What's New
What’s New? is a current digest of the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN), containing pertinent and up to date information to facilitate research and advance knowledge of population environment relationships. Previous "What’s New" newsletters (pdf) can be found via the "Past Newsletters" menu at the bottom of this page. Also try the top menu links to search/browse Events Calendar, Jobs/Funding, and eLibrary listings by year.
Special Announcements
- In collaboration with the POPGRID Data Collaborative, PERN will hold a cyberseminar on the topic of the Application of Gridded Population and Settlement Products in Geospatial Population-Environment Research from 14-18 October 2019. This cyberseminar will focus on the fitness-for-use aspect of various gridded population and settlement products and their suitability for different application areas in population-environment studies. We will explore issues of uncertainty, endogeneity, temporal-explicitness, and spatial conformity in these data products along with scale and projection considerations. We will also explore a number of application areas in research and development praxis. For more information visit https://www.populationenvironmentresearch.org/cyberseminars/10680
- PERN welcomes a new cohort of scientific committee members for the 2019-2022 period:
- Dr. Roberto Ariel Abeldaño, Full Professor, Demography, University of Sierra Sur, Oaxaca, Mexico
- Dr. Kathryn Grace, Assistant Professor, Geography, Environment and Society, University of Minnesota, USA
- Dr. Sabine Henry, Professor in Geography, University of Namur, Belgium
- Dr. Bryan Jones, Assistant Professor, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, CUNY Baruch, USA
- Dr. Samir K.C., Professor, Asian Demographic Research Institute, Shanghai University; and Project Director, World Population, IIASA, Austria/China
- Dr. César Augusto Marques, Graduate Studies Coordinator, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) - Escola Nacional de Ciências Estatísticas (ENCE), Brazil
- Dr. Karen McNamara, Senior Lecturer, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Queensland, Australia
- Dr. William Pan, Associate Professor of Global Environmental Health, Duke University, USA
- Dr. Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Head of Climate Science and Impacts and a Scientific Advisor, Climate Analytics, USA
- Dr. Brooke Wilmsen, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Australia
- PERN invites proposals for new cyberseminar topics, especially in partnership with other organizations. Anyone desiring to propose a cyberseminar should send a 2-3 paragraph concept note along with a list of 3-4 panelists to pernadmin@ciesin.columbia.edu. Proposals will be reviewed by the scientific committee responses will be given within one month of receipt.
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Conferences/Workshops/Public Discussions
Call for Manuscripts. Special Issue on Land Change Modelling
This Special Issue welcomes articles that present new approaches to spatially explicit modelling of land change, highlight novel contributions to land change modelling using historical approaches, compare and contrast different modelling approaches, and make other unique contributions to land change and land systems modelling, such as frameworks, methodologies, and model coupling approaches.
Those intending to submit should consider including data, model code (via common repositories such as GitHub), and appendices to facilitate replication, reuse, and expansion upon their submitted work by others.
For more information, see https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land/special_issues/land_change_modelling
Call for papers on Vulnerability & Risk Mapping - Sustainability special issue
Measuring, analyzing, and mapping the societal risks and vulnerabilities of climate change has become part of the standard toolkit of climate risk and vulnerability assessments. This Special Issue focuses on the spatial assessment of climate risks and related vulnerabilities and the use of spatial data and analysis in field-based assessments. Papers may cover a range of spatial scales–from local to global–and represent any world region, and may be produced by authors from any discipline. The deadline for submission is 30 November 2019.
Papers must:
• Define the problem space–that is, the system of analysis (what is vulnerable or at risk?), the valued attributes of concern (why are they important?), the external hazard (to what is the system vulnerable and exposed?), and a temporal reference (when?)–and the purpose of the assessment;
• Describe the analytical framework applied;
• Provide adequate detail regarding the data and methods used;
• Address the uncertainty in underlying data and methods;
• Present one or more maps portraying results;
• Address the policy relevance of the mapping/spatial analysis.
