This study was carried out to determine whether the changes in dust concentration (DC) in Iran were attributed to changes in aridity index (AI) from 1990 to 2018. Long-term precipitation and potential evapotranspiration were used to compute the United Nations Environment Program AI and horizontal visibility data were used to calculate the DC in the study area. The DC spatial distribution maps were

The ubiquity of chemicals demands new ways of thinking about human–nature assemblages. This article develops a dialogue between agrarian political economy, critical commodity chains research, and chemical geographies through a case study of the world’s most widely used agrochemical: glyphosate, commonly known as Monsanto’s Roundup. In the 1980s, glyphosate triumphed as a benign biocide that promised

Finding one’s way is a fundamental daily activity and has been widely studied in the field of geospatial cognition. Immersive virtual reality (iVR) techniques provide new approaches for investigating wayfinding behavior and spatial knowledge acquisition. It is currently unclear, however, how wayfinding behavior and spatial knowledge acquisition in iVR differ from those in real-world environments (REs)

This article synthesizes contributions of a growing body of geographic scholarship on marronage and presents a framework of maroon geographies to guide scholarship and political organizing centered on Black place- making and racial justice. I situate marronage-focused geographic scholarship within Black geographies literature that highlights the reverberations of transatlantic slavery in our current

In the aftermath of World War I, U.S. discourse was animated by the concern that demobilized soldiers, having experienced the world outside of their hometowns, would resist returning to farms and to their preinduction occupations. Did military service really encourage an occupational shift? Were rural individuals especially susceptible to and was emplacement in foreign locales especially culpable for

Current environmental justice (EJ) research is moving beyond the distributional paradigm to embrace frameworks that emphasize the plurality of EJs. This study proposes that actor-network theory (ANT), which foregrounds nonhuman agency and heterogeneous associations, holds great potential for pushing forward this research agenda. It presents an ANT-informed analysis of the plural epistemologies of EJ

This article explores the constitution of subterranean space in a Bolivian tin mine through an analysis of the discursive practices that materialize differentially valued people and differentially valued rocks. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, I examine the processes through which tin miners are formed as socially stratified subjects and tin is mattered in its multiple forms—as mineral

With the development of global logistical systems to coordinate the movement of goods, cities around the world are being reconceived as nodes in circuits of commodity capital. These efforts are reshaping urban environments and provoking novel forms of political resistance. They are also bringing distant places and subjects into new relations of interaction and interdependence. This article traces the

Hydrological droughts are important for agriculture and other human activities such as navigation and groundwater pumping, so it is necessary to understand their characteristics at various temporal and spatial scales. This study aims to examine the characteristics of hydrological droughts and their propagation from meteorological droughts across Wisconsin. Hydrological droughts were identified for

This article seeks to provide a critical perspective on the roles and effects of standards in governing new markets for sustainability. Departing from a narrow, technocratic interpretation of standards as tools to differentiate within existing markets, we examine the work of standards in configuring and enacting a specific type of environmental market, which we term growth-oriented. Through a case

Recent interest in geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) has fostered a wide range of applications using artificial intelligence (AI), especially deep learning for geospatial problem solving. Major challenges, however, such as a lack of training data and ignorance of spatial principles and spatial effects in AI model design remain, significantly hindering the in-depth integration of AI with geospatial

(2021). Nature and the Rivers of Life: William L. Graf, 1947–2019. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Correction. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Ahead of Print.

People’s daily activities in the urban environment are complex and vary by individual. Existing studies using mobile phone data revealed distinct and recurrent transitional activity patterns, known as mobility motifs, in people’s daily lives. The limitation in using only a few inferred activity types hinders our ability to examine general patterns in detail. We proposed a mobility network approach

Community-based monitoring (CBM) programs are increasingly popular models of environmental governance around the world. Accordingly, a handful of review papers have highlighted the various benefits, challenges, and governance models associated with their uptake. These reviews have been pragmatic in their recommendations and have supported CBM scholars and practitioners in implementing and understanding

Despite the importance of land legacy effects on land use/land cover change (LULCC), historical data remain underutilized in analyses of social–environmental systems (SES). Drought, a slow-onset disaster, serves as an ideal case study to examine how multitemporal LULCC provides context for contemporary land use patterns. We use historical geographic information systems (HGIS) to analyze land ownership

