Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6040099

Authors: Mohamed Daoudi Abdoul Jelil Niang Khalid Al-Ghamdi

This study explores the potential implications of rapid urban growth and land use/land cover (LULC) changes in Al-Madinah Al-Munawarah city on water resources. The methodology highlights the efficiency of geospatial techniques (remote sensing and geographic information systems) for mapping, identifying, understanding, and measuring the spatiotemporal dynamics and change rates of different LULC categories over 60 years (1965–2025). The change detection analysis of multisource and multitemporal data reveals substantial modifications in the initial landscape configuration, in which the human footprint was insignificant. The primary dominant driver of change is human activity (an exponential urban extension whose area increased from 15.2 km2 to 472 km2, or more than 3000%, and agricultural area for more than 190%) at the expense of natural landform features. The greatest urban growth was registered during 1986–2009. The alluvial fan and alluvial plain lost more area than all other LULC classes (more than 57%). The lava sheet also recorded a very sharp decline—the second largest in terms of area after the alluvial plain, with a loss of surface area of around 12%. The mountains and hills experienced a very limited loss of surface area (less than 2%). These changes linked to human pressures, combined with climate change, involved modifications to natural hydrological processes, disturbance of natural drainage pathways in different parts of the city, destruction of small streams, intensification of drainage density, and risk of flash flooding. The urban extension also led to the modification of groundwater level dynamics. These effects will increase environmental challenges for the city’s development plan.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6040098

Authors: Yi Qu Jirasek Trimetsoontorn Wangkun Chen

Climate change amplifies both chronic and episodic environmental risks, intensifying long-term exposure patterns that are unevenly distributed across space. This paper examines how differentiated regional climate and environmental risks in Thailand shape long-term well-being, and how the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP)—a Thai-origin framework grounded in three core principles of moderation, reasonableness/prudence, and self-immunity—may function as a diagnostic and adaptive sustainability framework within environmental and hazard geography. Using a comparative empirical environmental-risk analysis of secondary longitudinal datasets, the study examines four purposively selected regions—Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Rayong, and the southern Andaman and Gulf coasts (Phuket, Phang Nga, Songkhla)—chosen to maximise variation in exposure type and hazard. We also apply SEP’s three principles analytically within each regional case. Th findings show that chronic, low-intensity exposure—such as Chiang Mai’s seasonal PM2.5 haze and Bangkok’s combined air pollution and flooding—generates cumulative well-being costs that differ qualitatively from those associated with episodic, catastrophic hazards such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Tropical Cyclone Pabuk. Deaths attributable to air pollution in Thailand rose from 47,709 in 2016 to 55,877 in 2022, underscoring that chronic exposure imposes a health and economic burden comparable in scale to discrete disaster events. Adaptive capacity, not exposure alone, differentiates regional outcomes: Rayong’s industrially concentrated coastal corridor exhibits a spatial monitoring scale mismatch, with city-level averages substantially underrepresenting industrial-core peak exposure in Maptaphut district. The paper concludes that durable adaptation requires shifting from reactive normality toward anticipatory, spatially differentiated resilience, and that this paper is best understood as methodological groundwork for a larger research programme requiring primary household-level well-being surveys and finer-resolution geospatial exposure mapping.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030097

Authors: Lisandra Stephanie Seecharan Aaron Anil Chadee Hector Hugh Martin Hazi Mohammad Azamathulla Chakali Venkata Siva Rama Prasad

Construction activities transform the physical environment through land-use change, resource consumption, waste generation, and carbon emissions, making sustainable construction especially important in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS). This study investigates the current use and perception of Extended Reality (XR) as a spatial visualization and human–environment decision-support tool for sustainable construction in the Caribbean construction sector. This study addresses three research gaps: knowledge, contextual, and praxis gaps including a knowledge, contextual, and praxis gap by contributing XR evidence from a Caribbean SIDS context. The novelty lies in positioning XR as a human–environment interface for sustainable construction, creating the foundation for future studies on the use of digital tools within the construction sector for sustainable environmental development. Grounded in Human–Environment Interaction Theory, the study used questionnaire survey responses from 112 construction practitioners for analysis through descriptive statistics, effectiveness scoring, effectiveness indices, and non-parametric comparison of sustainability outcome groups. Findings show that XR adoption remains limited, but practitioners recognized its potential to improve design accuracy, project visualizations, workflow coordination, stakeholder communication, safety and sustainability-related decision-making. The main barriers were lack of awareness, cost, technological complexity and limited trust in digital outputs. XR was perceived to contribute most strongly to social and economic sustainability outcomes, particularly through the creation of jobs for AR (Augmented Reality)/VR (Virtual Reality) specialists, increased worker skills and experience, and enhanced collaboration and communication. Environmental contributions may currently emerge indirectly through improved social and economic sustainability.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030096

Authors: Abdullah Alattas Riyan Mohammad Sahahiri

The growth of ecotourism and hiking is one pillar of Saudi Vision 2030. However, the Kingdom lacks an up-to-date national spatial classification that would enable systematic coverage and strategic decision-making on potentially suitable hiking areas. In response, this study developed a GIS-based MCDA framework to classify hiking zones and assess their suitability across mountainous, desert, and coastal environments. We integrated and processed spatial datasets, including topography (Digital Elevation Model; DEM), climate (temperature), Land Use/Land Cover (LULC), and proximity to infrastructure, using Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and Euclidean Distance. We classified the terrain into three environmental masks and used Zonal Statistics to characterize 96 established trails. Then we used the Rank Sum method to objectively weight the criteria. The model generated high-, medium-, and low-suitability maps, indicating that favorable hiking areas are especially found in hilly terrain. Comparison with existing SCHF trails showed general consistency between established trail characteristics and the modeled suitability patterns, supporting the framework’s potential as a national-scale spatial decision-support tool.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030095

Authors: Gerzaín Avilés-Polanco Luis Felipe Beltrán-Morales Laura Sour Daniel Alfredo Revollo-Fernández Lilia Rodríguez-Tapia

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between poverty and the conservation status of remaining natural areas at the municipal level in Mexico. Specifically, it explores whether the condition of natural area conservation is directly related to poverty within municipalities and their surrounding regions. To address this, a first-order queen contiguity matrix was constructed. The relationship between poverty and the natural capital index was then analyzed using ordinary least squares regression, focusing on the direction, magnitude, and statistical significance of the resulting coefficient. Additionally, Moran’s I test was performed on the residuals to assess spatial dependence. The findings indicate the presence of spatial dependence in the residuals; consequently, spatial models were employed to ensure unbiased estimates of the relationship between poverty and natural capital.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030094

Authors: Ayoob Abbas Malko Sarhang Razzaq Hamad Kaka Jaafar Azeez Azad Rasul

Rapid urban population expansion in semi-arid environments poses considerable challenges for sustainable planning, particularly where demographic growth occurs under environmental constraints. This study examines the statistical association between climatic variability and population change in the Soran district center, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and develops an exploratory framework for forecasting future demographic trends. It uses the official annual population series compiled by the Statistics Directorate of the Soran Independent Administration for 2010–2024 (15 observations) together with monthly meteorological records for 2015–2024 from the Soran agro-meteorological station. Two properties of the demographic record govern what can be inferred from it. The 2010–2023 values are inter-censal estimates reproduced to within 0.10% by a single declining-growth rule, so goodness-of-fit statistics obtained on that segment measure agreement with an interpolation rule rather than forecasting skill; and the 2024 value derives from the 2024 census round, representing a level shift of +18.4% against a 2.0% per year trend—178 residual standard deviations—rather than a year of growth. Detrended, lagged Spearman correlations across twelve climate–lag combinations yielded no association surviving Holm–Bonferroni correction; because the pre-2024 values are administratively smoothed, this is reported as an inability of the available data to resolve a climate–demography association rather than as evidence of independence. Eight specifications—naïve, drift and linear-trend benchmarks, a second-order polynomial, a log-linear trend, an AIC-selected ARIMA, and two multilayer perceptrons—were compared under identical rolling-origin cross-validation, producing seven one-step-ahead forecasts each. On the inter-censal segment a random walk with drift attained a mean absolute percentage error of 0.087%, better than every fitted specification; on the census fold every specification erred by at least 11,663 persons. The reported 2025–2030 projection is therefore anchored on the 2024 census level with growth extrapolated from its 2011–2023 trend, giving 93,342 residents in 2025 and 101,691 in 2030 (scenario range 100,395–104,064), reproduced to within 488 persons by an ARIMA(0,2,2) with a 2024 step term. Polynomial and log-linear trends fitted across the discontinuity project 2025 values are below the observed 2024 population and are reported as specification failures. The study demonstrates both the potential and the limitations of demographic forecasting in data-scarce semi-arid urban settings and shows that the provenance of an administrative population series materially constrains the claims such a study can make.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030093

Authors: Selman Er Özlem Başarır

Historical research on human–environment relations often separates material landscape change from the cultural and institutional systems through which change was perceived and managed. This article develops Socio-Ecological Historical Geoarchaeology (SE-HGA) as a conceptual integration and reporting protocol for combining geo-archives, documentary evidence, spatial reconstructions, and material practices while retaining differences in provenance, scale, chronology, and uncertainty. The design combines a purposive, DOI-verified methodological corpus with two bounded secondary-data demonstrations concerning the Konya Plain. The principal sixteenth- to nineteenth-century illustration recodes published legal, fiscal, spatial, and infrastructural claims; an independent 1907 irrigation-project study is then used as a transfer stress test. Neither exercise constitutes empirical validation. Claims are recorded by provenance, temporal and spatial support, genre, epistemic status, and ordinal confidence, and their relations are classified as convergence, complementarity, contradiction, silence, or scale mismatch. A worked encoding of 17 suğlas (seasonally inundated cultivation units) in an Ottoman kanunname (provincial law code) and 10 fiscally visible suğlas in a 1584 register shows why literal disagreement should not be averaged away. The application also demonstrates why the approximately 40.7% disappearance or abandonment of 499 recorded settlements cannot be attributed to hydroclimatic stress without testing security, route exposure, fiscal pressure, and institutional capacity. The demonstrations illustrate P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, and P8 to different degrees, while P6 and P7 remain untested; none of the eight propositions is fully tested. SE-HGA’s present contribution is therefore procedural: it makes evidential dependence, incompatibility, and insufficiency auditable and identifies the primary data required for subsequent validation.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030092

Authors: Yusra Al-husban Hind Sarayrah Majed Ibrahim Hamza Ikhmaes

The quick drop of the water level in the Dead Sea has expedited the formation process of dissolution depression (DDs) along the southeastern coast, which brings about serious dangers with it. The objective of this research is to create a model that will allow us to forecast the risks of DD formation by means of a unique framework based on deep learning-segmented imaging of the earth in combination with multi-criteria geospatial susceptibility modeling. The research created a dependable geospatial database containing information on 668 identified DDs. Seven geo-environmental conditions were studied using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and were combined through weighted overlay analysis. The results show that almost 10% of the area under study falls into zones with a very high risk of DD occurrence; thus, the appropriate data were derived at the end of the study that can be used in forming an effective danger prediction tool.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030091

Authors: Nikolaos Gourgouletis Evangelos Baltas

Areal precipitation is usually not measured directly. It is estimated from data collected at individual meteorological stations that open, close and move for administrative rather than climatic reasons. Therefore, an observed trend in precipitation may have two possible explanations: a real climate change or an artefact caused by changes in the observation network. For example, the data from one station may suddenly change, or the number and location of stations used in the calculation may change. Two stages of checking were carried out in the study. First, every gauge record is compared with a composite of its neighbors to check its consistency. Second, areal precipitation is recalculated from the gauges that actually enter each estimate and their annual weights. Across the 71 Greek lake catchments carrying trends, removing every suspicious gauge and rebuilding the series leaves 14 of the original 16 field-significant increases and creates new detections. That verdict holds under every removal rule but the most aggressive; how many new detections appear depends on the reference gate. The surviving increases are therefore probably climate signal rather than gauge artefact. One limitation matters: if all gauges change in the same way at the same time, the screen cannot detect it. There was also one case of a significant decrease in precipitation. The station data themselves passed the homogeneity test, but the decrease was largely caused by the calculation becoming more dependent on a drier station.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030090

Authors: Yining Zhang Jin Xu Wanting Zhao

With rural revitalization as China’s national policy priority, rural tourism has been promoted as a pathway to stimulate local economies and advance revitalization objectives. National and local governments have introduced policy measures to support rural tourism development. However, the spatial correspondence between documented policy attention and tourism popularity remains uneven and insufficiently understood. To address this gap, this study develops an integrated evaluation framework combining a text-based measure of documented policy attention, denoted PII, and a Tourism Popularity Index (TPI) using multi-source data from 920 peri-urban villages in Shanghai with rural tourism destination POIs. Spatial analysis reveals disparities between tourism popularity and documented policy attention, and further examines the contextual characteristics associated with this misalignment. The findings indicate that: (1) documented policy attention and rural tourism popularity exhibit pronounced spatial disparities, with high-popularity clusters emerging where favorable resource conditions, accessibility, and higher levels of policy attention coexist; (2) widespread policy–popularity mismatches indicate limited correspondence between the two measures; (3) the selected cases illustrate differences in spatial planning, operational capacity, and market-oriented strategies, cautioning against uniform policy expansion. The study offers a spatially explicit framework for assessing policy–popularity alignment and informing context-sensitive rural tourism governance in highly urbanized regions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030089

