An Introduction to Human-Environment Geography

Local Dynamics and Global Processes

William G. Moseley, Eric Perramond, Holly M. Hapke, Paul Laris

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118241059
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

This introductory level text explores various theoretical approaches to human-environment geography, demonstrating how local dynamics and global processes influence how we interact with our environments.

• Introduces students to fundamental concepts in environmental geography and science
• Explores the core theoretical traditions within the field, along with major thematic issues such as population, food and agriculture, and water resources
• Offers an engaging and unique view of the spatial relationships between humans and their environment across geographical locations around the world
• Includes a variety of real-world policy questions and emphasizes geography's strong tradition of field work by featuring prominent nature-society geographers in guest field notes

Part I

Fundamentals of Human–Environment Geography

1

Introduction

A Geographic Perspective on Human–Environment Interactions

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Icebreaker: Human–Environment Connections Across Time and Space

Chapter Objectives

Introduction

Animals and Their Habitats

What Is Geography and What Does It Have To Do with Studying the Environment?

A Geographic Perspective on Environmental Questions

Plan for the Rest of the Book

Chapter Summary

Critical Questions

Key Vocabulary

Notes

References

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Icebreaker: Human–Environment Connections Across Time and Space

Before chemical fertilizers came into heavy use in the 20th century, guano (bird or bat droppings) was the leading internationally traded source of agricultural plant nutrients. It was valued because of its high levels of phosphorous and nitrogen and lack of odor. The Incas of South America understood the value of guano long before the Europeans and regulated its extraction quite carefully. The Incan government divided up the guano-bearing islands off the coast of modern-day Peru between its different provinces. Guano had accumulated on these islands over centuries because of abundant bird life due to rich fish stocks, a uniquely dry climate which enhanced guano preservation, rocky shores for nesting, and protection for the birds from predators and humans. Rules were established concerning when and where guano could be harvested and disturbing the nesting birds which produced guano was an offense punishable by death.

The geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt was the first European to recognize the potential value of guano. He returned from his 1799–1804 voyage around South America with samples which he shared with two French chemists who subsequently confirmed the value of the substance. American farmers experimented with guano in the 1820s, and then British farmers in the 1840s. Despite the initial concerns of farmers that such a powerful fertilizer would upset the nutrient balance of agricultural soils, demand for guano soon surged. The United Kingdom imported over 2 million tons of guano between 1841 and 1857. The fury over the guano trade was intense. It led to the Guano War of 1865–66 between Spain and Peru. The US Navy fought with Peru to maintain access to guano. The US also colonized over 50 islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean (including Midway Island) because of their guano resources. By 1900, the world’s guano resources were all but depleted.

Fast forward to the 21st century, when one of the authors of this text was traveling with a group of students along the Atlantic Coast of South Africa. Here he visited Lambert’s Bay, a fishing village on the coast with a history as a source of guano which was exported as fertilizer to Britain in the 19th century. The small island in Lambert’s Bay was now a bird sanctuary where nature lovers and tourists could come and observe the courting rituals and the nesting habits of the Cape gannet. The gannet was a prodigious producer of the guano that had once accumulated in vast quantities on rocky islands along this semi-arid coastline. The author had been to the island the previous year and seen large numbers of Cape gannets (see Figure 1.01). As he crossed over the bridge to the island, he noticed that something was quite different, there were no gannets. He came to learn that the entire colony had left because they were being attacked by seals. This was, in itself, highly unusual as the seals had long coexisted with the gannets and never bothered them. The problem was that the seals were competing with fishermen for the same food source and were losing. As such, it was hunger which led the seals to attack the gannets on the island and it was this atypical behavior which caused the colony of Cape gannets to leave. While some of the overfishing in this area was caused by South African commercial fishers, the bigger culprit was large international fishing fleets.

The twists and turns of this story raise a number of important issues for consideration. These include: the ability of some societies to manage their resources sustainably, the role of science in the use and management of resources, the seeming inability of the global capitalist system to limit consumption, the role that non-human actors may play in transmitting the impacts of one human action to another human group, and the limits of preservation in open ecosystems and economies. All of these themes and more are central to the dynamic subfield of human–environment geography.

Figure 1.01 A colony of Cape gannets, Lambert’s Bay, Atlantic Coast of South Africa. Source: Photo by W.G. Moseley. Used with permission.