Taking the Muslim other into consideration, this article investigates Muslims’ everyday encounters within the (im)mobile spaces of public transport that entangle bodies with different histories, backgrounds, and imaginaries. Building on affective atmospheres, I propose an embodied understanding of othering practices and traveling with difference in public transport. Employing (auto)ethnography in Amsterdam

The United States is bearing the brunt of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The spatially uneven viral spread and community inequality will jointly bring about worse consequences. The combined effects on U.S. communities remain unclear, however. Given spatially heterogeneous compliance with the stay-at-home orders and the varying timing of local directives, the uneven spread should be further examined

Majority-Black cities in North America are not often described in the academic literature as such. Racial capitalism is a restorative approach that puts majority-Black cities in the Global North into analytical relation with other cities in the global urban landscape. This is an important step to take for many reasons, including rising interest in conversations about the financial production of urban

The recent surge in populist politics in Europe and North America has challenged many of the policies aimed at advancing sustainable shifts. In this article we argue that this surge necessitates a rethinking of transition and transformation. The mainstream perspective on transitions understands it largely as the proliferation and upscaling of innovative technologies and policy frameworks. We recast

Overt expressions of White nationalism and White supremacy are once again mainstream in U.S. politics. Social movements advancing racist and nativist policies often do so through the language of constitutional rights, appealing to the Founding Fathers to advance exclusionary politics. Studying the legal discourse of conservative activists reveals the ideological work of law in buttressing White proprietary

This article discusses the enactment of conflicting time regimes in contemporary urban retail and consumer services. We draw on the theories of time–space compression, social acceleration, and the fast–slow dichotomy to argue that retail and consumer services act on urban life by enacting two apparently conflicting time regimes: fast time and slow time. Although retail and consumer services are not

Although the science of ecology is often understood in antimodernizing terms, this article shows how ecology in China has become a means to articulate green modernization and sustainable development. As scholars predominantly focus on the policy rhetoric surrounding China’s national modernization and sustainable development program called “ecological civilization building,” the origins of how ecology

This special issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers is devoted to the Anthropocene, the period of unprecedented human impacts on Earth’s environmental systems. The articles contained in this special issue illustrate that geographers have a diverse perspective on what the Anthropocene is and represents. The articles also show that geographers do not feel it necessary to identify

This article seeks to reconcile, as well as operationalize, two different methodological approaches on the basis of some important basic affinities: geoethics and Peircean semiotics. For this purpose, Peirce’s triangle is conceived as a “translator mechanism” to parse the human–planet relationship that cannot be dealt with through actions in pairs but must be considered as a triadic relationship in

In this article, we review the place of “the human” in influential approaches to the Anthropocene to expose the diverse conceptualizations of humanity and human futures. First, we synthesize current research on humans as landscape modifiers across space and time, making a key distinction between the “old Anthropocene” (beginning with human food production) and the “new Anthropocene” (coinciding with

Beyond its centrality to debates on the definition of a global chronostratigraphic geologic unit, the Anthropocene concept has served as a useful theoretical construct with which to assess regional-scale anthropogenic impacts on prehistoric ecological systems through the recognition of earlier “Paleoanthropocene” events predating the onset of modern, industrial, global-scale effects. To this end, we

The beginning of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch denoting human-caused changes to Earth’s systems, and what metrics signify its onset is currently under debate. Proposed initiation points range from the beginning of the Atomic Age to the Industrial Revolution to the adoption of agriculture in the early Holocene. Most of the debate centers on the effects of modern industrially oriented

A strident focus on atmospheric carbons and on climate change as its distinguishing feature has seen much debate and research surrounding the Anthropocene stray from its conceptual grounding in geology. Yet new research argues that hallmarks of the Anthropocene such as sea-level rise, melting ice sheets, and environmental engineering projects designed to mitigate chronic shortages of potable water

Urban flooding is a major concern in many cities around the world. Together with continuous urbanization, extreme weather events are likely to increase the magnitude and frequency of flood hazards and exposure in populated regions. This article examines the changing pathways of flood risk management (FRM) in Portland, Oregon; Seoul, South Korea; and Tokyo, Japan, which have different histories of land

This article examines three intertwined forms of human transformation of Amazonia’s landscapes: (1) anthrosols, (2) cultural or domesticated forests, and (3) anthropogenic earthworks. By acknowledging the extent to which landscapes are humanized, an Anthropocene lens provides an opportunity to examine Amazonia as an Anthropogenic space (anthrome), providing a more realistic approach to understanding

