Pub Date : 2015-05-13DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1022127
H. Kurtz
Recent scholarship highlights the play of biopower in and through policies and practices shaping food systems, but says little about the practices of resistance to such power. Alternative food movements mobilize critique of and resistance to an industrialized food system from many perspectives. This article examines food sovereignty activism in Maine as an illuminating instance of contemporary biopolitics. This article investigates a “food sovereignty ordinance” passed in eleven towns in Maine since 2011 as an important moment in the biopolitical struggle over the nature of food systems. The ordinance exempts direct transactions of farm food from licensure and inspection in an effort to maintain the viability of small, diversified farms in a struggling rural economy. The ordinance effectively carves out a space of food sovereignty in each town that enacts it, thereby protecting conditions of life and livelihood within local food networks. The analysis focuses on the spatiality of the practices that comprise biopolitics, with attention to the scalar politics in play as well; that is, the ways in which modalities of power shape and are shaped by social, economic, and political scales of organization. This exploration of the scaling of biopolitics in relation to the concept of food sovereignty suggests insights into the contours of other moments of struggle over food regulations.
{"title":"Scaling Food Sovereignty: Biopolitics and the Struggle for Local Control of Farm Food in Rural Maine","authors":"H. Kurtz","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1022127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1022127","url":null,"abstract":"Recent scholarship highlights the play of biopower in and through policies and practices shaping food systems, but says little about the practices of resistance to such power. Alternative food movements mobilize critique of and resistance to an industrialized food system from many perspectives. This article examines food sovereignty activism in Maine as an illuminating instance of contemporary biopolitics. This article investigates a “food sovereignty ordinance” passed in eleven towns in Maine since 2011 as an important moment in the biopolitical struggle over the nature of food systems. The ordinance exempts direct transactions of farm food from licensure and inspection in an effort to maintain the viability of small, diversified farms in a struggling rural economy. The ordinance effectively carves out a space of food sovereignty in each town that enacts it, thereby protecting conditions of life and livelihood within local food networks. The analysis focuses on the spatiality of the practices that comprise biopolitics, with attention to the scalar politics in play as well; that is, the ways in which modalities of power shape and are shaped by social, economic, and political scales of organization. This exploration of the scaling of biopolitics in relation to the concept of food sovereignty suggests insights into the contours of other moments of struggle over food regulations.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"859 - 873"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1022127","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-13DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1022128
D. Lambert, M. Solem, Sirpa Tani
This article provides the theoretical underpinnings for an innovative international collaborative project in the field of geography education named GeoCapabilities. The project attempts to respond in new ways to enduring challenges facing geography teachers in schools. These include the need to find convincing expression of geography's contribution to the education of all young people and coping with the apparent divergence of geography in educational settings and its highly disparate expression as a research discipline in university departments. The project also hopes to contribute to the development of a framework for communicating the aims and purposes of geography in schools internationally, because here, too, there is great variety in definitions of national standards and even of disciplinary allegiances (including, e.g., the social studies, humanities, and biological sciences). GeoCapabilities does not seek to flatten such divergences, for one of geography's great strengths is its breadth. The long-term goal is to establish a secure platform for the international development of teachers’ capacities as creative and disciplined innovators. The project encourages teachers to think beyond program delivery and implementation and to embrace their role as the curriculum makers.
