bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Intersectionality
Authors: Al‐Hindi Karen Falconer
Published: March 2017

Intersectionality (as a concept) originated with black American feminist thinkers of the late nineteenth century. It later germinated in collaborative work undertaken by women of color in the American civil and women's rights movements of the 1960s. It bloomed in the 1990s and has the potential to transform theory, methodology, and teaching around social and spatial issues of human difference and disadvantage.
Intersectionality
refers to lives lived, and the knowledge that arises from the intersections of social structures such as race, class, ability, and gender, that have the potential to oppress. The social and intellectual contexts from which intersectionality comes are key to understanding and using it. The concept has become very popular in research, activism, and teaching. Case study research as well as important scholarly debates are ongoing. Insights from work by and on women of color with origins in the Global South are especially exciting.
Manufacturing Industry
Authors: Yang Chun
Published: March 2017

The past decades have witnessed the evolving role of manufacturing industry. The distinctions between manufacturing and services industries have been blurring. With increasing globalization, there emerged a global shift of manufacturing capacity from developed to developing economies. Many emerging economies, as locations of low‐cost labor, such as China, have developed significant manufacturing and innovation capabilities. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis and economic downturn, global demand for manufactured goods has shifted from the Global North to the Global South, particularly emerging economies, which has brought about a more complicated landscape of global manufacturing than a few decades ago.
Lakes and Limnology
Authors: Horn Sally P.
Published: March 2017

Lakes are bodies of water that occupy depressions in the land surface created by natural geomorphic or biological processes, or by human activity. They are the focus of the field of
limnology
, which is the study of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of all inland waters, including fresh and saline lakes, streams, and wetlands, and of
paleolimnology
, which investigates lake sediments as archives of information on past climates and environments. Lakes contain less than 0.5% of all fresh water on Earth, but are significant for human wellbeing as sources of water, food, and economic and recreational activities, and as avenues for transport. They also contribute to biological diversity, supporting both aquatic and terrestrial biota, and may serve as sentinels of future climate and ecosystem change, just as their accumulated bottom sediments provide evidence of past changes in climates and environments resulting from natural processes and anthropogenic activities.
Identity
Authors: Ho Elaine Lynn‐Ee
Published: March 2017

Identity refers to a person's sense of self and how it shapes an individual's interaction with others in the social world. Identity claims can be invoked to reinforce or challenge systems of domination; hence it is a powerful tool in the hands of social actors and the social structures they represent. This entry examines the multifaceted nature of identity and how it is formed through social processes and relationships. For geographers, identity is not only spatially situated but also constituted in space and across geographical scales or networks. The entry identifies how different axes of identity matter in citizenship and postcolonial spaces. It underlines the intersectional aspects of identity and how identity is relational as well as situational.
Regional Economic Integration
Authors: Ottaviano Gianmarco I.P.
Published: March 2017

Regional economic integration is the process of creating a unified market for goods, services, and production factors across the borders of countries belonging to the same geographical area. Turning smaller segmented national markets into a larger, integrated regional market, regional integration attracts people and firms, fostering economic activity in participating countries to the detriment of excluded ones. It may also trigger divergence in the economic performance of participating countries. Regional policy may then be needed to avoid undesired outcomes.
Processing
LiDAR
Data
Authors: Brovelli Maria Antonia , Muñoz Carolina Arias
Published: March 2017

Point cloud filtering, or ground filtering, is the main preliminary step in Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data processing, and allows the separation of ground and nonground points. It is the basis for the generation of digital terrain models (DTMs) and the identification of ground features. Other steps in DTM generation, starting from the point cloud, are similar to those generally applied to field measurements: error filtering, resampling or reorganizing, and interpolation. Ground filtering methods, meanwhile, are specific to LiDAR measurements; they can be classified as: morphological or slope‐based, progressive densification, surface‐based, clustering/segmentation, block‐minimum, and multiscale algorithms. Automated filter algorithms are built into LiDAR software tools that can be either proprietary or Free and Open Source Software (FOSS); in any case, the efficiency and performance of these tools depend on the number of measurements, the chosen input algorithm, and the output mapping product.
Regionalism
Authors: Tomaney John
Published: March 2017

Regionalism is a key concept in human geography denoting mobilization of cultural, economic, and political sub‐national divisions. Regionalism typically presupposes a regional identity and is concerned with giving meaning to bounded material and symbolic worlds in an effort to create intersubjective meanings. The persistence of regionalism as a cultural and political form reaffirms the importance of the making (and unmaking) of territorial boundaries. Regionalism may represent the search for rootedness and belonging and the valorization of local distinctiveness in the face of the universalizing claims of globalization.
Industrialization
Authors: Pan Fenghua
Published: March 2017

