The depth and degree of geographic polarization in American politics are key arguments that reside within the larger political polarization debate. Evidence used to argue against the significance of geographic polarization is the prevalence of “purple” counties. It is argued that when the aggregate voting results within counties for candidates from the two major political parties are close enough and

The coastal ecosystems are a key subject of contemporary research concerning coastline position changes, climate change effects, hazard assessment, and ecosystem services. The population density in the coastal areas accelerates the natural morphogenetic processes of these ecosystems. The land-use planning strategies can have a vital role in achieving coastal ecosystem stability and providing resilience

Urbanization is a pressing issue of concern especially in Africa where it is expected to continue and increasingly, threaten the efficiency of natural carbon sinks and sustainability of cities. This paper assessed the diversity and carbon storage of trees in Zaria metropolis, North-western Nigeria through fieldwork and allometric equations. A total of 200 assessment plots were randomly generated using

Understanding environmental variables responsible for the spatial distribution of Lyme disease is essential for determining disease risk and directing control and prevention efforts. This study provides a novel application of geographically weighted regression to explore how the relationship between Lyme disease and land cover varies across the Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States. Results

Overcoming concerns about bicycling safety is critical to increasing the health benefits of bicycling for transportation. While exposure measures are critical for monitoring and understanding bike safety, lack of spatially and temporally detailed bike counts makes it challenging to conduct robust bicycling safety studies. Crowdsourced data from smartphone apps like Strava provide counts for nearly

Research efforts related to better understanding and capture of the fertility trends over the time are considered to be of significant interest in the fields of demography and social sciences. In Greece, the overall relationships between fertility and numerous determinants that influence it have been explored at national level. However, the possible spatial heterogeneity in these relationships has

The important ecological and recreational functions of public green spaces for metropolitan regions have been increasingly recognized, especially in the last few decades in developing countries that experienced rapid urbanization at the cost of ecological land. This study developed a green accessibility index (GAI) that quantifies the efficiency of accessing different levels of public green spaces

Computational natural wildfire simulation is a computing-intensive process. The process is also challenging because of the need to integrate data with wide spatial and temporal variability. Our study sought to simulate rapidly spreading natural wildfire with fidelity and quality through computational realization. We developed a novel probabilistic wildfire risk assessment tool whose operation was driven

Growing demand for agricultural commodities like rubber or oil palm is causing rapid change in Southeast Asia's biodiversity-rich forested landscapes. This change is particularly pronounced in Myanmar, whose economy is developing at great speed after the end of decades-long economic and political isolation and armed conflicts. Interventions are needed to ensure that development is sustainable. Designing

Restricting human movement to decrease contact probability and frequency helps mitigate large-scale epidemics. Movement-based zoning can be implemented to delineate the boundaries for movement restrictions. Previous studies used network community detection methods, which capture cohesive within-region movements, to delineate containment zones. However, most people usually travel and spend most of their

This study investigated the intersection between empirically derived and farmers perceived soil erosion risk in a medium-sized catchment on the Ugandan side of mountain Elgon. We postulated that farmers' perception of soil erosion risk was high and this influenced their employment of Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) measures on their land. An adapted Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was

Building disaster-resilient communities require operative resilience frameworks enabling factual decision-making and resource allocation at national and sub-national scales. While Pakistan is frequently hit by several natural hazards (i.e., floods, droughts, earthquakes, and extreme heatwaves) resulting in devastating impacts, no national-level higher-resolution disaster resilience information is available

The emergence of the novel Coronavirus Disease in late 2019 (COVID-19) and subsequent pandemic led to an immense disruption in the daily lives of almost everyone on the planet. Faced with the consequences of inaction, most national governments responded with policies that restricted the activities conducted by their inhabitants. As schools and businesses shuttered, the mobility of these people decreased

Fertility is a key process shaping long-term population dynamics. Distinctive fertility trends have characterized demographic transitions, exhibiting sequential periods of spatial convergence and divergence. This descriptive study investigates the spatiotemporal evolution of Total Fertility Rate (TFR) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR) at different geographical scales in Italy between 2002 and 2018. Descriptive

