Geographical Journal最新文献

Concerns about runaway artificial intelligence (AI) – including large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT – are at the forefront of contemporary political, social, and scientific discourse. This commentary provides a first look at ChatGPT's capabilities and limitations in supporting geographic research, critical thinking, learning, and curriculum development. We assessed ChatGPT's geographic knowledge, synthesising abilities, and potential for extrapolation. ChatGPT was employed for writing assistance, research evaluation, curriculum material creation, and content generation. Despite achieving scores of 47% to 55% on an actual exam paper, ChatGPT exhibited shortcomings including the generation of false references. Ethical concerns regarding academic misconduct, model bias, robustness, and toxic output were also identified. We assert that AI and LLMs like ChatGPT have transformative potential in Geography education and knowledge production but demand critical usage. Accordingly, we urge geographers to enhance AI literacy to enable responsible and effective use of these assistive technologies in our academic practice.

The suppression of anthropogenic fire is an important legacy of European colonisation worldwide. Fire suppression has undermined human livelihoods and fire-dependent ecologies. Belize and Guyana are the only former British colonies on the mainland of Central and South America. Both countries have fire-dependent tropical savanna ecosystems, where fire is used within local livelihoods, for example, for hunting. We compare the creation and implementation of savanna fire suppression and management policies and projects by agencies in twentieth to twenty-first-century Belize and Guyana, and the extent to which global environmental narratives have shaped this process. In both countries, a picture emerges of weak state efforts to control fire, largely driven by economic concerns. In colonial Belize, the state made intermittent attempts to suppress or manage savanna fires in limited areas, owing to interest in pine forestry. In Guyana, the colonial state did not attempt to control fires, given economic interest in cattle ranching, and the remoteness of the savannas. Since 2000, both states have developed new fire policies, and state agencies, conservation non-governmental organisations and Indigenous advocacy groups have won funding for fire-related projects. We show that these contemporary policies and projects, like those of the colonial period, primarily financed by inconsistent international funding, continue to lean heavily on international discourses about fire that make assumptions about fire problems and propose solutions incompatible with local realities. Understanding the local geography, ecology and politics, and recognising the ways colonial fire legacies altered, and continue to impact these places, could inform more just and productive approaches to working with local fire users in Belize, Guyana and beyond.

Technological advancement and exponential rise in the human population have led to severe modification of the land surface area. These human-induced geomorphic modifications are considered as an active geomorphic process that interrupts dynamic equilibrium between landform and anthropogeomorphologic processes. The present study aimed to evaluate the efficiency of Nir's ‘Index of potential anthropic geomorphology’ used to quantify anthropogeomorphic process (AGP) impact. The model was applied in 11 talukas (sub-districts) of Goa State, India. Goa is a good candidate to understand the impact of anthropogeomorphological process because it has a varied topography with different geomorphological landforms along with rapid increase in urbanisation and mining activities which are anthropocentric. Decadal results show that, during 1991, 2001, and 2011, the tourism hubs of North Goa Bardez (0.32, 0.36, and 0.40) and Tiswadi (0.44, 0.42, and 0.47) required least attention to curb human impact, while the major economic and tourism hubs of South Goa Marmugao (0.55, 0.53, and 0.40) and Salcete (0.40, 0.40, and 0.40) surprisingly showed no increase but instead a decline in the values. In addition, prominent mining talukas Bicholim (0.25, 0.30, and 0.20), Quepem (0.45, 0.39, and 0.15), and Sanguem (0.24, 0.22, and 0.18) also showed declining values, which is indicative of decreased human activities. The index results suggest ‘no requirement of urgent and efficient measures’ in any talukas because none of the values have been found to be above 0.50, which according to the model represents considerable damage to geomorphology. However, Goa is a world-renowned tourism destination and all these talukas have witnessed massive urban development, high literacy rate, and exponential growth in National State Domestic Product and mining activities, especially since the turn of the millennium, which are contrary to Nir's index results. Therefore, the model has been found to be over-generalised and ineffective in indicating actual AGP at the meso level.

The common narrative in the media is that the British public house is in terminal decline and that these losses are having a significant impact on local communities. While it is true that some pubs are closing, it is also true that others are opening. This article examines the quarterly trend of pub numbers over eight years in various neighbourhoods and utilises a multilevel model to estimate and illustrate these trends. City and town centres with a thriving night-time economy show the most significant increases in pub numbers, whereas suburban areas show a more mixed picture, with pubs in less affluent areas performing better. The areas where reductions are most pronounced are rural locations, especially remote rural communities. The article concludes with an analysis of the reasons behind these trends and suggests avenues for future research.

