Search

In this discussion piece, eight scholars in geography, urban planning, and agri-food studies from the United States (US) and France engage in a bi-national comparison to deepen our collective understanding of food and land justice. We specifically contextualize land justice as a critical component of food justice in both the US and France in three key areas: access to land for cultivation, urban agriculture, and non-agricultural forms of food provisioning. The US and France are interesting cases to compare, considering the differences and similarities in their colonial and agricultural histories, persistent and systemic race and class-based inequities in land access, and the roles of public bodies and social movements. In this paper, we synthesize literature, share reflections, and offer directions for future scholarship, including a broader comparative research agenda. An important difference we found is in the degree of scholarly attention to race and how it mediates access to land. We also observe that few scholars articulate a clear definition of justice in their work, nor do they share a common justice framework. We hope that this paper contributes to a more robust food and land justice framework for the use of scholars, practitioners and activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography may influence mental health by inducing changes to social and physical environmental and health-related factors. This understanding is largely based on older studies from Western Europe. We sought to quantify contemporary relationships between urbanicity and self-reported poor mental health days in US counties. We performed regression on US counties (n = 3142) using data from the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps. Controlling for state, age, income, education, and race/ethnicity, large central metro counties reported 0.24 fewer average poor mental health days than small metro counties (t = − 5.78, df = 423, p <.001). Noncore counties had 0.07 more average poor mental health days than small metro counties (t = 3.06, df = 1690, p = 0.002). Better mental health in large central metro counties was partly mediated by differences in the built environment, such as better food environments. Poorer mental health in noncore counties was not mediated by considered mediators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Carolinas of the United States, there are two significant land-surface features, the coastline and the Sandhills (inland), over which convection frequently forms during the summer months. The Sandhills, an area of sandy soil surrounded by other soil types, extends through the central Carolinas and is often the origin of convective storms. Nearby, sea-breeze circulations form along the coastline initiating convection during summers. The interaction between the outflow from the Sandhills convection, "the Sandhills front", and the sea-breeze front initiates and enhances deep convection in the region. The objective of this paper is to characterize and classify these mesoscale interactions, taking into account the geography and the background flow. Using radar and in situ observations, it is found that these interactions typically occur on 24% of all days in June and 36% of the days in June when synoptic forcing is weak or absent. Onshore, offshore, and southwesterly background flows result in different strengths and locations of the convection associated with these interactions. Additionally, light winds (< 3 m s−1) and moderate winds (3–6 m s−1) influence these interactions differently. Interactions between the two fronts during moderate southwesterly flow produce widespread regional precipitation with the highest precipitation amounts due to the advection of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. Interactions during light offshore winds also produce strong interactions between the sea-breeze front and the Sandhills front possibly due to opposing flows that aid in the strengthening of a well-developed sea-breeze. Interactions occur less frequently during onshore flow and have the least precipitation amounts. The sea-breeze circulation is weak in such cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The persistent relationship between race and unemployment among young men and women has been among the most vexing problems faced by Black communities in the Post-Civil Rights era. Researchers have tried to identify mechanisms through which racial status continues to bear on employment status by identifying individual attributes that render workers of different racial identities similarly likely to secure employment. When Black and White workers with similar human capital profiles have different odds of employment, we are left to speculate about what is behind those differences. In this paper, I demonstrate that racial differences in the odds of unemployment are greater in some states than in others and suggest that some part of the racial employment gap can be explained by state-level attributes. First, however, we must identify convincing measures of the strength of association between race and employment status across states. I offer four such measures and rank the states on each. We are left with some surprising answers to the question “where does race matter most?” and empirical foundations for a research agenda that sheds new light on racial employment gaps by treating labor markets rather than labor market participants as the units of observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to climate change, plant populations experience environmental conditions to which they are not adapted. Our understanding of the next century's vegetation geography depends on the distance, direction, and rate at which plant distributions shift in response to a changing climate. In this study we test the sensitivity of tree range shifts (measured as the difference between seedling and mature tree ranges in climate space) to wildfire occurrence, using 74,069 Forest Inventory Analysis plots across nine states in the western United States. Wildfire significantly increased the seedling-only range displacement for 2 of the 8 tree species in which seedling-only plots were displaced from tree-plus-seedling plots in the same direction with and without recent fire. The direction of climatic displacement was consistent with that expected for warmer and drier conditions. The greater seedling-only range displacement observed across burned plots suggests that fire can accelerate climate-related range shifts and that fire and fire management will play a role in the rate of vegetation redistribution in response to climate change. Tree species that are expanding