published: March 2017

State formation worldwide has always involved significant attention to infrastructural and fiscal integration across the state territory. This process is often referred to as national integration. Its absence and/or the exacerbation of disparities between localities and provinces can lead to calls for secession or autonomy, particularly when allied to concentrations of populations with cultural or ethnic differences from the national majority. Historically, localities, regions, and established states have sometimes come together to create federal or similar arrangements in which lower‐order units share governmental powers with higher‐order ones. The creation of such geographical blocs when it involves pre‐existing nation‐states is often referred to as regional integration. Today the best examples of such integration are so‐called supranational regional unions, such as the European Union, and much less institutionalized trading blocs, such as NAFTA.
Alternative Food Movement
Authors: Galt Ryan E.
Published: March 2017

There are arguably several alternative food movements (AFMs) rather than a singular one. Most exist to challenge the negative consequences of the industrial food system. Geographers and allied scholars have been central to a number of scholarly debates about AFMs centered on neoliberalism, accessibility, and the wellbeing of farmers and farmworkers within them. Organic, fair trade, civic agriculture and sustainable community food systems, food justice, and food sovereignty all form important parts of current AFMs. Each has its own history and dynamics, and one major challenge for AFMs is to find and cultivate unity in diversity.
Environmental (In)Security
Authors: Dalby Simon
Published: March 2017

Human insecurity is a matter of both environmental and social circumstances. In recent decades concerns with environmental change and its possible impacts on human societies have been linked to policy discussions of security. Scholarly analyses of resources, environment, change, and conflict suggest that these are far from simple linkages; scarcities and abundant resources are related to conflict but in complex ways. Discussions of the collapse of civilizations and alarm about such things as water wars now connect academic research, policy discussion, and media to the extensive discussion of climate change. This has rekindled scholarly debates from the 1990s and added urgency to policy deliberations about environmental security now that it is increasingly clear that humankind is substantially altering the earth system.
Structuration Theory
Authors: Strohmayer Ulf
Published: March 2017

Structuration theory played a key role in the formation of geographical theories during the 1980s. Characterized by the adaption of social‐scientific arguments and concepts within human geography, structuration theory arguably changed, especially, the manner in which the notions of “structure” and “agency” were discussed and incorporated into empirical research. This, too, arguably marks the legacy of structuration theory beyond the open and deliberate debate of the 1980s: a willingness by a majority of geographers to think complexity and to engage with theoretical abstractions that are capable of expressing social change in nonbinary forms.
Hydrology: History
Authors: Wescoat James L.
Published: March 2017

Hydrology is the study of water flows, from precipitation to infiltration, groundwater, evapotranspiration, and runoff. Historically, it has been closely associated with water resources engineering. Although regarded in various periods of its history as a physical science grounded in mathematics, it is increasingly engaged with the ecological and social sciences. This entry builds upon a major benchmark study by Asit Biswas, titledHistory of Hydrology(1970) by reviewing historical research published since that time along with historical research on twentieth‐century hydrology. While the history of hydrology has been a relatively small field, it has a wide range of prospects ranging from neglected processes in the hydrologic cycle (e.g., snow and soil moisture) as well as evolving approaches to scientific synthesis (e.g., ecohydrology and sociohydrology).
Geodesign
Authors: Fisher Thomas
Published: March 2017

Geodesign uses geographical information systems (GIS) to enable designers to make more informed decisions as they shape the built environment. This entry covers the definition and evolution of geodesign, its historical development and current practitioners, its theory and methods, its forms of practice and its educational venues, its applications and limitations, and its future directions as a field.
Soils on Slopes: Catenas
Authors: Almond Peter C. , Moir James L.
Published: March 2017

Hillslopes form a significant part of Earth's surface, and the soils formed across them vary in systematic ways. The predictable pattern of soils in relation to hillslope position is captured in the soil catena concept, which proposes that soil pattern evolves in a deterministic sense in relation to changes in soil and hillslope processes, as modulated by hillslope form. Important hillslope processes include the formation of mobile soil material from underlying consolidated material (soil production) and its transport. The rates of these processes determine the age distribution of the assemblage of minerals making up the soil (the time factor) and the opportunity for vertical and lateral soil differentiation. Movement of water across and through the soils differentially moves dissolved and dispersed soil materials according to their mobility. The concentration of water (especially groundwater) in different parts of the hillslope according to elevation and hillslope form also determines the soil moisture regime.
Soils as Relative‐Age Dating Tools
Authors: Markewich H.W. , Pavich Milan J. , Wysocki Douglas A.
Published: March 2017