Industrialization is a process by which the industrial sectors come to play a dominant role in the national economy and an agrarian society is transformed into an industrial society. The driving forces of industrialization are different at the various stages of industrialization in history. The pathways to industrialization also vary between different countries. Despite the rapid industrialization of some less developed countries in the past several decades, the global unevenness of industrialization has persisted between and within countries. Industrialization has brought greats benefits to societies, but large‐scale industrialization has also caused a lot of problems.
Plant–Water Interactions
Authors: Holder Curtis D.
Published: March 2017

Vegetation influences the quantity of water that contributes to runoff and groundwater recharge. During rainfall events a proportion of precipitation is intercepted by the vegetation canopy and evaporates back into the atmosphere. Canopy storage capacity is the amount of water held on the canopy at the end of a rainfall event, after drip has ceased and in the absence of wind. The precipitation that is not intercepted and evaporated from the canopy reaches the surface via the hydrological pathways of throughfall and stemflow. Vegetation factors that influence interception, canopy storage capacity, throughfall, and stemflow include leaf area index, stand density, vegetation age, species composition, canopy architecture, leaf and branch angle, leaf and bark surface properties, leaf hydrophobicity, and water droplet retention.
Flexible Specialization
Authors: Yeung Godfrey
Published: March 2017

Flexible specialization is the phenomenon of a closely linked network of firms engaging in the production and distribution of nonstandard, specialized products to cater for ever‐changing consumer demands. The transformation from the mass production of standardized products under Fordism to the volume production of nonstandardized products under flexible specialization illustrates how different forms of production organization can shape the characteristics of regional economic activities over time.
GPU
Computing
Authors: Tang Wenwu
Published: March 2017

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are coprocessors built using a many‐core architecture to accelerate general‐purpose computation in general, and spatial analysis and modeling in particular. The use of programmable GPUs for parallel spatial analysis and modeling has received much recent attention, and GPUs are available in a variety of alternative computing devices, from smartphones to high‐performance clusters. Leveraging GPUs for accelerating spatial analysis and modeling relies on the use of fine‐grained threads and shared‐memory parallelism. Because of their massively parallel computing capabilities, GPUs hold great potential for the acceleration of computationally intensive spatial algorithms.
Traffic Sensors
Authors: Yue Yang
Published: March 2017

Traffic sensors are key to traffic surveillance, signal control, and incident detection to ensure traffic safety and the operational efficiency of a transportation system. Various traffic sensors have been developed in recent decades, with the rapid development of electronic, communication, and computer technologies. This entry introduces some mainstream and emerging traffic sensors, and their associated advantages and limitations.
Corporations and
E
‐Commerce
Authors: Warf Barney
Published: March 2017

E‐commerce consists of a diverse set of business practices conducted through the Internet, including e‐tailing (electronic retailing), electronic data interchange, advertising, recruitment, banking, telephony, and distance learning. Its adoption has led to numerous changes in how firms conduct business. This entry first summarizes the major dimensions of e‐commerce, including retailing, gambling, education, and tourism. Second, it explores the geography of e‐commerce and the spatial implications of online consumption. Because it is embedded in local and national social contexts, there is no spatially invariant model of e‐commerce that unfolds in the same way everywhere.
Local/Global Production Systems
Authors: Yeung Godfrey
Published: March 2017

Production systems incorporate different production stages based on research and development, product design, the exploration of raw materials and minerals, and the manufacture of parts and components, which lead to the final assembly of a product before it is distributed and eventually sold to consumers. The relative power relationships between the networks of firms in various stages of production and their specific locations can have a profound impact on the generation of economic value and local industrial development, as well as on interactions with the globalized world.
City Logistics
Authors: Dablanc Laetitia
Published: March 2017

City logistics represents more than the mere transportation of goods within urban areas. It can be defined as
any service provision contributing to efficiently managing the movements of goods in cities and providing innovative responses to customer demands
. As such, city logistics does not apply well to the way goods are currently delivered and picked up in cities worldwide, as a significant portion of these activities remains inefficient and impact urban environments. As urban freight challenges increase in cities worldwide, new logistics services have emerged, especially in areas with a high level of activity, such as city centers. Although not yet significant in terms of volume and environmental benefits, these practices provide new directions for more sustainable city logistics activities, with diverse applications around the world.
Suburbanization
Authors: Watt Paul
Published: March 2017

