The World's Import Trade and the United States' Share Therein

Abstract

Many student geography organizations or clubs associated with colleges and universities undertake community service projects each year to meet local needs and to gain recognition within the community. A uniquely geographical project of playground map painting provides a great community service and goes one step further by incorporating elements of quality service-learning for the geography club members. Painting projects for large school playground maps of the world, United States, or home state are student-planned and student-run. The final painted map can be used for geographic education in elementary schools by conveying basic spatial and geographic relationships. This article will detail a proven method of producing a colorful, useful playground map that can be employed by geography clubs as a service-learning activity and used by educators in elementary schools.     

Agnotology as a Teaching Tool: Learning Climate Science by Studying Misinformation

Abstract

Foreign travel for secondary school teachers is beneficial for enhancement of classroom curriculum. The dual nature of the U.S. Navy-National Geographic co-sponsored trips is key to enriching the global geography perspective in the classroom. A travel study to Japan provides in-service benefit for teacher peers and community groups by enhancing geography through the link between the natural and social sciences.     

Illustrating the Concepts of the Contour Symbol,Interval, and Spacing VIA 3-D Maps

Abstract

Although topographic maps are commonly used, few readers seem to understand them adequately. In this paper we attempt to develop a teaching strategy to remedy this deficiency. The teaching strategy is founded upon a group of integrated illustrations which take the reader from data-gathering through to the final map. We believe that these illustrations are simple enough to be understood by grade school children, yet sophisticated enough to satisfy adults.     

Measuring the accessibility of different household income groups to basic community services in upland Misamis Oriental,Northern Mindanao,Philippines

Improving household accessibility to basic community services can help reduce poverty in upland areas. In this study, spatial analysis with GIS was used to measure the accessibility of different household income groups to community services in the landlocked upland municipality Claveria in Northern Mindanao, the Philippines. Important community services were identified through villagers' participation in a matrix‐scoring activity. Travel information was derived from key informant interviews while the geographical coordinates of sample households and important services were collected using GPS receivers. The Flowmap GIS software (version 7.2) was used to compute accessibility to services along the road network by habal‐habal (two‐wheel motorcycle). Outcomes from the participatory data gathering activities revealed that agricultural, educational and health facilities, as well as government services are important to the community to achieve sustainable livelihoods. Because local people perceive accessibility in terms of monetary costs, rather than distance, road distance measurements were converted into fare costs. Results of the accessibility analysis show that higher‐income household groups generally incur lower mean one‐way travel costs to reach important community services than poorer households. However, almost all households spend more than the daily per capita poverty threshold for the province to reach basic community services. A scenario to improve accessibility to services in the study area was investigated to emphasize the potential of GIS‐based accessibility analysis in rural service planning.     

The many faces of local community: Exploring lay conceptualizations of the Norwegian lokalsamfunn

ABSTRACT

Despite much attention paid to the topic of community in academic literature and policy documents, there is a relative lack of knowledge about what laypersons perceive as a local community. Based on data from a national survey, the authors examine how c.1400 Norwegians conceptualized local community – lokalsamfunn in Norwegian. They reveal some of the linguistic and conceptual aspects of local community as a term, in addition to tendencies and patterns among the survey responses. The respondents’ conceptualizations contained references to lokalsamfunn variously as a geographical area, people and relations, activities and involvement, attachment to place and people, and provider of local goods and services. Their main emphasis was on lokalsamfunn as a spatial unit. However, the responses contained relatively few references to the relational aspects of lokalsamfunn. The authors conclude that a common, lay understanding may be that lokalsamfunn is a vaguely defined but limited geographical unit filled with people who to varying degrees know each other and interact. Concerning policymaking aimed at fostering communal well-being, the authors hold that any community-based programming requires intricate knowledge of the people who form the community, since without community interaction and a degree of social cohesion any envisioned programmes may not succeed.     

Editorial Notes and News

Abstract

The “Harvest of Hope” was an interdisciplinary science/geography project that provided students from two different schools and very diverse backgrounds the opportunity to work in a cooperative community service effort. With teacher coordination from both districts involved in the project, students from an inner-city school and a suburban school planted, tended, and harvested crops on unused school property and donated the food to organizations providing resources to the needy. “Harvest of Hope” was designed to aid the needy of Denver and teach high school students about real-world geography issues. Students also gained knowledge of issues inherent in world agriculture and the group problem-solving process. From a social perspective, inner-city students and suburban students had the opportunity to interact and gain an appreciation for cultural diversity. Most importantly, students learned through this project to think globally, but act on a local level.     

