President's Column

Climate Variability and Change: Embracing Complexity and Uncertainty

Julie WinklerLast spring, at a listening session I attended on climate variability and change in northwestern Michigan, a local fruit grower summarized his concerns with the analogy that his industry is the “canary in the coal mine” for the potential impacts of climate variability and change on agriculture. This statement was motivated by the sensitivity of fruit production to climate extremes, particularly changes in the frequency of devastating spring freezes, and the limited short-term adaptation options given the relatively long-term investment of orchard blocks.

Geographers have increasingly become involved in assessments of the vulnerability to, and potential impacts of, climate variability and change. These challenging interdisciplinary endeavors are providing many geographers with exciting opportunities to work collectively with scientists from a range of disciplines, interact directly with stakeholder groups, and engage in research that is not only stimulating but also has considerable applied significance. I am concerned, however, with what I see as a continuing tendency in assessment studies to downplay the complexity and uncertainty of the potential impacts of climate variability and change.

Several years ago, in an editorial in Environmental Science & Technology, Baruch Fischhoff, a well-known decision scientist, argued that scientists, although traditionally trained to consider uncertainty, multiple approaches and a range of data sources, often turn to an advocacy-based communication when they are highly concerned about the potential consequences of either action or inaction and/or when they believe that the “science will not receive a fair hearing.” In advocacy-based communication, a case is made for a specific viewpoint and uncertainty is introduced only through arguments with contrasting viewpoints. Although advocacy-based communication has its place, a potential consequence is the loss of confidence in, and appreciation for, science by the general public. As an alternative, Fischhoff argued for what he refers to as nonpersuasive communication, an approach that explicitly considers uncertainty and “allows science to speak for itself.” From Fischhoff’s perspective, communication of climate variability and change involves climate scientists, or more generally domain scientists, who develop the information to eventually be communicated and confirm that it is scientifically sound, decision scientists who help identify the information relevant to a particular decision, and social scientists who work to overcome communication barriers.

Personally, I have long been uncomfortable with communication regarding climate variability change that fails to convey the associated complexity and uncertainty, particularly the many limitations of climate observations and projections, with which I am all too familiar as a geographer/climate scientist. Thus, Fischhoff’s argument for nonpersuasive communication of climate variability and change resonates strongly with me, although I would expand Fischhoff’s model to include a broader range of experts as domain scientists and would blur the distinctions between the domain, decision, and social science experts, emphasizing instead the communication among experts and between experts and stakeholders.

Climate scientists are not the exclusive domain experts in the communication of the potential impacts of climate variability and change. In fact, few stakeholders can directly incorporate future projections of climate variables in their decision-making. Rather, stakeholders require information on changes in climate-influenced parameters of relevance to their activity or industry. Expertise from a range of disciplines is needed, including social science (e.g., human geography, economics, demography) whose involvement extends well beyond overcoming communication barriers to the development and evaluation of information required for decision-making. For example, while growers of commodity crops (e.g., maize, soybeans, and wheat) are cognizant that changes in temperature and precipitation during the growing season will affect their operations, projected changes in yield and farm income are much more relevant parameters for their decision-making.

Furthermore, inferring potential yield or income from simplified climate scenarios (e.g., change in growing-season mean temperature and precipitation) is suspect given the complex relationships between weather/climate and yield, and between yield and income. Consequently, climate scientists, agronomists, economists and others need to collaboratively explore, in a scientifically sound manner, the ways that a perturbed climate may influence yield and, subsequently, profitability and livelihood.

The concept of the “usability” of assessment outcomes also needs to be broadened. Although a number of previous authors have implored climate scientists to consider the “usability” of their observations and projections, even chiding them for the too often opaqueness of the metadata (when provided) of climate information, the usability of the outcomes of the different impact models employed in an assessment, such as yield models, is less often considered. In addition, one can argue that stakeholders should be part of, rather than separate from, the assessment team, working with decision scientists to identify the information relevant to the decisions that they will be making, and with domain scientists to facilitate the co-creation of that information.

As someone involved in the development and use of climate projections for local/regional assessments, I am often asked by scientists from other fields for advice on the availability and suitability of climate information for a particular assessment. Lately, I have been somewhat disheartened by the number of requests I receive for “simple” climate scenarios (often little more than a projected change in mean temperature and precipitation). To be sure, simple scenarios, even “what if” scenarios, are extremely useful, particularly for vulnerability assessments, and they complement more detailed projections which, in conjunction with suitable impact models, can illuminate potential “surprises” that fall outside stakeholder experience. I am more concerned that a reliance on simplistic projections, especially when paired with relatively unsophisticated impact models, will fail to fully illuminate the complexity and uncertainty associated with climate variability and change, and fail to provide the information needed for robust decision-making, in contrast to when a plurality of approaches — both simple and complex — are employed. I have also been rather dismayed by the disconnect between the very fine spatial resolution at which climate information frequently is requested versus the information content of the scenarios which often varies much more broadly in space.