Suburbanization refers to the sociospatial process whereby cities expand outwards beyond their original central areas via the formation of suburbs. Suburbs are peripheral areas lying beyond a city's boundaries, but which are interconnected to the city economically and socially, for example, via commuting. Suburbanization typically involves building new homes for either sale or rent, combined with residential mobility whereby people leave the city in order to live in suburban homes and neighborhoods. Various explanations have been offered for suburbanization including transportation development, consumer preferences, uneven capitalist spatial development, class and racial social differentiation, and industrial decentralization. There is increasing scholarly recognition given to the socially diverse nature of the suburbs along class, racial, and ethnic lines. It has also been recently suggested that complex processes of post‐suburbanization are occurring, as seen, for example, in the development of edge cities in the United States.
Agroforestry
Authors: Suryanata Krisnawati
Published: March 2017

Agroforestry is a common land use practice whereby trees are incorporated into agricultural landscapes. It is touted for its ability to improve farmers' livelihoods while maintaining environmental stability. Interest in indigenous technical knowledge during the 1970s renewed attention to traditional practices of intercropping. The establishment of the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) in 1978 formalized the term “agroforestry.” ICRAF coordinates international research on agroforestry which was initially focused on understanding biophysical principles and ways to improve agroforestry. Political ecologists seek to expand the discussion beyond technocratic and managerial concerns, and have called attention to the fact that agroforestry is also a site of contentious struggle with overlapping property and labor claims. Planting high‐value commodity tree crops facilitates the adoption of agroforestry, but it is also a strategy of private accumulation of wealth that can shift the system's distributions of benefits, producing a range of ecological and social contradictions.
Applied Geomorphology
Authors: Meitzen Kimberly M.
Published: March 2017

Applied geomorphology is a field of science where the research outcomes provide information geomorphic landforms or processes that may be of concern to society, and, where relevant, provides solutions to problems of geomorphic context. Applied geomorphology examines geomorphic impacts that affect society, as well as society's impact on geomorphic forms and processes. The application of geomorphic knowledge to problem‐solving spans all of the classic traditions of geomorphology and is useful for human–environmental solutions across a broad range of geographies, including coastal shoreline erosion control, landslide risk assessments, and dam‐related river management issues. Resources, particularly maps, models, and prediction tools, provided by applied geomorphologists are useful to scientists, engineers, consultants, and decision‐makers involved with hazards, land‐use planning, natural resources, environmental management, and global environmental change. Applied geomorphologists working independently or serving on multidisciplinary advisory panels are well positioned to influence public policy to the benefit of society and the earth sciences.
Soils of Urban and Human‐Impacted Landscapes
Authors: Howard Jeffrey L. , Daniels W. Lee
Published: March 2017

Soils of urban and human‐impacted landscapes (Anthrosols) differ from soils normally found in natural settings in that they have been modified so profoundly by human activity that they have characteristics outside the range of native soil series and require reclassification as a different type of soil. Anthrosols are widely distributed in agricultural, archaeological, mine‐related, and urban geographical settings. Agricultural Anthrosols are formed by long‐term artificial additions of manure (Plaggenic) or irrigation water (Anthraquic). Anthrosols found at archaeological sites (Plaggenic, Dark Earth, Terra Preta, and Midden soils) are developed in various historical contexts (agricultural, occupation, ceremonial, and burial sites). They have formed through human additions of organic and mineral material. Mine‐related Anthrosols are formed from parent materials which have been artificially sized by blasting, and mixed together in an unnatural way by mechanized equipment. These soils are frequently biologically unproductive, difficult to reclaim, and many have become highly acidic by weathering of pyritic parent materials. Two types of urban Anthrosols are distinguished depending on whether they were formed in human‐altered material (native parent materials modified in place) or human‐transported material (anthropogenic deposits formed from mixed soil materials and other earthy fill). Urban Anthrosols often contain large amounts of artifacts in the form of waste building materials or carbonaceous wastes related to fossil fuel combustion. Some artifacts are comprised of substances (e.g., coal tar, plastic) not found in nature, and have a high preservation potential. Further study is needed because Anthrosols have unique properties that greatly affect their use and management.
Shape
Authors: Wentz Elizabeth A. , Li Wenwen
Published: March 2017

This entry defines shape as a conceptual, mathematical, and geographic concept. How and why shape is important and relevant in geography is explained with emphasis on map projections, geographic representation, and shape measures. Qualitative and quantitative approaches for measuring and comparing shapes are presented.
Geographic Information System
Authors: Chang Kang‐Tsung
Published: March 2017