Exploring social creativity in place-making: A case study from a coastal town in Northern Norway

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the article is to explore the relationship between place-making and social creativity. It is grounded in a single case study and an analytical generalization approach to the study of two projects in the town of Vardø, Norway: Vardø Restored and Biotope. Empirical data are presented as thematic stories in becoming, which are discussed using actor–network theory (ANT) and meshwork-inspired analysis. Social creativity is understood as inhabitants’ ability to meet new challenges with creativity. Place-making is understood in terms of place-specific creative and regenerative processes, with a focus on the role of community entrepreneurs and creative community arenas outside the formal planning system. Important findings suggest that social creativity emerges from community activities, in which multiple individuals and actors play important roles. Through these processes, entrepreneurs become community entrepreneurs when their collective orientations are activated. Individual community entrepreneurs can take active roles in stimulating social creativity based on their place-specific commitments, broad value-creation perspectives, and sensitivity to place-specific complexities, as well as by gaining credibility. The author concludes that creative community arenas for direct encounters between many different lifelines and actors, future motives, and collective actions are fundamental for the emergence of social creativity and place-making dynamics.     

Studying the Human Geography of Subsaharan Africa in the High School and College

Abstract

While the study of Africa has become increasingly important in American schools, teachers are often perplexed by the problem of which materials and approaches to use in presenting a course on Africa. This article outlines a course in the regional geography of SubSaharan Africa which was developed by the writer for an introductory course at the college level, but which can easily be adapted for use in an advanced high school course. Emphasis is on African history and contemporary spatial patterns of urbanization and economic development.     

Image Building in the Metro Centers: Some Implications

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that:

(1) High school and college teachers and their students are most likely to achieve success in the field when they are armed with a conceptual framework, a plan for discovering the framework and a body of instructional theory.

(2) There are distinct differences between field teaching or training and field experience.

(3) During a time when many students are dissatisfied with classroom instruction, field experience can revitalize geography teaching in colleges and high schools.

(4) Field experience can create concrete images which are likely to be meaningful for many years.     

From small sets of GPS trajectories to detailed movement profiles: quantifying personalized trip-dependent movement diversity

ABSTRACT

The ubiquity of personal sensing devices has enabled the collection of large, diverse, and fine-grained spatio-temporal datasets. These datasets facilitate numerous applications from traffic monitoring and management to location-based services. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in profiling individuals' movements for personalized services based on fine-grained trajectory data. Most approaches identify the most representative paths of a user by analyzing coarse location information, e.g., frequently visited places. However, even for trips that share the same origin and destination, individuals exhibit a variety of behaviors (e.g., a school drop detour, a brief stop at a supermarket). The ability to characterize and compare the variability of individuals' fine-grained movement behavior can greatly support location-based services and smart spatial sampling strategies. We propose a TRip DIversity Measure --TRIM – that quantifies the regularity of users' path choice between an origin and destination. TRIM effectively captures the extent of the diversity of the paths that are taken between a given origin and destination pair, and identifies users with distinct movement patterns, while facilitating the comparison of the movement behavior variations between users. Our experiments using synthetic and real datasets and across geographies show the effectiveness of our method.     

Mapping at the Age of Three

Abstract

A study of toy-play mapping by three-, four-, and five-year-old children demonstrates that children can clearly represent a cognitive map at the age of three. Mapping, therefore, is developmentally primitive, and formal map-learning can begin at the age of school entrance.     

The Use of Maps in the Teaching of Geography

Abstract

Coyote teaching emphasizes learning community, long term mentoring, a need for learning, ownership of learning, heightened sensory awareness, storytelling, purposefully designed tricks, and the Socratic method to promote lifelong learning and a new generation of coyote teachers. Many of these methods are found in other educational philosophies but seem to be fully integrated in the coyote teaching method. Because geography is integrative, it seems a logical discipline in which to apply this method. Each of the characteristics of coyote teaching has its unique place in geography education. This article demonstrates how each of these components of coyote teaching can be readily employed, enhanced, and, more importantly, integrated into geographic education and inculcated into multiple generations of geography educators.     

Utilizing the Audio-Tutorial Approach

Abstract

Construction of raised-relief maps by students in middle school to high school is a rewarding “hands-on” experience. A major feature of this project is that materials are readily available, inexpensive and manageable by students themselves. Tracing from topographic maps on to inexpensive, easily-carved materials like cardboard or foam-core board involves the student in map interpretation techniques. Concepts such as interpreting elevations from contour lines, recognizing symbolization on a map, seeing raised-relief as representing “the lay of the land,” understanding map scale, and recognition of color in representation of elevations are part of this experience. Carving and construction of the raised-relief map give the student an appreciation of topographic features in 3-D. The finished model can serve as a display and learning tool for the future.     

