People-Environment Geography
Information on the Geography Discipline of People-Environment
People-Environment Geography
People-Environment Geography is a field of geography broadly concerned with the interconnections between people and the environment. This field is wide-ranging and includes scholarship on themes ranging from human impacts on natural systems, to environmental conflict and struggles over natural resources, to critical analyses of the meaning of 'nature' and 'degradation' and their links with forms of social power. The UW-Madison department officially recognized People-Environment Geography as a field of specialization during the 1970s, but the department has a longer tradition of research in this area. Throughout the 1960s, UW Madison was an intellectual center for 'cultural ecology', a subdiscipline closely allied with anthropology that centers on detailed field research of indigenous resource management to understand how the environment shapes culture and vice versa. Biogeography has also been strong at UW Madison, particularly in light of Thomas Vale's investigation of human impacts on natural systems and alteration of disturbance regimes, such as fire.
During the 1990s and
continuing today, People-Environment geography at UW-Madison has expanded its
scope to consider environmental change at broader levels. The emphasis on
cultural ecology has broadened to incorporate 'political ecology', a conceptual
framework that emphasizes political explanations for environmental problems using
nested analytical scales, from local to international. Political ecology also
critically addresses narratives of environmental change, representations of
nature and struggles over access to natural resources. Beyond political
ecology, people-environment geographers at UW-Madison are concerned with
ecosystem fragmentation, and the impact of human-induced changes on ecosystem
function. People-environment geographers at the UW-Madison have extensive
training in both social and natural sciences, particularly ecology. Thus they
occupy a 'middle ground' between physical and human geography.
People-environment geographers commonly rely on both qualitative and
quantitative methods, including remote sensing and GIS. Two particularly strong
realms of people-environment research at UW-Madison are environmental history,
and the sociopolitical dimensions of environmental change and conservation in
developing countries.
Ian Baird is a political ecologist who has a strong
interest in social justice. In particular, his research is linked to the
proliferation or large economic land concessions; energy development and
adaptation (especially in relation to large hydropower dams in the Mekong
region); Mekong fisheries management; land and resource tenure; the human
dimensions of climate change, especially with regard to the Reduced Emissions
from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD) framework; forest and non-timber
forest product management; and environmental history. The regional focus of his
research is mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.
William Cronon works on the environmental history and historical
geography of North America, with special focus on the American West and the
frontier. He seeks to make past environmental change relevant to contemporary
policy debates, and has a special interest in the writing and rhetoric of
history and geography.
Holly Gibbs focuses
on tropical land-use change and globalization, particularly on the potential to
reconcile food security, climate change and conservation goals. She uses data-driven
modeling approaches, geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing
imagery combined with ground-based data on social and biophysical conditions to
document and understand patterns, drivers and consequences of land-use change,
particularly in the tropics.
Lisa Naughton focuses her research on the
socio-political dimensions of biodiversity conservation in developing
countries, particularly the humid tropics. She is especially interested in
wildlife ecology in human-altered landscapes, and in land use and social
conflicts around protected areas. In recent years, she has investigated
patterns of conflict and coexistence for wolves and people in the Lake Superior
region.
Morgan Robertson is
a geographer and political ecologist who specializes in the study of wetland policy andmarket-based
environmental policy. He has written extensively on wetland
banking, ecosystem services, economic theories of value, and compensation under
the Clean Water Act.
Matthew Turner's research falls at the intersection of the
political ecology of agropastoral production (resource access and conflict,
science studies, land-use analysis); tropical savanna/steppe biogeography
(nutrient cycling, range ecology, environmental monitoring); and agrarian and
development studies (gender, state-local relations, politics of scale).
Regional specialization: Sudano-Sahelian West Africa.