A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, querying, analyzing, and displaying geospatial data. Geospatial data describe both the location and attributes of spatial features. A GIS comprises the components of hardware, software, data, people, and organization. Prompted by the introduction of PCs and graphical user interfaces, GIS flourished in the 1980s. Now GIS is an indispensable tool in resource management, emergency planning, crime analysis, public health, land records management, precision farming, and many other fields. Geospatial data are spatially referenced and can be either vector or raster. Common GIS operations include data acquisition, data management, data query, vector data analysis, raster data analysis, and data display. An important trend is the integration of desktop GIS, web GIS, and mobile technology, which has already led to the development of location‐based services, collaborative web‐mapping, and volunteered geographic information.
Maritime Transport
Authors: Rodrigue Jean‐Paul
Published: March 2017

Maritime transport is the linchpin of the global economy, acting as the physical support for its flows of freight. Although containerization was an important driver of change in maritime shipping, bulk cargoes such as petroleum, minerals, and grains are still the fundamental and enduring trades that support the large industrial sector and the dynamism of maritime transport. The fates of globalization and of maritime transport remain closely intertwined because maritime transport supports commercial flows; more efficient maritime transport is also conducive to improved trade.
Land Degradation
Authors: Stringer Lindsay C.
Published: March 2017

Land degradation refers to a range of processes that contribute to a reduction in the quality and economic productivity of the land. It describes the deterioration of the biological, physical, or chemical properties of land and its constituent parts. Land degradation is often viewed in relation to certain ecosystem services that land is expected or desired to provide within particular socioeconomic and land‐use systems. This contextual nature of land degradation makes its management highly challenging. Land degradation creates challenges across a range of sectors and scales. This means that policies and actions to address land degradation span multiple governance levels. It is increasingly recognized that those who manage the land need to be directly involved in actions to reduce, prevent, and reverse its degradation.
Boreal Forest Ecosystems
Authors: Johnson E.A. , Martin Y.E.
Published: March 2017

The boreal forest is circumpolar. It had to reinvade from the south several times during the Pleistocene because of continental glaciation. Even in the Holocene the forest composition changed several times. Therefore the boreal forest we see today is a melange of histories and conditions. Only the southern end of the boreal forest has been significantly impacted by intensive land use. Peatlands are common on both uplands and lowlands due to incomplete drainage. The ground and surface waters do not always flow as the surface topography would suggest. The boreal trees can be best understood by their population dynamics as influenced by wildfire and insect outbreak disturbances. Climate warming will have the largest impact on boreal ecosystems since the Pleistocene glaciation.
Friendship, Geographies of
Authors: Bunnell Tim
Published: March 2017

Friendship refers to a broad range of interpersonal relations that are entered into and may be left voluntarily. Although geography is implicated in a variety of ways in friendship formation, maintenance, and dissolution, only sporadic attention has been given to friendship by geographers. Growing interest in friendship in geographic research is in part reflective of wider reappraisals of its structural significance, especially among sociologists; however, friendship is also bound up with disciplinary recognition of inter‐ and transpersonal geographies of affect, emotion, and intimacy as important in their own right. Friendship is a form of intimacy that some geographers argue is gaining significance in an increasingly urbanized world of human mobility and long‐distance connection, in which geographies of care are being reconfigured. Existing work has largely focused on Western and anglophone worlds, with correspondingly little attention given to contextual variation in the meanings and practices of friendship.
Supervised Classification
Authors: Jia Xiuping
Published: March 2017

Supervised classification is one of the machine learning approaches. While no training data are used in unsupervised classification, supervised classification relies on an analyst to define the classes that the data are classified into and provide the training data of each defined class. The output of the trained classifier with the training data is an assignment of a class label to each input data point. Several classifiers are widely used, including a minimum distance classifier, maximum likelihood classification, K‐nearest neighbors, and support vector machines. When an image dataset is classified, a thematic map is generated from the class label of each pixel. Training data play the key role in the establishment of the discriminant rules among the classes. The quality and quantity of the training samples are critical issues.
State‐Owned Enterprise
Authors: Hu F.Z.Y.
Published: March 2017

State‐owned enterprises (SOEs) refer to an ensemble of organizational forms with property rights exercised and controlled by government entities. They are closely intertwined with the balance of economic, social, and political objectives of the state in different spatial‐temporal contexts. Scholarly debate over the nature and performance of SOEs has strong implications for understanding the controversial relationship between property rights and economic efficiency, and the ideological contention between neoliberalism and state capitalism.
Developmentalism
Authors: Wong Theresa
Published: March 2017

Developmentalism is an approach to national economic development that emphasizes the intervention of the state. Current applications of developmentalism stem largely from post‐World War II aid projects inspired by modernization theories and targeting the “underdevelopment” of newly decolonized states. Developmentalism has been applied to long‐term development planning in developmental states such as South Korea and Singapore. Developmentalism has been criticized for having a linear view of progress and for neglecting deeply rooted power inequities in the world system that are the root of underdevelopment and dependency.
Areal Differentiation (or Chorology)
Authors: Johnston Ron
Published: March 2017