{"title":"Achieving Human Potential Through Geography Education: A Capabilities Approach to Curriculum Making in Schools","authors":"D. Lambert, M. Solem, Sirpa Tani","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1022128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1022128","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides the theoretical underpinnings for an innovative international collaborative project in the field of geography education named GeoCapabilities. The project attempts to respond in new ways to enduring challenges facing geography teachers in schools. These include the need to find convincing expression of geography's contribution to the education of all young people and coping with the apparent divergence of geography in educational settings and its highly disparate expression as a research discipline in university departments. The project also hopes to contribute to the development of a framework for communicating the aims and purposes of geography in schools internationally, because here, too, there is great variety in definitions of national standards and even of disciplinary allegiances (including, e.g., the social studies, humanities, and biological sciences). GeoCapabilities does not seek to flatten such divergences, for one of geography's great strengths is its breadth. The long-term goal is to establish a secure platform for the international development of teachers’ capacities as creative and disciplined innovators. The project encourages teachers to think beyond program delivery and implementation and to embrace their role as the curriculum makers.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"723 - 735"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1022128","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-04DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2014.924731
B. Smith
The demise of Fordism and inauguration of neoliberal policy regimes may be conceptualized as historical processes of spatial dispossession that diminish and sometimes destroy the collective spaces of working-class life. In central Appalachia, where miners’ militant, unionized brotherhood once influenced the geography of the bituminous coal industry and enabled the growth of active, working-class communities, spatial dispossession is especially stark. Here, neoliberalization of space involves not only the familiar dismantling of public institutions but also corporate enclosures of lands once treated as commons, withdrawal of residents from polluted local ecologies, intentional destruction of union solidarity, and erosion of miners’ heroic masculinity. Historical analysis reveals this dismantling of labor's gendered geography and degradation of working-class environments as mutually interrelated processes. Spatial dispossession is also evoking opposition, however, from reactionary, industry-orchestrated mobilizations to valorize coal in the name of masculinist nationalism, to fragmentary efforts, often led by women, seeking alternative economic and political possibilities. These conflict-ridden dynamics of spatial influence, dispossession, and (re)creation lay bare interrelated coproductions of gender and class, political economy and cultural practice, “nature” and society and thereby point toward a labor geography capable of engaging the contradictory forces that animate working-class life.
{"title":"Another Place Is Possible? Labor Geography, Spatial Dispossession, and Gendered Resistance in Central Appalachia","authors":"B. Smith","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2014.924731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.924731","url":null,"abstract":"The demise of Fordism and inauguration of neoliberal policy regimes may be conceptualized as historical processes of spatial dispossession that diminish and sometimes destroy the collective spaces of working-class life. In central Appalachia, where miners’ militant, unionized brotherhood once influenced the geography of the bituminous coal industry and enabled the growth of active, working-class communities, spatial dispossession is especially stark. Here, neoliberalization of space involves not only the familiar dismantling of public institutions but also corporate enclosures of lands once treated as commons, withdrawal of residents from polluted local ecologies, intentional destruction of union solidarity, and erosion of miners’ heroic masculinity. Historical analysis reveals this dismantling of labor's gendered geography and degradation of working-class environments as mutually interrelated processes. Spatial dispossession is also evoking opposition, however, from reactionary, industry-orchestrated mobilizations to valorize coal in the name of masculinist nationalism, to fragmentary efforts, often led by women, seeking alternative economic and political possibilities. These conflict-ridden dynamics of spatial influence, dispossession, and (re)creation lay bare interrelated coproductions of gender and class, political economy and cultural practice, “nature” and society and thereby point toward a labor geography capable of engaging the contradictory forces that animate working-class life.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"567 - 582"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2014.924731","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58757753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-28DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1018788
Keith Woodward, J. Jones, Linda Vigdor, S. Marston, H. Hawkins, D. Dixon
This article offers a theory and methodology for understanding and interpreting collaborations that involve visualization technologies. The collaboration discussed here is technically a geovisualization—an immersive, digital “fulldome” film of Hurricane Katrina developed by the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, produced in collaboration with atmospheric scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. The project, which brought together AVL's programmers, visualization experts, and artists with NCAR's scientists, required the integration of diverse disciplinary perspectives. In the language of such collaborations, the term renaissance team was coined to capture the collective expertise necessary to produce modern, high-end visualizations of large data sets. In this article, we deploy Simondon's concepts of technical objects and collective individuation to analyze the development of AVL's Katrina simulation. One extended sequence of team member collaboration suggests that technical objects also be treated as “collaborators,” for they have the capacity to transform such collectives through the unique problems they present.