Another concern is the lack of consideration of the assumptions of the impact models that will be employed in an assessment in the context of the nature and limitations of climate information, or of the contribution of the impact models themselves to the uncertainty of the assessment outcomes. That said, several recent publications represent initial steps in addressing these concerns. In particular, a recent analysis conducted at the University of California-Berkeley illustrated that the high degree of spatial autocorrelation in gridded climate observations can violate the independent assumption of empirical economic models that are often used in assessment studies and recommended that station observations may be the more appropriate choice of climate information for the development and application of these models. Also, members of the AgMIP (Agricultural Modeling Intercomparison and Improvement Project) team recently demonstrated that uncertainty introduced in future projections of wheat yield by the choice of yield model was as large or larger than the uncertainty introduced by an ensemble of climate projections. Both these studies point to the need for careful attention to the assumptions of impact models and to the necessity of evaluating the uncertainty surrounding all components of an assessment, rather than just the uncertainty of the climate information.

Geographers are in a unique position to develop enhanced approaches for climate assessments that improve the usability of assessment outcomes and to advocate for nonpersuasive communication in decision-making that embraces complexity and uncertainty. Geography is an “interdisciplinary discipline.” We regularly and effectively work across the many subfields of Geography and across disciplinary boundaries. We are also sensitive to disciplinary differences in research culture, methods and approaches, and, therefore, can help facilitate a more seamless integration across assessment components. Geographers are already actively involved in assessment efforts, but there is much more that we can do to advance new assessment approaches. The fruit grower in northwest Michigan, and the many others facing complex choices in an uncertain future, could use our help. Let’s step up to the task.

—Julie Winkler

DOI: 10.14433/2013.0023

For more information on articles referred to above see:

“Nonpersuasive Communication about Matters of Greatest Urgency: Climate Change” by Baruch Fischhoff in Environmental Science and Technology, pages 7204-7208, November 1, 2007

“Uncertainty in Simulating Wheat Yields under Climate Change” by Asseng et al. in Nature Climate Change, Volume 3, pages 827–832, 2013, DOI:10.1038/nclimate1916

“Using Weather Data and Climate Model Output in Economic Analyses of Climate Change” by Auffhammer et al., NBER Working Paper No. w19087, 2013, DOI:10.3386/w19087

Photo credit: Dwight Burdette; Apple orchard on Wassem Fruit Farm, Augusta Township, Michigan

 

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New Books for Geographers

New Books: December 2013

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Publishers are welcome to send new volumes to the Editor-in-Chief (Kent Mathewson, Editor-in-Chief, AAG Review of Books, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803).

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

December, 2013

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AAG Honors Five Geographers with 2014 AAG Enhancing Diversity Award

AAG Honors Five Geographers with 2014 AAG Enhancing Diversity Award

The AAG Enhancing Diversity Award honors those geographers who have pioneered efforts toward or actively participated in efforts toward encouraging a more diverse discipline over the course of several years. To learn more, visit www.aag.org/diversityaward.

This year the AAG Council and the AAG Enhancing Diversity Committee are pleased to recognized a team of five individuals to be honored with the 2014 Enhancing Diversity Award:

  • Jay T. Johnson, University of Kansas
  • Renee Pualani Louis, University of Kansas
  • Laura Smith, Macalaster College
  • Zoltan Grossman, The Evergreen State College
  • Douglas (RDK) Herman, Smithsonian Institution

In recognizing these geographers together, the committee is also acknowledging teamwork and long-term partnerships by giving the award to all five individuals and the work they have achieved together as well as individually.

Expanding the diversity of any organization, especially when the goal is to have an effect on an entire academic discipline, requires effort at every level. Johnson, Pualani Louis, Smith, Grossman, and Herman have over the past decade worked toward expanding the diversity of the AAG, and geography more broadly, through their leadership of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the AAG and beyond.

Their goal with IPSG has been primarily focused in two areas: Firstly, to increase the number of Native American, Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiians participating in the AAG, as well as pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in geography; Secondly, they have worked to increase the visibility of Indigenous peoples issues before the AAG and by doing so, the discipline in general.

Under their leadership, the number of Indigenous participants at AAG meetings has increased dramatically, including not only undergraduate and graduate students but also community members from various reservation and urban Indigenous communities across North and Central America, Australia and New Zealand. They have brought Indigenous leaders and academics to the AAG annual meetings as plenary speakers, including the late Vine Deloria, Jr., and Winona LaDuke.

In 2006, Professor Johnson proposed an Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledges and Rights Commission to the International Geographical Union, which was approved by the IGU at its regional meeting in Brisbane, Australia. Through the combined efforts of the newly formed IGU commission, the AAG specialty group and the Canadian Association of Geographers Native Canadians Study Group, an Indigenous geographies pre-conference was held in 2008 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, with over 35 geographers from around in the world in attendance. During the first two days of the AAG meeting in Boston, these three groups organized an Indigenous geographies symposium that included paper sessions and panels on various topics representing the broad spectrum of research covered by geographers working with and for Indigenous communities. The keynote speaker for this symposium was Dr. Daniel Wildcat, Director of Environmental Studies at Haskell Indian Nations University. Jay and Laura served two terms as co-chairs of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group, while Renee was serving as Treasurer and subsequently took over as Co-Chair with Grossman to continue this work.   From the time that this team began working together around 2002, the IPSG has almost doubled in size, from 120 to more than 210 members at present.