Arguments for geography as the study of areal differentiation, of the spatial distribution of physical and human phenomena as they relate to one another, were promoted as the discipline's
raison d'être
in the early twentieth century. They reflected earlier conceptions of a chorological approach to geography by Carl Sauer and, in particular, Richard Hartshorne, but whereas Sauer exemplified this relationship through the investigation of landscapes, Hartshorne focused on the study of regions. The latter approach, which for a few decades dominated the discipline, fell into disrepute as geographers increasingly specialized in particular systematic subfields, and subsequent attempts to reinvigorate descriptive accounts of particular regions have largely failed.
Apartheid
Authors: Ramutsindela Maano
Published: March 2017

The idea of apartheid, peculiar to the Afrikaner, is a crystallization of the South African white's views on and attitudes toward people of color. Apartheid was highly idealistic as clearly shown by its ultimate goal for a permanent and complete separation of white and black people in the cultural, economic, social, political, biological, and territorial spheres of contact. The three parts of apartheid, namely, idea, policy, and measures, fused together to underpin a system of racial segregation, oppression, and exploitation in the modern South African state. This national system and its consequences for black South Africans became a rallying point for anti‐apartheid struggles that culminated in the creation of a democratic South African state in 1994. The concept of apartheid has since been adopted to explain various forms of oppression and inequalities in other parts of the world, and the nature and outcomes of national and international economic systems.
Vulnerability
Authors: McLeman Robert
Published: March 2017

“Vulnerability” refers to the potential to experience loss or harm. It is a term frequently used when studying the human impacts of climate change, natural hazards, and other environmental events or conditions. It is used in a relational sense, that is, the vulnerability of X to Y. Vulnerability is a function of the nature and degree of exposure to a potential source of harm, sensitivity to that harm, and the capacity to adapt. It is a condition that varies over space and time in concert with changes in human and ecological systems. Human population processes are important influences on the formation of vulnerability. A range of qualitative, quantitative, and geospatial techniques are used in its study.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Authors: Green Milford B.
Published: March 2017

This entry details the motives, consequences, and history of mergers and acquisitions for selected major economies. Highlighted are the histories and motives of the six merger waves experienced in the United States. Domestic and cross‐border mergers are discussed. The idea of external control, and its relationship to mergers and acquisitions, is also explained.
Precipitation
Authors: Curtis Scott
Published: March 2017

Precipitation, or hydrometeors that fall from the Earth's atmosphere to its surface, can take the form of rain, snow, sleet, glaze, or hail. Some of the most disruptive meteorological hazards are a function of too much or too little precipitation, namely freshwater floods and droughts. Current research themes include microphysical properties, quantitative estimation and forecasting, and a vast array of climatological studies. Global precipitation estimation has advanced through satellite remote sensing and has allowed for a more comprehensive analysis of the global hydrologic cycle, and modeling improvements have made forecasting on short to long timescales more skillful.
Music
Authors: Duffy Michelle
Published: March 2017

Geography's interest in music arises out of an interest in how we make sense of our place in the world. Music can represent notions of identity and connect us to our different communities. Yet music is not a benign cultural object. Rather its acoustic properties are attributed certain ideological meaning, hence the meaning of music and designations of noise and sound are expressions of power. Recent geographical work has focused on music as a process, which has opened up understandings of how music constitutes place, identity, and community. Empirical work has not only explored the significance of what comprises music and our affective, emotional, and bodily processing of sound but also considered methodological approaches that seek to capture what is difficult to put into words – and the
raison d'être
of music.
Industrial Location Theory
Authors: Hanink Dean M.
Published: March 2017

Industrial location theory was first developed in the early nineteenth century with a focus on the spatial distribution of agricultural crop production in local markets. Over time it has been expanded to provide explanations and predictions of the location of manufacturing and services. It typically employs profit maximization as its objective in determining the optimum location of production, with sub‐objectives of either revenue maximization or cost minimization. Contemporary industrial location theory concerns both the optimum location of individual producers and the location of spatial concentrations, or agglomerations, of production.
Ecosystem Services
Authors: Dempsey Jessica
Published: March 2017