Authors: Mimi Roy Sriroop Chaudhuri

Rapid urbanization across global South megacities has accelerated the overexploitation of urban aquifers, creating complex socio-hydrological crises that threaten long-term water resilience for a vast population. Conventional urban-water management frequently relies on uniform, city-wide regulatory mandates that fail to account for localized hydrogeological heterogeneities and the socio-economic drivers of private extraction. This study performed a seasonal assessment (post- and pre-monsoon) of groundwater levels (GWLs), across the National Capital Territory of Delhi, India, using a 13-year archival dataset (2010–2022) of 77 ‘common’ wells, with a sequential spatial–statistical framework. No statistically significant ‘seasonality’ was found in GWLs, except for isolated years. About 13% of the observations appeared as ‘deep outliers’, the call for more process-level hydrogeologic investigations. Spatial interpolation via the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation technique, alongside Global Moran’s I, Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA), and spatially Constrained Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (sHCA), revealed a recurrent spatial pattern: persistent, deep GWLs, within the fracture-dominated, low-yielding Alwar Quartzite (Delhi Ridge) of South and Southeast Delhi. The spatial clustering demonstrates the migration of the deep-GWL hotspots toward the unconfined alluvial aquifers of the Yamuna River floodplains to the east, threatening future baseflow stability. These spatial drawdown patterns represent a structural response to municipal Drinking Water Services Framework (DWSF) deficits, where intermittent supply and informal water markets incentivize the growth of more unregulated and unrestricted private pumping of groundwater. Achieving sustainable urban groundwater governance requires replacing blanket administrative mandates with a more data-driven, micro-zoned socio-hydrological framework across the city—combining area-specific extraction caps, economic instruments for geologically targeted aquifer storage and recovery, informal market regulation, and facilitating more participatory, community-based (Water users Associations, WUA) initiatives in the future to protect groundwater resources in Delhi. However, it requires specialized monitoring data, which is still largely lacking, and detailed investigations involving the aquifer hydrogeology and groundwater pumping patterns.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030088

Authors: Md. Mostafizur Rahman Jannatul Ferdouse Ratu Md. Kamruzzaman Md. Arshadul Islam György Szabó

Rapid urbanization and increasing land surface temperatures (LSTs) have intensified urban heat stress in rapidly growing tropical megacities such as Dhaka. However, the coarse spatial resolution of conventional thermal satellite imagery limits the identification of fine-scale urban thermal variability required for climate-sensitive urban planning. This study develops a multi-sensor LST downscaling framework by integrating Landsat 8 thermal imagery with Sentinel-2-derived spectral indices within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. A random forest regression model was developed using the normalized difference vegetation index, normalized difference built-up index, and modified normalized difference water index as predictors for statistical downscaling from the 30 m Landsat grid to a nominal 10 m grid. To preserve localized thermal heterogeneity and improve radiometric consistency, a bicubic residual correction approach was incorporated into the downscaling workflow. The resulting statistically downscaled LST estimate on a nominal 10 m grid was subsequently used to classify Urban Thermal Zones (UTZs) across Dhaka City. The results showed that LST was negatively associated with vegetation and water-related indices and positively associated with the built-up index. The statistically downscaled product provided a more spatially detailed representation of the Landsat-derived thermal field and delineated relative surface-temperature hotspots and cooler zones across the study area. High-temperature zones were primarily concentrated within densely built-up commercial and industrial areas, whereas comparatively lower temperatures were observed in vegetated and water-dominated regions. The proposed framework demonstrates a computationally efficient approach to spatially refining Landsat-derived LST in a data-constrained tropical megacity. The findings provide valuable spatial information for urban climate adaptation, heat mitigation planning, and climate-resilient urban development.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030087

Authors: Shodiyor Boboyev Lutfullo Ibragimov Aigul Sergeyeva Alexander Danshin Mamatkodir Nazarov Khayitboy Abduvaliev Khamidullo Fozilov Sirojiddin Do’sbekov

Agro-industrial clusters have become an important instrument of agricultural transformation in Uzbekistan, yet their spatial organization remains insufficiently examined from a geographical perspective. This study investigates the spatial concentration, sectoral differentiation, and geographical characteristics associated with the distribution of agro-industrial clusters in the Samarkand Region. The analysis combines official statistical data, descriptive GIS-based spatial analysis, Location Quotient (LQ) assessment, Global Moran’s I, district-level correlation analysis, and exploratory scenario analysis. The results reveal pronounced territorial differentiation, although Global Moran’s I indicates no statistically significant region-wide spatial autocorrelation (I = −0.218, p = 0.346). Cotton–textile clusters are concentrated in districts with extensive irrigated agricultural land, with a significant positive association supported by both Pearson (r = 0.571, p = 0.033) and Spearman (ρ = 0.737, p = 0.003) correlations. Fruit and vegetable clusters also show descriptive concentration in irrigated districts, although no statistically significant district-level association was identified. Other cluster types exhibit spatial patterns associated descriptively with processing infrastructure, feed resources, market accessibility, and historical agricultural specialization. Illustrative scenarios suggest that future development may increasingly depend on production intensification, value-added processing, and export diversification under conditions of limited irrigated land and growing water scarcity. Conceptually, the findings show that Uzbekistan’s agro-industrial “clusters” function as state-initiated, vertically integrated production systems rather than classical market-driven Porterian clusters. Given the aggregated district-level and exploratory nature of the analysis, the findings should be interpreted as ecological spatial associations rather than causal or cluster-level mechanisms.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030086

Authors: Flavio Tiago Couto Natalia Verónica Revollo Sarmiento Cátia Campos Federico Javier Beron de la Puente María Andrea Huamantinco Cisneros

Understanding where and why wildfires occur is essential for assessing fire danger and supporting mitigation strategies. This study proposes a spatiotemporal map to represent wildfire activity and support fire danger assessment in two fire-prone regions: Central–North Portugal and the Paraná Delta, Argentina. Active fire observations spanning over 10 years were analyzed using spatial network theory and graph-based clustering to map regional patterns and identify persistent and emerging hotspots. To complement this, high-resolution Meso-NH simulations at 0.5 km resolution were conducted for selected events, including the Arouca and Trancoso fires in Portugal and two events in the Paraná Delta. The maps reveal that the central areas of both regions are the most fire-prone. Small areas in Portugal emerged as regions of increasing activity and potential future recurrence, while the Paraná Delta showed a progressive northward expansion of fire activity. The historical hotspot map was complemented by atmospheric conditions obtained from the numerical simulations to reflect meteorological fire danger. The high-resolution numerical simulations can provide key insights into areas with elevated danger, demonstrating that integrating Earth observation data and numerical modeling is highly effective for wildfire management and risk assessment.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030085

Authors: Husamah Husamah Abdulkadir Rahardjanto Ludwick Satria Romadoni

Mangrove deforestation is a global problem, but sediment-dominated estuaries can resist it through their own morphodynamic processes. This study reconstructs the spatiotemporal trajectory of the Ujung Pangkah estuary (1995–2025) to weigh natural progradation against anthropogenic pressure. We mapped the estuary in Google Earth Engine using Landsat archives and a Random Forest classifier with four spectral indices (NDVI, mNDWI, EVI, and MVI) and then independently validated all four epochs (Overall Accuracy 92.25–95.00%; Kappa 0.845–0.900). Error-adjusted change-detection analysis shows a non-monotonic trajectory: mangrove extent grew from 898.88 ha (1995) to a 2410.44 ha peak in 2015 and then contracted to 1816.87 ha by 2025 (error-adjusted: 1261.11 to 2626.03 to 2213.71 ha). Across the 30-year record, this is a statistically significant net expansion (z = 3.60, p < 0.001). Spatial attribution shows the 2015–2025 contraction comes mostly from landward anthropogenic conversion (78.1%), not seaward erosion (21.9%). A lagged correlation between a suspended sediment proxy and decadal net change (r = 0.92) offers quantitative support for continued sediment-driven coastal progradation. Ujung Pangkah’s resilience therefore coexists with a real, locatable anthropogenic pressure. Safeguarding this blue carbon ecosystem means targeting policy at the interior conversion zones already underway, alongside continued protection of the coastal frontier.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030084

Authors: Carla Rodrigues Santos Francisco Salazar Fernanda Beatriz Jordan Rojas Dallaqua Bruno Schultz

Tropical restoration areas present high spectral heterogeneity and spatial fragmentation, making land use and land cover (LULC) classification challenging, particularly when using medium-resolution satellite imagery. Although spectral mixture analysis, object-based image analysis, and machine learning approaches have been widely explored individually, their integrated application using freely available China–Brazil Earth Resources Satellite 4A Wide-field Panchromatic and Multispectral (CBERS-4A/WPM) imagery for monitoring Environmental Restoration Commitment Agreements (TCRAs) remains limited. This study investigated whether the integration of Linear Spectral Mixture Model (LSMM) fractions, Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA), and machine learning algorithms could improve LULC classification for mapping TCRAs in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Spectral, textural, and sub-pixel attributes derived from pan-sharpened CBERS-4A/WPM imagery were combined into a unified feature dataset, and Random Forest, XGBoost, Multilayer Perceptron, and Support Vector Machine classifiers were evaluated. Random Forest achieved the best classification performance, with an overall accuracy of approximately 0.66, demonstrating superior predictive capability compared with the other tested algorithms. Feature importance analysis indicated that LSMM-derived vegetation and shadow fractions contributed significantly to class discrimination. The integration of spectral, spatial, and machine learning approaches provides an interpretable and cost-effective framework for LULC mapping in highly fragmented tropical restoration landscapes, supporting environmental monitoring and restoration assessment.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030083

Authors: Nirakar Bhol Umesh Sharma Subhasmita Parida Prajnashree Mallick Sushree Rojalina Mahapatra Jyotiraditya Das Neeraj Sankhyan Shilpa Sharma Sunny Sharma Amit Kumar

Forest vegetation dynamics are changing under climate change, with important implications for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, carbon cycling, and livelihoods. Vegetation regulates terrestrial carbon storage and biophysical feedbacks, but its responses to warming, changing precipitation, rising atmospheric CO2, and climate extremes are complex and spatially variable. This review presents a PRISMA-guided integrative synthesis of 74 peer-reviewed studies published between 1990 and 2025, incorporating evidence from remote sensing, long-term ecological observations, ecosystem flux measurements, experimental studies, and Earth system modelling. Rather than examining climatic drivers independently, the review synthesizes their interactions with water availability, nutrient limitation, land-use change, disturbance, and biotic processes across physiological, population, ecosystem, and biome scales, with particular emphasis on India. The synthesis reveals that vegetation responses are governed less by individual climatic drivers than by their interactions with resource availability, disturbance, land use, and ecosystem characteristics. Across the reviewed evidence, contrasting greening and browning trends, phenological shifts, species redistribution, and changes in productivity and carbon dynamics were observed. Importantly, greening does not consistently translate into enhanced ecosystem functioning or resilience because increased canopy development may occur alongside water and nutrient limitation, declining carbon-use efficiency, recurrent disturbance, land-use intensification, or changes in species composition. Indian evidence further demonstrates contrasting vegetation trajectories across forests, drylands, Himalayan ecosystems, and agricultural landscapes. Major uncertainties arise from differences among remote-sensing indicators, scale dependency, limited long-term experimental coverage, and incomplete representation of water, nutrient, disturbance, and vegetation processes in coupled climate–vegetation models. Overall, the review identifies a shift from assessing forest vegetation change primarily through greening toward evaluating ecosystem functioning, carbon permanence, and ecosystem resilience capacity as integrated indicators.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030082

Authors: Caroline Breton Camilo Muñoz Nikolaos Bakirtzis Alexandros Savvaidis

Seismic monitoring networks increasingly develop capabilities that function as geographic information infrastructure, transforming continuous geophysical observations into spatial information that supports research, decision-making, and public awareness. In Texas, seismicity linked to oil and gas operations has increased since 2009 across major producing regions, prompting the Texas Legislature to establish the Texas Seismological Network and Seismology Research program (TexNet) in 2015. This paper examines TexNet’s seismic monitoring network, field operations, data-processing pipeline, and the information products, data services, and decision-support tools that transform seismic observations into accessible earthquake information. Since routine earthquake reporting began in 2017, TexNet has grown from an inherited network of eighteen broadband stations to a system directly maintaining 207 stations and incorporating 421 active stations to locate earthquakes across Texas. TexNet provides a suite of information products, data services, and decision-support tools—including the TexNet Earthquake Catalog, near-real-time notification systems, and open data products—that connect geophysical observations with the needs of researchers, regulatory agencies, industry, and the public. TexNet remains fundamentally a seismic monitoring network, with additional capabilities that support scientific, regulatory, and public information needs in Texas and other regions with induced seismicity.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030081

Authors: Vladimir Tabunshchik Anna Drygval Polina Drygval Olga Parubets Aleksandra Nikiforova Cam Nhung Pham Nikolai Bratanov Maria Safonova Ekaterina Petlukova Anna Repetskaya Irina Kalinchuk

Terrestrial vegetation cover is a critical component of the global carbon cycle, annually assimilating a substantial fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. However, regional estimates of gross primary production (GPP) and net primary production (NPP) remain insufficiently studied, especially for ecologically sensitive areas such as the sub-Mediterranean landscapes of southeastern Crimea. The aim of this study is to calculate and map the spatio-temporal distribution of GPP and NPP across southeastern Crimea over the period 2001–2025 using Earth remote sensing data and geoinformation modeling. This study employed MODIS products (MOD17A2H collection 061) processed in the Google Earth Engine cloud platform, together with temperature and precipitation data (ClimateEU, CHIRPS). Statistical analysis included calculation of the carbon use efficiency (CUE) coefficient and correlation analysis. The results show that the mean GPP for southeastern Crimea is 1.13 kg C/m2 and the mean NPP is 0.61 kg C/m2, which exceed global average values. Maximum productivity is characteristic of natural forest communities (sessile oak, beech and juniper forests), whereas anthropogenically transformed landscapes (agricultural land, urban coenoses) exhibit the lowest values. The mean CUE is 0.54, with the highest values (0.63–0.66) recorded for agrocoenoses and steppes, and the lowest (0.49–0.57) for forests. A positive correlation between productivity and precipitation and a negative correlation with air temperature were identified, especially for forest ecosystems. This study fills a gap in regional primary productivity assessments and can serve as a basis for ecosystem monitoring under climate change and anthropogenic pressure.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030080