Chapter Objectives

The objectives of this chapter are:

1 To suggest that humans, like other animals, are able to sustainably interact with their environment.

2 To highlight the pressing nature of some contemporary environmental problems.

3 To articulate the relevance of the geographic perspective to environmental questions.

4 To outline broad elements of a human–environment geography approach to environmental questions.

5 To demonstrate what new insights may be gleaned by applying the human–environment geography approach to some basic natural resource management concepts and an example of this in US environmental history.

6 To share the general plan and logic of the book.

Introduction

The broad objective of this chapter is to introduce to students to the way that human–environment geographers look at the world. We begin by exploring how humans are similar to, and different from, other animals which manipulate the environment. We then review geography and its distinctive human–environment tradition, followed by an exploration of some broadly similar ways that human environment geographers often examine environmental questions. The chapter ends with a specific case of how the geographic lens yields new insights when trained on some common environmental management approaches, namely exploitation, conservation, and preservation.

Animals and Their Habitats

Beavers (Castor canadensis in North America, Castor fiber in Eurasia) are known for their ability to modify the landscape for their own benefit and that of other species. By damming streams, beavers raise the water level to form protective moats around their lodges. The resulting beaver ponds also create the deep water needed for winter food storage in northern climates. While other animals struggle with winter cold and hunger, beavers stay warm in their lodges with an underwater food cache of branches in close proximity (see Figure 1.02). Beavers also harvest trees and branches for food and construction purposes. This pruning stimulates willows, cottonwood, and aspen to regrow more thickly the next spring. While some beaver behavior is instinctive, they also learn by imitation and from experience. As such, we find some beavers who are very adept at building dams and others who are not. Older, more experienced beavers also tend to build better dams than younger ones. The beavers’ habitat modifications also impact other species. The wetlands they create support other mammals, fish, turtles, frogs, birds, and ducks. These wetlands also provide a variety of ecological services, such as the catchment of floodwaters, the alleviation of droughts (because beaver dams keep water on the land longer), the reduction of erosion, the local raising of the water table, and the purification of water.

Figure 1.02 Sketch of beaver lodge and dam.

Humans, like other animals, also modify the landscape. We manipulate the land, for example, through burning, cutting, tilling, planting, harvesting, dam building, and home construction to meet our own objectives. Through a process of experimentation, success and failure, observation, and the sharing and stealing of ideas, humans have learned how to manipulate the environment for their own purposes. For example, through careful observation of local environmental feedback, humans often developed farming systems that were highly productive, and sustained over centuries (Figure 1.03). A case in point is shifting cultivators in Papua New Guinea who created farming systems that were over five times more efficient (in terms of a ratio of crop yield over energy inputs) than modern maize-cropping systems in the United States and supported much higher levels of agrobiodiversity (Pimentel and Pimentel 1979). Women in rural Mali (West Africa) routinely collect dead wood and coppice (trim) branches from existing trees for firewood, lessening the chances of unmanageable bush fires and encouraging regrowth. Up until recently, many American farmers planted shelter belts (or tree hedges) around their fields in order to reduce aeolian (wind) erosion and encourage the proliferation of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) which they hunted for game meat.

Figure 1.03 A farm in Papua New Guinea. Source: © WaterFrame/Alamy.

Of course, some societies took up unsustainable practices which eventually led to environmental decline and their downfall. Sometimes, but not always, these were highly stratified societies in which those making the decisions and those working the land were separated by many layers. In other cases, new migrants failed to understand the ecology of an area and attempted management approaches that were inappropriate for their new location. Still others developed intensive production systems which required significant amounts of human labor to maintain. When political instability or disease disrupted these labor flows, such systems quickly fell into decline and the productivity of the environment declined.

As humans societies grew and prospered, and people traveled greater and greater distances, they began to trade. While trade was initially in luxury items, food and raw materials eventually came to be traded in significant quantities. By the 20th century, even garbage was being shipped around the world. The significance of this trade, combined with urbanization, was that it gradually separated people from the sources of their food and goods and the byproducts of their consumption. We were losing our ability to productively and sustainably engage with ecosystems. Today we live in a world where many consumers in the most developed areas of the world have little to no idea where their provisions originate from and how they are produced. We also live on a planet where the consequences of such detachment from the biophysical world seem to be growing. Increasing carbon emissions, and resulting climate change, is probably one of the most disquieting, global-scale environmental challenges. Other challenges, like deforestation, ground water depletion, and the loss of biodiversity, are also of great concern.

Not all ecological challenges are a direct result of humans modifying the environment in a problematic ma...