their distribution in response to climate change could be hindered or facilitated by disturbances. Here the authors analyse forest inventory data from the western US to test the hypothesis that wildfire can facilitate climate-induced range shifts in trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The main purpose of this paper is to examine geographic variation in unmet need for mental health care among racially/ethnically diverse adults with psychiatric disorders in the US.Methods: Drawn from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES; 2001-2003), adults with any past year psychiatric disorder diagnosis (n = 3211) from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds were selected for analyses. Using weighted data, descriptive analyses and logistic regression analyses were conducted.Results: Two-thirds of the total sample had unmet mental health care need, which differed significantly by race/ethnicity (p < .001). Logistic regression analyses show regional variation of the effect of race/ethnicity in unmet need: after adjusting for covariates, Latinos in the South, Blacks and Latinos in the Midwest, and Latinos and Asians in the West had higher unmet need than non-Hispanic Whites, whereas no significant racial/ethnic effects were found in the Northeast.Conclusions: Findings suggest that geographic region plays an important role in the sufficient use of mental health services among racial/ethnic minorities. Further research should elucidate reasons for geographic disparities in mental health care among racial/ethnic minority adults to reduce disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper examines cross-border mergers and acquisitions undertaken by U.S. companies to determine whether geographic distance directly affects these firms' governance decisions. • We find that U.S. firms tend to acquire higher stakes in geographically proximate targets than in remote ones. • The paper also investigates the moderating effect of geographic distance on cultural distance and political risk. We find that as these two hazards increase, acquirers prefer shared ownership for proximate deals, and full ownership for acquisitions of geographically distant targets. These findings indicate that the previously-reported effects of cultural distance and political risk on FDI are not absolute, but they are moderated by geographic distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces multinational firms in a new economic geography model. There, unskilled labor mobility leads to less concentration of production than skilled labor mobility does. This is in line with empirical evidence that agglomeration of production in Europe is less pronounced than in the United States. The different patterns in (skilled versus unskilled) labor mobility together with the presence of multinational firms form one explanation of the actual differences in the spreading of industries in Europe as compared to the US [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to link the propensity for innovative activity to spatially cluster to the stage of die industry life cycle. The theory of knowledge spillovers, based on the knowledge production function for innovative activity, suggests that geographic proximity matters the most where tacit knowledge plays an important role in the generation of innovative activity. According to the emerging literature of the industry life cycle, tacit knowledge plays the most important role during the early stages of the industry life cycle. Based on a data base that identifies innovative activity for individual states and specific industries for the United States, the empirical evidence suggests that the propensity for innovative activity is shaped by the stage of the industry life cycle. While the generation of new economic knowledge tends to result in a greater propensity for innovative activity to cluster during the early stages of the industry life cycle, innovative activity tends to be more highly dispersed during the mature and declining stages of the life cycle, particularly after controlling for the extent to which the location of production is geographically concentrated. This may suggest that the positive agglomeration effects during the early stages of the industry life cycle become replaced by congestion effects during the latter stages of the industry life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational mobility has remained stable over recent decades in the United States but varies sharply across the country. In this article, I document that areas with more prevalent slavery by the outbreak of the Civil War exhibit substantially less upward mobility today. I find a negative link between prior slavery and contemporary mobility within states, when controlling for a wide range of historical and contemporary factors including income and inequality, focusing on the historical slave states, using a variety of mobility measures, and when exploiting geographical differences in the suitability for cultivating cotton as an instrument for the prevalence of slavery. As a first step to disentangle the underlying channels of persistence, I examine whether any of the five broad factors highlighted by Chetty et al. (2014a) as the most important correlates of upward mobility-family structure, income inequality, school quality, segregation, and social capital-can account for the link between earlier slavery and current mobility. More fragile family structures in areas where slavery was more prevalent, as reflected in lower marriage rates and a larger share of children living in single-parent households, is seemingly the most relevant to understand why it still shapes the geography of opportunity in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do graduate students believe they are being well equipped to understand the implications of climate change as part of their research and professional careers? With climate change impacting our ecosystems, infrastructure, and societies, do we see higher-education institutions preparing future generations to lead us through these challenges? Previous studies have captured individuals' knowledge of the climate system ranging from the K-12 level to adulthood, but very few studies have investigated the perception of climate education held by graduate students. We focused our efforts on three unique research questions: (i) what is the level of climate education that graduate students believe they are receiving, (ii) what is their view on the importance of climate education, and (iii) to what level do they perceive they are incorporating the impacts of a changing climate in their research? We developed and distributed a