Authors: Gergely Halász Alexandra Ferencz-Havel Dénes Saláta József Káposzta Kristián Kurcz Eszter Tormáné Kovács

The primary aim of this study is to identify how residents on the Hungarian and Slovak sides of the Lower Ipoly Valley perceive the most considerable material and immaterial local values and unique resources of their settlements. The research was designed to explore and compare the territorial capital of the two sides of the study area based on three major capital types: natural, social, and economic capitals. Data collection included 254 semi-structured interviews, conducted with 136 residents on the Slovak side (14 settlements) and 118 residents on the Hungarian side (12 settlements). Detailed interview summaries were analysed with qualitative content analysis using emergent coding. This resulted in an analytical framework comprising nine value dimensions. Across both sides of the border, we examined the same nine value dimensions: local workforce, local enterprises, civil organisations and cultural groups, local and community events, local gastronomy, natural values, built heritage, holders of local knowledge, and local products. Items mentioned that related to each value dimension were counted for each dimension and normalised to a 0–10 scale. The quantified values were aggregated at the settlement level (90 points being the maximum score). The average score of each dimension was also calculated for both sides of the study area. Our findings show that the Hungarian side achieved a total score of 40.4, while the Slovak side reached 36.6, both reflecting a similarly weak–moderate state of the local capitals with minimal differences. This indicates that the two sides of the study area share comparable developmental challenges but also considerable potential for improvement. The Hungarian side performed slightly better in nearly all dimensions except local gastronomy, where the Slovak side proved stronger. The Hungarian side’s relative advantages include a higher presence of local enterprises, a richer network of civil and cultural groups, and more diverse built heritage; in other dimensions, differences are marginal. One of the most pressing regional challenges is improving employment opportunities and stimulating entrepreneurial activity, which are essential for enhancing population retention. Overall, the results indicate that the settlements possess substantial—yet largely underutilised—value assets, whose conscious and consensus-based development could form a strong foundation for creative and innovative local development. Each settlement’s value matrix includes elements that define its uniqueness, enabling the identification of numerous potential development pathways, whether through nature-based educational and recreational programmes, the utilisation of culturally considerable built heritage, the revitalisation of living traditions, or the promotion of local traditional gastronomy on both sides of the study area.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030079

Authors: Erdenesukh Sumiya Sandelger Dorligjav Munkhbat Byamba-Ochir Batjargal Gankhuyag Enkhbat Erdenebat Dorligjav Donorov Dongmei Song Gantuya Ganbat

Near-surface temperature inversions are prevalent during the cold months in Ulaanbaatar city, Mongolia, and significantly degrade urban air quality by trapping hazardous pollutants within a shallow atmospheric boundary layer. This study investigates spatiotemporal variability, physical mechanisms, and long-term evolution of near-surface temperature inversions over Ulaanbaatar by integrating 25 years (2000–2024) of ground-based meteorological and radiosonde observations, with high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations for 2012–2023. Our results demonstrate the four-dimensional data assimilation (FDDA) grid nudging effectively captures localized topographic influences in the WRF simulations, showing a strong agreement with radiosonde observations (R2 = 0.783, p < 0.000). Near-surface temperature inversions are strongly controlled by the Siberian High, with the highest frequency occurring from December to February, when up to 67% of morning observations exhibit inversion conditions. A pronounced diurnal cycle was identified, with inversion intensity peaking at 5.6–6.8 °C during the early morning hours (02:00–08:00 LST) before reaching a minimum around 14:00 LST. Spatially, the strongest inversions occur along the low-lying Tuul River valley, where the planetary boundary layer is compressed to below 350 m and wind speeds decrease to less than 2.4 m·s−1, creating persistent atmospheric stagnation. Despite these favorable conditions for inversion formation, long-term observations indicate that regional warming (+2.0 °C) and the urban heat island effects have reduced inversion frequency by 31%, inversion thickness by 170 m, and inversion intensity by 0.9 °C over the past 25 years. These findings demonstrate the strong coupling between regional complex terrain, and boundary layer thermodynamics, highlighting the need to incorporate urban ventilation corridors and topography-informed planning into climate adaptation and winter air-quality management strategies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030078

Authors: K. P. Deepthi K. S. Vignesh C. Pradeepa Ramalingam Senthil

Pluvial flooding is intensifying in fast-growing coastal cities as rapid urbanization increases impervious surfaces and reduces natural infiltration, challenging planners to identify scalable and site-level mitigation strategies. Although statutory setbacks around institutional buildings are widely mandated for ventilation, safety, and accessibility, their contribution to urban flood resilience remains largely unexplored. This study develops the Flood Setback Performance Index (FSPI), a dimensionless indicator that integrates setback permeability and area-weighted runoff coefficients to quantify the flood-mitigation potential of mandatory setbacks. The framework was demonstrated using eight government school campuses in the Chennai, Chengalpattu, and Thiruvallur regions, which are part of a flood-prone coastal metropolis in India, following the extreme rainfall event of December 2025. Flood conditions were verified through post-event field surveys and visual evidence, while setback characteristics were extracted from satellite imagery and classified into permeable and impervious surfaces. The permeable fraction of setbacks and the FSPI values exhibited a strong inverse relationship with flood severity (Spearman’s ρ = −0.87, exact permutation p = 0.011). Ordinal logistic regression confirmed this gradient (likelihood-ratio χ2 = 9.3–10.3, p ≤ 0.002, McFadden’s R2 = 0.54–0.60), and campus rankings were made under saturated runoff coefficients. The findings demonstrate that statutory setbacks can function as nature-based flood-mitigation infrastructure with measurable hydrological benefits. Beyond the case study, the FSPI provides a simple, transferable, evidence-based tool for screening institutional sites by flood-mitigation performance and prioritizing where adaptation measures, such as increasing permeable-surface cover within statutory setbacks are needed, supporting climate-resilient urban planning and providing a regulatory reform decision-support tool with three applications: prioritizing the campus-level retrofit of permeable surfaces; screening building applications against setback surface standards; and identifying shelter-designated schools that require drainage upgrades. It thereby supports climate-resilient urban planning, regulatory reform, and progress toward Sustainable Development Goals 11 and 13.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030077

Authors: Chonglong Gu

Positioned as a node of low-end globalization, the Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui represents a transnational urban space with many ethnic restaurants, grocery stores, shops and cheap hotels. As a vertical hub of superdiversity, the building features significant number of people from South Asia (e.g., India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal), Southeast Asia, Africa and beyond. Unlike most ethnic enclaves and multicultural areas that feature horizontal spatial organization, the Chungking Mansions conceptually represents a vertical ‘Little South Asia’ or ‘Little UN’ condensed into one building. The transient and anonymous Chungking Mansions is something of a ‘non-place’ but it also has a sense of community. The building over time gained a bad reputation as a mysterious, dodgy, shady and dangerous ethnic place where violence and crimes take place. This article aims to demystify the Chungking Mansions from under-explored sociolinguistic/multilingual perspectives. Languages and symbols inscribed in the linguistic/semiotic landscape, we argue, represent important anthropogenic impacts on geography and nature, which constitute salient entry points into understanding how migration, low-end globalization and superdiversity leave traces on the urban landscape. This study documents and shows how various multilingual signs and cultural and religious symbols enact ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious identities and produce and reproduce social meanings alongside the building’s verticality. These materially and symbolically contribute to a vertical geography of superdiversity.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030076

Authors: Khadijetou AbdelWehab Sidi Ahmed Elemin Mohamed Ahmed Sidi Cheikh Sidi Mohamed Cheikh Ouedi Khadijetou El Hacen Amjad Kallel

Black-sand mining is an under-studied anthropogenic pressure on arid coastal environments, where sparse vegetation and slow natural recovery limit conventional impact assessment. Despite the recent expansion of heavy-mineral extraction along the Mauritanian coast, no spatio-temporal analysis has quantified its effects on land cover and surface-water dynamics in the N’Diago region. We analysed the N’Diago–LGUWYCHICH coastal sector (south-western Mauritania) using three Landsat scenes (2014, 2020, and 2026) in QGIS (free and open-source Geographic Information System), four spectral indices (NDVI-Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDWI-Normalized Difference Water Index, BSI- Bare Soil Index, and CI -Coloration Index), supervised Support Vector Machine classification and a 30 m SRTM Digital Elevation Model over a 97.82 ha area of interest. Bare soil dominated the landscape at every date (92.6–95.7%) and vegetation stayed below 7%, indicating that canopy-based metrics underestimate disturbance in this setting. The clearest change was hydrological: an inland water body shrank from 1.02 ha in 2020 to 0.40 ha in 2026, a 60.6% loss. This individual inland water body, measured directly and independently from the NDWI index, is our primary hydrological observation: the wet feature was smaller in the 2026 image than in the 2020 image and was located near the mapped concession areas, but the available data do not establish the cause of this change. Similar bare-soil and colour index values (BSI ≈ 0.23, CI ≈ 0.79–0.80) were observed in the processed images, while residual seasonal and radiometric differences between the Landsat 8 and DOS-corrected Landsat 9 products cannot be excluded; BSI and CI are treated only as candidate or contextual spectral patterns, so any delineation of the disturbed footprint is provisional and requires confirmation from independent field data. This study illustrates a low-cost exploratory workflow that may support preliminary monitoring in data-scarce arid coastal settings, pending validation with denser time series and field observations.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030075

Authors: Ratchaphon Samphutthanont Worawit Suppawimut

Forest fires are a major environmental concern in Northern Thailand, contributing to ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and seasonal air pollution. This study identified the environmental factors influencing forest fire occurrence and developed a forest fire susceptibility map using an integrated Geographic Information System (GIS) and Logistic Regression (LR) framework in Chom Thong District, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. Fire occurrence data were derived from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) active fire hotspots detected by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite (Suomi-NPP satellite) during 2023–2025. A total of 1674 hotspots were identified (616 in 2023, 889 in 2024, and 169 in 2025). Ten environmental variables, including elevation, slope, aspect, Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), stream density, rainfall, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI), Land Surface Temperature (LST), and land-use, were analyzed. The LR model was trained using 2293 training samples (70%) and validated using 983 samples (30%). The results revealed that slope, rainfall, stream density, and LST were significant predictors of forest fire occurrence, with deciduous and evergreen forests exhibiting the highest susceptibility among land-use classes. The resulting forest fire susceptibility map classified 235.12 km2 (21.16%) and 204.16 km2 (18.38%) of the district as very high and high susceptibility, respectively, primarily in mountainous forest areas. The model achieved an overall accuracy of 77.5% and an Area Under the Curve (AUC) value of 0.852, indicating good predictive performance. Furthermore, the proposed Geographic Information System-Logistic Regression (GIS-LR) framework provides an interpretable and transferable approach for forest fire susceptibility assessment and generates spatial information that can support forest fire prevention, resource allocation, and environmental management in Northern Thailand and other fire-prone regions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030073

Authors: Eko Yulianto Purna Sulastya Putra Septriono Hari Nugroho Agus Men Riyanto Putri Ayu Isnaini Yumei Charmenia Edi Hidayat

The southern coast of Java, Indonesia, is situated along the active Sunda subduction margin where raised coastal landforms may record the combined influence of relative sea-level change, wave processes, sedimentation, and vertical land motion. This study presents field-based RTK-GNSS topographic profiles from four coastal sites: Pantai Ajah, Kalijali, Kulon Progo, and Wingko. Profiles were used to locate terrace treads, risers, slope breaks, residual topographic highs, and possible raised coastal surfaces. The results show spatially varying coastal morphology. Pantai Ajah has a marked riser and probable terrace tread at about 7–8.5 m elevation. Kalijali shows a lower terrace-like surface at about 4–5 m, an upper surface at about 7–9 m, and a higher local topographic high at about 12–13 m. Kulon Progo is characterized by a low-elevation coastal surface that is only weakly expressed in the topography, whereas Wingko contains a distinct slope break and a broad landward surface at approximately 5–6.5 m elevation. Across the four profiles, broad low-gradient surfaces recur within two elevation ranges, approximately 4–6.5 m and 7–9 m. These ranges are treated as provisional morphometric groupings rather than correlated or coeval terrace levels. Higher isolated elevations are described as ridge-like or residual topographic highs whose origin and age remain unresolved. No direct chronological or sedimentological constraints are currently available, so correlations with Holocene or older sea-level highstands are only tentative. The results show the usefulness of RTK-GNSS profiling for the documentation of local coastal terrace morphology and for the identification of priority sites for future dating, sedimentological analysis, and coastal-hazard assessment.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030074

Authors: Melti Roza Adry Akhmad Fauzi Bambang Juanda Andrea Emma Pravitasari

Indonesia is one of the world’s most seismically active countries, experiencing frequent earthquakes that make assessing regional resilience essential for disaster risk reduction. This study dynamically evaluates socioeconomic resilience in 28 regencies/municipalities affected by destructive earthquakes between 2016 and 2022. Resilience was quantified using the Adjusted Mazziotta–Pareto Index (AMPI) at three periods: pre-event (T0), during the event (T1), and post-event (T2). Index changes were interpreted as resistance (Δ1 = T1 − T0), recovery (Δ2 = T2 − T1), and adaptive capacity (Δ3 = T2 − T0). Results show substantial regional differences in resilience trajectories: some areas experienced only minor declines during the earthquake, while others were heavily affected but recovered quickly. Cluster analysis revealed distinct typologies, including consistently high-resilience regions, rapid-recovery regions, and persistently vulnerable regions. These disparities are associated with variation in economic capacity, social vulnerability, labor market conditions, and access to health services. Overall, the findings highlight the value of a multidimensional, time-sensitive approach to measuring socioeconomic resilience. The study advances an AMPI-based temporal measurement framework and offers policy insights for development planning and disaster mitigation.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030072

Authors: Shaikh Mahfuz Alam Md Obidul Haque Jayedi Aman Shrabone Das Boishakhe Muhammad Moniruzzaman