Expansion of Antarctic vegetation in ice-free areas underlines the need for effective remote sensing techniques to properly monitor the changes. Detection and mapping of vegetation remains limited in the Antarctic environment given the complexity of its surface coverage. Some cryptogamic species exhibit low reflectance in the near-infrared region and are not easily detected by vegetation indices, such

Female breast cancer (FBC) incidence rate (IR) varies greatly across counties in the United States (US). Factors contributing to these geographic disparities have not been fully understood at the population level. In this study, we investigated the relationships between the county-level FBC IR and a diverse set of variables in demographics, socioeconomics, life style, health care accessibility, and

As conservation landscapes are threatened by global change, there is a growing need to understand relationships between human livelihoods and environmental processes. This often involves integrating multiple data sources capturing different scales of measurement. Participatory methods have emerged as a means to accomplish this, but are hampered by a wide range of challenges associated with data collection

Information collected from Focus Group Meetings (FGMs) and key informant interviews (KIIs) from Ramgati Upazilla of Lakshmipur District, Bangladesh, shows that once household members have lost their homes to riverbank erosion, they rarely migrate to distant places and stay in their immediate vicinity. The overwhelming majority of the victims rebuild their homes in nearby places on the lands of their

In this research, a methodology for the analysis of accessibility conditions for people with physical disabilities was developed. The analysis is based on an assessment of the sidewalk network in two tourist areas located in Maspalomas Costa Canaria (Gran Canaria, Spain). ArcMap's Network Analyst was used, and Spanish regulations on accessibility in urbanized public spaces, as well as the points of

In a watershed, disturbing land covers (LCs) are one of the most important factors in the balance and flow rate of water. This study aimed to monitor and model LC changes in the upstream of the Aras River Basin in Turkey over 1984, 2002, 2010 and 2016. The main ground to conduct such an analysis was to mitigate severe economic, social and ecological consequences driven by agricultural activities and

Access to a variety of affordable and healthy food has been a critical component in sustainable food-system planning. Research on food accessibility and food deserts (low-income areas with no or limited access to healthy food) can have important policy implications for alleviating health disparities. In the existing food access literature, supermarkets or large chain grocery stores have typically been

This study investigated the impact of the coastal industrialization policy which began in 2015 in Indonesia. Because this policy has effected physical change on the environment, it requires quantification to determine its driving factors, and to formulate solutions to its problems. In doing so, this research used remote sensing and machine learning techniques. Satellite data from Sentinel-2A were acquired

This research describes the intra-metropolitan distribution patterns of airport accessibility, employment density, and labor productivity using municipality-level datasets from the Tokyo metropolitan region. The geographic data analyses present that inner-city bayfront airport accessibility and cross-industrial employment density are high in municipalities with the designation of urban regeneration

Housing and health studies rarely concentrate on aggregate health indicators. There is a need for more research to disentangle the complexity within housing types and between housing and socioeconomic development as they influence health. To enhance the evidence base for the understanding of the association between housing and health, from a geographic perspective, we applied spatial multilevel analyses

Broadband service providers readily use time-series models to forecast broadband related to minimise disruptions to customers but also from an operational perspective. Within a competitive market, minimizing future broadband faults is important for customer retention. Whilst broadband faults happen at the household level, broadband service providers typically forecast broadband faults at the regional

In our review of the research on PGS (park green space) spatial equity, little consideration has been given to the impacts of small spatial scales and measurement accuracy on spatial equity assessments. Based on the web map API open data platform (including location and navigation data, etc.), this study established a fine-scaled evaluation framework of spatial equity from the aspects of sensitivity

Noise is a pervasive environmental stressor that has adverse impacts on people's mental health. However, past studies on the relationship between individuals' chronic noise exposure and psychological stress were inconclusive, partly due to their ignorance of the role of individual mobility and the temporality of the exposure-effect relationship. This study examines how individual mobility and temporality

During the past decade, the number of earthquakes has increased dramatically in the state of Oklahoma, largely attributed to induced seismicity from wastewater injections (hydraulic fracturing). The increased seismic disaster risk in Oklahoma has captured public attention and necessitated actions by decision makers to mediate the consequences. Geospatial modeling to identify the populations exposed

Soils have been widely transformed and degraded by human activities. The area occupied by soils that remain unmodified is decreasing, while recent rural outmigration and land abandonment provide new opportunities for soil restauration across larger area.Little is known about the spatial distribution of both near-natural and anthropogenically influenced soils on large scales. We here present a new methodology