{"title":"One Sinister Hurricane: Simondon and Collaborative Visualization","authors":"Keith Woodward, J. Jones, Linda Vigdor, S. Marston, H. Hawkins, D. Dixon","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1018788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018788","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a theory and methodology for understanding and interpreting collaborations that involve visualization technologies. The collaboration discussed here is technically a geovisualization—an immersive, digital “fulldome” film of Hurricane Katrina developed by the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, produced in collaboration with atmospheric scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. The project, which brought together AVL's programmers, visualization experts, and artists with NCAR's scientists, required the integration of diverse disciplinary perspectives. In the language of such collaborations, the term renaissance team was coined to capture the collective expertise necessary to produce modern, high-end visualizations of large data sets. In this article, we deploy Simondon's concepts of technical objects and collective individuation to analyze the development of AVL's Katrina simulation. One extended sequence of team member collaboration suggests that technical objects also be treated as “collaborators,” for they have the capacity to transform such collectives through the unique problems they present.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"496 - 511"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018788","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-27DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1018783
M. Gentile
Using a combination of descriptive and multivariate regression methods applied on a sample survey (n = 4,000) conducted in Luhansk, Ukraine, during Fall 2013, this article investigates demographic, socioeconomic, housing-specific, and geographical factors that predict urban poverty in countries undergoing the economic, political, and institutional transition from state socialism to the market with a specific focus on Ukraine. By doing so, it contributes to the literature on poverty under and after transition, which has a strong position within economics, and to the literature on the spatial expressions of poverty after state socialism, which is particularly prominent within geography. Inspired by Amartya Sen's notion that poverty contains an irreducible absolute core, as well as a relative component, this article makes use of a poverty index based on multiple thresholds that reflect the respondents’ capabilities to meet different needs. A fascinating result of this exercise is that poverty under transition is not only predicted by such classical factors as sex, personal and parental education, and socio-occupational status but also by housing-specific details such as location in vertical space and by classical geographical factors such as relative horizontal location and neighborhood prestige. Accordingly, this article responds to recent calls for increased sensitivity toward the third dimension of space in contemporary urbanism, at the same time making a substantial contribution to our hitherto incomplete knowledge of the patterns and sources of urban poverty and inequality in postsocialist transition.
{"title":"The Post-Soviet Urban Poor and Where They Live: Khrushchev-Era Blocks, “Bad” Areas, and the Vertical Dimension in Luhansk, Ukraine","authors":"M. Gentile","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1018783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018783","url":null,"abstract":"Using a combination of descriptive and multivariate regression methods applied on a sample survey (n = 4,000) conducted in Luhansk, Ukraine, during Fall 2013, this article investigates demographic, socioeconomic, housing-specific, and geographical factors that predict urban poverty in countries undergoing the economic, political, and institutional transition from state socialism to the market with a specific focus on Ukraine. By doing so, it contributes to the literature on poverty under and after transition, which has a strong position within economics, and to the literature on the spatial expressions of poverty after state socialism, which is particularly prominent within geography. Inspired by Amartya Sen's notion that poverty contains an irreducible absolute core, as well as a relative component, this article makes use of a poverty index based on multiple thresholds that reflect the respondents’ capabilities to meet different needs. A fascinating result of this exercise is that poverty under transition is not only predicted by such classical factors as sex, personal and parental education, and socio-occupational status but also by housing-specific details such as location in vertical space and by classical geographical factors such as relative horizontal location and neighborhood prestige. Accordingly, this article responds to recent calls for increased sensitivity toward the third dimension of space in contemporary urbanism, at the same time making a substantial contribution to our hitherto incomplete knowledge of the patterns and sources of urban poverty and inequality in postsocialist transition.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"583 - 603"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018783","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-27DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1018769
J. Wood
{"title":"Wilbur Zelinsky, 1921–2013: “A Curiosity Too Urgent to Be Throttled”1","authors":"J. Wood","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1018769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018769","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"620 - 626"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018769","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-27DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1018773
Yu Liu, Xi Liu, Song Gao, Li Gong, Chaogui Kang, Ye Zhi, Guanghua Chi, Lili Shi
The emergence of big data brings new opportunities for us to understand our socioeconomic environments. We use the term social sensing for such individual-level big geospatial data and the associated analysis methods. The word sensing suggests two natures of the data. First, they can be viewed as the analogue and complement of remote sensing, as big data can capture well socioeconomic features while conventional remote sensing data do not have such privilege. Second, in social sensing data, each individual plays the role of a sensor. This article conceptually bridges social sensing with remote sensing and points out the major issues when applying social sensing data and associated analytics. We also suggest that social sensing data contain rich information about spatial interactions and place semantics, which go beyond the scope of traditional remote sensing data. In the coming big data era, GIScientists should investigate theories in using social sensing data, such as data representativeness and quality, and develop new tools to deal with social sensing data.