Soils develop at the earth's surface via multiple processes that act through time. Precluding burial or disturbance, soil genetic horizons form progressively and reflect the balance among formation processes, surface age, and original substrate composition. Soil morphology provides a key link between process and time (soil age), enabling soils to serve as both relative and numerical dating tools for geomorphic studies and landscape evolution. Five major factors define the contemporary state of all soils: climate, organisms, topography, parent material, and time. Soils developed on similar landforms and parent materials within a given landscape comprise what we term a soil/landform/substrate complex. Soils on such complexes that differ in development as a function of time represent a soil chronosequence. In a soil chronosequence, time constitutes the only independent formation factor; the other factors act through time. Time dictates the variations in soil development or properties (field or laboratory measured) on a soil/landform/substrate complex. Using a dataset within the chronosequence model, we can also formulate various soil development indices based upon one or a combination of soil properties, either for individual soil horizons or for an entire profile. When we evaluate soil data or soil indices mathematically, the resulting equation creates a chronofunction. Chronofunctions help quantify processes and mechanisms involved in soil development, and relate them mathematically to time. These rigorous kinds of comparisons among and within soil/landform complexes constitute an important tool for relative‐age dating. After determining one or more absolute ages for a soil/landform complex, we can calculate quantitative soil formation, and or landform‐development rates. Multiple dates for several complexes allow rate calculations for soil/landform‐chronosequence development and soil‐chronofunction calibration.
Brands and Branding
Authors: Pike Andy
Published: March 2017

This entry defines what is meant by brands and branding, explains how they are geographical, introduces the idea of geographical associations, and emphasizes the roles of actors – producers, circulators, consumers, and regulators – in spatial circuits of meaning and value. Origination explains the geographical associations constructed by actors related in spatial circuits in their attempts to cohere and stabilize meaning and value in goods and services brands and their branding in particular spatial and temporal market contexts.
Place
Authors: Adams Paul C.
Published: March 2017

Place is a key concept in geography despite varying interpretations of its meaning and constant struggles to define the term. To a geographer, place implies a particular mixture or synthesis of heterogeneous processes coming together in a location, and doing so in contingent and shifting ways while also forming connections to other places. Place is also a distinct framing of human experience. Its complexity and inherent subjectivity make place quite difficult to theorize, in part because, as observers of the world, we cannot view place (or anything else in the world) from a vantage point outside of place. The terms “location,” “locale,” and “sense of place” provide a useful framework to understand this complexity and to interpret the place‐based changes associated with mobility and communication.
Dasymetric Mapping
Authors: Mennis Jeremy
Published: March 2017

A dasymetric map is a type of thematic map intended to represent a statistical surface of density, most commonly population density. The process of dasymetric mapping refers to the transformation of data encoded in a choropleth map into a dasymetric map, or at least a representation that better approaches a dasymetric map. The process incorporates an ancillary data layer, typically an area‐class map. The source zones of the choropleth map are then overlaid with the ancillary data to produce a new set of target zones for which population density is estimated. Parameterizing the functional relationship between the ancillary data classes and the underlying population density surface is typically done by collecting a sample of ancillary data observations for which population density can be established. Statistical approaches, such as regression, can then be employed to estimate population density for the target zones of the dasymetric map.
Industrial Geography
Authors: He Canfei , Zhu Shengjun
Published: March 2017

Industrial geography has traditionally been defined as the study of the spaces, places, and geographical circulation of industry. It is a sub‐branch of economic geography and deals with the spatial arrangement of industrial activities. This entry is organized along a rough time line. After an introduction, the second section seeks to review briefly the main phases of the discipline's historical development from the early twentieth century when industrial geography was institutionalized in both Western Europe and the United States to its most recent situation. Four main phases and relevant approaches are presented: location theory and spatial science; the behavioral approach; Marxism, the radical approach, and regulation theory; and industrial district and cultural turn. The third section outlines the contemporary research in industrial geography by listing some of the primary groups of theoretical and empirical studies: globalization; firms, networks, institutions, and poststructuralism; industrial district, embeddedness, cluster, and agglomeration; global production networks, global commodity chains, and global value chains; labor and labor market; and the evolutionary approach. The last section concludes this entry.
Historical Geography
Authors: Kinda Akihiro
Published: March 2017