Post-disaster recovery involves interdependent processes of physical and psychological rehabilitations. Over the past few years, researchers have explored geotagged social media data to assist the planning, monitoring, and assessment of the post-disaster recovery of tourism destinations, given its advantages over traditional approaches. Nonetheless, recent studies have mostly focused on quantitatively

In most cities, urban growth follows a sprawl pattern. In the Melbourne metropolitan area, the Plan Melbourne (2017–2050) was formulated with the aim of reducing sprawl and encouraging sustainable growth. However, the Internet research has shown that in the metropolitan area of Melbourne, no studies aiming to investigate the urban growth using satellite images and analyzing compact urban growth drivers

Improving farmers' market accessibility is increasingly being used as a mechanism to promote healthy food consumption. Previous studies about farmers’ markets largely focused on describing either the demographics of market patrons or the impact of market participation on fruit and vegetable intake. Thus, little empirical research has examined how market accessibility impacts nearby communities. The

Ridesourcing services such as Uber, Lyft, and DiDi are purported to be more efficient than traditional taxis because they can match passengers with drivers more effectively. Previous studies have compared the efficiency of ridesourcing and taxis in several cities. However, gaps still exist regarding the measurement and comparison between the two modes, and the reasons for the higher efficiency of ridesourcing

Social networks and public supports have been becoming increasingly important in disaster management and mitigation. This paper demonstrates empirical and credible evidence of social network supports and their spatial and temporal dynamics of evolutionary patterns in flood disaster preparedness and recovery, as demonstrated by the case of the 2017 mass-flooding event in rural areas of Sri Lanka. For

Climate and land use change (CLUC) have a far-reaching influence on the ecosystem. Regional ecosystem health, which is the direct and comprehensive reflection of evaluating regional ecosystem quality, has been significantly affected by these changes. However, existing studies mainly focused on the influences of climate or land use change on ecosystem structure, functions, or services, few studies have

This paper contributes to debates on the implications of land-based investments on local livelihoods in the Global South. Drawing on a comprehensive national dataset on land concessions in Laos, and 2005 and 2015 village-level poverty rates, we examine the association between land-based investments and poverty at the village level in Lao rural areas. Results outline contexts in which land-based investments

Past studies have rather consistently shown a significant positive association between firearm ownership and suicide rates (particularly firearm-related) in the United States. However, the impact of spatial dependence of suicide rates has not been considered in the existing research that took an ecological studies approach. To bridge this gap in the literature, we estimated and compared the association

This paper investigates regional inequality, spatial polarization, and places mobility in provincial China through a case study of Jiangsu province from a multi-scale and multi-dimensional framework. Based on policy changes and inequality indices, we divide the development trajectory of Jiangsu since the reform into three sub-periods: 1978–1993, 1994–2004, and 2004–2014. The analysis reveals that regional

Various environmental criminology theories and empirical studies have linked the urban environment to crime. The crime pattern theory, in particular, argues that edges, either social or physical, affect crime. A recent study has combined both social and physical edges to derive composite edges. A composite edge index measured by NPP-VIIRS satellite nightlights at the census tract level is found to

This study investigates agricultural land use change in Chitwan, Nuwakot and Lamjung districts of Nepal during 1990 –2017 in relation to rural outmigration. Agriculture in Nepal is characterized by subsistence farming, low productivity, limited access to markets, constraints of terrain, poor economic returns, and vulnerability to natural hazards now exacerbated by climate change. These challenging

The aim of the research was to identify functional changes of villages in peripheral area of Kłodzko County in the Sudetes Mountains in southwestern Poland. The study area has for many decades been classified as a marginal and problem region, mainly due to a substantial trend of long-term depopulation. However, in recent years the signs of economic revival have been observed. The study innovatively

Wildlife-train collisions (WTCs), particularly those with large mammals, pose a threat to the safety and continuity of rail operations. In this study, we collected 1,909 WTCs which took place in the Czech Republic between 2011 and 2019, in order to identify the most hazardous WTC locations and their spatial pattern. 208 WTC hotspots were identified using the KDE+ method. They contained 782 collisions

