Editorial: Geography and general education

Editorial: Geography and general education     

Detectives and geology in fiction - 1: Holmes and Thorndyke

In the early years - the so called 'Golden Age' - of mystery fiction, there were a number of towering figures - the 'great detectives'. However, only two of them included geology among their concerns. Their abilities and achievements are here compared and assessed.     

Environmental impact assessment in Southeast Asia: fact and fiction?

Despite the early introduction of mandatory environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the planning systems of many countries in the Southeast Asia region successes in protecting the natural environment have been limited. Is this the failure of the EIA itself due to the use of an inappropriate western based model or is it more related to a lack of political will and implementation weakness? The facts indicate that the EIA is often used as a means to an end rather than as a beneficial planning tool in itself. The fiction relates to the impressive array of legislation and sophisticated processes on paper that are often ineffective in practice. This paper attempts to highlight the problem areas and suggests other techniques and strategies that may be introduced to solve them.     

网络信息空间的地理学研究回顾与展望

网络信息空间（以下简称网络空间）的地理学是当前地理学研究的重点方向之一。1991年万维网诞生并向大众普及后网络空间开始得到广泛认可,同时其作为一种新的空间与事物也吸引了地理学界的高度关注。以多种期刊数据库和搜索引擎为检索源,考察国内外网络空间的地理学研究成果。依据研究内容将国外研究归纳为网络空间地理内涵、虚拟社区、虚拟化身与认知、网络空间的经济地理学,网络空间制图和互联网6个重点研究领域,将国内研究归纳为互联网的区域作用、网站和虚拟地理环境3个热点领域,并分别进行了梳理回顾。最后对国内外研究进行了简要评述,从网络空间的外部层面、内部层面和作用层面提出了若干研究议题。     

Detectives and geology in fiction - 2: After the Golden Age

Following the'Golden Age'of Holmes and Thorndyke, geology and geological phenomena have figured in quite a number of crime novels. In a handful, geologists even serve as central characters — or as victims. These novels are here identified and briefly discussed, while the lack of a geologist as 'series character'is lamented.     

An Inconvenient Truth: blurring the lines between science and science fiction

Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth gives a variety of unusually biased interpretations of the state of climate science and global warming theory. These cover a wide range of natural events and processes which could potentially be impacted by global warming, but which the movie misrepresents as clear examples of the human influence on climate. A few examples include the mixing up of cause and effect in his graphical portrayal of temperature and carbon dioxide variations over hundreds of thousands of years; the repeated depiction of ice calving from glaciers as a sign of global warming; the implication that Hurricane Katrina was the fault of humans; and the particularly extreme view that the Greenland ice sheet will melt, flooding coastal cities worldwide. Ultimately, all of these are related to the widespread perception that scientists have uniquely tied global warming to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The real inconvenient truth is that science has no idea how much of recent warming is natural versus the result of human activities.     

Geography and the pragmatic tradition: The threefold engagement

Geography has had only limited interchange with the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism. This paper claims that a closer engagement with pragmatism has much to offer to geography, not least in providing an arena within which very different types of geographical inquiry - qualitative and quantitative, human and physical - may find some common ground for useful conversation and debate. However, this will only be fully achieved if geography embarks on a threefold engagement with pragmatism: (1) studies that develop and deploy specific pragmatist ideas and concepts within particular geographical research; (2) studies that attempt to relate geographical research to the wider arena of the pragmatic tradition; (3) historical examination of early links between pragmatism, social science and geography. The history and contemporary revival of pragmatism is described, together with its impacts on social theory and social science. The existing literature on geographical engagement with pragmatism is then examined, and it is argued that there is a much broader relevance within both human and physical geography, not linked to particular styles of research. The question of the history of earlier influences of pragmatism on American geography is then raised, and some linkages charted. The philosopher Hilary Putnam has used the term ‘pragmatist enlightenment’ to describe what he sees as the promise of pragmatism, and the paper concludes by suggesting that this also promises an exciting and fruitful engagement for geography.     

地理信息系统GIS在地籍、地形测量中的运用

本文利用地理信息系统(GIS)对测绘地形、地籍以及生成土地证、房产证等一些图件进行说明，并作相应的转换处理，满足了地籍管理工作的需要。     

Orogenic gold and the mineral systems approach: Resolving fact,fiction and fantasy

The fact that mineral deposit attributes such as the size frequency of orogenic gold deposits in specific provinces exhibit power law distributions similar to forest fires, earthquakes, and fault size populations, is a compelling motivation to examine their genesis from a systems context. Based on well-studied Earth systems such as climate, the systems related to mineral deposits are likely to be complex and potentially include sensitive dependent components that vary simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways.Although a “systems approach” was enunciated for mineral exploration by Fyfe and Kerrich as early as 1976, it is yet to be fully embraced by the geosciences community that commonly retain models dependent primarily on deposit-scale characteristics. Orogenic gold deposits are well studied and widely considered to represent a single class of deposit that has formed over much of Earth history in settings ranging from Archean granite-greenstone belts to Phanerozoic turbidite sequences. Accordingly, the deposit type is well suited for assessment within a systems context. If orogenic gold deposits do in fact represent a single class of deposits, then the simplest application of a systems approach highlights the fact that the nature of the host upper crustal succession cannot be a fundamental control, with specific granite suites and pyritic sediments not universal, or at least not essential, components of the system. Furthermore the scale of orogenic gold systems implicates processes capable of tapping sub-crustal source regions.Increasingly, advances in orogenic gold systems, and mineral systems in general, are linked to application of systems science that emphasize importance of system-driven criticality. Orogenic gold systems and other mineral systems are typically short in duration and linked in time and space to tectonic triggers. The latter promote a rapid release of energy (‘avalanches’) that overcome system thresholds and are strong indicators of complex systems that may show power-law behavior.Only a rigorous application of a systems approach can cut through the confusion that arises from conflicting models based on local deposit studies. Only a systems approach can evaluate the significance of rare or anomalous features in a small number of deposits. Truly predictive models for mineral exploration will ultimately be developed by workers who adhere to the systems approach.     

Geography of urban environment: Current results and prospects

Urban environment is defined by specifying three numerical scales (n, m, t) indicative to success in providing n needs for m people during time t when other potentially available space is not necessary. Geography expertise, which is mainly about relevance of urban spatial organizations to the n, m, t advance, is illustrated by a sample of current research projects. Abundance of results depends upon monitoring real-life experiments with the UE. This is provided in studies of activity spaces of urbanites which means accent on Human Ecology models with an end-point of numerically exact assessment of the UE advance along the n scale.     

IGU Commission: Geography of commercial activities

The International Geographical Union Reports

IGU Commission: Geography of commercial activities     

Geography of American rap: rap diffusion and rap centers

The goal of this paper was to contribute to the interdisciplinary research that linked place and music by conducting a brief geography of rap. Rap music grew from the isolated Bronx in the 1970s and became a mainstay in popular culture today. Hip hop music was noted for its strong sense of place, as rap credibility (what ‘hood do you represented), identities (e.g. Flo Rida), and local slang (e.g. sippin’ sizzurp in Houston) were often geographically-based. This research described the various spatial meanings of rap, mapped the diffusion of hip hop music, and identified rap centers. Cartographic analysis was based on the hometowns of 1124 rappers and the release dates of their debut albums from 1979 to 2015. The diffusion of rap followed the hierarchical diffusion pattern by leapfrogging from one major urban area to another.