Institute of Geography of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

Translatora s Acknowledgements. 1. Plan of the Present Work. 2. Social Space. 3. Spatial Architectonics. 4. From Absolute Space to Abstract Space. 5. Contradictory Space. 6. From the Contradictions of Space to Differential Space. 7. Openings and Conclusions. Afterword by David Harvey. Index.

This paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process, involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity. The paper draws on a seminar series on the ‘Geographies of Energy Transition: security, climate, governance' hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011, which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography. Focussing on the UK Government's policy for a low carbon transition, the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy. Six concepts are introduced and explained: location, landscape, territoriality, spatial differentiation, scaling, and spatial embeddedness. Examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low-carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent – and contending – potential geographical futures are in play. More attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low-carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low-carbon economy will be like. It also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available.

ABSTRACT Aim Spatial modelling techniques are increasingly used in species distribution modelling. However, the implemented techniques differ in their modelling performance, and some consensus methods are needed to reduce the uncertainty of predictions. In this study, we tested the predictive accuracies of five consensus methods, namely Weighted Average (WA), Mean(All), Median(All), Median(PCA), and Best, for 28 threatened plant species. Location North‐eastern Finland, Europe. Methods The spatial distributions of the plant species were forecasted using eight state‐of‐the‐art single‐modelling techniques providing an ensemble of predictions. The probability values of occurrence were then combined using five consensus algorithms. The predictive accuracies of the single‐model and consensus methods were assessed by computing the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver‐operating characteristic plot. Results The mean AUC values varied between 0.697 (classification tree analysis) and 0.813 (random forest) for the single‐models, and from 0.757 to 0.850 for the consensus methods. WA and Mean(All) consensus methods provided significantly more robust predictions than all the single‐models and the other consensus methods. Main conclusions Consensus methods based on average function algorithms may increase significantly the accuracy of species distribution forecasts, and thus they show considerable promise for different conservation biological and biogeographical applications.

To address devastating environmental crises and to improve human well-being, China has been implementing a number of national policies on payments for ecosystem services. Two of them, the Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) and the Grain to Green Program (GTGP), are among the biggest programs in the world because of their ambitious goals, massive scales, huge payments, and potentially enormous impacts. The NFCP conserves natural forests through logging bans and afforestation with incentives to forest enterprises, whereas the GTGP converts cropland on steep slopes to forest and grassland by providing farmers with grain and cash subsidies. Overall ecological effects are beneficial, and socioeconomic effects are mostly positive. Whereas there are time lags in ecological effects, socioeconomic effects are more immediate. Both the NFCP and the GTGP also have global implications because they increase vegetative cover, enhance carbon sequestration, and reduce dust to other countries by controlling soil erosion. The future impacts of these programs may be even bigger. Extended payments for the GTGP have recently been approved by the central government for up to 8 years. The NFCP is likely to follow suit and receive renewed payments. To make these programs more effective, we recommend systematic planning, diversified funding, effective compensation, integrated research, and comprehensive monitoring. Effective implementation of these programs can also provide important experiences and lessons for other ecosystem service payment programs in China and many other parts of the world.

This article interrogates the relationship between two apparently disjointed themes: the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other. The argument advanced in this article attempts to tease out this apparently paradoxical condition. On the one hand, the climate is seemingly politicized as never before and has been propelled high on the policy agenda. On the other hand, a number of increasingly influential political philosophers insist on how the post-politicization (or de-politicization) of the public sphere (in parallel and intertwined with processes of neoliberalization) have been key markers of the political process over the past few decades. We proceed in four steps. First, we briefly outline the basic contours of the argument and its premises. Second, we explore the ways in which the present climate conundrum is predominantly staged through the mobilization of particular apocalyptic imaginaries. Third, we argue that this specific (re-)presentation of climate change and its associated policies is sustained by decidedly populist gestures. Finally, we discuss how this particular choreographing of climate change is one of the arenas through which a post-political frame and post-democratic political configuration have been mediated.