These scholars have advanced the status of indigenous geography through the synergies of their individual efforts as well, including ways that have contributed to the IPSG’s success.

Pualani Louis serves as Secretary of the International Geographical Union (IGU)’s Indigenous People’s Knowledges and Rights Commission as well as numerous other professional service roles.  She is a Hawaiian woman and an Indigenous cartographer, and has researched place naming, GIS and integration of Indigenous spatial knowledge systems, as well as playing an important role in advancing cross cultural ethical research standards.  From 2009 to 2012, she also served as an Advisory Board Member to the AAG’s ALIGNED project, advancing diversity with nearly a dozen pilot undergraduate programs and developing many resources for departments and members.

Johnson has also served with the AAG ALIGNED project as a Representative Pilot Department at the University of Kansas, as well as Chair of their newly founded Diversity Committee inspired by his initiative and involvement.  His research interests in indigenous people’s cultural survival and the politics of place has continued to thrive with new roles as Director of the Indigenous Geographies Research Center at KU and as CoPI of the $3 million NSF funded IGERT for an interdisciplinary climate change studies program in collaboration with KU and Haskell Indian Nations University.

Smith has also continued her leadership, scholarship, and service contributions through IPSG and AAG broadly.  She has a PhD in Geography with a minor in Law and has been a GIS and land management consultant with the Bois Forte Reservation Tribal Council and the State of Minnesota’s Planning Department.

Grossman is Professor of Geography and Native American and World Indigenous Peoples Studies at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. From 2008-2010, he served as Co-Chair for the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. Previously, Grossman has worked as Assistant Professor of Geography and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire from 2002 to 2005. Co-founder of Midwest Treaty Network to support WI Ojibwe spear fishers attacked for exercising their treaty rights, and then to bring together the tribes and white sport fishing groups to protect the fish from mining projects.  In 2008, he attended the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 7th Session (focusing on climate change), as an Observer from the International Geographical Union (IGU) Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledges and Rights Commission, at UN Headquarters, New York.   

Herman is senior geographer for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and adjunct associate professor at Towson University, Maryland. An early architect of NMAI’s Indigenous geography project, he went on to create Pacific Worlds, a web-based indigenous-geography education project for Hawai’i and the American Pacific. Both projects focus on indigenous cultural knowledge and environmental understandings. He has published several articles and given numerous scholarly presentations regarding the representation of Indigenous cultures and the importance of Indigenous knowledge.

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Resources

NIH GeoFrontiers Final Report November 2013

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A MACE for Geographers, or How to Write a Paper

Geography, as a disciplinary field, admits graduate students from different backgrounds with the goal of making them part of a profession that is uniquely situated for grappling with major challenges of the globalized world. Whether studying the pillars of Physical Geography themes, Human Geography concerns, or Geographical Technique abilities, graduate students are here to write their way to graduation. To succeed in the profession, most geographers who follow the Sauerian admonition of “Know Thy Word” point to usage of the written text. I argue that it is not enough to know the word, but to use it correctly! Not everyone is Jared Diamond (ecologist) or Charles Mann (journalist), but everyone can be a facile and persuasive writer of Geography. And, by the power of their keyboard, even becoming honorary geographers.

Most students often write without a road map. In geography, manuscripts shall be treated as a product of intellectual exploration, inquiry and effective communication that follows a meticulous, thoughtful plan for achievement, with a compass at hand. Science writing is no different, particularly with professional journals and scholarly books, because the peer review process ensures that poor papers will not get printed. The “publish or perish” paradigm of American academia, hence, secures that audiences, experts and others, will determine the fate of the geographer. Professionalism, thus, is partially gauged by the impact factor of the outlet, so the author should start focusing on the target journal to get acquitted with its guidelines, recent published collections, format and overall thematic emphasis. Parish (1981) warned that “the style required for research papers is not the same as the style you learned in your writing classes.” You must acquire the ability to express both unambiguously and succinctly, as well as to avoid expressive evocation, complexity, imagery and symbolism. Exhibit your expository style rather than your literary or colloquial one. At any rate, consider the WWW model—What, Where and Why— to sketch ideas to make your geography writing a doddle, not a nightmare (SEAI 2013).

As subject-dependent, geographical research methods are not universal. Analytical tools, methodological protocols, and subject matter are linked vertically amongst the three pillars of geography, but not horizontally. Conversely, writing skills are universal and assignment-independent. Peter Hoffer (2013) advises: to write well, just use your MACE! The acronym for Muse, Artist, Craftsman, and Editor describe four ethereals that shall rest on your shoulders while writing. Let’s get to know them better, following Hoffer:

The MUSE inspires us. She is our creative imagination reified. She brings us ideas, concepts, metaphors, and connections. She runs wild, swirling about us as our ideas flit about when we are gathering our materials and about to write. We need the Muse to guide us as we get down our first impressions, lines of attack, and conclusions. The Muse does not worry about the precise order of these, much less how we express them. Nor should we —not at first. Instead, as we progress in our research, we must let her guide us. The Muse tells us: Do not wait until all the inputs are in —keep on jotting down your insights.