Rapid urbanization is reshaping land surface conditions and local thermal environments in fast-growing coastal cities. This study examines how Land Use Land Cover (LULC) transformation influenced seasonal land surface temperature (LST) dynamics in Chattogram City Corporation (CCC), Bangladesh, over 2004–2024. Multi-temporal Landsat imagery was analyzed using a Random Forest classifier, and spectral indices (NDVI, NDBI, NDBaI, MNDWI) were derived to characterize surface biophysical conditions. Built-up land expanded by 27.71 km2, largely replacing agricultural and vegetated areas. Summer mean LST rose from 36.08 °C to 36.50 °C, while winter LST rose from 25.25 °C to 26.97 °C. Only the winter warming trend is statistically significant; the summer change falls within the ±1–2 °C retrieval uncertainty of Landsat-derived LST. The summer–winter thermal gap consequently narrowed from 10.83 °C to 9.53 °C, indicating that urbanization-driven warming in this tropical coastal city is disproportionately concentrated in the cool dry season. Partial correlation and multiple regression analyses confirm that built-up intensity (NDBI) is the dominant driver of surface warming, while vegetation (NDVI) exerts a consistent cooling influence. Water bodies showed contrasting seasonal trends, with winter extent declining alongside a slight summer increase. These findings highlight the critical role of vegetation and water bodies in moderating urban heat and provide data-driven insights for climate-responsive planning in rapidly urbanizing coastal cities.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030071

Authors: Karishma Sarma Ujjal Deka Baruah Anoop Kumar Shukla

Rainfall variability plays a significant role in modulating both aquatic and socioeconomic systems in the Eastern Himalayas. Among the longitudinal ranges of the Himalayas, the Greater Himalaya is considered the most vulnerable due to its high climatic sensitivity and steep topography. Given this importance, the present study investigates the spatial patterns of temperature and precipitation, their trends, and the occurrence of extreme events over Eastern Greater Himalaya (EGH) during 1981–2025. High-resolution gridded datasets for temperature (0.1° × 0.1°) from ERA5-Land and precipitation (0.05° × 0.05°) from CHIRPS are used. The significance and magnitude of trends are quantified using the Mann–Kendall test and Sen’s slope, respectively. The temperature in EGH is increasing at ~0.27 °C per decade, with the most pronounced increase during winter (>0.4–0.5 °C per decade). Temperature extremes show a clear shift toward warmer conditions, with an increasing frequency of warm days and nights (TX90p: ~0.29; TN90p: ~0.64), along with rising intensity (TXx: ~0.007 °C/year; TNn: ~0.04 °C/year) and a decline in cold extremes. Precipitation exhibits high spatial variability (<500 mm to >2000 mm) but weak and statistically not significant long-term trends. The monsoon contributes the highest precipitation (~1200–2000 mm), with a shift toward drier conditions after 2010–2015. Extreme precipitation indices show declining trends in daily maximum (RX1day: ~5–140 mm), maximum 5-day (RX5day: ~8.4–240 mm), total (PRCPTOT: ~−0.23 mm/year) and intensity of (SDII: ~−0.041 mm/day) precipitation. This research indicates a significant climate shift in EGH with rapid warming along with uncertain precipitation patterns, which may have implications for water resources, aquatic systems, and dependent communities.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030070

Authors: Hanna Tutova Olena Lisovets Olha Kunakh Olexander Zhukov

Monitoring dynamic post-catastrophic landscapes necessitates unsupervised classification approaches capable of incorporating newly emerging landscape-cover states without relying on predefined classes. Within this framework, the temporal correspondence of independently derived spectral clusters presents a critical methodological challenge. This study compared different temporal correspondence approaches for multi-temporal Sentinel-2 imagery of the post-catastrophic floodplain landscape of Khortytsia Island (Ukraine) from 2021 to 2026. In addition to existing temporal cluster correspondence methods based on centroid distance, Mahalanobis distance, Linear Discriminant Analysis, and Random Forest, geometrically oriented approaches employing the elongation and principal-axis orientation of spectral point clouds were evaluated. A series of tests assessed correspondence accuracy, robustness to seasonal and interannual drift, graph connectivity, and consensus structure among different temporal correspondence solutions. The results demonstrated that geometrically oriented approaches preserved temporal correspondence among landscape-cover states with high stability despite phenological and interannual variability. In particular, axis-based correspondence more effectively maintained separation between corresponding and competing clusters amid progressive temporal divergence. Consensus analysis revealed that disagreement among methods was concentrated in ecotonal and actively transforming zones, indicating areas of increased landscape instability. This study shows that the geometry of spectral trajectories contains valuable information for temporal correspondence and provides a promising foundation for monitoring dynamic post-catastrophic landscape systems.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030069

Authors: Salvador Martínez-Puche Antonio Martínez-Puche

This article examines how Spanish rural cinema functions as a media dispositif—understood, following the Foucauldian concept as operationalised in media studies, as an apparatus of heterogeneous practices, discourses and institutional arrangements that produces and governs representations—for the construction and circulation of territorial imaginaries, thereby participating in the media ecosystem of public debates on depopulation, migration and multicultural coexistence. Through a diachronic and sociodemographic comparison of La piel quemada (Josep Maria Forn, 1967) and Suro (Mikel Gurrea, 2022)—two feature films set in the province of Girona (Catalonia, Spain) but separated by 55 years and opposing migratory pressures—the study analyses how audiovisual fiction produces, challenges and renegotiates the dominant sociodemographic imaginaries of two distinct historical conjunctures: the developmentalist boom of late Francoism and the neo-rural turn of the early twenty-first century. A qualitative chronotopic methodology is applied to 18 systematically selected sequences from both films, organised around three contextualising axes (historical, territorial, sociodemographic). The central original contribution is the concept of the media–geographic diptych as an instrument for diachronic comparative analysis of rural cinema as a media form. Secondary contributions include evidence that the two media texts analysed construct an imaginary of structural continuity of xenophobia in the rural territorial discourse of Girona and a theoretical proposal on cinematic multilingualism as an under-theorised territorial media practice. The discussion situates these findings within current debates on rural cosmopolitanism, overtourism and the media construction of la España vaciada, and offers preliminary evidence that audiovisual fiction occupies a differentiated position in the media ecology of territorial public discourse that merits systematic attention in future studies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030068

Authors: Yanil Contreras-Jiménez Carolina Palma-Preciado Miguel Torres-Ruiz Magdalena Saldaña-Pérez Rolando Quintero Carlos Guzmán Sánchez-Mejorada Roberto Zagal-Flores

Ensuring a high quality of life for citizens is a fundamental objective for every city, with public safety representing one of the most critical challenges to social sustainability and equitable urban development. This study analyzes the spatiotemporal dynamics of violent crime in Mexico City across pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic periods (2019–2023) to evaluate how COVID-19 mobility restrictions were associated with changes in crime patterns. Using publicly available crime reports, we applied Seasonal-Trend decomposition using Loess (STL) and Moran’s I to examine four violent crimes: homicide, robbery, kidnapping, and rape. The results reveal crime-specific pandemic-related patterns. While robbery showed a sustained decline, its spatial clustering intensified significantly, with Moran’s I increasing from 0.22 to 0.59, indicating highly localized risk zones. Conversely, rape exhibited a steady increase that appeared unaffected by lockdown measures, while maintaining significant spatial autocorrelation. Likewise, Cuauhtémoc borough persisted as the main urban hotspot across all phases. Overall, crime did not decline uniformly during the pandemic; instead, mobility restrictions reshaped the geographic distribution and concentration of specific offenses. This research contributes to the understanding of crime dynamics during and after a public health emergency.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030067

Authors: Sina Khoshnevisan Saeid Gharechelou Fatemeh Khakzad Mohammadreza Asli Charandabi Amir Ghayebi Milad Zibaei Shirvan

Precise identification and monitoring of small agricultural water bodies are essential for sustainable water resources management in arid and semi-arid regions, where even limited water losses can significantly affect agricultural productivity and local water security. However, the accurate detection of small ponds remains a major challenge in remote sensing, to address this challenge, this study proposes an integrated three-step framework that combines high-resolution remote sensing imagery, machine and deep learning techniques, and hydrological analysis to identify agricultural ponds and quantify their evaporation losses in Bastam, Iran. In the first step, a dedicated annotated dataset comprising 1061 RGB satellite images, each with a spatial size of 256 × 256 pixels and a ground resolution of 0.5 m, was developed for model training and evaluation. Using this dataset, three deep learning models BiSeNet, UNet3+, and SegNet and four traditional supervised classifiers Maximum Likelihood, Neural Network, Mahalanobis Distance, and Minimum Distance were implemented and compared for pond detection. The results demonstrated that deep learning models consistently outperformed conventional classifiers in delineating small agricultural ponds. Among all evaluated methods, BiSeNet achieved the highest segmentation performance, with an IoU of 82.08%, an F1-score of 90.15%, a precision of 91.86%, and a recall of 88.50%. Among the conventional classifiers, Maximum Likelihood combined with a 5 × 5 spatial kernel produced the best performance, achieving an IoU of 76.90%, an F1-score of 86.93%, a precision of 90.87%, and a recall of 83.32%, whereas simpler classifiers such as Minimum Distance showed only marginal improvements after kernelization. In the final step, the detected ponds were used to estimate evaporation losses through the Meyer method. The hydrological analysis revealed a clear periodic pattern in evaporation and a cumulative water loss of 388,636.7 m3 over a nine-month period, highlighting the considerable impact of evaporation on the efficiency of small agricultural water storage systems in dry environments. Based on these findings, practical mitigation strategies, including evaporation-reducing chemical surface films and floating covers, are discussed as potential options for reducing water loss. Overall, the proposed framework demonstrates the clear advantage of deep learning for the accurate identification of small agricultural ponds and provides an integrated methodological basis for monitoring water bodies and evaluating associated evaporation losses. The study offers a practical and transferable approach for supporting agricultural water management and improving water-use efficiency in arid and semi-arid regions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030066

Authors: Éric Robitaille

Complete neighbourhoods, places where residents can meet their daily needs on foot, have become a central component of healthy and sustainable urban planning. Yet most assessment frameworks are calibrated for dense metropolitan environments, leaving rural and peri-urban municipalities without operational tools suited to their territorial needs. This article presents MilieuxVie, an open-source, browser-based interactive mapping application developed for the Laurentides health region of Québec (76 municipalities, 11 land-based unorganised territories, 2 indigenous territories and 4 aquatic administrative units; 93 territorial units in total; ~680,000 inhabitants). The tool evaluates the spatial accessibility of 12 service categories drawn from the Vivre en Ville (2026) complete-neighbourhood framework and OpenStreetMap data, using 2026 residential parcels from the provincial property assessment roll as origin points and weighting results by number of dwelling units. Three adaptive radius tiers (dense, intermediate, rural), based on residential dwelling-unit density (dwellings per km2 of residentially designated urban land), scale the distance standards to settlement density. Because thresholds are scaled to settlement density, scores express context-relative service proximity rather than a uniform pedestrian standard and should not be read as directly comparable absolute accessibility across rural, peri-urban, and urban settings. A dedicated urban perimeter mode further disaggregates analysis to sub-municipal built-up zones, aligning the tool with Québec’s provincial Government land-use planning guidelines (GLPG). Gap analysis outputs identify which service types fall below the 70% coverage target, helping elected officials and planners identify where to focus further analysis. Results illustrate the scope of accessibility deficits across the region and highlight the analytical limits of uniform distance thresholds when applied beyond metropolitan contexts. Scores differ significantly across different settings (Kruskal–Wallis p = 0.006); the adaptive radius tiers narrow but do not close the structural gap, with rural municipalities scoring significantly lower than dense ones. The tool is freely available and requires no software installation, making it directly deployable by local planning offices.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030065

Authors: Danijela Vukoičić Dušan Kićović Dragan Petrović Ljiljana Mihajlović Dušan Ristić

Mountain tourism destinations are increasingly challenged by climate change, environmental degradation, and the need to balance economic development with the long-term conservation of natural resources. This study evaluates alternative pathways for the sustainable development of mountain tourism in Central Serbia by applying an integrated multi-criteria decision-making framework that combines conventional and fuzzy approaches to account for uncertainty in expert judgments. A set of economic, environmental, social, developmental, and governance-related criteria was used to assess different tourism development models and identify those with the greatest potential to support long-term sustainability. The findings indicate that development strategies emphasizing climate adaptation, environmental protection, tourism diversification, and active participation of local communities provide the most promising basis for sustainable mountain tourism development. The study also highlights the importance of diversifying tourism products beyond winter-based activities through nature-based forms of tourism, including geotourism, which builds upon the region’s rich geoheritage, geomorphological diversity, and cultural landscapes while strengthening destination resilience to climate change. The proposed evaluation framework provides a practical decision-support tool that can be adapted to other mountain regions facing similar environmental and developmental challenges.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030064

Authors: Álvaro-Francisco Morote Jorge Olcina Daniel López-Rodríguez Bàrbara Micó-Vicent Jorge Jordán-Núñez Antonio Belda

This study analyses the Master Plan for Analysis, Anticipation and Reaction to Natural Disasters of the Valencian Community (Spain) from the perspective of geographical risk literacy. The research adopts a qualitative methodology based on documentary analysis and conceptual assessment of public policy. The corpus includes Valencian institutional documents, Spanish civil protection and education regulations, international disaster risk reduction frameworks and the scientific literature on geography education, risk perception, social vulnerability and school preparedness. The findings show that the plan can strengthen institutional coordination, public communication and preventive culture through its preventive orientation, phased structure, official sources, attention to vulnerable groups, updated cartography and promotion of drills. However, its social effectiveness will depend on transforming protocols and guides into verifiable citizen capacities: identifying hazards, recognizing local exposure, interpreting warnings and maps, selecting safe routes, preparing households and rehearsing decisions in realistic contexts. The article proposes complementing the plan with a geographical literacy programme for territorial resilience based on local risk sheets, school atlases, evaluated drills, community mediation, accessible viewers and public monitoring indicators. The discussion places the Valencian case within international debates on disaster risk reduction, anticipatory governance, people-centred early warning systems and school safety. Because no empirical implementation data are yet available, the contribution is framed as an analytical and design-oriented framework requiring subsequent validation through pilots, surveys, interviews and evaluated drills.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030063