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) pertains to the use of geographic information sys-tems (GIS) to broaden public involvement in policymaking as well as to the value of GIS to promote the goals of nongovernmental organizations, grassroots groups, and community-based organizations. The article first traces the social history of PPGIS. It then argues that PPGIS has been socially constructed by a broad set of actors in research across disciplines and in practice across sectors. This produced and reproduced concept is then expli-cated through four major themes found across the breadth of the PPGIS literature: place and people, technology and data, process, and outcome and evaluation. The themes constitute a framework for evaluating current PPGIS activities and a roadmap for future PPGIS research and practice. Key Words: community-based organiza-tions, geographic information systems, grassroots groups, PPGIS, social construction. I t is an odd concept to attribute to a piece of software the potential to enhance or limit public participation in policymaking, empower or marginalize community members to improve their lives, counter or enable agendas of the powerful, and advance or diminish

Choosing effective colour schemes for thematic maps is surprisingly difficult. ColorBrewer is an online tool designed to take some of the guesswork out of this process by helping users select appropriate colour schemes for their specific mapping needs by considering: the number of data classes; the nature of their data (matched with sequential, diverging and qualitative schemes); and the end-use environment for the map (e.g., CRT, LCD, printed, projected, photocopied). ColorBrewer contains 'learn more' tutorials to help guide users, prompts them to test-drive colour schemes as both map and legend, and provides output in five colour specification systems.

Part 1 How meaning is derived from maps: taking a scientific approach in improving map representation and design an information processing view of vision and visual cognition - cartographic implications how maps are seen how maps are understood. Part 2 How maps are imbued with meaning: a Primer On Semiotics For Understanding Map Representation A Functional approach to map representation - semantics and syntactics of map signs a lexical approach to map representation - map pragmatics. Part 3 How maps are used - applications in geographical visualization: GVIS - facilitating visual thinking GVIS - relationship in space and time GVIS - should we believe what we see.

Es un análisis exhaustivo de las dimensiones sociales del cambio climático, pues se considera una prioridad para el desarrollo humano aprender a vivir con sus efectos. Se presentan una serie de opciones que puede afrontar la humanidad en esta tarea estrictamente defensiva de adaptación a los riesgos del calentamiento global de la Tierra. Es una obra de referencia para los estudiantes de pregrado y postgrado interesados en los estudios sobre cambio climático, geografía y desarrollo.

Abstract Border policing and immigration law enforcement produce a spectacle that enacts a scene of ‘exclusion’. Such spectacles render migrant ‘illegality’ visible. Thus, these material practices help to generate a constellation of images and discursive formations, which repetitively supply migrant ‘illegality’ with the semblance of an objective fact. Yet, the more these spectacles fuel anti-immigrant controversy, the more the veritable inclusion of the migrants targeted for exclusion proceeds apace. Their ‘inclusion’ is finally devoted to the subordination of their labour, which is best accomplished only insofar as their incorporation is persistently beleaguered with exclusionary campaigns that ensure that this inclusion is itself a form of subjugation. At stake, then, is a larger sociopolitical (and legal) process of inclusion through exclusion. This we may comprehend as the obscene of inclusion. The castigation of ‘illegals’ thereby supplies the rationale for essentializing citizenship inequalities as categorical differences that then may be racialized.

This important collection examines deportation as an increasingly global mechanism of state control. Anthropologists, historians, legal scholars, and sociologists consider not only the physical expulsion of noncitizens but also the social discipline and labor subordination resulting from deportability, the threat of forced removal. They explore practices and experiences of deportation in regional and national settings from the U.S.-Mexico border to Israel, and from Somalia to Switzerland. They also address broader questions, including the ontological significance of freedom of movement; the historical antecedents of deportation, such as banishment and exile; and the development, entrenchment, and consequences of organizing sovereign power and framing individual rights by territory. Whether investigating the power that individual and corporate sponsors have over the fate of foreign laborers in Bahrain, the implications of Germany's temporary suspension of deportation orders for pregnant and ill migrants, or the significance of the detention camp, the contributors reveal how deportation reflects and reproduces notions about public health, racial purity, and class privilege. They also provide insight into how deportation and deportability are experienced by individuals, including Arabs, South Asians, and Muslims in the United States. One contributor looks at asylum claims in light of an unusual anti-deportation campaign mounted by Algerian refugees in Montreal; others analyze the European Union as an entity specifically dedicated to governing mobility inside and across its official borders. The Deportation Regime addresses urgent issues related to human rights, international migration, and the extensive security measures implemented by nation-states since September 11, 2001.