While history pertains to phenomena in temporal sequence and geography deals with the coexisting relationship of spatial elements, the study of historical geography is concerned with both the passage of time and disposition in space. There is an inseparable connection between historical and geographical phenomena occurring at the same time in the same place. Historical geography is the study of past geography, changing landscape, past in the present, and geographical change. It also examines its subjects from the viewpoint of the real, perceived, and theoretical worlds of the past. The sources for research are geographical materials, historical documents, and archaeological artifacts. The growing sophistication of digital databases and data processing is helping to refine and diversify research methodologies. In research, new ways of thinking are imparting greater depth to the way cross‐sectional analysis is conducted.
Environmental Knowledges and Expertise
Authors: Morris Carol
Published: March 2017

Geographical research conducted in recent decades has begun to challenge the ideas that environmental knowledge is associated exclusively with the natural sciences and that a deficit in environmental knowledge among publics is a significant barrier to engaging these publics in environmental action. Instead, geographers have drawn attention to the diversity of environmental knowledges and have argued that informal, noncertified, or local environmental knowledges need to be taken seriously in the governance and management of environmental problems. Research attention has also been paid to formally accredited environmental expertise and the activities of associated experts including the “boundary work” that is undertaken by these groups in efforts to maintain the privileged status of scientific knowledges. Work has begun recently to explore the coproduction of environmental knowledge by diverse actors, reflecting a shift toward participatory forms of democracy.
Cultural Turn
Authors: Rosati Clayton
Published: March 2017

The cultural turn describes a broad set of shifts in the social sciences and humanities, which blossomed from the 1970s to the early 2000s. In geography, the cultural turn's impact was felt widely and drew heavily on these shifts, impacting – among others –contemporary cultural geography, including landscape studies;economic geographiesof labor, regulation, innovation, agglomeration, culture industries, urban economic geography, and studies of the capitalist state; andgeopolitics, involving Gramscian and Foucauldian international relations, scale and activism, development, and neoliberalism. This turn embodies several tensions between determining systems and individual agency. Likewise, culture and the cultural have invited critique and challenges from approaches that question the ontological status of culture, the relevance of meaning and representation, and the turn's human‐centered aspects. Yet, the cultural turn persists with increasingly materialist engagements with Gramsci, systems of meaning, capitalist processes, and social power in everyday life.
Interdisciplinarity and Geography
Authors: Bracken Louise J.
Published: March 2017

Calls for interdisciplinary research and teaching abound, and geography is uniquely placed to take advantage of these. Yet, interdisciplinary working is not necessarily straightforward, and confusion and debate are rife about the most suitable practices of undertaking interdisciplinary research and the subsequent quality of the work produced. This entry outlines the background to interdisciplinarity and the motivations for undertaking such work, and analyzes the issues around language, framing, and including stakeholders; all need to be addressed to undertake effective interdisciplinary research. While undertaking interdisciplinary research is challenging, it is also rewarding and can produce novel and highly relevant findings. This entry provides an insight into the practice of interdisciplinary research to help develop and ensure successful interdisciplinary projects.
Location and Multiplant Firms
Authors: Mota Isabel
Published: March 2017

This entry discusses research on the location choices of multiplant firms within the economic geography tradition. From the theoretical point of view, most research builds on spatial competition models, while new economic geography models focusing on multiplant location choices are rare. Empirical studies are scarce; most use a case study approach, with their main focus on the birth, growth, performance, and exit of multiplant firms.
Constructing 3‐DGIS
Authors: Yano Keiji
Published: March 2017

This entry provides an elucidated overview of 3‐D GIS data structure and 3‐D GIS data acquisition, while introducing the latest technologies and several 3‐D city models. Many attempts have been made to convert 2‐D maps into 3‐D maps. Thanks to the shift toward GIS technology and the development of methods for acquiring new 3‐D data, detailed 3‐D city models can now be constructed. With the appearance of Google Earth and CityEngine, further enhancement of virtual geographical environments using 3‐D GIS can be anticipated.
Aid
Authors: Essex Jamey
Published: March 2017

