A Companion to Environmental Geography

About this book

The first book to comprehensively and systematically map the research frontier of 'human-environment geography' in an accessible and comprehensive way. It cross-cuts several areas of a discipline which has traditionally been seen as divided; presenting work by human and physical geographers in the same volume.

A Companion to Environmental Geography: presents both the current 'state of the art' research and charts future possibilities for the discipline; extends the term 'environmental geography' beyond its 'traditional' meanings to include new work on nature and environment by human and physical geographers – not just hazards, resources and conservation geographers; and, contains essays from an outstanding group of international contributors from among established scholars and rising stars in geography.

Contents

Acknowledgements viii
List of Contributors ix
1 Introduction: Making Sense of Environmental Geography 1
      Noel Castree, David Demeritt and Diana Liverman

Part I Concepts 17
2 Nature 19
      Bruce Braun
3 Sustainability 37
      Becky Mansfield
4 Biodiversity 50
      Karl S. Zimmerer
5 Complexity, Chaos and Emergence 66
      Steven M. Manson
6 Uncertainty and Risk 81
      James D. Brown and Sarah L. Damery
7 Scale 95
      Nathan F. Sayre
8 Vulnerability and Resilience to Environmental Change: Ecological and Social Perspectives 109
      W. Neil Adger and Katrina Brown
9 Commodification 123
      Scott Prudham

Part II Approaches 143
10 Earth-System Science 145
      John Wainwright
11 Land Change (Systems) Science 168
      B. L. Turner II
12 Ecology: Natural and Political 181
      Matthew D. Turner
13 Quaternary Geography and the Human Past 198
      Jamie Woodward
14 Environmental History 223
      Georgina H. Endfield
15 Landscape, Culture and Regional Studies: Connecting the Dots 238
      Kenneth R. Olwig
16 Ecological Modernisation and Industrial Transformation 253
      Arthur P. J. Mol and Gert Spaargaren
17 Marxist Political Economy and the Environment 266
      George Henderson
18 After Nature: Entangled Worlds 294
      Owain Jones

Part III Practices 313
19 Remote Sensing and Earth Observation 315
      Heiko Balzter
20 Modelling and Simulation 336
      George L. W. Perry
21 Integrated Assessment 357
      James Tansey
22 Ethnography 370
      Kevin St. Martin and Marianna Pavlovskaya
23 Analysing Environmental Discourses and Representations 385
      Tom Mels
24 Deliberative and Participatory Approaches in Environmental Geography 400
      Jason Chilvers

Part IV Topics 419
25 Ecosystem Prediction and Management 421
      Robert A. Francis
26 Environment and Development 442
      Tom Perreault
27 Natural Hazards 461
      Daanish Mustafa
28 Environmental Governance 475
      Gavin Bridge and Tom Perreault
29 Commons 498
      James McCarthy
30 Water 515
      Karen Bakker
31 Energy Transformations and Geographic Research 533
      Scott Jiusto
32 Food and Agriculture in a Globalising World 552
      Richard Le Heron
33 Environment and Health 567
      Hilda E. Kurtz and Karen E. Smoyer-Tomic

Index 580

Customer Reviews

Biography

Noel Castree is Professor of Geography at Manchester University. Editor or author of Remaking Reality (1998), Social Nature (2001), and Nature (2005), his main resarch and teaching interests are in the political economy of environmental change.
David Demeritt is a Reader in Geography at King's College, London. He has published many essays on the politics and practice of environmental science and theories of society-nature relations more generally.
Diana Liverman is Director of the Environmental Change Institute and Professor of Environmental Science in the School of Geography and Environment at Oxford University. She has published widely on environmental change and policy.
Bruce Rhoads is Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and would describe himself as a `hard core' physical geographer.