Showing papers in "Annals of The Association of American Geographers in 2003"
TL;DR: In this paper, an overview of multi-agent system models of land-use/cover change (MAS/LUCC) is presented, which combine a cellular landscape model with agent-based representations of decisionmaking, integrating the two components through specification of interdependencies and feedbacks between agents and their environment.
Abstract: This paper presents an overview of multi-agent system models of land-use/cover change (MAS/LUCC models). This special class of LUCC models combines a cellular landscape model with agent-based representations of decisionmaking, integrating the two components through specification of interdependencies and feedbacks between agents and their environment. The authors review alternative LUCC modeling techniques and discuss the ways in which MAS/LUCC models may overcome some important limitations of existing techniques. We briefly review ongoing MAS/LUCC modeling efforts in four research areas. We discuss the potential strengths of MAS/LUCC models and suggest that these strengths guide researchers in assessing the appropriate choice of model for their particular research question. We find that MAS/LUCC models are particularly well suited for representing complex spatial interactions under heterogeneous conditions and for modeling decentralized, autonomous decision making. We discuss a range of possible roles for MAS/LUCC models, from abstract models designed to derive stylized hypotheses to empirically detailed simulation models appropriate for scenario and policy analysis. We also discuss the challenge of validation and verification for MAS/LUCC models. Finally, we outline important challenges and open research questions in this new field. We conclude that, while significant challenges exist, these models offer a promising new tool for researchers whose goal is to create fine-scale models of LUCC phenomena that focus on human-environment interactions.
1,779 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Graham and Marvin discuss the issues that shape urban form and city life more than infrastructure, which is the most important aspect of urban life. But they focus on infrastructure.
Abstract: Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-415-18964-0 (cloth); 0-415-18965-9 (paper). Few issues shape urban form and city life more than infrastructure, which u...
1,263 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors use meteorological data from ground stations, from the space-borne Total Ozone Monitoring Spectrometer (TOMS), and from the National Center for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalysis project to illustrate the key source regions of dust and demonstrate the primacy of the Sa...
Abstract: Dust storms are recognized as having a very wide range of environmental impacts. Their geomorphological interest lies in the amount of deflation and wind erosion they indicate and their role in loess formation. Atmospheric mineral-dust loading is one of the largest uncertainties in global climate-change modeling and is known to have an important impact on the radiation budget and atmospheric instability. Major gaps remain in our understanding of the geomorphological context of terrestrial sources and the transport mechanisms responsible for the production and distribution of atmospheric dust, all of which are important in reducing uncertainties in the modeling of past and future climate. Using meteorological data from ground stations, from the space-borne Total Ozone Monitoring Spectrometer (TOMS), and from the National Center for Environmental Prediction–National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalysis project, we illustrate the key source regions of dust and demonstrate the primacy of the Sa...
680 citations
TL;DR: Physical violence, whether realized or implied, is important to the legitimation, foundation, and operation of a Western property regime as discussed by the authors, and certain spatializations play a practical and ideological role at all these moments.
Abstract: Physical violence, whether realized or implied, is important to the legitimation, foundation, and operation of a Western property regime. Certain spatializations—notably those of the frontier, the survey, and the grid—play a practical and ideological role at all these moments. Both property and space, I argue, are reproduced through various enactments. While those enactments can be symbolic, they must also be acknowledged as practical, material, and corporeal.
570 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the inadequacies in our current modes of understanding (the vulnerability of science) and the need for more integrative approaches in understanding and responding to environmental hazards (vulnerability science).
Abstract: The events of September 11th shocked the nation and painfully illustrated our vulnerability to international terrorist attacks. Despite some of the most sophisticated models, monitoring systems, and science in the world, officials were unable to anticipate and predict these cascading events. The collective scientific ability to geographically represent environmental threats, map exposures, and map consequences is relatively straightforward when the threats are recognized. But what happens when we cannot recognize threats or some of their unintended consequences? This article examines the twin issues of the inadequacies in our current modes of understanding (the vulnerability of science) and the need for more integrative approaches in understanding and responding to environmental hazards (vulnerability science).
462 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply the concept of collective action frames to a case study of four organizations in a single neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, and assess the extent to which the organizations characterize the neighborhood in their justifications of organizational goals and actions.