Aid is the transfer of goods, services, and other resources on concessionary and often conditional terms, typically as a form of development or humanitarian assistance. Aid functions through complex networks of official state, intergovernmental, and multilateral institutions, mostly but not entirely in the Global North, working alongside a wide array of private, nongovernmental, and philanthropic organizations and actors. Historically, aid has been closely associated with state strategies of national security and has been an important instrument of statecraft and foreign policy. The Cold War's end and the widespread adoption of neoliberalism have significantly altered the global aid system. Contemporary geographies of aid are shaped by increased South–South connections and flows, the growing role of nonstate actors in aid provision and governance, and the inclusion of social and environmental objectives in aid programs. Critics still contend that aid remains heavily politicized, largely ineffective, and centered on donors rather than recipients.
Producer Services and Trade Liberalization
Authors: Breinlich Holger
Published: March 2017

Trade liberalization and recent advances in communication and information technologies increasingly permit the trade of producer services across borders. This entry discusses research on the nature and importance of such trade, and on the consequences of services trade liberalization. Trade in producer services now accounts for close to 70% of services trade and 14% of total world trade. Services trade liberalization has figured prominently in multilateral negotiations in the World Trade Organization and in many regional trade agreements. Progress in liberalizing services trade has been slow, however, and has been achieved mainly via unilateral initiatives. As a consequence, important barriers remain across many countries and types of services. This is despite the fact that a small but growing body of research has shown that trade liberalization in producer services can have substantial positive economic effects.
Water and Human Rights
Authors: Matthews Olen Paul
Published: March 2017

In 2010 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing water as a human right. The push for a human right to water and sanitation is in part a reaction to private sector service providers. High prices for services have generated protests. From the protestors' perspective water is not a commodity and privatization of water supply systems infringes on human rights. Although the General Assembly passed the resolution, it is not binding international law. It does represent evolving customary international law. The evolving international law is neutral as to who should provide water and sanitation services. It requires human rights to be protected by encouraging investment in supply systems and regulating those who deliver services.
Watersheds
Authors: Royall Dan
Published: March 2017

Watersheds are natural, contiguous subdivisions of the Earth's land surface, consisting of topographically related and hydrologically integrated terrain elements. They have great relevance to human existence due to the critical importance of water resources to all life, and because their functioning determines the availability and quality of water for human use, as well as the nature of river flood hazards. Many watershed functions can be understood by water and sediment budgeting using the simple continuity formula: input minus output equals change in storage. Detailed explication of these terms with the aim of understanding the complex spatiotemporal nature of interconnectivity in watersheds has long been a critical research goal. Despite the common acceptance of watersheds as ideal natural resource units, watershed management is complicated by the often transboundary nature of many watersheds and by the complexities and costs of implementing watershed‐scale solutions under conditions of heterogeneous land use and ownership.
Regional Finance
Authors: Dow Sheila
Published: March 2017

Analysis of the relationship between regional economic conditions and finance varies according to the underlying theoretical framework. Mainstream analysis allows a lasting effect of finance only as a result of financial inefficiency, which may persist but is ultimately eliminable. In contrast, Post‐Keynesian analysis of regional finance focuses on the spatial dimension of enduring interrelationships between real and financial developments. While the former approach emphasises regional economic convergence, the latter approach emphasises the forces for divergence. The entry addresses the spatial structure of the financial sector, the regional impact of monetary policy, and the relationship between finance and regional development.
Branch Plant Economy
Authors: Phelps Nicholas A.
Published: March 2017

The branch plant economy is a concept that emerged in a particular time and from particular places to capture the local development implications of the evolving division of labor within large, often multinational enterprises. Arguably it retains a relevance to understanding some of the present limits to economic development as a result of the integration of local economies into evolving divisions of labor within and between such enterprises. It remains a concept around which important research agendas can be centered, although it may benefit from an injection of new insights from literature elsewhere in economic geography, international business, and development studies.
Environmental Citizenship
Authors: Pallett Helen
Published: March 2017

Environmental citizenship is a contested concept implying a set of rights and responsibilities arising from the environmental impacts of human actions. Its origins are largely in twentieth‐century environmental movements whose tenets were incorporated into the sustainable development agenda from the 1980s. Environmental citizens can be created by government pro‐environmental behavior change policies; however these approaches have been criticized for seeing environmental citizens only as consumers. Environmental citizenship has relevance to multiple scales of governance beyond the nation‐state, in part because environmental problems are often transnational in nature. Methods of engaging environmental citizens in decision‐making include opinion polling and deliberative processes, but all are criticized for being partial in the way they frame environmental issues and in the kinds of citizens they seek to engage. Recent moves to extend citizenship rights to nonhumans raise significant challenges for working definitions of and ways of engaging with the environmental citizen.
Civil Society
Authors: Davies Andrew D.
Published: March 2017