List of Figures. List of Contributors.Preface. Acknowledgements.1. Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics: Noel Castree (University of Manchester).2. Being Constructive About Nature?: David Demeritt (Kings College, London).3. Nature, Poststructuralism, and Politics: Bruce Braun (University of Minnesota) and Joel Wainwright (University of Minnesota).4. The Nature of 'Race': Kay Anderson (Durham University).5. Postcolonialism and the Production of Nature: Derek Gregory (University of British Columbia).6. Gendered Natures: Feminism, Politics, and Social Nature: Jane Moeckli (University of Iowa) and Bruce Braun (University of Minnesota).7. Social Nature and Environmental Policy in the South: Views from Verandah and Veld: Piers Blaikie (University of East Anglia).8. Political Ecology: A Critical Agenda for Change?: Ray Bryant (King's College, London).9. Natural Disasters?: Mark Pelling (University of Liverpool).10. Marxism, Capitalism, and the Production of Nature: Noel Castree (University of Manchester).11. Dissolving Dualisms: Actor-networks and the Reimagination of Nature: Noel Castree (University of Manchester) and Tom MacMillan (University of Manchester).12. Solid Rock and Shifting Sands: The Moral Paradox of saving a Socially Constructed Nature: James Proctor (University of California, Santa Barbara).Index.

GEOGRAPHICAL CYCLE.continental coast, whichever it proves to be, along the Pacific to the meridian of Peter island.Magnetic observations, deep-sea soundings, and dredgings would be taken throughout the three seasons; but, looking to the uncertain movements of the pack-ice, and to our ignorance of the conditions obtaining over the unknown area, a very wide discretion will be given to the leader of the expedition.Simultaneously, the German expedition would proceed to its station at Kerguelen island, and thence to the scene of its labours, and, we hope, its discoveries.The ENDERBY or YALDIVIA and WEDDELL quadrants certainly comprise investigations of equal importance, including the discovery of that part of the continental land south of the Weddell sea, which is believed to comprise rocks other than volcanic.Here a landing-party will have work of even greater interest than that which lands in McMurdo bay.But it is not for me even to outline the contemplated German exploration, which has, doubtless, already been systematically planned by the able advisers of the expedition.I believe that this great geographical enterprise is one of the most important that has ever been conceived.It will add largely to the sum of human knowledge, and, in many ways, will be of direct benefit to mankind.It is a beneficent work, a work which makes for peace and good fellowship among nations.It must rejoice the hearts of all geographers that the countrymen of HuImboldt, of Ritter, of Kiepert, of Richthofen, and of Neumayer should combine with the countrymen of Banks, of Rennell, of Murchison, and of Sabine to achieve a grand scientific work which will redound to the honour of both nations.

Including urban case studies and contributions from prominent urban scholars, this volume will give students, scholars and researchers of geographical, environmental and urban studies a better understanding of how interrelated, everyday economic, political and cultural processes form and transform urban environments.

Abstract Why does the regulation of risks to human health and safety vary so dramatically from one policy domain to another? Why are some risks regulated aggressively and others responded to only modestly? Is there any logic to the techniques we use in risk regulation? This book addresses these important questions by systematically examining variety amongst risk regulation regimes across policy domains, analysing the significant driving forces shaping those regimes, and identifying the causes of regulatory failure and success. In order to do so, the book develops a systems‐based concept of a ‘risk regulation regime’, which enables comparative description and analysis of the rules, institutional arrangements, and cultures that are bound up with the handling of risk within and between regimes. Using that framework, the book analyses how regimes and their constituent components are differentially shaped by three major driving forces—namely, the pressures exerted by market failure, by public opinion, and by organized interests inside and outside the state apparatus—and blame‐avoidance responses of regimes in the face of pressures for greater openness. The book applies the method to analyse a range of risk regulation regimes that cross the divide between ‘natural’ and ‘socially created’, state‐created and market‐created, ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’, high‐tech and low‐tech, individually, and corporately produced risks. Those regimes include the release of paedophiles into the community, air pollution, local road safety, radon, pesticides, and dangerous dogs. The analysis reveals both variations and paradoxes that can neither be identified by single case studies, nor be easily explained by macro‐oriented approaches to understanding risk regulation. The Government of Risk shows how such an approach is of high policy relevance as well as of considerable theoretical importance.