Authors: Rizqi Abdulharis Susilo Kusdiwanggo Ida Nurlinda Gustaff Harriman Iskandar Angga Dwiartama Andri Hernandi Teguh Purnama Sidiq Walter Timo de Vries

Indigenous knowledge and associated indigenous resource management practices are at the root of sustainable land and marine management. Typically, they point to the necessity of maintaining biodiversity and of ensuring the sustenance of social and economic systems, which benefit the well-being of indigenous communities. Conscious of these core attributes, the Government of Indonesia has enabled formal access for indigenous communities to forests for their livelihoods. Nonetheless, meeting the sustainable development goals through such forest management and conservation in Indonesia is threatened by various competing interests and power imbalances. These lead to the disproportionate conversion of naturally vegetated areas, as well as the inability of communities to benefit from economic opportunities. Moreover, the Government of Indonesia has insufficiently regulated the utilisation of indigenous knowledge to conserve the forest areas. This creates a policy design and implementation gap which is not properly understood or addressed. In this conceptual article, we posit that applying cultural space methodology fills the gaps. This methodology combines cultural space and land administration concepts and connects people to land and marine space. This article discusses how and why using the methodology proves to be effective for agricultural and maritime communities in Indonesia and helps to reform the administration capacities of the territories. It identifies and assesses people and land/marine space relationships by the existence of (1) knowledge, practices, and/or objects that represent the relationship, (2) the social, economic, and environmental function of space for the community, and (3) administration of the forest and conservation areas. The methodology also provides a procedure to convert information on the interrelation of the indigenous community, its cultural space in the forest and conservation areas, and indigenous knowledge into geospatial information and data that represent the cultural space unit as a geographic feature.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030062

Authors: Dino Bečić

Platform-mediated short-term rental (STR) markets concentrate intensely in heritage urban cores, yet the temporal stability of this concentration remains poorly understood. This study examines spatial dynamics of STR concentration in Dubrovnik’s UNESCO-listed historic core across five biennial cross-sections (2017–2025) using complete administrative eVisitor registration data and an H3 hexagonal grid at resolution 11. Global and local spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I, LISA, Getis-Ord Gi*), Emerging Hot Spot Analysis for spatiotemporal typologies, and bivariate LISA to distinguish capacity saturation from fragmentation were applied. Results demonstrate structural persistence: Moran’s I remained highly significant (p < 0.001) across all periods including COVID-19 disruption (range 0.417–0.467, CV = 4.4%), despite 53% supply growth and only 3.7% spatial expansion. Consecutive hotspots dominated typological classification, indicating active consolidation. Capacity analysis revealed concordant High–High patterns (56.8% of significant cells) with zero High–Low associations, confirming saturation not fragmentation. Findings support spatial lock-in in STR markets: concentration persists because locational advantages are properties of place rather than market volume, requiring spatially differentiated regulation rather than aggregate supply controls.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030061

Authors: Avinoam Meir

This article argues that there is a “substance” within places that is essential for understanding local space and its spatial processes but remains a research lacuna in human geography. It consists of geographical entities which, through relationships with the place, participate significantly in processes within it, e.g., production of its space, configuring the nature of its space, and transforming the nature of the place. I first address the issue of a geographical entity and its agency that is attributed to it under the posthuman paradigm and how it may be viewed relationally, highlighting commonalities and differences between human geography and sociology, why entitativity does not defy relationality, the nature of relationality of geographical entities, and how it may be studied practically. Three geographical entities with different natures and geographical contexts are illustrated: the spatiality of an urban military base; the nature of a rural space created and transformed by an industrial compound; and the transformed nature of a place by an intentional community. The discussion highlights the merit of geographical entities as significant “substances” for understanding local space and the various issues and questions that surface when engaging with them. The conclusion dwells upon the value of studying geographical entities for human geography and for geography in general.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6030060

Authors: Rosny Jean Patricia Tello Reátegui

Coffee production in Peru plays a crucial socio-economic role, supporting over 200,000 families and contributing significantly to export income. However, the spatial variation in coffee farming across ecological and socio-economic regions remains poorly understood. This study examines spatial patterns of coffee farm clustering in three Peruvian mountainous regions (Moyobamba, Tingo María, and Tocache) using descriptive statistics, geospatial visualization, and unsupervised clustering techniques. Farm-level reports and government geospatial records covering 2019–2023 were analyzed to evaluate cultivation area, altitude, and spatial distribution. Kernel density mapping, Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation, and Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) were applied to identify statistically significant clustering patterns, while regression analysis and DBSCAN clustering were used to evaluate spatial trends and production hotspots. Moran’s I indicated moderate spatial clustering (0.34, p < 0.001), while regression analysis showed a weak negative association between altitude and cultivation area (β = −1.144 × 10−4, adjusted R2 = 0.023). Results suggest that measured environmental variables explain only a limited proportion of spatial variation in coffee production, indicating that additional unmeasured factors, potentially including socio-economic influences, may contribute to observed clustering patterns. These findings highlight the value of spatial analysis for understanding production heterogeneity and for supporting regionally adapted agricultural planning strategies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020059

Authors: Sandy Alawna Xavier Garcia

Access to safe and reliable water resources is one of the most critical global challenges of the twenty-first century. In developing regions, such as Palestine, ensuring adequate water access has become increasingly difficult due to rapid population growth and the intensifying impacts of climate change, which place additional pressure on limited water resources. In this context, alternative water sources, such as rooftop rainwater harvesting (RWH), represent a promising option for enhancing water resilience. This study assesses the impacts of climate change on water resilience in the West Bank by evaluating the future performance of rooftop RWH systems. The potential effects of climate change on optimal storage capacity, system reliability, and deficit ratio are assessed spatially across different West Bank governorates. Monthly rainfall projections for the period 2021–2100 were obtained under three climate change scenarios (SSP126, SSP370, and SSP585). The results indicate that climate change is expected to negatively affect both optimal storage capacity and system reliability, with the most pronounced impacts occurring under the high-emission scenarios. However, the magnitude of these impacts varies spatially among governorates. At the West Bank level, the reliability of the RWH system decreases from 38% to 34% when shifting from the low-emission scenario to the high-emission scenario. Additionally, the optimal storage capacity and the harvested volume will decrease from 65 m3 to 58 m3. This study is the first in this area to use the mass balance approach to predict the future impact of climate risk on the storage capacity of rooftop rainwater harvesting systems. Overall, the findings provide a comprehensive assessment of the feasibility of rooftop RWH as a mitigation and adaptation measure to climate risks and its potential role in enhancing water resilience in the West Bank. This study presents the full framework for assessing the reliability of rainwater harvesting systems under conditions of climate uncertainty.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020058

Authors: Louise Gil Soares Ferreira Samir de Souza Oliveira Alves Leonardo Vieira Barbalho Giselle Megumi Martino Tanaka Jonatas Goulart Marinho Falcão Yara Vieira Lopes Andrew Santana da Silva Auzenan Pereira de Sá Fernando Dias de Almeida Barros Francisco Airasca Altónaga Luiz Felipe de Almeida Furtado Luiz Carlos Teixeira Coelho

In Brazil, approximately 16.4 million people (8.1% of the population) live in informal settlements (favelas), with Rio de Janeiro among the most heavily affected. This situation results from rapid rural–urban migration and unplanned urbanization, leading to persistent land tenure conflicts, exemplified by the decades-long struggle in the Santa Luzia favela. This study demonstrates how participatory geospatial methodologies can support land regularization while preventing displacement. Unlike conventional participatory mapping studies that often prioritize community empowerment over technical precision or, conversely, state-led cadastres that prioritize accuracy over local participation, this study integrates two complementary frameworks: counter-cartographies (to redress power asymmetries) and fit-for-purpose land administration (to ensure minimal technical standards for tenure security). Through a university–community collaboration, a low-cost cadastral survey of Santa Luzia was conducted using remotely piloted aircraft photogrammetry to generate high-resolution orthoimagery (2 cm ground sample distance), GIS vectorization integrated with resident interviews and local knowledge, and spatial analysis compliant with local technical standards. The findings demonstrate three specific innovations: (1) methodological: volunteer students and community residents co-produced cartography achieving 2 cm precision, meeting legal requirements for land regularization without expensive professional surveys; (2) participatory: unlike purely community-led mapping that may lack legal enforceability or top-down systems that exclude local knowledge, this model embeds participatory data collection within Brazil’s Social Interest Regularization (REURB-S) framework, ensuring both grassroots legitimacy and state recognition; and (3) policy-making: the project operationalizes counter-cartographies not as symbolic resistance but as a legally compliant pathway to tenure security, offering a transferable model for democratizing land administration in informal settlements while challenging exclusionary urban planning.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020057

Authors: Maria de Belém Costa Freitas Miguel Domingos Teixeira Carla Rolo Antunes Henrique César Ribeiro Maria do Rosário Partidário

Land management is a relevant problem in rural areas all over the world, conditioning the planning decisions and the applicability of planning instruments. This study evaluates the limitations of cadastral data in representing land fragmentation and management patterns in wild-fire-prone landscapes, using Alferce (Portugal) as a case study with broader international relevance. Similar challenges—fragmented ownership, incomplete land registries, and increasing wildfire risk—affect many regions worldwide, particularly across the Mediterranean basin and other fire-prone rural landscapes. A mixed-methods approach combines cadastral data with field data from 23 landowners producing two datasets: cadaster-only and ownership-enhanced. Fragmentation is assessed using Simmons and Januszewki indices, supported by spatial analysis (Kernel Density and Moran’s I). Results show that cadastral data alone significantly overestimates fragmentation. While parcel-based analysis suggests a highly fragmented landscape, incorporating ownership information reveals more aggregated management structures. The 23 landowners manage 1247 ha (≈13% of the area), forming a “keystone” group with strong potential for coordinated land management and fire prevention. Higher fragmentation is associated with population centers. These findings demonstrate that cadastral units do not reflect functional management units and considerations about property fragmentation are biased by the lack of information about the owners, a key theoretical contribution with implications beyond Portugal. For policymakers, integrating ownership data and targeting key land managers can improve land use planning and wildfire mitigation and, overall, the sustainability of the territory. Despite limitations (small sample), the approach is transferable to other regions facing similar structural constraints.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020056

Authors: Andri Hernandi Irwan Meilano Asep Yusup Saptari Deni Suwardhi Rizqi Abdulharis Alfita Puspa Handayani Sella Lestari Nurmaulia Nabila Sofia Eryan Putri Ratri Widyastuti Putri Merdekawati Fitri Nur Cahyani

Property taxation serves as a critical instrument for fiscal efficiency and equitable distribution, yet implementation faces significant challenges including valuation inaccuracies, insufficient administrative capacity, and diminished public trust. Indonesia’s Land and Building Tax (PBB-P2) utilizes the Sales Value of Taxable Objects (NJOP) as an administrative proxy for market value, which frequently deviates from actual land prices. These disparities create horizontal inequities, diminish local revenue potential, and generate taxpayer resistance, especially in decentralized regions with constrained technical resources. This research presents the Spatially Adaptive Land Value Determination (SALAD) model as a comprehensive framework for enhancing property tax governance and modernizing fiscal cadastre systems. Unlike conventional mass appraisal methods, SALAD integrates spatial zoning, assessment ratio analysis, land-use characteristics, and the Index of Developing Villages (IDM) with socio-economic indicators including purchasing power and community fiscal behavior. The model incorporates structured social validation to improve public acceptance. Field validation in Lebak Regency employed mixed-methods design with surveys of 75 respondents across 20 villages and interviews with village heads and tax officials. Results demonstrate that transparency, fairness, and visible public benefits are essential for community support. Validation indices vary significantly by IDM category (ANOVA: F = 4.23, p = 0.03 for economic; F = 3.81, p = 0.04 for institutional), confirming that the SALAD model’s adaptive mechanism is empirically grounded.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020055

Authors: Subham Roy Alireza Mohammadi Ranjan Roy

Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) represent a significant public safety issue in rapidly urbanising nations, resulting in considerable fatalities, injuries, and economic losses. This research investigates the spatio-temporal distribution and hotspot dynamics of RTAs in Siliguri City, India, a principal transnational transport corridor connecting northeastern India with adjacent countries. A geocoded dataset comprising RTA incidents from 2021 to 2023 was analysed using integrated GIS-based machine learning and statistical methods. Temporal clusters were identified through Kulldorff’s purely temporal scan statistics, while Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) quantified accident density during morning peak, midday/off-peak, evening peak, and lean/night-time intervals. Spatial clustering was further assessed using LISA-Moran’s I, purely spatial scan statistics, and Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (HDBSCAN). Emerging Hotspot Analysis (EHA) was employed to detect evolving hotspot patterns over time. The findings indicate that major accident hotspots are concentrated at key intersections and transport corridors, such as Hill Cart Road, Darjeeling More, Sevoke Road, Eastern Bypass, and Burdwan Road. Moran’s I (0.157; p = 0.007) demonstrates significant but moderate spatial autocorrelation, and spatial scan statistics identified three principal high-risk zones. HDBSCAN classified 81.90% of incidents within clustered areas. Lean/night-time periods exhibited the highest accident densities, reaching 14.21 accidents/km2 at critical intersections. These results underscore the utility of integrating GIS and machine learning techniques for urban traffic safety planning and hotspot-focused intervention strategies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020054

Authors: Alfita Puspa Handayani Sandy Hardian Susanto Herho Iwan Pramesti Anwar Faruq Khadami Karina Aprilia Sujatmiko Sella Lestari Nurmaulia Walter Timo de Vries

