Changing priorities in physical geography: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Key Messages The disappearance of the sub‐discipline of physical geography is both notable and regrettable. This Special Issue provides a forum to describe changes across the environmental sciences, and Geography provides a set of values with which to evaluate these changes. For physical geography to continue to exist, we must produce physical geographers who identify as geographers and who engage in geographical discourse.

Geography and the Anthropocene: Critical approaches needed

“…The core is a spatial perspective that underlies the main themes of our field, as collected by Day (2017): the study of (1) systems and processes; (2) the natural world; (3) anthropogenic processes; (4) impacts on people; (5) environmental change; (6) interconnected systems; and (7) a scientific approach (Day 2017: 34). The contributions to a special issue on “Changing priorities in physical geography” (Tadaki et al, 2017) aim to offer some solutions and discuss various contexts ranging from urban settings (Ashmore and Dodson, 2017; Conway, 2017) to climate change (Spencer and Lane, 2017). Besides, the scientific approach is challenging, since there is still a mixture of positivist and rationalist approaches (Inkpen, 2005; Slaymaker, 2017) as well as a recent focus on critical approaches (Lave et al, 2018a; Slaymaker, 2017).…”

“…Besides, the scientific approach is challenging, since there is still a mixture of positivist and rationalist approaches (Inkpen, 2005; Slaymaker, 2017) as well as a recent focus on critical approaches (Lave et al, 2018a; Slaymaker, 2017). As we term ourselves Physical Geographers, the blunt definition of our discipline might be: Physical Geography is what Physical Geographers do (Tadaki et al, 2017: 6).…”

Glacial Geomorphology

“…It is perhaps the apparent lack of explanatory power that was missing in the purely morphological approach that the need to understand the processes involved in the glacial system and its subsystems has re-emerged (cf. Spedding, 1997;Harrison, 2005;Tadaki et al, 2017). However, this philosophical/methodological dichotomy should not be construed as implying that either the morphological or the process-form approach can be regarded as superior to one another.…”