Abstract: This article uses social-movement theory to analyze how neighborhood organizations portray activism as grounded in a particular place and scale. I apply the concept of collective-action frames to a case study of four organizations in a single neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Using organizational documents such as annual reports, comprehensive plans, and flyers, I present a discourse analysis of the ways that organizations describe their goals and agenda. In particular, I assess the extent to which the organizations characterize the neighborhood in their justifications of organizational goals and actions. In order to legitimate their own agendas and empower community activism, neighborhood organizations foster a neighborhood identity that obscures social differences, such as ethnicity and class, among residents. They do so by describing the physical condition of the neighborhood and the daily life experiences of its residents. These “place-frames” constitute a motivating discourse for organiza...
415 citations
TL;DR: The idea of replicating Silicon Valley in other places began over twenty-five year... as discussed by the authors, which is the origin of the present paper, and is the basis for this paper.
Abstract: Philip Cooke. New York: Routledge. 2002. xii and 218 pp., tables, figs., and index. $100.00 cloth (ISBN 0-415-16409-5). The idea of replicating Silicon Valley in other places began over twenty year...
281 citations
TL;DR: Marcuse and van Kempen as discussed by the authors have published a survey of the Annals and a quick perusal of the journal The Annals of the British Medical Association (ANNAL).
Abstract: Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. xvii and 318 pp., maps, figs., tables, refs., and index. $30.95 paper (ISBN 0-631-21290-6). A quick perusal of the Annals and ...
250 citations
TL;DR: The displays of nationalistic fervor in the wake of the September 11 attacks have been studied by Nevins and others as mentioned in this paper, who argue that "nationalistic fervour in the following days of the 9/11 attacks sur...
Abstract: Joseph Nevins. New York: Routledge, 2002. xi and 286 pp., maps, apps., and index. $17.95 paper (ISBN 0-415-93105-3). The displays of nationalistic fervor in the wake of the September 11 attacks sur...
248 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the process of racialization as an essential aspect of how everyday geographies are made, understood, and challenged, starting from the premise that a primary root of modern American race relations can be found in the southern past, especially in how that past was imagined, articulated, and performed during a crucial period known as “Jim Crow.
Abstract: This article examines the process of racialization as an essential aspect of how everyday geographies are made, understood, and challenged. It begins from the premise that a primary root of modern American race relations can be found in the southern past, especially in how that past was imagined, articulated, and performed during a crucial period: the post-Reconstruction era known as “Jim Crow.” More than just a reaction to a turbulent world where Civil War defeat destabilized categories of power and authority, white cultural memory there became an active ingredient in defining life in the New South. The culture of segregation that mobilized such memories, and the forgetting that inevitably accompanied them, relied on performance, ritualized choreographies of race and place, and gender and class, in which participants knew their roles and acted them out for each other and for visitors. Among the displays of white southern memory most active during Jim Crow, the Natchez Pilgrimage stands out. Elit...
244 citations
TL;DR: Soja et al. as mentioned in this paper presented Postmetropolis is presented as a "postmetropolis" which is a collection of post-metropolis articles from the 1990s and 2000s.
Abstract: Edward W. Soja. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. xx and 440 pp., diags., photos., notes, bib., and name and subject indices. $30.95 paper (ISBN 1-57718-001-1). Postmetropolis is presented as...
TL;DR: This article explored the concept of winners and losers in the context of two aspects of global change: economic globalization and climate change, and identified two major underlying theoretical perspectives on winners and winners.
Abstract: The idea that global change produces winners and losers is widely accepted. Yet there have been few systematic discussions of what is meant by “winner” or “loser,” and little attention has been given to the theoretical underpinnings behind identification of winners and losers. This is particularly true within global-change literature, where the phrase “winners and losers” is widely and rather loosely used. In this article, we explore the concept of winners and losers in the context of two aspects of global change: economic globalization and climate change. We first identify two major underlying theoretical perspectives on winners and losers: one suggests that winners and losers are natural and inevitable; the other suggests that winners and losers are socially and politically generated. We then apply these perspectives to current research on global change and demonstrate that they play a decisive role, influencing opinions on what winning and losing entails, who winners and losers are, and how wi...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that practitioners of new economic geographies can no longer rely exclusively on established “scientific” methodology for empirical research and data analysis, instead, they argue for a process-based methodological framework through which they employ complementary methodological practices (e.g., tracing actor networks and in situ research) not only to explore the microfoundations of economic action, but also to generate, in a reflexive manner, theoretic...
