Geographical Research最新文献

Social-ecological memory (SEM) may be a key source of resilience in social-ecological systems (SES), allowing for renewal and reorganisation after disturbances. This study provides an overview of the genesis and evolution of the SEM concept, its research trends and gaps, and its potential applicability to geographical thought. Combining systematic review and bibliometric analysis, we collected 219 records published in the last two decades, which were reduced to 87 relevant records after applying the inclusion/exclusion criterion. The results indicate that interest in SEM research is growing, but wide acceptance and concordance around terminology are still lagging. The concept has substantially evolved and expanded over the last decade but remains mostly abstract and conceptual. Research has focused predominantly on European countries, rural contexts, and westernised societies, identified multiple disturbances and ecosystem services as driving the maintenance and evolution of SEM, and highlighted an unequal interest between social and ecological memory carriers. Our review underlines the strong pertinence of the SEM concept for the study and management of social-ecological systems, which would benefit from the development of application strategies and tools. In the future, researchers should seek to expand the idea of social-ecological memory into an applied field having clearer links and boundaries with more established concepts important in geography, among them traditional ecological knowledge.

Across the globe, interdisciplinary and creative approaches to climate change education are crucial at all levels, particularly in higher education. In this article, I draw from insights working with a class at New Mexico State University in the United States. The aim was to examine approaches to understanding, communicating, and representing climate change. Each student was asked to compose a narrative in which they imagined the year 2100 as a time when we have adequately mitigated and/or adapted to the climate crisis. The assignment set the tone for collective action and foregrounded the importance of story and imagination in building just and sustainable futures. The class complemented a public climate change speaker series and, as a second assignment, students suggested which speakers to invite to shape the series in the future. The two assignments opened new spaces to empower, learn with and from, and build connections between university students and academic staff to shape climate discourse and action in communities. Reflecting on what was learned, sharing an example of a climate futures assignment, and presenting views on a collaborative approach to climate change education all add, I hope, to the literature on imagining futures, empowerment, and authentic learning in climate change education.

Australian railway histories are dominated by narratives of engineering triumphs, colonial expansion into empty land, and bringing civilisation and development through railway infrastructure. These settler-colonial stories can be read back on themselves as histories and geographies of Aboriginal dispossession and colonial possession. Indeed, Aboriginal people, lands, waterways, and cultures have always been implicated in railway infrastructures, willingly or not. Aboriginal people’s entanglements with the New South Wales railways, to which we refer as “rail relations,” have involved dispossession, removal, employment, mobility, and travel, including the forced removal of children known as the Stolen Generations. These are relations of harm, loss, and grief but also of pride, connectivity, and survival. We argue in this paper that when Aboriginal communities engage in storying the New South Wales railways as Aboriginal they reassemble this infrastructure otherwise: not just as a tool of dispossession but also as life affirming. Indigenous storytelling can therefore overcome settler colonial erasure and the oversimplification of railway infrastructure hi/stories. Research about how Aboriginal lives have been interconnected with railways expansion and development is limited. While Aboriginal railway stories are continuously told within communities, they remain almost entirely silenced elsewhere. Overcoming the invisibility of Aboriginal rail relations is crucial as both truth-telling of the past and to ensure more just infrastructural outcomes now and in the future.

How can we support young citizens facing chaotic climate futures? This question is urgent, particularly for Indigenous communities who face disproportionate risks and impacts of climate change. For the past three decades, climate-related education has focused largely on the acquisition of scientific knowledge in instrumental ways, while encouraging individual behaviour change. This approach centres the problem rather than human capabilities to generate solutions, which is especially misaligned with the increasing practice and significance of Indigenous communities’ regenerating self-determining capabilities. This article reports on a pilot study that uses intergenerational storytelling methods or pūrākau to support leadership capabilities among Indigenous Māori and Pacific young people aged 10 to 14 years in communities at high risk of flooding in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The study showed how storytelling locates and scaffolds Indigenous young people into positions of individual and collective responsibility for grappling with “wicked problems” such as climate and injustice and climate-related challenges as part of the future they will inherit and shape within a broader intergenerational journey of resilience and reclamation.

This article explores epistemological and ontological accounts of Country’s mentorship among young Indigenous Australian knowledge holders, creatives, entrepreneurs, changemakers, and advocates. Using a qualitative decolonising race theoretical lens, the research team adapted and explored multi-directional, more-than-human understandings of the human–Country mentorship relationship to reflect young mob experiences of enacting and embodying Country. The findings highlight Country’s agency, sentience, and authority, whereby young mob shared how they were guided by, sustained by, and obligated to Country. This research honours Country as a knowledge holder and mentor. The research team aims to be transformative by showing new ways to understand Country and both-ways mentorship relationships with young mob and Country. The article is a unique contribution to the research field, as mentorship literature often fails to effectively unpack Indigenous Australian relationality with Country, problematises young mob, and is contextually bound to individual programs, singular communities, or cohorts. By giving voice to Country as a mentor, the research team aims to disrupt Western hegemonic power relations in dominant mentorship frameworks and challenge mentorship theory, practice, and policy. We hope this article encourages geographers and others to take Indigenous ways of knowing, being, doing and becoming more seriously.

Globally, road fatalities affect wildlife populations and ecosystems, leading to ecological imbalances, economic losses, and safety hazards for both animals and humans. However, the emotional toll on humans is less well understood. This research explores tourists’ responses to roadkill, using emotional geography as the overarching framework, and focusing on the island state of Tasmania in Australia. Tasmania is known for its diverse and abundant native wildlife, as well as the unfortunate distinction of having Australia’s highest rate of wildlife fatalities caused by vehicle collisions, commonly referred to as roadkill. A mixed-method questionnaire asked respondents to share emotions, and we then considered their relationships to socio-demographic attributes. Around 97% of respondents encountered roadkill during their stays, and 63% encountered live animals on or near the road. Tourists identified sadness as the most felt emotion when confronted with the consequences of wildlife–vehicle collisions. Anger and disgust were also experienced, primarily because of the unpleasant sight of roadkill and the realisation that animals suffered. Women reported being more negatively affected than men. Tourists who had visited to see wildlife were more affected than those who had not. Analysis leads to the conclusion that unplanned, sporadic, unexpected, and confronting encounters with dead animals detract from the tourism experience for most, especially encounters with wildlife was anticipated as a positive experience on tour. Such findings have wider implications for those working in the tourism industry in mainland Australia, Canada, and South Africa, where roadkill is also problematic.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, most research has examined specific temporal snapshots. This study diverges by offering a comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 incidence across the Spanish provinces throughout six distinct waves of the pandemic. Using spatial exploratory techniques, we find no single pandemic; rather, there have been waves. Significant differences in the spatial distribution of cases and deaths across six waves show that each has unique characteristics. Homogeneous conclusions cannot be drawn at the national level. Notable regional differences in the pandemic’s spatial distribution suggest a need for subnational responses, reflecting variations in climate, economic dynamism, sectoral specialisation, and socio-health resources. Spatial regression models show that the main determinants of COVID-19 incidence depend on stage. Traditional factors commonly associated with epidemiological studies, such as temperature, exerted significant influence during the pandemic’s onset. However, as mobility restrictions were enforced and vaccination campaigns were rolled out, economic conditions, and especially levels of economic activity, emerged as increasingly significant determinants.