Geography concepts and applications

¶ … ROLES OF PHYSICAL, CULTURAL & VERNACULAR

LANDSCAPES IN HUMAN DIMENSIONS RESEARCH

As an extension of the sciences of geography and physical morphology, human dimensions research explores various concepts associated with human fairness, risk, biodiversity and sustainability and provides methods to measure public satisfaction and identify different communities of interest, conflict or consensus. Human dimension categories include economics with a focus on the monetary measurement of ecosystems; recreation which seeks to understand the relationship between the recreation setting and human experience; cultural heritage which explores the characteristics of sustainable societies, and lastly environmental psychology and social interactions which involve the measurement of ecosystem-related public perceptions, attitudes and beliefs and the objectives of the concerned parties.

A prime example of this research concerns the findings of the Department of the Interior and its exploration on how human dimensions affect certain areas of the western United States. Research topics associated with these findings include national and regional assessments, national strategic planning and forest technology, economic impacts, recreation resource and species management, water resources, energy and mineral development, conflict resolution, accidental environmental damage, critical habitats for endangered species and forest access management in relation to road closures.

In addition, the studies carried out by the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) which focused on "how humans drive important interventions in Earth systems (and) the interactions between natural and social processes" (USGCRP (website, 2002), led to the development of four specific challenges, these being how to determine the consequences of human sensitivities to global environmental change, the scientific foundation for analyzing the potential human responses to global change, an understanding of the underlying social processes behind human relationships to the global environment and how major human causes of change in the global environment alter over time and across space.

In regard to how all of this is connected with the morphology of physical, cultural and vernacular landscapes, a number of specific examples are of great importance to a clear understanding of the processes. Physical landscapes are of course affected by the ways human beings manipulate their environment. Jay Appleton clearly explains this by pointing out that "humans are a part of the climate system, the drivers of land cover change, increasingly significant contributors to the chemical composition of the atmosphere and utterly dependent on the global water cycle" (156), all of which greatly adds to how the land is altered by pollution, soil depletion, housing, the diverging of water sources to other physical locations and the removal of minerals and ores. Also, the social processes behind human relations to the environment play a major role in the form of human attitudes and behaviors, population dynamics, institutions and economic / technological transformations.

Cultural landscapes, or those elements "that serve as markers to announce and display the presence of a cultural group's most cherished ideals to their own members and to outsiders" (Alanen 11), are usually divided into three groups -- the individualist, the holistic which argues that large-scale events are autonomous and independent of the participating individuals, and the socio-dialectical which focuses on how different individuals and groups, dependent on access to power and resources, affect the context of the landscape. A good example of this would be the relationship between native American Indians, the U.S. government (particularly the Department of the Interior) and the use or importance of land to both parties. In this instance, a specific archeological site such as a burial ground held as sacred to a particular tribe might come under attack if the land on which it sits is determined to be on federal property, thus creating tension between the two parties. As explained by the socio-dialectical, the "choice" of whether the Indians or the government becomes the dominant player is based on how much power or influence each party maintains, one being non-affluent and the other "elite."