Civil society is a concept central to most, particularly Euro‐American, understandings of politics. Broadly conceived as the area of political activity that takes place outside the state, civil society has often been seen as a space of liberal political freedom or, from a more radical perspective, as a space of bourgeois hegemonic control. Since the collapse of state socialism, “civil society” has become a key term for political and development geographers seeking to understand how processes like economic and cultural globalization have shifted political activity into “new,” transnational forms. These debates did not do away with radical theorists' concerns that the potential of civil society as a domain for transformative political change has been overblown. Current debates concern the utility of “civil society” as a concept that adequately expresses the diversity of political forms occurring today. In particular, the concept of political society has been posited as a subaltern zone of difference to an elite civil society. An engagement with civil society then remains a key part of a framework for understanding the relations between politics and society.
Human Ecology
Authors: Knapp Gregory
Published: March 2017

Human ecology can refer to a variety of disciplinary subfields or to the interdisciplinary project to systematically study human–environment relations; it may include research that has been or may be labeled differently (e.g., as cultural ecology). Ongoing research includes study of the major episodes and transformations of human–environment relationships including the human revolution, foraging, agriculture, civilization, and modernization in terms of such factors as environment, demography, efficiency, social stratification, and violence. Studies have also focused on human ecological adaptations in particular environments, such as mountains, polar regions, arid zones, and the humid tropics. Human ecologists also are interested in norms of behavior, alternatives for development, and prospects for sustainability.
Routing and Navigation
Authors: Richter Kai‐Florian
Published: March 2017

Navigation is not a professional skill executed only by pilots or ship captains, but an everyday activity of getting from one location to another. It encompasses locomotion and wayfinding – a planning task. Routing is the process of path selection in a network, usually done by somebody or something other than the navigator. With the advent of smartphones and mobile Internet, recent years have seen a near ubiquity of routing (or navigation) services. The communication of routing information by computational systems does not always match with the expectations of the systems' human users, which may create some issues in the navigation process and which constitutes one of the current research challenges.
Late
C
enozoic Polar Glaciations
Authors: McKay Rob
Published: March 2017

The Cenozoic geological era has seen the transition from a warm “greenhouse” climate, with limited or absent cryosphere, to one with large ice sheets in either hemisphere. Much of what we know about the evolution and development of Cenozoic glaciations comes from records far removed from the polar regions, in particular marine isotope and eustatic sea level records. These records provide a high‐resolution, continuous but indirect record of global ice volume changes through time. However, identifying the geographical distribution of ice sheet evolution in either hemisphere through time has proved difficult due to the sparse, discontinuous, and inaccessible nature of geological records in polar regions.
Representation: Fields
Authors: Ledoux Hugo
Published: March 2017

A field is a model of the spatial variation of an attribute over a spatial domain, and it is used to represent continuous geographical phenomena such as the elevation of a terrain, the salinity of a body of water, or the humidity of the air (phenomena that can change over time). Fields are more problematic than objects to store in a computer, first because they are intangible, and second because they are continuous (while computers are discrete machines). This entry presents an overview of the different strategies for representing fields as found in geographic information system‐related applications. These strategies take into account the fact that while geographical fields are continuous, we first have to collect samples to study them. Higher‐dimensional representations, where for instance time is integrated as an extra dimension to spatial ones, are also discussed.
Informal Sector
Authors: Harker Christopher
Published: March 2017

The informal sector designates forms of paid labor that are outside, or are placed beyond, legislative and regulatory frameworks, which designate the formal sector. The crude binary between formal and informal has subsequently been nuanced, leading to the concept of dynamic and heterogeneous informal economies, and more broadly informality, a heuristic for identifying performative divisions of illegitimacy/legitimacy that constitute
inter alia
practices of dwelling, urbanization, and citizenship.
Green Capitalism
Authors: Scales Ivan R.
Published: March 2017

Green capitalism is a form of environmentalism that emphasizes the economic value of ecosystems and biological diversity. It is founded on the principle that private property, entrepreneurial freedom, and market exchange, rather than regulation, are the most efficient ways of dealing with natural resource use and environmental degradation. Green capitalism is based on the idea of natural capital, defined as the stock of ecosystems that yields a renewable flow of economic goods and services to businesses and society. It is expected that once markets can account for environmental costs and benefits they will stimulate innovation and increase in efficiency and thereby reduce environmental impacts.
Data Structure, Vector
Authors: Benjamin Zhan F. , Lin Yan
Published: March 2017