The ARTIST exhibits better control of words than the Muse. The Artist in us demands order, shape, placement, and process. She loves to outline, arranging and rearranging our arguments and our evidence until the pattern satisfies us. The Artist knows that written geography cannot be more than two-dimensional (words going left to right on a line or top to down on a page) while Geography itself is four- dimensional (time, space, and the scalar of historicity, added to the linear narrative). But the Artist also knows how to fabricate a virtual third or fourth dimension. She tells us how and when to interweave analysis and digression.

The Muse and the Artist respect each other well, for the Artist is willing to accommodate a new insight or inspiration somewhere in the organization of the paper; in turn, the Muse recognizes the artist’s need to find some kind of aesthetics, and keeps that evolving pattern in mind as she inspires new ideas.

The CRAFTSMAN is more disciplined than both of them, for the he worries about the finished product. Every Craftsman is known by the professional caliber of his work, just as every graduate student is graded on prose quality. The Craftsman is patient; he drafts a paper according to the artist’s design, then, revises. The best Craftsman is willing to lay aside a paper and return to it, adding new material, cutting away waste. He polishes, trims, and rounds. He routinely produces more than four drafts of a single paper. Moreover, unlike the Muse and the Artist, the Craftsman is happy to have criticism of drafts. His temperament allows him to incorporate constructive comments and rewrite sections that do not work for others. After all, he knows (as the Muse and the Artist sometimes forget) that he is writing for an audience, and ultimately it is that audience’s response that measures the quality of the work transpired. He will perfect the map, the photo, or the line graph that the Artist selected to illustrate the Muse’s hints.

The EDITOR is the last ethereal to check in. Of course, she is always there: chiding the Muse for flights of irrelevant fancy; telling the Artist to tighten the outline to fit the topic; watching every step the Craftsman takes to insure that the reader will understand his meaning. The Editor is the spell checker, grammarian, and style manual. She will brook no shortcuts or technical errors. Every footnote and bibliographical entry must be in correct form as she is detail-oriented. Every quotation must be perfect. The Editor is the superego of the paper, allowing no plagiarism and demanding that every source be cited. Editors, as busybodies, must be repeatedly cautioned to wait their turn with a paper. But, we must listen to the Editor’s admonition: to keep very careful notes; to put page numbers on the index cards, or Xeroxes, or laptop entries, or sticky notes; and to turn every close paraphrase into an exact quotation, lest we slip. Even when the Muse is talking to us and we are writing down an idea at white hot speed, we need to be sure that if such idea originated in one of our secondary sources, we jot down its origin precisely. She will even take the Craftsman’s illustration and check for caption accuracy, date, legend, scale, and halftones. Sometimes the Editor cuts the infograph and includes a table instead.

Hoffer (2013) is quick to point out that MACE is not really as linear as suggested. Although papers usually go through the stages of idea, outline, draft, manuscript and galley proof, in that order, a good writer will always be willing to loop back to earlier stages of the process for emend if needed. Geographers shall insist in having their hard work of proposal development, fund raising, and field performance, rewarded with a publication as recognition of their superb effort with the study. However, either not preparing a paper for publication in the target language of fieldwork regions, or not writing towards an audience that will barely read an output in a scientific journal, often neglects international outreach. There is nothing wrong with publishing in magazines, newspapers, film scripts, television screenplays, or coffee-table books. That your message is getting across diverse constituencies matters, including your peers in the scientific circle you self-adhere when you write a paper. Be literary when you need to be outside the halls of academia, but be scientific with your peers.

One should always be proud of one’s writing; but successful writers do not have overblown egos. They must be willing to go back to the beginning if a paper does not work. In the end, the quality of the manuscript will percolate the sieves of the process; whether a chapter of the Thesis or a section of the Dissertation, most geography graduate students aspire to have a paper published in a journal. The paper will shine when published, knowing that the Muse keeps flirting, the Artist keeps creating, the Craftsman keeps polishing and the Editor keeps emending what will become new writing opportunities, for yet another paper… The more you write, the merrier!

Fausto O. Sarmiento
Professor of Geography
University of Georgia

DOI: 10.14433/2013.0022

References

Hoffer, P. 2013. A mace for graduate students (0r how to write a paper). Printed handout for History Students, University of Georgia. Athens.

Parish, S. 1981. The Student’s Practical Guide: Writing Term Papers for Anthropology (and Related Subjects). Electronic version. https://weber.ucsd.edu/~jmoore/courses/Parish.html

SEAI. 2013. How to write a geography essay. URL: https://www.seai.ie/Schools/Post_Primary/Subjects/Geography_LC/Essay_and_Exam_Tips/Geography_essay_writing/

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President's Column

Supporting the Regional Divisions

Julie WinklerOver the years, the AAG Newsletter has been peppered with presidential columns about the AAG regional divisions. The nine regional divisions host their annual meetings during autumn, and, barring scheduling conflicts, the AAG president represents the national-level Association at these meetings. Hence, it is only natural that former presidents have wanted to share with the AAG membership their thoughts on this intense, motivating, and rather exhausting experience. Foci of past columns have included approaches for enhancing attendance at the regional meetings, ways that the regional meetings can advance geography, opportunities for students, the relative participation of faculty and students from undergraduate-only and Ph.D.-granting geography departments, and the regional division structure itself.