Abstract: Practicing new economic geographies necessarily entails a critical re-evaluation of research methodologies because of its different substantive research foci. In this article, I examine some methodological implications of the recent refiguring of the “economic” in economic geography. Some key features of new economic geographies include understanding the social embeddedness of economic action, mapping shifting identities of social actors, and exploring the role of material and discursive contexts in shaping economic behavior. I argue that practitioners of new economic geographies can no longer rely exclusively on established “scientific” methodology for empirical research and data analysis. Instead, I argue for a process-based methodological framework through which we employ complementary methodological practices (e.g., tracing actor networks and in situ research) and triangulation, not only to explore the microfoundations of economic action, but also to generate, in a reflexive manner, theoretic...
TL;DR: Resource peripheries that are geographically remote from "core economies" are also peripheral to contemporary theorizing in economic geography, and require higher profile within economic geography's research agenda as discussed by the authors. But the restructuring qua remapping of resource peripheries is collectively shaped by institutional forces unleashed by post-Fordism and globalization that are fundamentally different from the restructuring of cores.
Abstract: Resource peripheries that are geographically remote from “core economies” are also peripheral to contemporary theorizing in economic geography, and requires higher profile within economic geography's research agenda. The restructuring qua remapping of resource peripheries is collectively shaped by institutional forces unleashed by post-Fordism and globalization that are fundamentally different from the restructuring of cores. As industrial regions, resource peripheries must negotiate the imperatives of flexibility and neoliberalism from vulnerable, dependent positions on geographic margins. For many resource peripheries, neoliberalism has been perversely associated with trade protectionism. As resource regions, the restructuring of resource peripheries has been further complicated by resource-cycle dynamics and radically new social attitudes toward the exploitation of resources that have helped spawn the politics of environmentalism and aboriginalism. Trade, environmental, and aboriginal politics...
TL;DR: In this paper, the interplay of local environmental gradients and disturbance patches initiated by overwash during coastal storms was investigated for dune systems of two barrier islands in the Georgia Bight, and they described how this interplay constitutes a complex biogeomorphic system in which disturbance and recovery along gradients reinforce one another in positive feedback.
Abstract: Studies of dune vegetation patterns have emphasized two structuring agents: local environmental gradients that shape the prominent zonation of coastal plant species, and disturbance patches initiated by overwash during coastal storms. For dune systems of two barrier islands in the Georgia Bight, we investigate how the interplay of these two conceptual frames generate patterns in (1) longitudinal (along-shore) and transverse (across-shore) compositional variability and (2) the arrangement of species along transverse gradients. We describe how this interplay constitutes a complex biogeomorphic system in which disturbance and recovery along gradients reinforce one another in positive feedback. Topographic and cover data were sampled within strip transects aligned perpendicular to the shoreline at study sites along a frequently storm-overwashed microtidal (South Core Banks, North Carolina) and an infrequently overwashed mesotidal (Sapelo Island, Georgia) barrier island. Multiresponse permutation proc...
TL;DR: This paper studied the economic consequences of family migration for husbands and wives in matched married-couple families, using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households.
Abstract: This article focuses primarily on determining the economic consequences of family migration for husbands and wives in matched married-couple families, using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households. The analysis is designed to determine whether or not the return to migration for husbands and wives is similarly affected by their relative earning potential, as predicted by the human-capital model of migration. The study's secondary contributions include its estimation of the effect of moving on earnings for both husbands and wives within matched married-couple families and its avoidance of the problems of self-selection bias and unobserved variable bias associated with cross-sectional models by using panel-data methods. The results indicate—as predicted by the gender-role model of family migration—that the effect of family migration on individual earnings is largely a function of gender: family migration causes an increase in the husband's income and no change in th...
TL;DR: The Handbook of Cultural Geography as discussed by the authors is a good starting point for a discussion of the cultural turn of cultural geographies and its connections to poststructuralist ideas and approaches.