Social preferences regarding the delivery of ecosystem services in a semiarid Mediterranean region

The valuation of ecosystem services has primarily been conducted within the context of the economic value of these services to society. Ecosystem services research has since advanced to identify conflicts of interest between different sectors of society while prioritizing conservation actions. This approach can be important in semiarid ecosystems, where biodiversity conservation can be hindered by a lack of community awareness. In the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula, conservation is perceived by society as a barrier to the economic development provided by agricultural or tourism activities. We use the contingent valuation method to identify community perception and economic values of different ecosystem services provided by semiarid ecosystems in the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. This method identifies the perceptions of individuals benefiting from ecosystem services and examines their willingness to pay for the maintaining of these ecosystem services. Results showed that most respondents recognized the importance of services to human well-being and were willing to conserve these services. Preferences for maintaining water and air quality showed that respondents understood the relationship between the conservation of ecosystem services and local well-being. However, responses varied greatly across categories of beneficiaries; this finding highlights a potential conflict of interest that should be considered in any decision-making processes.     

How Collaborative Governance Practitioners Can Assess the Effectiveness of Collaborative Environmental Governance,While Also Evaluating Their Own Services

Abstract

Collaborative governance applied to environmental issues is becoming more common, and evaluation of such efforts can provide useful information for multiple audiences. However, due to a variety of challenges, collaborative governance practitioners rarely evaluate the outcomes of collaboration and their contributions to these efforts. With these challenges in mind, the William D. Ruckelshaus Center designed an evaluation framework that can meet multiple parties’ objectives, be integrated into practitioners’ existing services, and balance flexibility and practicality with rigor and replicability. The Center conducted a pilot of this framework on a collaborative watershed management effort in southeastern Washington State, where the Center had previously assisted with organizational development. The resulting evaluation highlights a variety of social, knowledge-based, and economic outcomes for the collaborative, as well as lessons for practitioners and evaluators of collaborative governance. We suggest that this methodology can be useful for practitioners interested in evaluating similar collaborative efforts.     

THE CONTENT OF RATZEL'S POLITISCHE GEOGRAPHIE

The concentration of poor, service-dependent groups in aging central cities results both from suburbanization of the affluent and from the reliance of the service-dependent population upon place-specific human services provided by the public sector. Such concentration of services and their users in deteriorating inner-city sites may be functional for the larger society, but it has adverse impacts upon those who are service dependent. This paper argues that the implications of locational interdependence between such groups and their support services demand a paradigm for urban geography that centers upon the fundamental structure and impacts of population/service-provision linkages.     

Index to Volume 100

Abstract

The integration of GIS into the secondary curriculum can aid student learning of geography. Through a partnership between a local high school and our university, high school students received nine hours of classroom instruction and field-based training on GIS and GPS to complete a mapping project. Upon completion, a test based on seven geography core curriculum units was administered to these students and to a group of university students who did not receive GIS training. Results of the test revealed that high school students significantly outperformed the university students, suggesting that GIS does aid in the learning of geographic principles.     

An Evaluation of University World Geography Textbook Questions for Components of Spatial Thinking

ABSTRACT

Geography textbooks contain chapter or review questions that may engage students in spatial thinking. This research used Jo and Bednarz’s (2009) Taxonomy of Spatial Thinking to evaluate the percentage of spatial thinking questions in four university-level world geography course textbooks. The results from this study were then compared to the findings in Jo and Bednarz’s (2009) analysis of high school geography textbooks. Thirty-five percent of university level textbook questions are related to spatial thinking compared to twenty-four percent in high school geography textbooks. The results provide information useful to stakeholders, such as teachers, administrators, and textbook writers and may help these stakeholders to consciously incorporate the three components of spatial thinking as defined by the National Research Council (2006). A simplified taxonomy for identifying spatial-thinking concepts in textbook review questions is also suggested.     

Estimating spatial efficiency using cyber search,GIS, and spatial optimization: a case study of fire service deployment in Los Angeles County

ABSTRACT

The efficiency of public investments and services has been of interest to geographic researchers for several decades. While in the private sector inefficiency often leads to higher prices, loss of competitiveness, and loss of business, in the public sector inefficiency in service provision does not necessarily lead to immediate changes. In many cases, it is not an entirely easy task to analyze a particular service as appropriate data may be difficult to obtain and hidden in detailed budgets. In this paper, we develop an integrative approach that uses cyber search, Geographic Information System (GIS), and spatial optimization to estimate the spatial efficiency of fire protection services in Los Angeles (LA) County. We develop a cyber-search process to identify current deployment patterns of fire stations across the major urban region of LA County. We compare the results of our search to existing databases. Using spatial optimization, we estimate the level of deployment that is needed to meet desired coverage levels based upon the location of an ideal fire station pattern, and then compare this ideal level of deployment to the existing system as a means of estimating spatial efficiency. GIS is adopted throughout the paper to simulate the demand locations, to conduct location-based spatial analysis, to visualize fire station data, and to map model simulation results. Finally, we show that the existing system in LA County has considerable room for improvement. The methodology presented in this paper is both novel and groundbreaking, and the automated assessments are readily transferable to other counties and jurisdictions.