I would like to add my thoughts to this ongoing discussion. However, my travels to the regional meetings coincide with ongoing deliberations by the AAG Council of the challenges and opportunities for the regional divisions. At the AAG Council meeting earlier this month, an entire morning session was reserved for the discussion of two questions posed to the regional and national councillors: How have changes in the “external” environment during the past two decades impacted your regional division, considering both the opportunities they create and the challenges they pose? How can the regional divisions strengthen geography at the national level and the AAG specifically? Thus, I also draw on that discussion for this column.

My overall impression is that the regional divisions have enormous potential for supporting geography and geographers. Some of this potential is very much realized, but much also remains untapped. Geographers require opportunities and venues for professional development throughout their careers. Some geographers will seek development opportunities primarily through AAG national-level activities, such as the AAG annual meeting, and/or through professional offerings from other organizations. But for others, the regional division meetings can provide an important additional, or even alternative, professional development venue. Some geographers may find that the smaller, more intimate regional meetings facilitate networking and the establishment of new research and teaching collaborations. The regional meetings can also be an ideal venue for sharing findings and for interacting with peers for those geographers conducting regionally focused research. For others, the regional meetings can provide an initial foray into disciplinary professional activities. Many geographers, myself included, presented their first paper or poster at a regional meeting. Also, the regional meetings can, and should be, a means for non-geographers interested in working more closely with geographers to introduce themselves to the discipline in a less formal setting. The regional meetings can also fill a professional development role for those geographers whose professional and personal constraints make participation in national-level activities challenging. Some geographers, including many community college faculty, are limited by their employers to only a few off-site days per year, hindering their ability to participate in the nearly week-long AAG annual meeting. Entrepreneurial geographers lose revenue every day away from their businesses. Other geographers are caring for small children or elderly relatives, making extended periods away from home difficult. In these situations, the shorter regional meetings, which often overlap with the weekend, are a more accessible professional development venue.

In order to tap into their full potential, regional divisions need to closely monitor the effectiveness of their annual meeting. Viewing the regional meetings through the lens of professional development can help with this assessment. An initial question is simply whether the meeting attendance is diverse and, if not, whether there are sectors within the geography community who feel that the regional meetings are not providing the professional development opportunities they are seeking. For example: Is attendance from graduate, four-year, and two-year academic programs proportional to the number and size of these programs within the region? Are non-academic geographers in attendance? Do undergraduate and graduate students participate? The quality of the professional development that is offered to attendees is also important: Is informal networking facilitated? Has care been taken to minimize conflicting sessions so that attendees can easily participate in all sessions of interest to them, maximizing exposure to, and feedback on, each other’s presentations? Are workshops or other skill-enhancing opportunities provided? These and similar assessment questions can help identify gaps in what the regional meetings are offering, and also can point to potential enhancements.

Discussion and assessment also needs to occur at the national level, and, in advance of the fall council meeting, the AAG Regional Councillors collectively identified a suite of challenges and opportunities for the regional divisions. A number of the challenges (continued reductions in travel funding, increased conference costs, undervaluation by employers and administration of participation in the regional organizations) are not surprising, but one potential challenge that garnered considerable discussion is that new faculty within a region may be unaware of what the regional meetings have to offer, especially if they are graduates of programs that historically have not participated in their regional division. Potential opportunities include greater advertisement of the regional divisions to AAG members, more joint regional conferences, sponsored plenary speakers who have broad public appeal, and the sharing of best practices among regions. The latter, sharing of best practices, was viewed as having particular potential, as many AAG members are familiar with only a small number of the regional divisions (often the division in which they currently work and the one where they completed their education).

The AAG Council and Central Office are undertaking several initiatives in support of the regional divisions. Regional division chairs have been invited to a luncheon meeting at the AAG annual meeting in Tampa to discuss with Council members their perceptions on the future of the regional divisions and the linkages between the regional and national components of the AAG. Following the luncheon, a two-hour workshop intended for all regional division officers will focus on sharing best practices, including practices and initiatives for membership recruitment and retention, meeting organization, hosting joint meetings, communication with members, and financial management. AAG Central Office staff will also be present to share insights based on their national-level experiences. In further support of the regional meetings, the Council approved at their fall meeting an extension of the childcare subsidy offered to attendees at the AAG annual meeting to attendees of the regional meetings, although at a reduced rate reflective of the shorter duration of the regional meetings. The provision of this subsidy recognizes that for some AAG members the regional division is their professional association, and that these members should have the same benefits as those who mainly participate in national-level activities.