Abstract: has long set up residence in the region. Chapters by Brenda Yeoh and David Slater are particularly eye-opening, as are the section introductions here, in pointing toward an intellectual de-centering for global cultural geography that often seems light-years away at AAG or IBG conferences. Despite this opening onto what still seem novel possibilities for globalizing the subdiscipline as a de-centered intellectual terrain, the Handbook ends up with a decidedly strong U.K. slant. Nearly half of the authors are U.K.based, and of the twenty-three based in North America, nearly half are U.K.-born and/or U.K.-trained individuals. The problem with this lies in a noticeable narrowing, from the conceptual lens laid out so broadly and ecumenically in the Rough Guide toward the trendiest poststructuralist edges. Indeed, in the index, Bruno Latour outpolls Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Karl Marx, though he does trail Carl Sauer. I myself have never really understood the overblown adulation for Sauer that floats around American cultural geography. So, on the one hand, I do not make much of the gaping hole this Handbook leaves where his legacy would be. It cannot be an accident that the very first page is a full-page photograph of a New Orleans tomb conveyed as being here ‘‘In Loving Memory’’ of a dead ‘‘Cultural Geography’’ that was ‘‘Born 1925,’’ the year of publication of The Morphology of Landscape. It is a funny opening. But come on here, gang. Like most American cultural geographers, I am somewhere to be found on that admittedly irritating family tree that dutiful Sauerians keep like a Domesday Book, as the student of a student of a student of Sauer. By my very unscientific reckoning, there can be only a few possible traces of that tree in this Handbook, which utterly ignores the very broad and still quite active and respected mainstreamof Americancultural geography inspired by Sauerian ideas and approaches, and that leaves the book shockingly incomplete. Eleven of the fifteen people that a recent survey of AAG Cultural Geography Specialty Group members cited as being among the ‘‘most outstanding living practitioners of cultural geography’’ (Smith 2003, p. 25) hardly appear at all in this handbookFnot even in critiques of their ideas. I recognize and respect the editors’ principled refusal to establish or regurgitate a canon, but can something really be called a Handbook of Cultural Geography when there are more citations of meFand that is two citationsFthan there are of Wilbur Zelinsky, George Carney, James Shortridge, John Jakle, Terry Jordan-Bychkov, Bret Wallach, Peirce Lewis . . . need I go on? This lacuna might be explained as having any number of possible causes or origins, not the least of which must be the subdiscipline’s ‘‘living tradition of disagreements’’ with which the editors begin. Yet aside from the slights the absences are bound to ignite and the possible buyers of the book whom those absences will just piss off, I think there are important intellectual shortcomings that arise as a result. Just to give one instance, a Latour-inspired claim in one chapter that ‘‘Nature has been evacuated in cultural geography’’ (p. 165) would seem downright silly when placed beside the thriving and influential arena of endeavor that Sauerian cultural ecology remains. But it never gets placed there: there is no counterargument herein. A‘‘living tradition of disagreements’’ only lives when people who disagree with eachother still end up in the same handbook, no? The editors of this genuinely brilliant book seem to dare the reader to argue with them from the first page, and so I have. I would encourage everyone interested in cultural geography, or in the cultural turn within a whole set of human geographies, to do likewise. Even the frustration is rewarding.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a review of geographic representations, their associated analytical possibilities and relevant computational tools in the combined spatial analysis and GIScience literatures, identifying several research and development frontiers, including analytical gaps in current GIS software.
Abstract: A common—perhaps modal—representation of geography in spatial analysis and geographic information systems is native (unexamined) objects interacting based on simple distance and connectivity relationships within an empty Euclidean space. This is only one possibility among a large set of geographic representations that can support quantitative analysis. Through the vehicle of GIS, many researchers are adopting this representation without realizing its assumptions or its alternatives. Rather than locking researchers into a single representation, GIS could serve as a toolkit for estimating and exploring alternative geographic representations and their analytical possibilities. The article reviews geographic representations, their associated analytical possibilities and relevant computational tools in the combined spatial analysis and GIScience literatures. The discussion identifies several research and development frontiers, including analytical gaps in current GIS software.
TL;DR: In this paper, Herod describes the history of labor geography as an identifiable "project" for a long time, which has been an identifiable 'project' for a lot of people.
Abstract: Andrew Herod. New York: Guilford Press, 2001. xvi and 352 pp., maps, diags., photos., notes, and index. $25.00 paper (ISBN 1-57230-685-8). Labor geography has been an identifiable “project” for abo...
TL;DR: The authors examines the active but compromised authority of the state as it engages the global space of flows through a policy study, revealing that the pressures to meet high immigration targets were accompanied by inadequate monitoring resources that have compromised the state's due diligence.