The glacier database provides an opportunity to track its dynamics and address issues linked with water resources, hazards and sustainability. To better understand the dynamics of Eastern Dhauliganga basin, we mapped the clean and debris-covered glaciers by using satellite images from Landsat-series and Sentinel 2. The band-ratio based methods—NDSI (Normalised Difference Snow Index) and NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) were used to map the clean ice glaciers. The debris-covered glaciers were delineated using topographic parameters and thermal band of Landsat TM. The glacier extent and length change were monitored for 25 glaciers in the basin, of which 13 are clean ice and 12 are debris-covered glaciers. During the time period from 1994 to 2018, higher area loss was observed for clean ice glaciers (±20.6%) compared with debris-covered glaciers (±10.9%). The clean-ice glaciers retreated at a rate of 4.8–33.7 m/year, whereas debris-covered glaciers retreated at a rate of 2.9–28.8 m/year during 1994–2018.

Given the importance of carbon monoxide (CO) in acute health threats, studies have been conducted in different countries and cities (272 cities in China and 337 cities on a global scale) on the relationship between daily mortality and CO while the spatial analysis of factors affecting CO pollutant in cities, especially in developing countries, has rarely been done. Accordingly, this research has measured the effect of five environmental-social variables (ESVs) on the spatial distribution of CO pollutants in the metropolis of Mashhad, Iran. CO concentration data were collected in 23 air pollutant monitoring stations in an area of 356 km² in 2019. Then, the relationship between five variables and CO pollutant were measured using linear and multiple regression by Sentinel 2A and 3 satellite images in ArcGIS and TerrSet software. The results show that the mean CO concentration averages at 1.56 ppm in the whole city. But its range varies between 0.171 and 2.907 ppm, which is a low figure compared with presented standards and does not indicate a critical situation. The results of multiple regression indicate that 42% of the variance in CO concentration is explained by independent variables. Among five independent variables, the beta value of the land surface temperature (LST) and digital elevation model (DEM) variables is negative and positive for the other three variables, including population density, normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalised difference built-up index (NDBI). It should be noted that the strongest correlating variable is population density. Prediction of the spatial distribution of CO pollutants shows the division of the city into three areas: (1) the south and southwest slopes of the city with a low concentration; (2) central areas with a medium concentration; and (3) northern and northeastern areas of the city with a high concentration where low-income groups reside and there are more worn-out vehicles, motorcycles and industrial workshops. Areas with high CO concentration need more attention from urban managers.

Climate change and rising sea levels have led to managed realignment at the coast, but the practice of realignment has an ambiguous socioecological identity that has hindered its widespread use. Realignment represents the realization of the nature-based coastal management strategies first proposed in the United States during the Shoreline Debate of the early 1980s. It was put into practice in 1990 on Northey Island, Essex, as an experimental response to coastal erosion, and has subsequently become relatively widespread on the British coast. Realignment has been represented either as a form of ecological modernisation or as a rewilding, though it can challenge both these understandings through the radical ambiguity of the ‘wild experiments’ it produces. This ambiguity, however, means that while realignment has the potential to enable a structural transformation of socioecological relations at the coast, it has commonly only been used for the purposes of pragmatic environmental reform.

This paper moves across the ecological assemblages of the Periyar basin in Kerala. It argues that the connectivities and unintentional designs that emerge bespeak the Anthropocene in its regional and political peculiarities. The river has never been a conduit of water alone. The narrative builds broadly on ecological relations entrenched in history, most visibly as hydrological regimes. Such regimes are significant because of the riparian densities that articulate the geo-morphology. The different entanglements in ecology, as well as the successive productions of natures, gain significance as ‘recognitions’ during rupture events like the large floods. In contemporary contexts, the versatile flows of capital dissolve markers and boundaries and reconfigure regions in terms of capital. Vikasanam or new urban reforms, apart from political policies, are also ecological designs that normalise exceptions, otherwise reserved for special economic zones. The frictions with new materiality, post dam floods and hydrological controls, during developmental and neoliberal post developmental phases, become moments of recognition, making and unmaking sense of place.

This paper focuses on the complex relationship between pace and place, offering a novel lens for understanding mobility within the context of canal boating. Drawing on fieldwork on the canals in north-west England, the paper focuses on mobile placemaking practices. Canal boats act as physical and material but also ideological pacemakers, guiding the boaters towards subscribing to the idea of slow living, where certain canal-based pace-myths play an important role. Pacemaking on the canals is therefore a form of placemaking, realised through the mobility of the vessel, materialities of the infrastructure, tempos and temporalities, representations and stories about canal life as well as the bodies on board and on towpaths as canal boaters modulate and manage their experience and performance of pace. The investigation of the interplay between the slow pace, rhythms, embodied practices, canal infrastructure, and the prevalent pace-myths offers valuable insights into the ways places are shaped by the pace of mobility, thus expanding the concept of placemaking. By foregrounding pace as a key concept in mobility studies, the paper demonstrates the need for a more nuanced understanding of the temporalities associated with different modes of movement.