Ecosystem services, commonly defined as the benefits provided by ecosystems to humans, are an increasingly dominant approach to ordering and organizing human and nonhuman (or ecosystemic) relations, setting norms for the management and governance of socioecologies. The ecosystem services revolution aims to make visible and ideally quantifiable the often underappreciated and undervalued ecological structures and processes necessary for human life on earth. While the concept is becoming central to environmental governance, some academics (including geographers and ecologists) contest this turn, along with some environmental, indigenous, and social justice activists.
C
artesian Coordinate Systems
Authors: DeMers Michael N.
Published: March 2017

Cartesian coordinate systems as used in geography are planar representations of locational information typically derived by converting the spherical Earth's geographic coordinates into something less cumbersome to deal with in map form. There are many forms of geographic Cartesian coordinate systems but the most common include the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), Universal Polar Stereographic (UPS), Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), State Plane Coordinate (SPC), US National Grid, and the Ordnance Survey National Grid. Each of these systems is devised for a particular purpose, whether that is to allow for interoperability with other systems or for more specific uses such as military uses or regional planning. All of them use datums and map projections specifically selected to improve their accuracy. They also possess some form of lettering and numbering system that allows precise locations down to 10 m in some systems.
Social Resilience and Environmental Hazards
Authors: Deeming Hugh
Published: March 2017

The concept of resilience has long been associated with the idea of “bouncing back” following a disturbance. Therefore, in social systems it has become associated with defining a population's ability to preserve those functions it feels desirable after disturbance (e.g., a hazard event). It has been suggested that social resilience can be achieved through a balance of resistance, social learning, and self‐organization. Approaches to understanding the concept have been developed across a range of disciplines, such as social ecological systems theory and psychology, and resilience theories have become influential in informing applied approaches, including climate change adaptation and, increasingly, disaster risk management. Social resilience in populations exposed to environmental hazards has also been suggested to depend on the interaction between a complex mix of that population's social, economic, institutional, infrastructure, and community capacities. One of the critiques of the resilience approach is that it has evolved from an analytical into a more normative concept and is thus difficult to quantify usefully. The focus on persistence is also problematic because, in some cases, a more appropriate strategy for dealing with severe or chronic hazards may be transformation.
Arid Climates and Desertification
Authors: Wikle Thomas A.
Published: March 2017

Covering nearly half of the earth's land surface, dry climates are extremely diverse in terms of temperature, patterns of precipitation, and physical appearance. A common attribute to all arid regions is low precipitation. Factors contributing to aridity include persistent high pressure, continentality, and location relative to either mountain ranges that block moisture‐laden winds or cool ocean waters that inhibit rainfall. Using Köppen's Climate Classification System, arid climates are designated as hot or cold deserts or as semiarid steppes. Arid and semiarid areas are susceptible to the impacts of drought but also to human degradation harmful to the productivity of vegetation called desertification. Although there is no consensus on its specific causes, desertification has been attributed to overgrazing, poor agricultural practices, and the indiscriminate use of fire, deforestation, and other activities that alter natural patterns of vegetation.
Monsoons
Authors: Roy Shouraseni Sen
Published: March 2017

A monsoon is defined as the seasonal reversal of winds over large landmasses, accompanied by significant changes in seasonal precipitation patterns. It was first observed over the Indian subcontinent, where it marks the summer rainy season (June–September) and is locally known as the southwest monsoon season. During the summer months, the inter tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) migrates northward close to 30°N, heightening the differential heating between land and sea, as well as the physiographic barrier Himalayas to the north. These conditions produce moisture‐laden onshore winds from the adjacent Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal resulting in widespread rainfall across the subcontinent. The first monsoon winds strike India's southwestern coast from the southwest direction around the first week of June; by the first week of July the entire Indian landmass is affected by monsoonal circulation.
Infiltration
Authors: Harden Carol P.
Published: March 2017

Infiltration, the entry of water into soil, is an essential control point in the hydrologic cycle because it divides the surface runoff of precipitation from subsurface water, which promotes the growth of plants and recharges groundwater. Infiltration is a complex process, controlled by a large number of factors and widely influenced by human activities. Relative measurements of infiltration rates allow prediction of threshold rates, beyond which overland flow is generated, causing erosion, flooding, and water quality degradation. Most human activities affect the hydrologic cycle by decreasing infiltration and increasing overland flow, but interventions in urban areas have begun to increase the infiltration of storm water.
High‐Tech Industry
Authors: Zhou Yu
Published: March 2017

The high‐tech industry includes technology‐driven manufacturing and services. Geographical studies on the high‐tech industry are motivated by the spatial restructuring of global economies. Developed countries increasingly specialize in high‐tech segments of global production networks, which serve as the catalyst to job and regional growth. Developing countries specialize in low‐value‐added segments of the high‐tech industry in the global system, but they also aspire to technological upgrade and autonomy. The high‐tech industry has prominent regional nodes due to uneven distribution of human resources, unique regional institutional environments, and varying public investment and policies.
Localization/Delocalization
Authors: Zhou Yu
Published: March 2017

