geography

Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History

Northern Canada’s distinctive landscapes, its complex social relations and the contested place of the North in contemporary political, military, scientific and economic affairs have fueled recent scholarly discussion. At the same time, both the media and the wider public have shown increasing interest in the region. This collection extends our understanding of the environmental history of northern Canada—clarifying both its practice and promise, and providing critical perspectives on current public debates.

"Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness"

In this introduction to the special issue on Multispecies Studies, Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, and Ursula Münster provide an overview of the emerging field of multispecies studies. Unsettling given notions of species, the article explores a broad terrain of possible modes of classifying, categorizing, and paying attention to the diverse ways of life that constitute worlds.

“Landscape and Inscription”

In this special issue on Multispecies Studies, Cary Wolfe and Maria Whiteman discuss the changing notions of landscape and nature at work in the video installation Mountain Pine Beetle and explores some of the forces that eventuated in the devastated landscapes of the Rocky Mountain West brought on by the infestation of the mountain pine beetle beginning in the early 2000s—an infestation caused, in no small part, by what some scientists have called a perfect storm of circumstances created by global warming.

"Mapping Scenario Narratives: A Technique to Enhance Landscape-scale Biodiversity Planning"

Carter et al. translate key themes from scenario narratives into spatial representations using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). They apply this technique to a Tasmanian case study exploring future scenarios for biodiversity in a predominantly privately-owned agricultural landscape, enabling land managers to explore outcomes from potential interventions and identify strategies that might mitigate the impact of future issues of environmental concern.