The declaration of the Anthropocene reflects the magnitude of human-caused planetary violence, but it also risks disguising the inequitable geographies of responsibility and sacrifice that underlie its designation. Similarly, many existing strategies for climate change mitigation, including the development of low-carbon energy, are critical to reducing carbon emissions and yet simultaneously risk deepening

Based on the growing body of research and vivid scientific discourse, the Anthropocene is slowly making its way into the curricula of geography programs across the world. Unlike academic geography, the school subject seems to be more reluctant when it comes to the Anthropocene’s implicit implementation. Using content analysis, this article explores how geography curricula or compound subjects containing

The nineteenth century saw rapid urbanization and dramatic social change in Great Britain, some of which can now be viewed at national scales for the first time through linkage of georeferenced digital historical data to contemporary and historical framework data. Here, we attempt to georeference every individual address record from the 1881, 1891, and 1901 censuses for Great Britain and to define

Many cities have undergone spatial redistributions of low-income populations from central to suburban neighborhoods over the past several decades. A potential negative impact of these trends is that low-income populations are concentrating in more automobile-oriented areas, resulting in increased barriers to daily travel and activity participation, particularly for those who are unable to afford a

The northeastern United States experienced extensive deforestation during the seventeenth through twentieth centuries primarily for European agriculture, which peaked in the mid-nineteenth century, and followed by widespread farmstead abandonment and reforestation. Analysis of airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data has revealed thousands of historical land-use features with topographic signatures

This article offers an exploration of the embodied experiences of flying while fat, based on research with a significantly larger group of people than any previous research on this topic. Theoretically, this article advances geographical understandings of fat embodiment and the embodied experience of transport spaces that attend to micropolitical encounters and comfort (Bissell 2008 Bissell, D. 2008

The breadth of spatial analytics relied on in geography is remarkable. These methods are used to gain insight, typically in the context of planning, management, decision making, and policymaking. The challenge is invariably establishing meaning in obtained findings, providing insights and knowledge. This is done, however, in very different ways depending on the spatial analytic approach, with statistical

The development of solar energy has been depicted as a paradigmatic break in unsustainable global growth, largely because it is framed as an innovation with minimal carbon emissions. On the contrary, drawing on literatures from spatial justice and political ecology, including on authoritarian populism, this article analyzes the rise and fall of the solar industry and the associated failures of “green

This article presents crucial new evidence that prisons with a higher proportion of the area within their perimeter given over to natural vegetation exhibit lower levels of self-harm and violence (both between prisoners and toward staff). Extending prior qualitative prison-level studies that find that nature contact influences prisoners’ self-reported well-being, it uses geographic information systems

In this article, I contribute to theorization of the modern era as the Plantationocene, a concept grounded in life on the land and centered around the role of the plantation in sustaining a racialized elite, propelling colonial exploration, creating a core and a periphery, sanctioning forced labor, and shaping both the cultures we consume and the cultural norms we inhabit and perform. I draw on empirical

Mediterranean ecosystems have been more frequently exposed to wildfires in recent decades. Those wildfires are caused by changes in land use and land cover that enable extensive forestry and farming. This qualitative research investigates a changing landscape identity related to a subjective perception after cyclical and seasonal wildfires (2012–2017). In this regard, we conducted twelve semistructured

Community–academic collaborations that value experience-based knowledge alongside institutional ways of knowing have long been of interest in geography. In 1984, Harvey proposed a “peoples’ geography” that would integrate nonacademic knowledge into the field, increasing geography’s potential to help create a just world. Recent community–academic food justice collaborations have taken up this proposition

Multilevel models have been applied to study many geographical processes in epidemiology, economics, political science, sociology, urban analytics, and transportation. They are most often used to express how the effect of a treatment or intervention might vary by geographical group, a form of spatial process heterogeneity. In addition, these models provide a notion of “platial” dependence: observations

This article reconstructed the track, intensity, and societal impacts of the Great Havana Hurricane of October 1846, using all available historical data, which include ship logs, newspapers, diaries, and early instrumental records. Most of the data were extracted from original manuscripts at historical libraries and repositories. Meteorological aspects of the hurricane were analyzed by mapping twice-daily

(2021). On the Validity of Validation: A Commentary on Rufat, Tate, Emrich, and Antolini’s “How Valid Are Social Vulnerability Models?”. Annals of the American Association of Geographers: Vol. 111, No. 4, pp. em-i-em-vi.