nationwide survey (495 respondents) to graduate students to capture their perception of the level of climate education being offered and the importance of climate education. We show that graduate students in the agricultural, atmospheric, biological, computer, engineering, environmental, geographic, geologic, health, and social sciences indicate that climate education is very important and find that there are a number of climate courses offered at institutions nationwide; however, most students do not feel they are receiving a large breadth or depth of climate education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residing in a high-poverty area has consistently been associated with higher mortality rates, but the association between poverty and mortality can change over time. We examine the association between neighborhood poverty and mortality in New York City (NYC) during 1990-2010 to document mortality disparity changes over time and determine causes of death for which disparities are greatest. We used NYC and New York state mortality data for years 1990, 2000, and 2010 to calculate all-cause and cause-specific age-adjusted death rates (AADRs) by census tract poverty (CTP), which is the proportion of persons in a census tract living below the federal poverty threshold. We calculated mortality disparities, measured as the difference in AADR between the lowest and highest CTP groups, within and across race/ethnicity, nativity, and sex categories by year. We observed higher all-cause AADRs with higher CTP for each year for all race/ethnicities, both sexes, and US-born persons. Mortality disparities decreased progressively during 1990-2010 for the NYC population overall, for each race/ethnic group, and for the majority of causes of death. The overall mortality disparity between the highest and lowest CTP groups during 2010 was 2.55 deaths/1000 population. The largest contributors to mortality disparities were heart disease (51.52 deaths/100,000 population), human immunodeficiency virus (19.96/100,000 population), and diabetes (19.59/100,000 population). We show that progress was made in narrowing socioeconomic disparities in mortality during 1990-2010, but substantial disparities remain. Future efforts toward achieving health equity in NYC mortality should focus on areas contributing most to disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study of the effect of geographic areas within a U.S. maximum security state correctional institution on the racial attitudes of new inmates admitted between April 26, 1974 and May 27, 1974. Results show a low norm scale on the Black Equality Scale which indicates negative attitudes toward interracial interaction. Seventy percent of the inmates decreased in prejudice over the time period in the living area with most positive norms. The norms for interracial interaction were reportedly influenced by the historical and physical layout of the living areas. Also noted is the possibility of initiating integration with new inmates in a specific area.

This short intervention provides a snap shot of key concerns, developments, and challenges in the doctoral programs currently provided by Geography Departments in universities in the United States. It profiles overarching trends in recruitment and graduations, charts the standard routes students navigate through, documents the ever more systematic effort to provide greater professionalization for students and reflects upon the ramifications of the economic recession for doctoral students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a multi-year research and action project carried out under the aegis of the Association of American Geographers to address the cultures and practices of doctoral programs in the discipline. We explore the diversity of career paths that graduate students seek, the extent to which doctoral programs are responsive to the range of career possibilities, and whether these programs are aware of preferential and contextual differences within the student body, for example, by gender and citizenship. We briefly review the educational resources and activities the project has developed to support change that addresses the research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borrowing from recent finance research that describes geographic distance as a determinant of information asymmetry and performance, we examine the relation between audit quality and auditor-client proximity. After controlling for monitoring costs (audit fees) and client firms' selection of auditors, we find that accruals quality (a common proxy for audit performance) improves with auditor proximity. The findings indicate that auditors have information advantage that dissipates with geographic distance (i.e., 'soft' information in Berger et al. in J Financ Econ 76(2):237-269, ; Coval and Moskowitz in J Polit Econ 109(4):811-841, ; Petersen and Rajan in J Financ 57(6):2533-2570, ), suggesting that that investors, analysts, and regulators should pay additional attention to information risk for firms audited by non-local auditors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the vision of Spain conveyed by National Geographic Magazine ( NGM) in the period from 1888 to 1936. It is part of a broader line of research into the way geographical magazines aimed at general readers shape popular geographical imaginations. The article has two main objectives. On the one hand, it examines the connections between the type of representations typically found in NGM and the cultural stereotypes that existed about Spain in the United States at the time, notions mainly rooted in the North American tradition of travel writing, as well as in US Hispanism. On the other hand, the article analyzes the image of Spain disseminated in NGM against the backdrop of the geo-historical, political, and socio-economic context of the country in this period, a particularly important analytical step given the profound differences between Spain and the US at the time. Special attention is paid to NGM's editorial style (much more close to travel journalism than to academic geography descriptions of the country), as well as to the influence of Romantic paradigm and the importance given to Spain's regional diversity in the image conveyed by the magazine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The participants ( N = 180) in this study resided in two different states (i.e., North Dakota (ND) and Georgia (GA)). Each participant completed two tasks in a counterbalanced order: 1) free recall of the fifty United States and 2) recall of the fifty United States using a numbered map of the United States where they matched the state name to