I was fortunate to be able to attend the annual meetings of eight of the nine regional divisions, five this Fall and three last year. Frankly, this experience was one of my more rewarding professional opportunities in quite awhile. Each meeting had its own “flavor,” but some of the lingering highlights and memories, beyond the excellent scientific presentations and posters, include: the APCG member who subsidized the banquet tickets for student first-authors of papers and posters; the moving and relevant keynote address on memorialization of university tragedies at the joint West Lakes/East Lakes meeting hosted by Northern Illinois University, a university that experienced such a tragedy first hand; the pleasure of an esteemed geographer, someone I personally admire, in receiving SEDAAG’s Lifetime Achievement Award; the motion at the SWAAG business meeting to work to make their meetings more family friendly; meeting Maryland’s Chief Innovation Officer at the MAD meeting and discovering that he is a geographer; the vanloads of undergraduate students who attended the Middle States meeting and their incredible presentations; the open house at the University of Nebraska-Omaha Geography Department, host of the GPRM meeting, and viewing their enviable facilities; talking with an assistant professor from a major Ph.D. program, a first time attendee of the SWAGG meeting, who was thrilled with the attendance and feedback for his paper presentation; the gift basket of local products delivered to my hotel by the Geography Club at Stephen F. Austin University; and the Mark Twain impersonator at the APCG banquet who relived Twain’s adventures as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada (absolutely sublime). I also found out that, not only have I forgotten much of my introductory geography, I cannot even follow the Geography Bowl rules (apologies fellow SEDAAG “Dream Team” members!)

You may not receive a gift basket, and the impersonator was perhaps a one-off experience, but nonetheless, give the regional meetings a try. My experiences of the past year certainly have reinvigorated my commitment to my regional division.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the regional divisions and their annual meetings.

—Julie Winkler

DOI: 10.14433/2013.0020

 

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Melinda Sue Meade

Melinda Meade was born in 1945 in New York City and grew up and went to school and college on Long Island. She was valedictorian of her Hicksville High School (1963) and Hofstra University (1966) classes. Melinda planned to teach history, but then changed her life by volunteering for the Peace Corps instead of going to graduate school in history. She taught English for two years in a small town in northeastern Thailand, six hours by elephant from the railhead in the provincial capital. As Melinda put it, the village did not want a male volunteer, and there was concern about sending a young woman into the jungle of Thailand in the 1960s, but the Peace Corps knew Melinda could do the job. In Thailand she discovered the complexities of development and learned to view the world through the lived experiences of another culture. She also made lifelong friends, one of her dearest friends, Phoungphet Meesawat, was her assistant in the village. Melinda and Phoungphet visited one another several times in Thailand and the States, remaining in close contact over the decades first via letters and then via email.

Following the Peace Corps, Melinda went to graduate school, first at Michigan State University (MA 1970) and then at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii (PhD 1974). She chose geography, a field to which she would dedicate her life; geography allowed her to combine her interests in Asia, population change, and health promotion and disease ecology. Her dissertation research involved two years of fieldwork on land development/population resettlement schemes in Malaysia, which explored the dimensions of population movement and how such movement affected disease ecologies. This was Dr. Meade’s constant interest, how people move through environments and thus move through disease ecologies. Returning from field work in Malaysia, she took a tramp steamer up through Japan. Her academic career spanned departments of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Georgia, and finally the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) from 1976 until her retirement in 2010. She studied topics as diverse as the eradication of malaria in the United States, the enigma of cardiovascular disease and stroke in the coastal plain of the southeast as expressed in the city of Savannah, Georgia, and the implications of the growth of megacities and the globalization of population movement for the diffusion of diseases and the emergence of a different state of disease and health ecology in the urban population of the future. Melinda was a trailblazer for women academics. She traveled widely and conducted international research in a time when most young women simply didn’t. Melinda was an active member of the generation that shattered ill-conceived beliefs and expectations about a woman’s place in academia. Her hard work and sacrifice made it possible for generations of young women to have fulfilling and successful academic careers.

Professor Meade taught courses from first year undergraduate to doctoral levels on issues of changing population dynamics and structure, agricultural modernization, urbanization, and globalization in the developing world; on population geography, medical geography, disease ecology, the world’s food supply; and on Tropical Asia. She excited students with discussions of mobility and exposure and why both people and places are important for human health. She spoke of the day in 1974 when the world’s population reached 4 billion, and how there was fear about rampant famine due to overpopulation, but how Esther Boserup’s predictions of necessity producing innovation and Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution averted those dire forecasts. Dr. Meade won the Spencer and Tanner Award for excellence in inspirational undergraduate teaching from UNC, and was inducted into the UNC Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars in 2000. Melinda is best known, particularly to undergraduates, as the author of the definitive textbook in the field of medical geography. Working with a succession of co-authors, she has opened the world of population and health to students far beyond the walls of UNC.

Over her many years as the departmental population and medical geographer, Melinda oversaw the training of 4 MA and 7 PhD students. She also informally mentored many other students, particularly women scholars. Melinda was a well-respected and well-loved mentor. Her intellect and compassion were always on hand when working through research or contemplating life as a graduate student. She gave unselfishly of her time to her graduate students and approached student research with an enthusiasm and excitement that was contagious. She encouraged people to think deeply and to strive not just to “do research” on a population, but to truly understand and appreciate the different ways in which diverse populations live their lives. Melinda engaged her students in scholarly dialogue which demanded a maturity of thinking which naturally led to intellectual development. She read voraciously and widely. She was also stubborn and brutally honest. Her academic legacy is a far reaching network of scholars who focus on people and places and health outcomes.