(2021). Answer to the CDC: Validation Must Precede Promotion. Annals of the American Association of Geographers: Vol. 111, No. 4, pp. em-vii-em-viii.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have received a great deal of attention in recent years, with many commentators asking how these vehicles will “see” to navigate themselves and, more important, avoid colliding with people, other vehicles, and objects. This article analyzes how AVs see and the data sets they create through Jean Baudrillard’s framework of simulation and simulacra, paying attention to how these

This article examines three intertwined forms of human transformation of Amazonia’s landscapes: (1) anthrosols, (2) cultural or domesticated forests, and (3) anthropogenic earthworks. By acknowledging the extent to which landscapes are humanized, an Anthropocene lens provides an opportunity to examine Amazonia as an Anthropogenic space (anthrome), providing a more realistic approach to understanding

In this article, we review the place of “the human” in influential approaches to the Anthropocene to expose the diverse conceptualizations of humanity and human futures. First, we synthesize current research on humans as landscape modifiers across space and time, making a key distinction between the “old Anthropocene” (beginning with human food production) and the “new Anthropocene” (coinciding with

This article attempts to identify and separate the role of spatial “context” in shaping voter preferences from the role of other socioeconomic determinants. It does this by calibrating a multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model of county-level data on percentages voting for the Democratic Party in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This model yields information on both the spatially

A strident focus on atmospheric carbons and on climate change as its distinguishing feature has seen much debate and research surrounding the Anthropocene stray from its conceptual grounding in geology. Yet new research argues that hallmarks of the Anthropocene such as sea-level rise, melting ice sheets, and environmental engineering projects designed to mitigate chronic shortages of potable water

Commuting, like other types of human travel, is complex in nature, such as trip-chaining behavior involving making stops of multiple purposes between two anchors. According to the 2001 National Household Travel Survey, about half of weekday U.S. workers made a stop during their commute. In excess commuting studies that examine a region’s overall commuting efficiency, commuting is, however, simplified

Anthropogenic erosion and sedimentation are critical components of global change that involve life-sustaining natural resources of soil and water. Many geomorphic systems have responded to intense land use disturbance with episodic erosion and sedimentation, often orders of magnitude greater than background geological rates in the Holocene. Accelerated sedimentation is a metric for land use change

Anthropogenic erosion and sedimentation are critical components of global change that involve life-sustaining natural resources of soil and water. Many geomorphic systems have responded to intense land use disturbance with episodic erosion and sedimentation, often orders of magnitude greater than background geological rates in the Holocene. Accelerated sedimentation is a metric for land use change

The novel COVID-19 disease has affected people in more than 180 countries, accounting for more than 1 million deaths globally to date. This study intends to explore a rapid spatial and temporal assessment of the COVID-19 disease in South America. Data were gathered from the World Health Organization and analyzed using spatial mapping and statistical software. Models were developed based on the established

In the Anthropocene, ruin appreciation is shifting its focus from crumbling architecture to the deteriorating planet. Whereas Romantic and modern ruin gazing privileged nature’s reconquest of the built environment, now, the carbon-intensive infrastructures of global capitalism are turning nature itself to ruin. By critiquing popular representations of the melting Arctic—a visual trope within Anthropocene

Spatially homogenous precipitation regions were delineated for the contiguous United States using a gridded data set of daily precipitation. Seasonal means (1981–2010) of four variables, together characterizing seasonal precipitation, were computed and subjected to a principal component analysis (PCA). PCA reduced the original 30,665 grid cells by sixteen precipitation variables (four variables, four

Conventionally, natural hazard scholars quantify social vulnerability based on social indicators to manifest the extent to which locational communities are susceptible to adverse impacts of natural hazard events and are prone to limited or delayed recoveries. They usually overlook the different geographical distributions of social vulnerability at different hazard intensities and in distinct response

The foundational premise of the Anthropocene, constant across the range of proposed definitions, is that the biophysical world is now profoundly social. This carries substantive methodological implications: If the environment is ecosocial, surely the way it is studied must be, too. Yet, as our bibliometric analysis demonstrates, the bulk of academic articles on the Anthropocene published between 2002