In multi-hazard environments, women’s social reproductive labor often constitutes a foundation of community survival, yet remains undertheorized in disaster scholarship. This study contributes to an active scholarly conversation by examining Daya Annisa, a women-led grassroots organization in Bantul Regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a region under continuous geological stress from the Sunda Megathrust, the Opak Fault, and Mount Merapi. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions analyzed through Social Reproduction Theory (SRT), with a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) framework reinterpreted as an analytical lens on the structural conditions of reproductive labor, the analysis traces four interlinked practices: preparedness embedded in arisan and pengajian gatherings, community-based vulnerability mapping, trust-based crisis response, and informal post-disaster livelihoods. The paper argues that resilience in such settings is best understood not as a passive capacity to absorb shocks, but as the active, gendered, and largely uncompensated labor through which communities are materially sustained when formal systems are stretched. Three policy shifts follow: long-term flexible funding calibrated to continuous reproductive preparedness; institutional integration of community-generated vulnerability data with appropriate privacy and inclusion safeguards; and inclusion of grassroots women’s organizations as autonomous decision-making actors in disaster governance.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020053

Authors: Tamer A. Al-Sabbagh Hamdy N. Eid Ahmed Ali Ahmed Ali Younes Mohamed A. El-Shenawy

This study analyzes the spatial distribution of restaurant services in Tanta, Egypt, using a multi-scalar framework that integrates spatial autocorrelation, kernel density estimation, diversity measures, and spatial econometric modeling. It is theoretically grounded in Central Place Theory (CPT) and Central Flow Theory (CFT) to examine how urban hierarchy and mobility dynamics jointly shape food service geography in a mid-sized Global South city. The findings reveal significant spatial inequalities, with nearly half of all restaurants concentrated in a limited number of central neighborhoods, while peripheral areas remain underserved. Spatial regression analysis indicates that these patterns are not adequately explained by population distribution, as total population and density variables showed non-significant effects in the OLS model. Instead, clustering is more strongly associated with accessibility and infrastructure. The transition from OLS to the Spatial Error Model (SEM) significantly improved the explanatory power (R2 increased from 0.369 to 0.534), with a highly significant Lambda coefficient (λ = 0.69, p < 0.00001) confirming that unobserved spatial processes and mobility flows are the primary drivers of restaurant concentration. Correlation results further indicate that road density (Coefficient = 2.10, p < 0.01) and educational facilities have significant positive relationships with restaurant density, whereas most demographic indicators show weak effects. Furthermore, a significant negative interaction between population and road density (−2.63, p = 0.014) underscores that mobility corridors can override traditional residential thresholds, providing empirical support for CFT. Diversity analysis highlights clear intra-urban disparities, with high-diversity clusters located along major accessibility axes. Kernel density results point to a hybrid spatial structure, where traditional urban cores coexist with emerging secondary nodes. Overall, the study demonstrates that restaurant distribution in Tanta is better explained through a hybrid CPT–CFT framework, where accessibility and mobility flows outweigh population thresholds. These findings challenge traditional models and emphasize the need for dynamic, accessibility-oriented planning approaches to address spatial inequalities in urban services.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020052

Authors: Velimira Stoyanova Petja Ivanova-Radovanova Dessislava Poleganova Stefan Genchev Georgi Belev Gergana Metodieva

Rapid urbanization highlights the increasing importance of urban green infrastructure in shaping urban spatial organization, quality of life, and environmental sustainability. This study examines spatial inequalities in the provision of urban parks in Sofia (Bulgaria) and Istanbul (Republic of Türkiye) from a comparative urban geography perspective. The two cities are selected as contrasting urban contexts in Southeastern Europe, characterized by different patterns of urban development, population density, and spatial structures. A GIS-based analytical framework is applied at the district administrative level, integrating indicators such as the share of urban parks, park area per capita, Local Moran’s I, and the Gini coefficient. The results reveal distinct spatial patterns: Sofia demonstrates relatively higher levels of park provision but pronounced inequalities, characterized by the concentration of large park areas in a limited number of central districts. In contrast, Istanbul exhibits a more even spatial distribution but significantly lower levels of park area per capita, indicating an overall shortage of urban park space. The findings demonstrate that Sofia and Istanbul experience different forms of spatial disparities in park provision due to distinct trajectories of urban development.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020051

Authors: Nihat Karakuş Serdar Selim Rifat Olgun Ceren Selim Namık Kemal Sönmez

This study aims to investigate the short-term dynamics of agricultural landscapes using AI-supported multi-temporal land use/land cover (LULC) data. The Finike district, located within the Mediterranean climate zone, was selected as the study area, and 10 m spatial resolution ArcGIS Living Atlas LULC raster datasets for the years 2017 and 2024 were used. Spatial dynamics of agricultural areas were analyzed using Fragstats by quantifying changes in area and dominance (CA, PLAND), fragmentation and patch density (NP, PD), spatial integrity and largest patch structure (LPI), shape complexity (PARA_MN), and aggregation–connectivity patterns (CLUMPY, AI), thereby providing a comprehensive assessment of fragmentation, dispersion, clustering, and landscape cohesion over time. The analyses were conducted specifically for the agricultural class for both class-level and landscape-level metrics. The findings indicate that agricultural areas, which covered approximately 3128 hectares in 2017, decreased to 2643 hectares by 2024, as shown in the quantitative results of landscape metrics, accompanied by a pronounced increase in fragmentation. The increase in the number of patches, the decrease in mean patch size, and the rise in patch density demonstrate that the agricultural landscape has transformed into a more fragmented and irregular structure. The results further reveal a weakening of spatial integrity in agricultural areas, suggesting increased pressure from land use change processes, particularly urban expansion, in the study area, and highlighting potential risks for land management, agricultural sustainability, and ecological functions. Overall, the study highlights that the integrated use of high-resolution, AI-supported LULC data and landscape metrics provides a robust and effective framework for monitoring short-term dynamics in agricultural landscapes and supporting evidence-based planning processes.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020050

Authors: Helena Albuquerque Jorge Marques Joana A. Quintela

Urban tourism research has long recognised that understanding cities depends not only on accumulated knowledge but also on the ability to read space, interpret urban form and connect physical settings with cultural meaning. Although these ideas are well established in tourism geography, fewer studies have examined how such skills can be developed through structured learning activities in higher education. This article addresses this gap by analysing the Urban Hunting Game (UHG) as a place-based learning approach designed to strengthen students’ spatial awareness and analytical capacity to interpret urban environments through fieldwork and digital mapping. The UHG was implemented in two European cities, Porto and Kaunas, through distinct pedagogical structures shaped by local conditions. In Porto, students followed a collaborative process using uMap to co-create a single itinerary. In Kaunas, international student groups independently designed thematic routes using MyMaps. This differentiated methodological approach proved advantageous, as it showed how different levels of autonomy and digital engagement influence spatial decisions, interpretive strategies and the narratives that the students construct. Based on student-generated maps and observational notes, the findings show that the UHG enhances spatial literacy, encourages attention to detail and supports the translation of field observation into coherent tourism experiences. This study contributes to tourism geography by illustrating how map-centred, place-based learning methodologies can be adapted to diverse urban contexts and by highlighting their potential to develop interpretive and analytical competences relevant to urban tourism studies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020049

Authors: Ranajit Ghosh Prolay Mondal

This study examines the multidimensional nature of poverty and its underlying local determinants within the Suri Sadar Sub-Division of Birbhum District, Eastern India, an area marked by sharp ecological and socio-economic contrasts. Adopting a mixed-method approach, the research integrates primary household survey data (2024-25) with secondary spatial datasets to construct a comprehensive analytical framework. The extent and intensity of multidimensional poverty were measured using the Alkire–Foster (AF) method, while the determinants were identified through a Binary Logistic Regression model. Findings reveal that multidimensional poverty in the region is deeply rooted in the intersection of human, environmental, and spatial factors rather than mere income deprivation. Approximately 26.8 per cent of households were found to be multidimensionally poor, with the western plateau blocks, i.e., Rajnagar, Khoyrasole, and Md. Bazar, showing the highest deprivation levels. Spatial poverty drivers include education, agriculture, and gender equality improvements. Policy implications emphasise the need for geographically tailored, multi-sectoral interventions that focus on human capability, investing in infrastructure, and promoting gender-inclusive development. By elucidating the localized dynamics of poverty, this research contributes to the broader discourse on spatial inequality and sustainable development in rural Eastern India, offering actionable insights for evidence-based regional planning and targeted poverty alleviation.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020048

Authors: George Faidon D. Papakonstantinou

Preventive geohazard assessment in heritage landscapes presents a methodological challenge, as environmental processes rarely operate within clearly bounded states. Instead, they evolve gradually across space and time and are often only partially observable. Conventional cumulative indices based on linear aggregation and fixed classification thresholds provide operational clarity but may suppress gradual activation, interaction effects, and uncertainty that are critical for preventive heritage management. This study develops a fuzzy geohazard assessment approach that extends cumulative hazard modeling through graded representation and uncertainty-aware aggregation. Environmental variables are represented as spatial fuzzy sets, allowing hazard conditions to be expressed as degrees of activation rather than discrete classes. Hazard-specific activation is derived through rule-based fuzzy inference, while cumulative geohazard conditions are synthesized using a weighted fuzzy γ aggregation operator that balances conjunctive behavior with precautionary disjunctive amplification. The approach is implemented within a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment and demonstrated in Parrhasian Heritage Park, a mountainous heritage landscape in Southern Greece. Results show that cumulative geohazard patterns respond systematically to variations in the precautionary parameter γ, enhancing transitional zones where multiple hazards coexist at moderate activation levels while preserving spatial continuity. Sensitivity analysis indicates that cumulative activation patterns remain structurally stable under moderate variations in membership calibration, supporting preventive GIS-based decision making.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020047

Authors: Tamara Febles Arévalo Jaime Díaz-Pacheco Pedro Dorta Antequera Lucía Martínez Quintana Abel López-Díez

Disaster risk reduction and management are essential for sustainable development in territories highly exposed and vulnerable to natural hazards. Recent disasters in the Canary Islands have highlighted the importance of proactive preparedness and systemic approaches to risk management, emphasizing the need to better understand existing barriers to disaster risk reduction (DRR). This study develops an analysis of risk governance within the current planning instruments in the Canary Islands, the island of Tenerife, and the municipality of Candelaria. The research examines the integration of DRR across strategic, territorial, urban, and emergency planning at the regional, insular, and municipal levels. The findings identify key challenges and opportunities for integrating DRR within existing planning frameworks, highlighting both the potential and the limitations of current instruments as cross-cutting tools for building more resilient territories. While Tenerife has a relatively solid administrative and planning structure that could support a more systemic vision of risk, sectoral fragmentation and coordination gaps remain. Overall, the study contributes to the ongoing discussion on advancing risk governance from a systemic perspective at the local level. The challenges identified delineate the boundaries and directions for improvement, offering a valuable contribution to the existing body of knowledge.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020046

Authors: Francisco Javier Tipan Salazar Carla Rodrigues Santos Fernanda Beatriz Jordan Rojas Dallaqua Bruno Schultz

Multi-temporal orbital satellite imagery is an alternative for measuring behavioral patterns or trends in different physiognomies through vegetation indices (VIs) and Spectral Linear Mixture Models (SLMMs). In this study, time series of Landsat 7/8/9 and Sentinel-2 have been used to classify a considerable quantity of areas spread over the São Paulo state from 2021 to 2024. Because the large amount of samples considered in our analysis, self-organizing maps (SOMs) have been applied as a convenient method to group similar satellite image time series samples with respect to a certain vegetation index or green vegetation fraction (VEG). Since every dataset area belongs to different types of physiognomies, each cluster has been labeled according to the plurality technique. Additionally, we obtained the mean spectral behavior of the VIs and VEG in the 2021–2024 seasonal cycle of all samples. The results showed similar variations from the rainy to the dry season for most of the physiognomies. On the other hand, this research indicates that the proposed method for classification the Brazilian areas spread over the São Paulo state is consistently good, obtaining the best performance (quantization error) associated with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time series samples.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020045

Authors: Saeid Amini Hamidreza Rabiei-Dastjerdi Maryam Pashaei Ioannis Konaxis Mohsen Saber

Nighttime light (NTL) satellite data provide an effective proxy for analyzing urbanization, tourism development, industrial activity, and population dynamics. Based on these premises, the present study investigates the spatiotemporal behavior of Nighttime Light Dynamics across 107 Italian provinces from 2014 to 2022 using VIIRS Day/Night Band composites processed in Google Earth Engine (GEE). A comprehensive framework combining descriptive statistics, seasonal analysis, correlation assessment, time-series clustering, and Emerging Hotspot Analysis (EHA) was applied to characterize spatial patterns, temporal trends, and joint spatiotemporal dynamics. The results reveal pronounced spatial heterogeneity, with higher and more stable Nighttime Light Dynamics concentrated in Northern and Central Italy, while Southern regions exhibit lower intensity and greater temporal variability. Seasonal analysis shows that summer contributes more strongly to intra-annual Nighttime Light Dynamics dispersion, whereas winter illumination patterns are rather uniform. A strongly positive relationship between Nighttime Light Dynamics and population density was observed at national and regional scales (R2 = 0.71), confirming the reliability of Nighttime Light Dynamics as an honest demographic proxy. Time-series clustering and EHA further identify central locations, stable urban cores, transitional regions, and areas experiencing intensifying (or diminishing) illumination trends. Overall, the study highlights the value of integrating spatiotemporal analytics with Nighttime Light Dynamics data to support evidence-based regional planning and sustainable development strategies aimed at addressing spatial inequalities across Italy and, more generally, advanced economies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020044