SO2, which is one of key components that can deteriorate the environment, can be relocated by international trade. Based on the EORA, the EDGAR databases and input-output model, this study calculated China's SO2 emissions caused by import and export, and presented a method to exhibit China's export-related SO2 footprint at a high resolution. The results showed that export generated more SO2 emissions

The symbiosis of housing and industry is currently regarded to be the key to implement the national strategy of rural revitalization in China. However, challenges have emerged in portraying the spatial mismatch pattern of housing and industry development in rural regions from the demographic perspectives accompanying the massive rural-urban migration. The measurement of housing-industry symbiosis needs

In the context of rapid urbanization, changes in human demand and agricultural technology progress have deeply expanded the cultivated land attribute dimensions. Thus, evaluating the regional cultivated land quality with different attributes and studying its spatial mechanism is of great theoretical and practical significance. Based on the analytical framework of resource-asset-capital attributes of

Housing affordability is an issue of increasing importance and interest, particularly in the United States. Much of this interest is due to skyrocketing rents in coastal cities with tight housing markets. Shrinking cities, in contrast, are often characterized as rich in low-cost housing, providing an affordable alternative to superstar cities. This paper compares income and rent dynamics in cities

Over the last few years, the use of remote sensing data in different applications such as estimation of air pollution concentration and health applications has become very popular and new. Thus, some studies have established a possible relationship between environmental variables and respiratory health parameters. This study proposes to estimate the prevalence of Chronic Respiratory Diseases, where

Cropland abandonment because of rural depopulation or policy interventions has become a key issue in Chinese mountainous areas. One such region is the Guangxi Karst Mountainous Area (GKMA), a zone where more than 59% of total land area is hilly. Although depopulation and declining agriculture since 2000 within the GKMA have led to vast areas of abandoned cropland, the spatiotemporal distribution that

Our research seeks to expand existing knowledge of travel behavior and decision-making in avalanche terrain. We have done this by using GPS tracking to observe the travel behavior of out-of-bounds (OB) skiers and collecting survey data to investigate their terrain choices. We sampled participants in the field by distributing hand-held GPS units and surveys along the southern boundary of Bridger Bowl

China and Brazil are the world's leading exporter and importer of agrochemicals respectively. We combine quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze global-local interactions in the spatial restructuring of China's agrochemical industry in relation to a 2006 agrochemical import-acceleration policy in Brazil. We synthesize global political ecology and evolutionary economic geography (EEG) research

In recent years, an increased interest in farmland globally has led to the emergence of many land-based investment projects. Although most projects enter the production stage, a significant number also ends in failure. This paper asks why land-based investment projects fail. This is a crucial question as failed investment projects are unlikely to have any positive impacts on the host regions. I develop

Understanding the myriad reasons why people value protected areas provides insight on how to align the decisions made by public land management agencies with diverse stakeholder interests. This study drew on survey data collected within the context of Denali National Park and Preserve to better understand the spatial dynamics of social values reported by frontcountry and backcountry recreationists

Sustainability commitments by private sector actors are emerging as interventions to help reduce global deforestation. Much attention is placed on the forest conservation impact of these interventions in areas where commodity production constitutes a main driver of deforestation. It is, however, less clearly understood what role they could play in areas where the production of commodities is not evidently

Unsustainable urbanisation has radically deteriorated the natural hydrological phenomena within cityscapes of developing countries. Such neo-urban spaces have inadvertently disrupted the hydrological balance both within and around themselves. As a result, tumultuous ‘hydro-dynamism’ is being faced in atmospheric and sub-surface locales of even small planned neo-urban townships like New Town, West Bengal

Assessing damage on the ground is a challenging task for humanitarian organizations and disaster managers due to the limited availability of data and methods for processing. As the most commonly adopted data source, remote sensing imagery can only reflect the damage situation on top of a building and fails to present the damage level from the perspective of the human eye. Recently, an increasing number

This article interrogates the spatial, economic, and cultural underpinnings of traditional retailscapes in sub-Saharan Africa to understand how they intersect with contemporary urban planning policies. It does so by deploying a multi-step investigation of the issues from four perspectives: transportation corridors, spheres of influence, centrality, and observed spatial patterns – each leading us to