{"title":"Social Sensing: A New Approach to Understanding Our Socioeconomic Environments","authors":"Yu Liu, Xi Liu, Song Gao, Li Gong, Chaogui Kang, Ye Zhi, Guanghua Chi, Lili Shi","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1018773","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018773","url":null,"abstract":"The emergence of big data brings new opportunities for us to understand our socioeconomic environments. We use the term social sensing for such individual-level big geospatial data and the associated analysis methods. The word sensing suggests two natures of the data. First, they can be viewed as the analogue and complement of remote sensing, as big data can capture well socioeconomic features while conventional remote sensing data do not have such privilege. Second, in social sensing data, each individual plays the role of a sensor. This article conceptually bridges social sensing with remote sensing and points out the major issues when applying social sensing data and associated analytics. We also suggest that social sensing data contain rich information about spatial interactions and place semantics, which go beyond the scope of traditional remote sensing data. In the coming big data era, GIScientists should investigate theories in using social sensing data, such as data representativeness and quality, and develop new tools to deal with social sensing data.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"512 - 530"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1018773","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-15DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1015098
J. Dittmer
This article offers an alternative to civilizational thinking in geopolitics and international relations predicated on assemblage theory. Building on literature in political geography and elsewhere about everyday practices that produce state effects, this article theorizes the existence of transnational geopolitical assemblages that incorporate foreign policy apparatuses of multiple states. Everyday material and discursive circulations make up these assemblages, serving as conduits of affect that produce an emergent agency. To demonstrate this claim, I outline a genealogy of the UKUSA alliance, an assemblage of intelligence communities in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I then trace the circulation of materialities and affects—at the scales of individual subjects, technological systems of mediation, and transnational processes of foreign policy formation. In doing so, I offer a bottom-up process of assemblage that produces the emergent phenomena that proponents of civilizational thinking mistakenly attribute to macroscaled factors, such as culture.
{"title":"Everyday Diplomacy: UKUSA Intelligence Cooperation and Geopolitical Assemblages","authors":"J. Dittmer","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1015098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1015098","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers an alternative to civilizational thinking in geopolitics and international relations predicated on assemblage theory. Building on literature in political geography and elsewhere about everyday practices that produce state effects, this article theorizes the existence of transnational geopolitical assemblages that incorporate foreign policy apparatuses of multiple states. Everyday material and discursive circulations make up these assemblages, serving as conduits of affect that produce an emergent agency. To demonstrate this claim, I outline a genealogy of the UKUSA alliance, an assemblage of intelligence communities in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I then trace the circulation of materialities and affects—at the scales of individual subjects, technological systems of mediation, and transnational processes of foreign policy formation. In doing so, I offer a bottom-up process of assemblage that produces the emergent phenomena that proponents of civilizational thinking mistakenly attribute to macroscaled factors, such as culture.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"604 - 619"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1015098","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-15DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1015096
Daniel J. Weiss, G. Malanson, S. Walsh
Multiple environmental factors contribute to the spatial and compositional character and elevational patterns of alpine treeline ecotones (ATEs), and the relative influence of these factors is scale dependent and spatially variable. Frameworks detailing the hierarchical structure of the ATE have been developed to characterize scale dependencies of the pattern and controls of treeline, but this topic has not been studied across a broad range of scales (e.g., from the hillslope to the region). This research directly examines scaling by comparing relationships among treeline elevations and a set of possible controls as geographic extent is varied. The data set used for this research consists of elevational data at the ATE and a set of hypothesized controls for 1,006 sites in twenty-six mountain ranges across the Western United States. The response and predictor variables are quantified from digital data sets using geographic information systems and remote sensing methodologies and then analyzed using a Mantel test framework. Results generally support, and add empirically derived detail to, existing theoretical frameworks, with climatic controls (i.e., variables characterizing temperature and precipitation) having higher correlations with ATE elevation at coarser scales and topographic variables having higher correlations at finer scales. These scale relations support the conceptual hierarchical frameworks that have been proposed, and they are useful guides of covariate selection for future ATE modeling endeavors.