Case studies and mapping projects are especially encouraged that:
• were developed in conjunction with stakeholders (i.e., transdisciplinary science) and/or where mapping results were applied in planning and decision-making contexts;
• utilize statistical techniques/novel methods to identify the drivers of risk and vulnerability;
• use future scenarios for climate and/or socioeconomic systems;
• integrate various streams of data (ranging from survey data and official statistics to Earth observation data);
• seek to validate mapping results.
In addition to case study or location-specific applications, we invite papers that explore spatial methods as well as papers critically reflecting on climate risk and vulnerability mapping.
For further information or to submit a manuscript, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/Climate_Risk_Mapping
Call for Papers on Climate Risk and Vulnerability Mapping
Measuring, analyzing, and mapping the societal risks and vulnerabilities of climate change has become part of the standard toolkit of climate risk and vulnerability assessments. This Special Issue focuses on the spatial assessment of climate risks and related vulnerabilities and the use of spatial data and analysis in field-based assessments. Papers may cover a range of spatial scales–from local to global–and represent any world region, and may be produced by authors from any discipline.
Papers must:
• Define the problem space–that is, the system of analysis (what is vulnerable or at risk?), the valued attributes of concern (why are they important?), the external hazard (to what is the system vulnerable and exposed?), and a temporal reference (when?)–and the purpose of the assessment;
• Describe the analytical framework applied;
• Provide adequate detail regarding the data and methods used;
• Address the uncertainty in underlying data and methods;
• Present one or more maps portraying results;
• Address the policy relevance of the mapping/spatial analysis.
Case studies and mapping projects are especially encouraged that:
• were developed in conjunction with stakeholders (i.e., transdisciplinary science) and/or where mapping results were applied in planning and decision-making contexts;
• utilize statistical techniques/novel methods to identify the drivers of risk and vulnerability;
• use future scenarios for climate and/or socioeconomic systems;
• integrate various streams of data (ranging from survey data and official statistics to Earth observation data);
• seek to validate mapping results.
In addition to case study or location-specific applications, the editors invite papers that explore spatial methods as well as papers critically reflecting on climate risk and vulnerability mapping.
For further information or to submit a manuscript, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/Climate_Risk_Mapping
Call for Papers: Cadernos Metrópole nº 48: The Metropolis and the Environmental Question
The Scientific Editors and Editorial Committee of the journal Cadernos Metrópole invite researchers from areas of knowledge that approach the urban and regional issue to send texts to the organization of volume 22, number 48, about the theme, “The metropolis and the environmental question”.
The field of planning, territorial organization and governance has witnessed the exponential growth in the number of research studies, articles, theses and dissertations that not only interact with the environmental issue, but, on the contrary, view the politicization of the relationship between nature and the capitalist production of space as the central locus of their analyses and reflections. Therefore, their point of departure is the premise that society and nature are inseparable and that humankind and nature transform each other, in a constant process of production and reproduction of space.
Large cities, metropolises and macro-regions have tensioned the conflicting relationship between natural resources, capital and the increasing demand for the consumption of their resources, like energy, food and water. The effects can already be felt in different parts of the planet, with the intensification of water shortageperiods, which tend to become more and more frequent in a scenario of climate changes. This movement does not produce crises, conflicts and uncertainties only in large cities or urban spaces, but in the entire complex system of production and reproduction of these natural resources, in rural spaces, and in medium and small cities.
In a dialectical sense, if the process of capitalist production of space has been changing based on a new relationship with the natural resources, practices and reflections in the sphere of planning and governance also require new paradigms, new meanings, new actions and research agendas. The present issue of Cadernos Metrópole aims to contribute to the construction of the field of praxis and theory in environmental planning and governance from the perspective that does not dissociate the transformation of nature from the production of space in capitalism, that is, from the perspective that does not separate the environmental question from the social question.
For more information, see http://revistas.pucsp.br/metropole/announcement/view/323