Vector data structures in GIS are the ways in which objects such as points, lines, and polygons are organized in a computer. This chapter reviews the key developments that resulted in the topological data structure of modern vector GIS, presents the basic components of the state‐of‐the‐art vector data structure using an example, illustrates the versatility of a topological vector data structure to support spatial search and spatial analysis, and discusses the constraints of existing vector data structures and challenges for developing more powerful vector data structures.
C
hicago School
Authors: Curran Winifred
Published: March 2017

The Chicago School of urban sociology sought to explain the city's growth and organization through the lens of human ecology. A number of ecological processes were central to the Chicago School's conception of the city: centralization, concentration within natural areas within the city, competition for position, segregation over natural areas, invasion, and succession, all operating within a city that was assumed to be a unified whole. Although much criticized, it was influential for well over 50 years.
Climatic Modes and Teleconnections
Authors: Carleton Andrew M.
Published: March 2017

Recurring spatial anomaly patterns of climate variability on intraseasonal, interannual, and decadal timescales (“climatic modes”) express associations with atmospheric and oceanic circulations, modulated by land surface–atmosphere interactions. These teleconnections range in influence from global (El Niño Southern Oscillation) to hemispheric (Arctic Oscillation, Antarctic Oscillation) to continental/regional (e.g., North Atlantic Oscillation, Pacific–North America pattern), and originate both in the tropics (e.g., Madden–Julian Oscillation) and extratropics (e.g., Antarctic Circumpolar Wave). Climate variables influenced by – and characterizing – teleconnections include temperature and precipitation, sea level pressure/geopotential height, winds, outgoing longwave radiation, and sea surface temperature. The opposing (i.e., extreme) phases of a teleconnection are evident as distinct patterns of heat and cold, droughts and floods, wildfires, synoptic circulation activity (tropical cyclones, frontal cyclones), and subsynoptic weather (e.g., tornadoes, “polar lows”). Contemporary climate change (“global warming”) may be altering both the internal attributes and frequencies of teleconnections.
Natural Resources
Authors: Banoub Daniel
Published: March 2017

Natural resources are commonly understood as any part of the nonhuman world that satisfies a human want or need. This entry challenges the conventional definition by arguing that natural resources are dynamic, not static, relational, not fixed, and irreducibly social, rather than exclusively biophysical. The geographical implications of this definition are then examined by thinking through the contradiction between fixity and motion in the classification, political economy, and geopolitics of natural resources.
Change Detection
Authors: Knight Joseph F. , Pelletier Keith C. , Rampi Lian P.
Published: March 2017

Change detection is the identification and characterization of the effects of natural and anthropogenic processes in a landscape. Change detection methods are broadly divided into pre‐ and postclassification categories. Preclassification methods use mathematical operations to compare image pixel values to identify changes and their magnitudes. Postclassification methods compare two or more classified images to identify the
from
and
to
land‐cover/use classes of changed areas. It is important to choose methods and input data that are appropriate for the goals of the change detection study. Change detection has been used successfully in a wide range of applications in natural resource, environment, land use, and social disciplines.
Geolocation Services
Authors: Jung Chin‐Te
Published: March 2017

Geolocation services are web services which can reveal the geolocation information (such as latitude and longitude) of an object by use of geolocation technologies, such as the global positioning system (GPS), assisted GPS, or Wi‐Fi locating system, and can geocode an address, a ZIP code, a place name, or an Internet protocol address into geographic coordinates. This entry provides a definition of geolocation and gives a list of examples of common geolocation services.
Map Algebra
Authors: Dana Tomlin C.
Published: March 2017

Map algebra is a computational language intended to represent the concepts, conventions, and capabilities of cartographic modeling. It is the notational pseudocode for a geospatial data‐processing methodology that casts map layers as variables and layer‐generating computations as functions. Like those of conventional algebra, these functions can be combined by using the output of one as input to another, so only a small set of elementary functions is required to generate compound functions of unlimited variety and complexity. Among the elementary functions of map algebra are “local” functions that characterize independent locations, “zonal” functions that characterize locations sharing common attributes, and “focal” functions that characterize locations in terms of their neighbors. These neighbors may be defined in terms of distance, direction, visibility, accessibility, or adjacency.