Localization emerged as a countercurrent to globalization. The proliferation of global production networks reduced local control of economies, and led to delocalization. However, fears of a homogenized world dominated by a few leading transnational corporations never materialized. Transnational corporations increasingly adopt strategies to localize investment, management, product design, and marketing as an effective approach to global expansion. Localization is also the primary means through which localities respond to the challenge of globalization, namely by mobilizing local resources to couple with global networks, and furthering the local embeddedness of foreign corporations. The coexistence of localization and globalization is often described as “glocalization.”
Rights, Labor
Authors: Doucette Jamie
Published: March 2017

Labor rights include geographically limited normative and legal rights, universal human rights that pertain to labor relations between workers and their employers, and the collective rights of workers within society; the latter are presumed to be geographically and politically universal but in practice they are unevenly distributed and exercised. In capitalist economies, the collective nature of such rights creates tension with existing property rights; nonetheless, the exercise of labor rights remains an important aspect of the pursuit of social justice. In order to better understand how labor rights have been unevenly recognized and exercised across geographic space, recent scholarship has examined how labor rights are configured through diverse sociospatial registers, including global production networks, national territories, geographic scale, as well as practices of migration.
Difference
Authors: Dixon Deborah P.
Published: March 2017

Difference is crucial to geographic inquiry not only as an object of analysis in and of itself, but also as a means of locating and sorting other objects ready for analysis. In a diverse and often diffuse disciplinary landscape, two key shifts can be discerned in regard to how difference is understood and debated. The first revolves around the charge of essentialism, as difference as a matter of the distinctness of objects/events and their core attributes is posed against difference as a socially constructed iteration with political consequences. The second revolves around the charge of transcendentalism, as socially constructed difference is in turn posed against differentiation as an ontological condition that requires greater attention to the limits of analysis itself.
Transnational Environmental Governance
Authors: Biermann Frank
Published: March 2017

Transnational environmental governance is the collective steering of societal processes by public and private actors in order to prevent, mitigate, and adapt to environmental change, involving two or more countries. Such processes typically involve a variety of actors. In addition to the traditional role of states, environmentalist groups, science networks, business associations, and intergovernmental organizations also play an increasing role in complex systems of multilevel governance. Major instruments of transnational environmental governance are international treaties and novel types of institutions concluded by nonstate actors. Problems of equity and legitimacy are becoming increasingly crucial. Importantly, the overall effectiveness of transnational environmental governance does not appear to be sufficient to prevent large‐scale long‐term transformations of the Earth system.
Exploration
Authors: Garrett Bradley L.
Published: March 2017

Exploration is the process of searching for new environments, encounters, and knowledges. It is a concept inexorably linked with geographic thought and practice, being fundamental to human migration and settlement on Earth. Exploration is also a term fraught with baggage where cultural encounters have led to conflict, oppression, and exploitation, prompting important considerations of the geopolitical effects of exploration on environments and peoples; critical commentary on the colonial legacy of the practice. Exploration is of course not limited to land and sea; expeditions into outer space have created new possibilities for discovery and sparked renewed concerns over control and colonization. Exploration of archives, the urban, the everyday, and the virtual also form possible frontiers of encounter. Finally, we might consider research into processes of nonhuman exploration.
Unsupervised Classification
Authors: Kim Wonkook , Liang Shunlin
Published: March 2017

Unsupervised classification is an analysis technique that categorizes data based on the similarity between data samples. It is used to understand data structure, summarize data distribution, and identify categories of new data. In this entry, the basic concept of unsupervised classification is described in comparison with supervised classification and major unsupervised algorithms widely used in the literature are reviewed next. Finally, the applications of unsupervised classification in geography‐related fields are discussed.
Finite‐Element and Finite‐Difference Modeling
Authors: Bithell Mike
Published: March 2017

Many geographical systems can have aspects of their behavior modeled in terms of numerical quantities: the temperature of the atmosphere, flow depth in rivers, growth of populations, or numbers of people that carry a disease, for example. Many of these quantities can be modeled in terms of their rates of change over time and space via differential equations, or mathematical functions that relate variables and their derivatives. Often these equations are too hard to solve using purely mathematical techniques, and in these cases a computational solution has to be found instead. It is shown here how such solutions can be attempted using small finite steps in space or time to obtain approximate estimates of model behavior.
Just‐In‐Time Production System
Authors: Reid Neil
Published: March 2017