the actual state on the map. There were significant differences in recall by task. Also, there were significant chi-square values and a significant interaction for the states recalled by ND participants and GA participants. Participants demonstrated high recall (70 % or higher) for the 5-7 states surrounding their state of residence (e.g., primary geographic memory bubble). All participants had high recall for the states of WA, CA, NV, TX, FL, ME, AK and HI (e.g., secondary geographic memory bubble). The implications of these results relating to geographic illiteracy, instruction, and memory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to investigate the role of geography in the venture capital investment in the US biotechnology industry. Data include 4,409 quarterly investment deals from the MoneyTree Survey during 1995 and 2008. Strong spatial concentration patterns are identified. Using both ordinary squares regressions and geographically weighted regressions, we find that as the geographic distance between biotechnology firms and their investors decreases, deal size increases. Location in established biotechnology clusters, such as New England and California, helps to bring a larger deal into individual firms as well. Also, the impact of distance decay in these two clusters is more significant than that in other regions. In addition, we find that a global venture capital investing syndication network brings large deals. Furthermore, firms in later stages of development, and/or with few financing rounds, tend to receive more capital per deal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior generations’ electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998–2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators’ flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub “temporal gerrymandering.” We suggest a theory of postmodern electoral crises, in which the rules of time and space are simultaneously in flux. These crises expose concerns with early American democratic theory, which was based on an understanding of “the people” as geographically and temporally unidimensional. Representative systems, therefore, were designed largely without reference to geographic and temporal complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial regional variation in health service use has been reported for both general medical and mental health services. It is unknown however, whether regional variation is reduced during periods of major system reform. Data from the Department of Veterans Affairs’ are used to examine performance measures for its 22 regional networks from 1996 to 2001, a period of major system reform. Out of 21 mental health performance measures the coefficient of variation (the standard deviation divided by the mean) increased for 16 measures and declined for only 5. Although regional variation increased only slightly on 12 of these 16 measures it appears system reform clearly does not reduce regional variation across the board and it may in fact increase such variation for some aspects of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The migration of Neotropical birds may provide a robust measure of changing environmental condition along the migratory route. I review previous work on assessing broad-scale stopover quality in the eastern United States and discuss how future research can aid regional environmental assessment. Scientists can quantify how environmental changes affect the migratory system, and then monitor for those effects on migrant abundance from year to year. The cyclical nature of migration provides a constant re-evaluation of habitat quality and spatial distribution by migrant birds. Avian monitoring programs can detect changes in migrant abundance. Migrating birds may thus provide a living sensor of environmental change, enabling broad-scale environmental assessments to detect and address habitat degradation early on, allowing local managers to prioritize restoration efforts accordingly. Understanding the environmental factors driving stopover selection, and how birds move between stopovers during migration, is an important first step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography in the United Kingdom and geography in the United States have common roots in nineteenth-century German and French practices. For the first half of the twentieth century they had relatively separate trajectories with few inter-personal contacts linking them. From the 1950s on, contacts developed rapidly, through both greater trans-Atlantic movement by geographers and shared journals. Nevertheless, after some convergence in the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, the two have diverged again somewhat because of the different contexts within which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the reception of American geography in France. It presents an overview on American geography as big science and the organization of transcontinental field trips in North America, the effect of World War I and II on the relations and influence of American geography, the rise of anti-Americanism, and the French geography. French geographers were fascinated by the development of American industry, the new forms of mass consumption, the democratization of car ownership, and the growing of cities.

This article focuses on the problem resolving technical problems in conducting the census in the U.S. every decade. Data from 1990 and previous censuses suggested there would be a net undercount in 2000; the undercount would depend on age, race, ethnicity, gender, and--most importantly--geography. This differential undercount, with its implications for sharing power and money, attracted considerable attention in the media and the courthouse. There were proposals to adjust the census by statistical methods, but this is advisable only if the adjustment gives a truer picture of the population and its geographical distribution. The census turns out to be remarkably good, despite the generally bad press reviews. Statistical adjustment is unlikely to improve the accuracy, because adjustment can easily put in more error than it takes out. In this article, we sketch procedures for taking the census, evaluating it, and making adjustments.

The article focuses on the success of cartography and geography in the U.S. The establishment of the Indigenous Peoples' Knowledges and Rights Commission (IPKRC) by the International Geographical Union (IGU) is a main breaking point in the Geography's history. The commission shows that geographers around the world participate in the revision of attitudes relative to indigenous peoples, their knowledges and their rights.