Abstract: Through a policy study, this article examines the active but compromised authority of the state as it engages the global “space of flows.” Business immigration programs in close to thirty countries announce the state's intent to domesticate the unruly forces of globalization by enticing its principal agent, homo economicus. With the objective of priming economic development using immigrant capital and proven entrepreneurial skills, the Canadian business program has permitted the entry of nearly 300,000 immigrants, primarily from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Government statistics have emphasized program success in terms of capital invested and jobs created. However, census data and tax-filer returns suggest modest income generation and limited entrepreneurial endeavor by business immigrants. Interviews with government managers reveal that the pressures to meet high immigration targets were accompanied by inadequate monitoring resources that have compromised the state's due diligence. Annual statistics pr...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the linkages between culture, politics, space, and labor mobility and offer a way to think about them by building on poststructural critiques of development and postcolonial theories of migrant subjectivity.
Abstract: Harnessing primary and secondary evidence from India, our essay conceptualizes the cultural dynamics of migration. In so doing, it demonstrates the incompleteness of standard marginalist and Marxist accounts of labor circulation. As a corrective, we examine the linkages between culture, politics, space, and labor mobility and offer a way to think about them by building on poststructural critiques of development and postcolonial theories of migrant subjectivity. The proverbial compression of space-time not only has made extralocal work more viable for members of proletarianized groups but, more importantly, has allowed them to transfer their experiences of new ways of being into local contexts through acts of consumption and labor deployment that can become elements of a Gramscian counterhegemonic praxis. We argue that the possibility of this sort of “body politics” compels not merely a critique of the modernization paradigm that has organized classical migration studies but, more profoundly, a re...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address the land use and land-cover decisions of colonist farmers in the Amazon Basin as a function, in part, of household characteristics, and present a framework that integrates them into a model of forest dynamics at household level.
Abstract: Changes in land use and land cover are dynamic processes reflecting a sequence of decisions made by individual land managers. In developing economies, these decisions may be embedded in the evolution of individual households, as is often the case in indigenous areas and agricultural frontiers. One goal of the present article is to address the land use and land-cover decisions of colonist farmers in the Amazon Basin as a function, in part, of household characteristics. Another goal is to generalize the issue of tropical deforestation into a broader discussion on forest dynamics. The extent of secondary forest in tropical areas has been well documented in South America and Africa. Agricultural-plot abandonment often occurs in tandem with primary forest clearance and as part of the same decision-making calculus. Consequently, tropical deforestation and forest succession are not independent processes in the landscape. This article presents a framework that integrates them into a model of forest dynamics at household level, and in so doing provides an account of the spatial pattern of deforestation that has been observed in the Amazon's colonization frontiers.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate how spatiotemporal changes in air pollution levels (specifically, total suspended particulates (TSP) rise or fall with socioeconomic status.
Abstract: This article addresses two questions: (1) How do spatiotemporal changes in air pollution levels—specifically, total suspended particulates (TSP)—rise or fall with socioeconomic status? (2) A critical equity interpretation of environmental policy then motivates this question: does the pursuit of average regional reductions in pollution benefit those who need improvements least, benefit those who need improvements most, or maintain the status quo? TSP data are drawn from networks of monitoring stations operated in 1985, 1990, and 1995. The monitoring data are interpolated with a kriging algorithm to produce estimates of likely pollution distribution throughout Hamilton. Exposure is related to socioeconomic status (SES) variables at the census tract level for corresponding years—1986, 1991, and 1996—and associations are tested with ordinary least squares (OLS) and spatial regression models. The results show that whether TSP rises or falls, injustice persists but becomes less pronounced over time. Am...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors summarized the theory of climate change and the relationship of climate-change forcing to hydrologic and aquifer processes and outlined the development of a methodology to quantify the effects of climate changes and of changes in ground-water use by population growth.
Abstract: This article summarizes the theory of climate change and the relationship of climate-change forcing to hydrologic and aquifer processes. It focuses on regional aquifer systems and on the methods to link large-scale climate-change processes to ground-water recharge and to simulate ground-water flow and solute transport in a warmer, 2xCO2 climate. The article reviews methods currently available to generate climate-change forcing and to simulate regional aquifer systems under ensuing hydrologic conditions. In addition, it outlines the development of a methodology to quantify the effects of climate change and of changes in ground-water use by population growth on hydrologic response. An example illustrates a specific procedure and our current capabilities and limitations to assess the potential impacts of a warming climate and population growth on regional-scale aquifer systems. The results indicate that aquifer exploitation strategies must take into account climatic variability and climate-change pa...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors hypothesize that nearly all humans acquire the ability to read and use map-like models in very early childhood and that this ability is a fundamental part of human ecological adaptation, comparable in many ways to tool use.