To gain a better understanding of the global application of soil erosion prediction models, we comprehensively reviewed relevant peer-reviewed research literature on soil-erosion modelling published between 1994 and 2017. We aimed to identify (i) the processes and models most frequently addressed in the literature, (ii) the regions within which models are primarily applied, (iii) the regions which remain unaddressed and why, and (iv) how frequently studies are conducted to validate/evaluate model outcomes relative to measured data. To perform this task, we combined the collective knowledge of 67 soil-erosion scientists from 25 countries. The resulting database, named 'Global Applications of Soil Erosion Modelling Tracker (GASEMT)', includes 3030 individual modelling records from 126 countries, encompassing all continents (except Antarctica). Out of the 8471 articles identified as potentially relevant, we reviewed 1697 appropriate articles and systematically evaluated and transferred 42 relevant attributes into the database. This GASEMT database provides comprehensive insights into the state-of-the-art of soil- erosion models and model applications worldwide. This database intends to support the upcoming country-based United Nations global soil-erosion assessment in addition to helping to inform soil erosion research priorities by building a foundation for future targeted, in-depth analyses. GASEMT is an open-source database available to the entire user-community to develop research, rectify errors, and make future expansions.

Downscaling, or translation across scales, is a term adopted in recent years to describe a set of techniques that relate local-and regional-scale climate variables to the larger scale atmospheric forcing. Conceptually, this is a direct evolution of more traditional techniques in synoptic climatology; however, the downscaling approach was developed specifically to address present needs in global environmental change research, and the need for more detailed temporal and spatial information from Global Climate Models (GCMs). Two general categories exist for downscaling techniques: process based techniques focused on nested models, and empirical techniques using one form or another of transfer function between scales. While in the long term nested models hold the greatest promise for regional-scale analysis, this approach is still in development, requires detailed surface climate data, and is dependent on high end computer availability. Conversely, empirical relationships offer a more immediate solution and significantly lower computing requirements, consequently offering an approach that can be rapidly adopted by a wider community of scientists. In this paper, an application of empirical downscaling of regional precipitation is implemented to demonstrate its effectiveness for evaluating GCM simulations and developing regional climate change scenarios. Gridded analyses of synoptic-scale circulation fields are related to regional precipitation using neural nets. Comparable GCM circulation fields are then used with the derived relat~onships to investigate control simulation and doubled atmospheric CO2 simulation synoptic-scale forcing on regional climates.

“New Keywords: Migration and Borders” is a collaborative writing project aimed at developing a nexus of terms and concepts that fill-out the contemporary problematic of migration. It moves beyond traditional and critical migration studies by building on cultural studies and post-colonial analyses, and by drawing on a diverse set of longstanding author engagements with migrant movements. The paper is organized in four parts (i) Introduction, (ii) Migration, Knowledge, Politics, (iii) Bordering, and (iv) Migrant Space/Times. The keywords on which we focus are: Migration/Migration Studies; Militant Investigation; Counter-mapping; Border Spectacle; Border Regime; Politics of Protection; Externalization; Migrant Labour; Differential inclusion/exclusion; Migrant struggles; and Subjectivity.

Self organizing maps (SOMs) are used to locate archetypal points that describe the multi-dimensional distribution function of a gridded sea level pressure data set for the northeast United States. These points -nodes on the SOM -identify the primary features of the synoptic-scale circulation over the region. In effect, the nodes represent a non-linear distribution of overlapping, non-discreet, circulation types. The circulation patterns are readily visualized in a 2-dimensional array (the SOM) that places similar types adjacent to one another and very different types far apart in the SOM space. The SOM is used to describe synoptic circulation changes over time, and to relate the circulation to January station precipitation data (for State College, Pennsylvania) in the center of the domain. The paper focuses on the methodology; however, the analysis suggests that circulation systems that promote precipitation have decreased over the last 40 yr -although January precipitation at State College has actually increased. Further analysis with the SOM indicates that this is due to a change in precipitation characteristics of the synoptic-scale circulation features, rather than to their frequency of occurrence.

(1996). The city as a hybrid: On nature, society and cyborg urbanization. Capitalism Nature Socialism: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 65-80.