Just‐in‐time (JIT) is a production system that allows manufacturers to minimize the volume of inventory (component parts) at the point of production. This is achieved by ordering parts and arranging for their delivery as they are needed for incorporation into the production process. This reduces costs associated with inventory storage. While some have argued that JIT necessitates close geographic proximity between suppliers and customers, there is now sufficient evidence that efficient and effective JIT systems can be operated with a geographically distant and dispersed supply network.
Production of Nature
Authors: Loftus Alex
Published: March 2017

The Marxist geographer Neil Smith first developed the production of nature thesis to analyze the changing ways in which humans relate to their environments. Drawing on Marx's writings, Smith makes the claim that nature is produced rather than pregiven. In so doing he challenged much of the prevailing orthodoxy within both Marxist and non‐Marxist approaches to nature. The thesis quickly became enrolled in a broader movement to challenge essentialist interpretations of “nature” and “society.” The great value of the production of nature thesis over other approaches is its attentiveness to the specificity of capitalist relations of production, its nondualistic approach, and the clear effort to historicize socio‐natures. These three contributions point to the possibility of very different ways of shaping environments in the future.
Participatory Modeling
Authors: Hubacek Klaus , Ravera Federica , Tarrasón David , Prell Christina
Published: March 2017

Participatory modeling (PM) links science and modeling to stakeholder knowledge and experiences, thus supporting and enabling participatory decision‐making when dealing with complex social‐ecological problems. Whereas traditional model building emphasizes expert‐driven collection of information, PM emphasizes collective deliberation, where learning outcomes emerge from ongoing discussions. Stakeholder involvement can range from simply providing information, that is, “knowledge transfer,” to consultation to “collaborative model building.” Here, stakeholders engage in collective problem framing, priority setting, option formulation, and model evaluation. Models are coproduced in an iterative learning process between modelers and stakeholders. This entry summarizes the history of PM and different approaches of stakeholder involvement for model building and social learning.
Location‐Based Games
Authors: Ahlqvist Ola
Published: March 2017

Location‐based games is a subgenre of a group of games called pervasive games due to the way they expand the spatial, temporal, and social boundaries of traditional games. A defining character of location‐based games is the degree to which the locations of game entities, such as players, avatars, tokens, or other objects, determine the game dynamics. In addition, these games are characterized by the varying degree to which they employ various mobile, location‐aware, information, and communication technologies to create a blurring of the boundaries between the game world and the real world.
Mortality
Authors: Tyner James A.
Published: March 2017

Mortality is most often conceived in demographic terms as the state or condition of being dead. Consequently, numerous terms and measures have been developed to classify and document patterns and causes of mortality. Recent scholarship has broadened the concept of mortality to consider the political, economic, and cultural meanings and practices surrounding death as indicated by studies on premature death, violence, biopolitics/biosecurity, and deathscapes.
Atmospheric Aerosols
Authors: Zhong Shiyuan , Zaveri Rahul
Published: March 2017

Atmospheric aerosols are suspensions of tiny particles in air that originate from a wide variety of natural and anthropogenic sources. Depending on their sources, aerosols appear in different sizes and have different physical and chemical properties. Aerosols play a significant role in the Earth's climate system and are a major contributor to air pollution. Despite considerable advances in recent decades, significant gaps still remain in our knowledge of aerosols and their impacts on our planet and human health.
Biopower
Authors: Srinivasan Krithika
Published: March 2017

This entry discusses biopower with specific reference to the Foucauldian tradition that has inspired its popularization and wide usage as an analytical device. An overview of Foucault's initial theorization of biopower is followed by an account of the main ideas – population, governmentality, the intertwining of welfare and violence, and subjectification – encapsulated by this concept of “the power over life” and which have proven to be of much significance to geographical and social science inquiry. The entry also includes a discussion on some of the key intellectual debates around the meaning and implications of biopower and of the variety of empirical domains where it has been and continues to be productively deployed and developed.
Reproduction: Social
Authors: Kofman Eleonore
Published: March 2017

In the 1970s, Anglo‐American feminist scholars and activists, influenced by Marxism, highlighted the role of reproduction in maintaining female subordination and oppression and sought to challenge the binary division between production and reproduction and the devaluation of women's domestic labor. In the face of diverse critiques, the debate over and use of the concept diminished. Since about 2000 there has been a revival of interest in the concept by feminist scholars of political economy in geography, international relations, and sociology. This development has been due to the effects of neoliberal governance and declining provision and reprivatization of welfare and more fluid boundaries between work and home. The crisis of social reproduction in the Global South and peripheral areas of the North and the recourse to migrant labor in wealthier countries to fill gaps in reproductive labor have also provided a stimulus to theorization and empirical studies.