Abstract: We hypothesize that nearly all humans, in all cultures, acquire the ability to read and use map-like models in very early childhood, and that this ability is a fundamental part of human ecological adaptation, comparable in many ways to tool use. Evidence pertaining to this theory should be sought in three kinds of research: studies in differing cultures of the development of young children's ability to use map-like models; studies probing for evidence of map-like modeling across the ethnographic spectrum; and studies probing for evidence of the use of map-like models in prehistory. We are pursuing all three lines of research. However, our main focus thus far has been on the developmental dimension of the problem. Here, we report evidence that supports the universality hypothesis from seven empirical studies carried out on mapping abilities of three- to five-year-old children in several Western and non-Western cultures; we offer a general ecological theory of the development of mapping abilities, ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that channelization in the Embarras River basin of east central Illinois has altered stream channel and planform geometries to an extent that exceeds background rates of change for unchannelized reaches by one to two orders of magnitude.
Abstract: The adverse effects of channelization on the environmental quality of streams and rivers at a global scale are well documented, but the magnitude of human-induced changes in river systems relative to the efficacy of geomorphological processes has yet to be ascertained quantitatively. Stream channelization is a common feature of the agricultural landscapes of the midwestern United States. This study shows that channelization in the Embarras River basin of east central Illinois has altered stream channel and planform geometries to an extent that exceeds background rates of change for unchannelized reaches by one to two orders of magnitude. The average rate of change in channel position resulting from stream responses to channelization also greatly exceeds the average rate of change for unchannelized reaches, yet the spatial extent of stream adjustments to channelization is limited, and most straightened or relocated channels persist in their altered state for decades following channelization.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply geographic methodologies, particularly related to scale and space, to an understanding of the tragedy of the commons, and develop a typology classifying common resources into one of three categories (Open Access, fugitive, and migratory) based on spatial relationships between resources and resource users.
Abstract: The “tragedy of the commons” is a concept familiar to students of resource management, and many academic disciplines have devoted considerable attention to its understanding and solution. Despite a long tradition of concern with issues directly related to the problem, the field of geography has been relatively silent in the commons literature, especially on the theoretic front. The present article attempts to address this shortcoming by applying geographic methodologies—particularly as related to scale and space—to an understanding of the phenomenon. The article first demonstrates the role of sociopolitical scale in defining the commons problem and then develops a typology classifying common resources into one of three categories—open access, fugitive, and migratory—based on spatial relationships between resources and resource users. The article shows that the geographic nature of the commons problem for any particular resource depends on the sociopolitical scale at which it is assessed, and sugg...
TL;DR: This article designs, implements, and evaluates a new approach to classification that places class-interval selection into a multicriteria framework and considers not only number–line relationships, but also the area covered by each class, the fragmentation of the resulting classifications, and the degree to which they are spatially autocorrelated.
Abstract: During the past three decades a large body of research has investigated the problem of specifying class intervals for choropleth maps. This work, however, has focused almost exclusively on placing observations in quasi-continuous data distributions into ordinal bins along the number line. All enumeration units that fall into each bin are then assigned an areal symbol that is used to create the choropleth map. The geographical characteristics of the data are only indirectly considered by such approaches to classification. In this article, we design, implement, and evaluate a new approach to classification that places class-interval selection into a multicriteria framework. In this framework, we consider not only number–line relationships, but also the area covered by each class, the fragmentation of the resulting classifications, and the degree to which they are spatially autocorrelated. This task is accomplished through the use of a genetic algorithm that creates optimal classifications with resp...
TL;DR: The authors traces the emergence of industrial tree improvement along the Pacific Slope of western Oregon and Washington and explores the social production of nature by capital and science, particularly the ways in which, in response to natural-resource constraints, the reproductive biology of forest trees has been increasingly targeted, appropriat...
Abstract: This article traces the emergence of industrial tree improvement along the Pacific Slope of western Oregon and Washington. Anxieties about timber famine in the United States prompted research on forest genetics and Douglas-fir provenance as far back as 1913, while diminishing supplies of old-growth timber resources in this region led to tree improvement—systematic tree breeding to enhance commercially attractive characteristics—on an industrial scale beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout, tree improvement has been characterized by a preponderance of co-operation among private, otherwise competitive capitalist firms, with considerable support from state agencies and from science in both research and applied settings. Pacific Slope tree improvement is explored as a case study of the social production of nature by capital and science, particularly the ways in which, in response to natural-resource constraints, the reproductive biology of forest trees has been increasingly targeted, appropriat...