{"title":"Multiscale Relationships Between Alpine Treeline Elevation and Hypothesized Environmental Controls in the Western United States","authors":"Daniel J. Weiss, G. Malanson, S. Walsh","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1015096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1015096","url":null,"abstract":"Multiple environmental factors contribute to the spatial and compositional character and elevational patterns of alpine treeline ecotones (ATEs), and the relative influence of these factors is scale dependent and spatially variable. Frameworks detailing the hierarchical structure of the ATE have been developed to characterize scale dependencies of the pattern and controls of treeline, but this topic has not been studied across a broad range of scales (e.g., from the hillslope to the region). This research directly examines scaling by comparing relationships among treeline elevations and a set of possible controls as geographic extent is varied. The data set used for this research consists of elevational data at the ATE and a set of hypothesized controls for 1,006 sites in twenty-six mountain ranges across the Western United States. The response and predictor variables are quantified from digital data sets using geographic information systems and remote sensing methodologies and then analyzed using a Mantel test framework. Results generally support, and add empirically derived detail to, existing theoretical frameworks, with climatic controls (i.e., variables characterizing temperature and precipitation) having higher correlations with ATE elevation at coarser scales and topographic variables having higher correlations at finer scales. These scale relations support the conceptual hierarchical frameworks that have been proposed, and they are useful guides of covariate selection for future ATE modeling endeavors.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"437 - 453"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1015096","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2015.1012634
Greg Oulahen, L. Mortsch, Kathy X Tang, D. Harford
Indexes that measure social vulnerability to hazards have gained acceptance as a research tool that can inform local policymaking. Many indexes, however, are created remotely by researchers without using the input of those working in local policy. If practitioners are involved in creating an index that they find accurate and useful, it is more likely they will incorporate the findings of the index in local policy decisions. This article describes the process of ground truthing a social vulnerability index with practitioners working in five municipalities in Metro Vancouver and how the index was then revised to reflect their input. This process involved presenting an index to focus groups of municipal practitioners for their feedback and conducting a survey of participants that was then used to assign weights to the variables in the index. The study found that practitioners were generally accepting of the research approach to quantifying social vulnerability by place, although they often had specific concerns regarding the methodology and offered suggestions to make the index more reflective of the local context. The process of revising the index illustrates that local practitioner input can be used to create a measure of social vulnerability to hazards that is meaningful to those working in the community.
{"title":"Unequal Vulnerability to Flood Hazards: “Ground Truthing” a Social Vulnerability Index of Five Municipalities in Metro Vancouver, Canada","authors":"Greg Oulahen, L. Mortsch, Kathy X Tang, D. Harford","doi":"10.1080/00045608.2015.1012634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1012634","url":null,"abstract":"Indexes that measure social vulnerability to hazards have gained acceptance as a research tool that can inform local policymaking. Many indexes, however, are created remotely by researchers without using the input of those working in local policy. If practitioners are involved in creating an index that they find accurate and useful, it is more likely they will incorporate the findings of the index in local policy decisions. This article describes the process of ground truthing a social vulnerability index with practitioners working in five municipalities in Metro Vancouver and how the index was then revised to reflect their input. This process involved presenting an index to focus groups of municipal practitioners for their feedback and conducting a survey of participants that was then used to assign weights to the variables in the index. The study found that practitioners were generally accepting of the research approach to quantifying social vulnerability by place, although they often had specific concerns regarding the methodology and offered suggestions to make the index more reflective of the local context. The process of revising the index illustrates that local practitioner input can be used to create a measure of social vulnerability to hazards that is meaningful to those working in the community.","PeriodicalId":80485,"journal":{"name":"Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers","volume":"105 1","pages":"473 - 495"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00045608.2015.1012634","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58758796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：