She loved gardening, growing fabulously beautiful roses, and her dogs, including Jenny, who misses Melinda very much. A beautiful video tribute to Melinda’s life entitled “ATLAS HANDS” can be watched at swraex.wistia.com/medias/plaluvak07.

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New Books for Geographers

New Books: November 2013

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Publishers are welcome to send new volumes to the Editor-in-Chief (Kent Mathewson, Editor-in-Chief, AAG Review of Books, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803).

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

December, 2013

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Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Sharing Knowledge
AAG Staff
AAG Staff

Steven Kale

Steven R. Kale, 65, died November 7, 2013, in his hometown of Salem, Oregon, following a brief illness. Kale achieved much in his life in academics, his profession, and in relationships with others in his life.

Kale, the middle of three children, was born in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1948 to Alton and Ruby Kale. His early years were spent in central Kansas where he and his older brother James became Eagle Scouts. After graduating from Mankato High School in 1966, Kale matriculated at Kansas State University. He earned degrees in Geography and Business Administration. Later, he obtained a master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

In 1975, Steve started his career as an economist at the Nebraska Department of Economic Development. From 1982 to 1989, Kale taught courses and conducted research in economic development, area and community development, renewable energy, and other topics at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Kale left the University in 1989 to take on transportation work at the Oregon Department of Transportation. He remained at ODOT for 16 years and retired as the agency’s primary freight planning person. However, Steve continued to work, setting up his own consulting firm and taking on jobs for several Oregon ports and intermodal freight businesses to help them plan seed funding for projects. He also subcontracted with other consulting firms on a variety of transportation related projects.

Steve was an active member of many professional organization and national bodies, including the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Intermodal Freight Transport Committee of the Transportation Research Board where he served as the chair. Kale was also active in the Association of American Geographers and the International Geographic Union. His enthusiasm for geography and interest in his alma mater kept him involved on the KSU Geography Alumni Board.

Kale’s lifelong interest in far-away places took him to Oulu, Finland; Mendoza, Argentina; Sidney, Australia; Dubrovnik, Croatia; and much of Europe. He also managed to visit all 50 U.S. states. Steve’s travels also took him to the Arctic Circle twice: once in Alaska and another time in Finland.

A lover of the outdoors, Kale was also interested in hiking, camping, skiing, canoeing, whitewater rafting, and bird watching. He was an ardent supporter of environmental protection and cultivated lifelong friendships with many people. Steve’s personal and professional qualities were very much respected. He will be dearly missed.

Steve was preceded in death by his mother Ruby (Streit), father Alton Dale Kale, his sister Elaine and brother James. He is survived by three nephews: Jonathan Cote, David Kale, and Dan Kale.

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President's Column

Physical Geography In the AAG Journals: Is It Time for a New Approach and a New Journal?

WinklerWinkler
Winkler

A great deal of excellent research is conducted by physical geographers. Unfortunately, only a small portion of this research is published in the two AAG journals, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and The Professional Geographer. As you peruse your November issue of the Annals, you may notice that, for the first time in a number of years, this issue does not include an Environmental Sciences (ES) section. The small number of submissions to this section, in conjunction with the recent increase in the number of Annals issues per year, has made it more difficult to regularly populate an ES section in spite of extensive efforts by the current ES editor to recruit manuscripts. The submission rate of physical geography manuscripts is in sharp contrast to the overall substantial increase in manuscripts submitted to the Annals and The Professional Geographer, but is consistent with trends observed for journals published by other geographical scholarly societies. Few articles by physical geographers appear in the Transactions of the British Geographical Society, for example.

Why do physical geographers publish less in the AAG journals compared to other subfields of geography? Like any author, physical geographers want their research to reach the largest possible audience. They also want their work to reach the audience that can best make use of, and build upon, their research. The perception of many physical geographers is that these goals may not be achieved by publishing in the AAG journals. My own experience is in line with this perception. Over my career, I have published a modest number of physical geography-related articles in the Annals and The Professional Geographer. For the most part, these articles have been cited by fellow “geographer climatologists.” This, of course, is a community whom I respect, and I am honored that they read my work. But at the same time, I would have liked a broader readership for these articles. Other physical geographers apparently feel similarly, as recent surveys, such as that of Steven Quiring* from Texas A&M University, suggest a decline in the proportion of physical geography articles published in geography journals. Quiring found that in 1989-1997 geographer climatologists published 21% of their articles in geography journals, but by 1998-2005 the proportion had dropped to only 11%.