Authors: Toma Itamura Takanori Fukuoka

This study analyzes the locational characteristics of temples and shrines within the Namerigawa River basin in Kamakura, focusing on the characteristic landform known as “yatsu valleys”. While previous studies on Kamakura have examined historical and tourism-related aspects, few have investigated the spatial relationship between religious sites and geography. Using GIS-based national land numerical data and field surveys, this research classified 56 temples and shrines by environmental type, historical period, and religious sect. Results indicate that a significant number were built in the yatsu valleys, especially during the Kamakura period. Many yatsu valleys’ names reflect historical temple associations, even if the original structures no longer exist. Furthermore, temporal patterns show shifts in dominant sects, such as the Jodo-Shu and Nichiren-Shu, after 1260. Spatial analysis reveals a concentration of temples near specific watersheds and water networks, particularly where water access is optimal. This study contributes a geographical perspective to the field of historical and religious site research in Kamakura and underscores the need for comparative studies in other watersheds to deepen understanding of temple and shrine distribution across the region.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020043

Authors: Olga Bjelotomić Oršulić Sanja Šamanović Darko Šiško Vlado Cetl

Global gridded population datasets are widely used in urban analysis, risk assessment, and sustainability monitoring, including the calculation of indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite their broad use, their behaviour at local scales in shrinking cities remains insufficiently understood. This study evaluates three global population datasets—WorldPop, GHS-POP, and GPWv4—in seven Croatian city cores using official census data as reference. Croatia represents a relevant case due to long-term population decline combined with relatively stable built-up extents. Population estimates were compared at the city-core level for the period 2001–2021, and spatial differences between datasets were examined using pixel-level residuals, built-up intensity metrics, and land-cover stratification. The results show that WorldPop and GHS-POP achieve similar accuracy in city-total estimates, with relative errors generally ranging between about 2% and 10%, but differ systematically in their spatial allocation of population. GHS-POP concentrates population within built-up areas, while WorldPop redistributes a substantial share into non-built-up land-cover classes, exceeding GHS-POP by approximately 290,000 inhabitants outside built-up areas, whereas GHS-POP concentrates over one million additional inhabitants within built-up zones. GPWv4 often shows the smallest city-level errors but produces spatially uniform population surfaces that limit its suitability for intra-urban analysis. The findings highlight that model choice can strongly influence spatial indicators used in SDG-related and sustainability assessments, highlighting the need for context-specific evaluation of global population datasets in shrinking urban environments.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020042

Authors: Bayan Khaledi Manuchehr Farajzadeh Yousef Ghavidel Rahimi

The Alborz Mountain range, serving as the strategic water tower of the Iranian Plateau, is experiencing the accelerating impacts of climate change. Given the critical role of snow reserves in this region for water security, understanding the mechanisms of snow degradation in response to warming is essential. Aiming to investigate the divergent responses of snow cover and snow depth to extreme temperature indices, this study analyzes a 23-year time series (2001–2023) of ERA5-Land data and MODIS imagery across 11 elevation bands. To this end, trends and correlations among the Warm Spell Duration Index (WSDI), the Percentage of Warm Days (TX90p), the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI), and Average Snow Depth (ASD) were assessed using the Modified Mann–Kendall (MMK) test, Generalized Linear Modeling (GLM), and Spearman’s rank correlation. The findings reveal elevational heterogeneity in the snow regime of the Alborz. Notably, the decline in spatial snow cover (NDSI) is primarily concentrated in the mid-elevation transition zone (2000 to 3000 m), whereas the reduction in snow depth (ASD) is a widespread phenomenon, observed even at high altitudes above 4000 m. A key innovation of this research is demonstrating the dominant role of heat frequency over heat duration; GLM results indicate that the TX90p index (frequency of warm days) has a much stronger negative correlation with the degradation of snow resources than WSDI. These results confirm the transition of the Alborz hydrological system toward instability, the upward shift in the snowline in the transition zone, and the invisible thinning of the snowpack at higher elevations.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020041

Authors: Daniel Ibarra-Marinas Laura Marcela Silva-Mendoza Dulce Mata-Chacón Francisco Belmonte-Serrato

Metro Manila, one of the world’s most densely populated megacities, is highly vulnerable to sea-level rise because of its low-lying deltaic location, frequent tropical cyclones, and rapid anthropogenic subsidence caused mainly by groundwater extraction. This study brings together historical tide-gauge records from the Port of Manila (PSMSL) with the Sixth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) projections under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, adding in vertical land motion (VLM) and sea-level fingerprints to work out local relative sea-level (RSL) changes. Assuming a constant subsidence rate, cumulative VLM reaches ~0.785 m by 2100 and ~1.289 m by 2150. When you factor in climatic contributions (amplified 10–20% by fingerprints, especially under high-emission scenarios thanks to far-field Antarctic ice-loss effects in the western Pacific), projected RSL ranges from 1.09–1.42 m (SSP1-2.6) to 1.51–2.00 m (SSP5-8.5) by 2100, and from 1.70–2.28 m to 2.41–3.54 m by 2150. Results show that 7.95–11.15 km2 (1.2–1.8% of land area under SSP5-8.5) could face permanent inundation, mostly in Malabon (~18%), Navotas (~20%), and Manila (~7%). Our conservative estimates (permanent ocean-connected flooding, excluding existing aquaculture areas) come in much lower than earlier mid-century projections of up to a 30% area affected. All this will worsen chronic tidal flooding, erosion, saltwater intrusion, and risks to millions in low-lying districts. We urgently need integrated adaptation, better groundwater regulation, and a mix of nature-based and engineered solutions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020040

Authors: Mário Molokáč Enikő Kornecká Lucia Molitoris Dana Tometzová Lucia Bednárová

The article will focus on the concept of eco-hotel, ecotourism, the criteria for the creation of an eco-hotel and, subsequently, the certifications valid in Europe specifically in the Visegrád Group countries. The analysis of the Visegrád Group (V4) countries focuses on the ecolabel and comparison of certified and non-certified hotels. With the increasing number of ecolabels on the market, many hotels are trying to adapt to this growing trend. However, it is very important to expose the misleading advertising in the field of “being eco”. Tourists are often misled by the so-called “greenwashing”, which is an increasingly big problem. This negative phenomenon needs to be eliminated, and hoteliers should be motivated to create an environmentally friendly environment in the context of sustainable tourism development.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020039

Authors: Nuha Hamed Al-Subhi Mohammed Nasser Al-Suqri Faten Fatehi Hamad

The proliferation of marine data presents both an opportunity for ocean governance and a challenge, contributing to fragmentation across disciplines, institutions, and sectors. Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) stands out as a major framework for integrating marine information. However, an integrated synthesis that combines quantitative mapping of publication patterns with qualitative analysis of thematic evolution remains absent. This study employs a two-step approach combining systematic review and bibliometric analysis of Scopus-indexed literature (2000–2024). Based on a focused corpus of 20 publications rigorously screened for explicit MSDI relevance, we examine publication trends, collaboration patterns, thematic structures, and evolutionary trajectories. Results indicate accelerating scholarly interest in MSDI, with European institutions contributing 75% of the analysed publications. Policy frameworks such as the INSPIRE Directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) emerge as key drivers of research activity. Temporal analysis of this corpus suggests a tentative five-phase evolution in MSDI research: (1) foundational technical standardisation, (2) governance model implementation, (3) semantic interoperability enhancement, (4) policy integration, and (5) advanced applications incorporating FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) principles and Artificial Intelligence (AI). These phases, derived from systematic coding of thematic focus across publications, represent observed patterns within the analysed literature rather than definitive stages. This paper concludes that MSDI is moving toward a more socio-technical approach that requires the consideration of a technical-focused tool in present-day ocean governance. Future work should combine semantic AI, decentralised architectures, polycentric governance models, and impact assessment frameworks to align MSDI development with the objectives of equity, inclusion, and sustainability.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020038

Authors: Andrea Yanes Ana Carolina Torregroza-Espinosa Laura Salas María Margarita Sierra-Carrillo Laura Noguera Luana Portz

The San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina archipelago, located in the Colombian Caribbean, hosts diverse ecosystems, including coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, and beaches, all of which are increasingly threatened by human activities. This research proposes a spatial analysis of ecological risk that integrates ecosystem vulnerability and anthropogenic pressures associated with land-use change to promote sustainable risk management. The vulnerability of island ecosystems was assessed by analyzing changes in cover across multiple time periods. At the same time, risks from anthropogenic pressures were determined based on marine protected area zoning and land-use planning regulations. Results show contrasting patterns: while several mangrove and beach sectors remained relatively stable, mangrove loss reached up to 65% in Providencia, and seagrass ecosystems experienced severe degradation, including a complete loss (100%) in western San Andrés. Risk maps indicate that the highest risk levels are consistently associated with Special Use Zones, where tourism infrastructure, navigation, and port activities are permitted. These findings highlight the importance of ecosystem-based risk management and adaptive governance in reducing anthropogenic pressures and preserving island ecosystem health.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020037

Authors: Nikola Naumov Alexander Naydenov Desislava Varadzhakova Marina Raykova

Winter tourism is increasingly influenced by changing socio-demographic dynamics, climate change, and evolving leisure preferences. While prior research has examined winter tourist motivations, sustainability strategies and climate change adoption, less attention has been paid to differences between urban and rural residents in their attitudes toward domestic winter leisure tourism. This study addresses this gap by exploring variations in participation patterns, service evaluations, and overall tourism experiences among urban and rural Bulgarian residents. Drawing on a quantitative survey of urban and rural residents (n = 1003), the research systematizes the general characteristics of domestic winter leisure tourism practices and evaluates key tourism service dimensions, including accessibility, accommodation, pricing, infrastructure, and environmental quality. Descriptive statistics and inferential analyses were applied to identify statistically significant differences between groups. The findings reveal distinct behavioural and perceptual patterns: urban residents demonstrate higher participation frequency and place greater emphasis on service quality and diversified amenities, whereas rural residents show stronger sensitivity to pricing and accessibility factors. Differences are also observed in the overall evaluation of the tourism experience, reflecting structural and socio-economic disparities. The study contributes to winter tourism literature by integrating spatial residence into the analysis of domestic tourism demand and experience assessment. The results provide practical implications for destination managers and policymakers seeking to design differentiated marketing strategies and improve service provision in line with the needs of diverse domestic segments.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6020036

Authors: Simeon Matev Antoana Dimitrova Nina Nikolova Zvezdelina Marcheva Kalina Radeva

This study examines the propagation from meteorological to hydrological drought across representative river basins in Bulgaria, focusing on temporal and spatial characteristics of the process. Monthly precipitation and streamflow data for 1964–2023 were used to calculate the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI-1 to SPI-12) and the Streamflow Drought Index (SDI-1). The results indicate an increase in drought frequency and severity during 1994–2023 compared to 1964–1993, particularly at longer accumulation scales (SPI-6 to SPI-12). The strongest relationships between meteorological and hydrological drought are observed at multi-seasonal scales (SPI-3 to SPI-6), while clear seasonal differences are identified between the cold (November–April) and warm (May–October) half-years. Conditional probability analysis shows a common propagation lag of 7–9 months across the studied basins. At the same time, once critical precipitation deficits are reached, hydrological drought may develop at short lags of 0–1 month, indicating a rapid system response under severe conditions. Marked regional differences are observed. The middle and lower Struma basin shows the highest drought-transition probabilities (>50%), whereas the Tundzha basin appears more buffered due to reservoir regulation and hydrogeological conditions. The results highlight that drought propagation depends on accumulation time, seasonal regime, and basin characteristics, and they support the need for basin-specific and proactive water management under changing climate conditions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010035

Authors: Iryna Skulska Maria Conceição Colaço Francisco Castro Rego Muha Abdullah Al Pavel Paulo Adão José Castro Ana Catarina Sequeira

Community land management plays an important role in wildfire-prone landscapes in Mediterranean Europe. However, in Portugal, information on the spatial extent and boundaries of community land remains fragmented across multiple institutions. This study addresses a critical but often overlooked issue in wildfire management: the fragmentation of institutional data on community land boundaries in mainland Portugal and its direct implications for forest fire risk management, planning, and accountability. We harmonized georeferenced datasets from various government and public institutions, applying multi-institutional spatial integration supported by legal land use criteria using the Land Use Land Cover map 2018 (LULC2018). The resulting national map represents the first fully harmonized spatial assessment of community land (baldios) in mainland Portugal. Our results show that baldios currently occupy approximately 595 thousand hectares, significantly exceeding official estimates. Of this total, around 74% are under partial forest regime law, and approximately 76% are classified as having a high or very high wildfire hazard. This means that three out of every four hectares of baldios in mainland Portugal are structurally susceptible to extreme wildfire conditions. Beyond improving cartographic data, the study’s findings demonstrate how the lack of land registry weakens the institutional foundations for community-based wildfire management. Without a functional, legally validated national map of community land boundaries, responsibilities, co-management mechanisms, and prevention measures remain spatially inconsistent.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010034

Authors: Tamara Bračko Bojan Žlender

Increasing frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events, together with altered soil saturation dynamics, have significantly increased the occurrence of shallow landslides. These processes are closely linked to climate change and increasingly affect mountainous and hilly regions worldwide, where rainfall-induced pore pressure variations and transient infiltration govern slope instability. Despite growing recognition of climate-driven slope failures, most conventional geomechanical analyses still rely on static assumptions and simplified boundary conditions, which are insufficient to capture the pronounced temporal variability of hydro-climatic forcing. To address this gap, this study introduces a conceptual and methodological framework for a proactive landslide cadaster, developed within the Climate Adaptive Resilience Evaluation (CARE) framework. Rather than serving as a static inventory of past events, the proposed cadaster functions as a structured, updatable repository of climate–geomechanical parameters that directly support advanced landslide analyses. The core innovation lies in the formalization of the climate–geomechanical interface, which enables the transformation of climatic and hydrological variables into parameters directly applicable in geomechanical modeling. These parameters encompass climatic, hydrological, geomechanical, and thermo-hydraulic processes and are assigned to spatially referenced locations, complemented by documented landslide occurrences. Their spatial distribution forms a network of reference points that allows interpolation, continuous updating, and reuse across multiple analyses. In this way, the cadaster becomes a proactive, process-based data infrastructure, serving as the foundational input for scenario-based landslide susceptibility, hazard, and risk assessments within the CARE analytical workflow. The conceptual framework is illustrated through an example from Slovenia, focusing on the Visole area near Maribor, where selected data types and workflow steps are presented for demonstration purposes.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010033