Another confounding factor is that physical geographers are frequently involved in multi-disciplinary research, and the selection of a journal for publication is often a group decision. Journals with names like Annals of the Association of American Geographers or The Professional Geographer can be seen as overly discipline-specific to non-geographers on a research team. More often, interdisciplinary research is submitted to journals serving a broad range of disciplines or to disciplinary journals with exceptionally large readerships. Greater use of quantitative indices to evaluate research success may also be contributing to the relatively small number of submissions by physical geographers to AAG journals. A decade or more ago, quantification of individual productivity was mostly limited to the number of articles published per year, but now H-factors, total number of citations, and related measures are also used to evaluate research productivity and impact. Since physical geographers often compete for resources and recognition with other physical scientists, they are compelled to publish in journals with similar impact factors as the publication outlets of their non-geography colleagues.

What impact does the limited publication by physical geographers in the Annals and The Professional Geography have on the AAG and, more generally, the discipline of geography? In my opinion, the potential consequences are large. We argue that a major strength of our discipline is its integrative nature and the ability of geographers to think and work across the human/physical divide. Yet how strongly can we make this argument if our major journals include little physical geography? What impression do these journals give others of the breadth of geography and its synergies? Also, how is a geography community built, if a major component of the discipline is not publishing in geography journals, and, consequently, other geographers are largely unaware of their work? And if physical geographers no longer turn to the AAG as a publication outlet, will they continue to participate in and support other aspects of the AAG, such as its professional meetings?

The concerns raised above are not new. Nor do they apply only to physical geography. But the lack of an ES section in next month’s Annals reinforces the need for new efforts to ensure the visibility of physical geography within the geography community and beyond.

An essential initial step is for individual physical geographers — including me — to acknowledge the importance of a physical geography presence in AAG journals to the discipline as a whole. A modest commitment, of perhaps one manuscript submission every three to four years over the course of one’s publishing career, would go a long way to increasing physical geography’s presence in the Annals and The Professional Geographer. Physical geographers also need to reconsider what constitutes an “Annals article.” Many of us wait to submit to the Annals until we have that special manuscript we think appeals broadly across much of geography or can be written in a manner that is easily understandable across multiple subfields. We need to keep in mind that scientifically-sound manuscripts that move a subfield of geography forward also merit review and potential publication in the Annals. Greater publicity of AAG journals to other disciplines is also needed. Strategically-distributed press releases of particularly significant papers, whatever the subfield, can attract readership. Additional options include the wide distribution of the table of contents of the Annals and The Professional Geographer via relevant listservs and other media to reach a broader audience.

But “out of the box” approaches also need to be considered. One such option is for the AAG to add new journals to its publications suite — journals that have the AAG imprimatur, yet appeal to a wide range of disciplines and have broad visibility. Such a journal, tentatively titled Geohumanities, is already under consideration by the AAG Council and Central Office, and, at its last meeting, the AAG Council initiated discussion of a second journal geared toward environmental science, referred to, for discussion only at this point, as Geographical Perspectives on Global Change. Both journals would have as their goal the publication of quality research by geographers and non-geographers that advances geographic understanding and/or employs geographic methods and techniques.

How might a new AAG-sponsored global change/environmental science journal enhance the visibility of physical geography research? A thematic, rather than disciplinary, journal title would hopefully attract a broad readership across multiple disciplines. A broad readership, in turn, would make this journal an attractive outlet for physical geographers and other environmental scientists to publish their research. Also, a more thematic journal would be appealing as a publication outlet for the outcomes of interdisciplinary research efforts. If well supported by physical geographers, all geographers could easily turn to this journal to keep abreast of new developments in physical geography. In addition, the AAG could more aggressively market a journal devoted to global change/environmental science to other disciplines, especially those in the natural sciences, than what is currently possible when only a small number of articles related to environmental science are published in the Annals and The Physical Geographer. Wider marketing would bring more attention to the entire AAG journal suite, benefiting our current journals, as well as the proposed new journal. Furthermore, the AAG imprimatur on a successful global change/environmental science journal that is highly regarded across multiple disciplines would bring more visibility to geography’s contribution to these areas, a benefit for the entire discipline.

Obviously, further effort is needed to assure such a journal’s success. We need to explore and identify a niche(s) that an AAG-sponsored global change/environmental science journal could best fill, and selection of a journal title requires careful attention. A visionary, well respected, and dedicated editor, along with a world-class editorial board drawn from multiple disciplines, are essential to the journal’s success. An intense and extensive publicity campaign is also essential. Admittedly, initiating a new journal, especially at a time when the publication industry is undergoing substantial change, has some risk. But so, too, does having a major portion of our discipline not publishing in AAG journals.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on a new journal, specifically, and on physical geography, more broadly. Also, we will have a moderated discussion on how the AAG can better support physical geography at our annual meeting in Tampa. I invite you to participate. This session is tentatively scheduled for 11:45 a.m. – 12:40 p.m., Thursday, April 10, 2014. More information will be posted on the AAG website and distributed electronically via the AAG Geogram.

–Julie Winkler

DOI: 10.14433/2013.0018

* For more information on the survey conducted by Steven Quiring see “Trends in Publication Outlets of Geographer-Climatologists,” The Professional Geographer, Volume 59, Issue 3, pages 357–364, August 2007. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9272.2007.00618.x Members can log in to see this article.

 

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Changing Human Populations Networks and Connections Spatial Narratives
Julie Winkler
Julie Winkler