Authors: Hanna Tutova Olena Lisovets Olha Kunakh Olexander Zhukov

Catastrophic disturbances pose significant challenges to remote sensing because landscapes can change rapidly, while access for field validation is limited, making it difficult to consistently track the spatiotemporal dynamics of discrete land-surface types. Building on the metaphor of the “ecosystem as an organism” and the individualistic perspective on ecosystems, each surface type is treated as a spectrally coherent entity whose identity must remain comparable over time despite changing conditions. To achieve this comparability, a Procrustes-based framework is introduced to align multi-index feature spaces from different dates to a common archetype, enabling cross-date classification within a commensurable coordinate system. Since Procrustes alignment requires a stable reference, the concept of core pixels (centroid-typical samples in feature space) is extended to spatially grounded anchor pixels that are invariant in both spectral and geographic space, thereby representing the persistent “organismal” structure of the landscape. Regression-based evaluation indicates that the Procrustes–anchor workflow improves classification fidelity and produces a clearer, more interpretable transition matrix of type changes, facilitating the separation of systematic transient dynamics from noisy reassignments. The resulting discrete habitat maps are independently validated using field geobotanical vegetation types, providing an ecological basis for the classified surface-type dynamics under catastrophic conditions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010032

Authors: Mehmet Burak Kaya Onur Alisan Eren Erman Ozguven Ren Moses

Tornadoes pose growing threats to both communities and the built environment, yet few studies have quantified how spatial characteristics of the built environment interact with social and economic factors while influencing tornado impacts. This paper introduces an integrated metric that combines tornado risk and exposure to evaluate localized disaster impact. Focusing on Florida’s Panhandle, we examine how housing density and affordability, network connectivity, and urban form efficiency, together with demographic and socioeconomic attributes, shape tornado impacts at the U.S. census block group (CBG) level. To address spatial autocorrelation and non-stationarity, five statistical models were compared, including both global and local spatial regressions. The findings indicate that multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) most effectively captures the spatial heterogeneity of tornado impacts. Built-environment and affordability factors show clear spatial heterogeneity— smart location indexand housing cost burden (h_ami) are positively associated with tornado impact in CBGs near Tallahassee and parts of Pensacola—suggesting amplified impacts in location-efficient urban areas where exposure is concentrated and affordability stress may limit preparedness and recovery. In contrast, network density is negatively associated with the impact of key clusters, consistent with the idea that denser, more redundant road networks can reduce canopy-weighted disruption by providing alternative routes for emergency access and restoration. Overall, these findings can inform our understanding of how the built environment influences tornado exposure, offering critical insights for planners and policymakers seeking to strengthen communities against tornadoes.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010031

Authors: Shadrack Kihwele Victor Anthony Gabourel-Landaverde Felister Mombo Eliapenda Elisante Imelda Gervas Jesús Barrena-González Manuel Pulido-Fernández

This study evaluates the costs and benefits of participatory forest management (PFM) versus non-participatory forest management based on the perceptions and involvement of local communities in the Kilombero Valley Ramsar site, Tanzania. The area hosts ecologically significant wetlands managed through different regimes: forests managed by local communities under PFM and protected areas controlled by national authorities. Using data collected through focus groups, key interviews, household surveys, and direct observations in two villages—Siginali (PFM) and Kilama (non-participatory)—this research explores perceptions of two different forest management approaches. The results revealed: (i) a generally low awareness and participation in forest management activities in both villages; (ii) restrictions on forest resource access, essential for local livelihoods, were common and often poorly accepted in the two villages; (iii) neither approach alleviates poverty, instead, strict regulations have worsened livelihoods by eliminating traditional income sources; (iv) forced participation in patrols and fire control was also noted as an unfair burden without direct compensation; and (v) the “fortress” model is perceived as more effective at improving forest health and stopping illegal activity due to stricter patrols. The study concludes that while PFM supports forest sustainability, it needs enhanced local engagement, benefit-sharing mechanisms, and complementary income-generating initiatives such as ecotourism to sustainably balance conservation and community welfare.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010030

Authors: Hadi Allafta Christian Opp Ahmed Jawad Al-Naji

This study aims to investigate the relationship between basin hydrology and estuarine processes such as dynamics that influence salinity and water quality in the Shatt Al-Arab River, southern Iraq. Extensive samplings were conducted at 25 sites along the river course over one hydrological year. Runoff estimates were obtained using the soil conservation service–curve number (SCS-CN) model. During winter, peak rainfall (76.8 mm month−1) and runoff (12.38 mm month−1) promote the shortest salt wedge extension (8 km) and the highest water quality (median water quality index (WQI) = 22). In contrast, during fall, minimal rainfall (6.51 mm month−1) and runoff (0.14 mm month−1) result in a salt wedge extension of 109 km and the lowest water quality (median WQI = 250). Strong correlations between rainfall–runoff estimates, salt wedge extension, and water quality parameters demonstrate that water quality status can be predicted using hydrological inputs alone. Thus, this study introduces a novel quantification of the flushing influence required to maintain the Shatt Al-Arab River’s ecological health. A strong (r2 = 0.87) significant (p < 0.05) negative correlation was detected between the runoff coefficient (a proxy indicator of catchment wetness) and the standard deviation of WQI. Such a negative correlation implies that hydrological flushing fosters water quality stability. Principal component analysis (PCA) further revealed how natural and anthropogenic sources contribute to water quality. The findings illustrate how seasonal hydrological variability control mixing processes, salt wedge propagation, and water quality in estuarine-influenced river systems, presenting a framework adaptable to similar systems worldwide.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010029

Authors: Rahul Devrani Rohit Kumar Jitendra Kumar Roy Abhiroop Chowdhury

The Aravalli Mountain System (AMS) is one of the oldest fold orogens in the world, serving as a natural boundary against desertification in north-western India. The AMS has high environmental importance and faces accelerated soil degradation driven by both anthropogenic pressures and climatic shifts. Still, high-resolution measurements of soil erosion processes have not been conducted on the AMS scale. The present study assesses long-term LULC transitions between 2001 and 2021, identifies high-resolution short-term LULC dynamics between 2017 and 2024, and models spatiotemporal soil erosion dynamics using the RUSLE model. The findings indicate that LULC has changed rapidly, with built-up areas increasing by 53 per cent at the expense of rangelands and croplands. These drivers resulted in a 13.8 per cent increase in the mean annual soil loss between 2017 and 2024, from 1.59 to 1.81 t/ha/yr, while forest cover has increased over the timescale, as is evident in this study. The steep slopes, susceptible soils, and mining areas are strongly associated with erosion hotspots. Increased soil erosion in the AMS despite a significant increase in afforestation highlights that local conservation cannot compensate for massive land conversion. The present study provides a scalable, high-resolution framework for assessing soil erosion in vulnerable old mountain systems globally for sustainable land-use planning, mineral governance, and integrated conservation to protect for future generations.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010028

Authors: Néstor Campos Adolfo Quesada-Román

Traditional fieldwork in Physical Geography courses is considered a key activity to fix concepts and ideas taught in class. Unfortunately, it is a complex and expensive activity. Over recent decades, with the advancement and emergence of new technological tools, part of the traditional fieldwork has been replaced by virtual fieldwork techniques. In this study, we analyzed and evaluated the perceptions of the students in relation to the traditional fieldwork, focusing on the reinforcement of the concepts taught in class. After several extensive fieldwork campaigns, we evaluated a group of Physical Geography students through tests, which assessed perceptions related to learning enhancement, skill acquisition, motivation and environmental awareness, and we confirmed that the traditional fieldwork allowed the students not only to reinforce their knowledge, but also to acquire new skills and improve their understanding of the importance of environmental conservation.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010027

Authors: Bui Thi Dieu Hien Nguyen Thi Hai Nguyen Ngoc Thanh Nguyen Huu Ngu

This study was conducted to assess the impact of land allocation on the land tenure security, settlement, and land use stability of households, individuals in Central Vietnam. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to test the model using survey data from 400 households and individuals in Quy Nhon, Tay Son, and An Lao, administratively under Binh Dinh Province during the 2019–2023 study period and currently under Gia Lai Province following the July 2025 administrative restructuring. The research results show that land allocation has a direct and positive impact on land tenure security, settlement, and land use stability, while also having an indirect impact through a mediating variable, partly land tenure security (shown by the significance level of the research model at 1%, total effect βLA→LTS–SLUS = 0.603). The research results propose several policy implications for land allocation regulations that combine enhanced legal security, actual security, and perceived security, thereby encouraging land users to settle and stabilize their land use.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010026

Authors: George Faidon D. Papakonstantinou

Urban hydrological risks are endangering vulnerable populations, particularly in densely populated metropolitan areas undergoing rapid land use transformation. This study uses geospatial analysis to identify zones in the Athens metropolitan area that are prone to surface water accumulation and stream flow development during extreme rainfall events. Two spatial indices were developed by integrating digital elevation models, flow accumulation, slope, aspect, the topographic wetness index, and classified road network data: a Surface Water Accumulation Index and a Stream flow Pathway Index. Roads were categorized based on their orientation relative to the direction of the slope, which allowed for an assessment of their influence on hydrological flow. Both indices were classified into five risk levels representing gradients of hydrological vulnerability. The spatial patterns revealed by this analysis show strong correlations with flood-prone areas and natural drainage systems. These insights are essential for guiding urban planning efforts aimed at reducing hydrological hazards, particularly for at-risk groups such as the homeless. This approach offers a valuable tool for promoting sustainable, socially inclusive landscape management.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010025

Authors: Fowzia Gulshana Rashid Lopa Sajib Sarker Rizbina Reduan Rayma

Coastal settlements in Bangladesh are geographically flood-prone areas. This physical nature erodes the size and shape of those settlement boundaries over time. Such changes leave communities vulnerable in terms of securing a living place and livelihoods. However, the research arena rarely addresses the long-term changing aspects of settlement and the local governance responses to vulnerability. To examine this situation, this study explored settlement transformation patterns and governance challenges, using the case study of Chattogram Division in Bangladesh from 2005 to 2025. It applied a mixed-methods approach. The analysis, using the technique of Multi-temporal Landsat imagery with Random Forest classification, revealed complex settlement trajectories. It showed built-up areas expanded significantly between 2005 and 2015 but shrank by 2025, reflecting both hazard exposure and displacement pressures. Union-level analysis identified 62 coastal unions with high to very high settlement change. Conducting field surveys in selected Juidandi and Kalamarchhara unions through focus group discussions with communities and interviews with local officials highlighted recurring inundation, permanent land loss affecting thousands of households, and persistent disruptions to livelihoods. This study also found moderate emergency responses in selected unions; however, strategic planning for relocation, health, and well-being of communities is insufficient. Continuous resource constraints and poor coordination with communities and line organizations made local implementation less effective, which blurs the effectiveness of disaster risk reduction policies. These findings underscore the necessity of union-level governance capacity building, integrating community-based adaptation with formal interventions, and developing spatially differentiated relocation strategies to enhance the resilience of climate-vulnerable coastal settlements.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010024

Authors: Dieu-donné N’tambwe Nghonda Héritier Khoji Muteya Sylvestre Cabala Kaleba François Malaisse Amisi Mwana Yamba Wilfried Masengo Kalenga Jan Bogaert Yannick Useni Sikuzani

Village landscapes within an 80 km radius of Lubumbashi (south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo) are undergoing rapid spatial transformation driven by subsistence agriculture, charcoal production, and mining activities. This study analyzes how these transformations are spatially perceived and organized across five village territories of the Lubumbashi Charcoal Production Basin using an adapted version of Kevin Lynch’s perceptual model. Landscape elements were independently identified by trained cartographic observers and by local community members. A comparison of the resulting maps yields a Sørensen similarity index ranging between 70% and 75% across villages, indicating strong convergence in spatial interpretation despite differences in expertise. Among the perceptual components, districts and landmarks account for nearly half of all identified elements and comprise the most perceptible anthropogenic disturbances. Spatial analysis shows that areas perceived as negatively impacted represent between 40% and 79% of total village surfaces. Deforestation associated with post-cultivation fallow dominates in Makisemu (47.6%) and Texas (64.4%), while woodland degradation linked to charcoal production is particularly pronounced in Mwawa (39.0%) and Luisha (25.1%). Mining-related disturbances, including soil and water alteration, are especially evident in Nsela (24.6%). These findings demonstrate that Lynch’s framework, although originally developed for urban systems, can effectively structure perception in diffuse rural woodland environments when methodologically adapted. Perception-based cartography therefore provides a robust complementary tool to biophysical monitoring for understanding the spatial footprint of anthropogenic pressures at the village scale and informing ecosystem restoration strategies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010023

Authors: Riyan Mohammad Sahahiri Abdullah Alattas Ahmad Fallatah Ammar Mandourah

This study intends to develop a GIS–AHP integrated framework to identify and analyze potential ecotourism routes between Jeddah and Alula, a corridor rich in ecological and cultural resources in Saudi Arabia. The research employed an integrated GIS and AHP methodology applying four criteria: ecological, cultural, infrastructural, and socio-economic. The AHP provided a systematic method for allocating weights to criteria through expert assessment, while GIS facilitated the spatial analysis, standardization, and integration of diverse information into a unified suitability map. The results reveal considerable regional heterogeneity in ecotourism suitability along the corridor. Highland areas near Alula and Al-Madinah showed high suitability due to the favorable climate, vegetation, and scenic aspects, while arid interior zones were mostly low-suited. The regions surrounding Jeddah, Yanbu, and Alula prospered from significant cultural and infrastructural accessibility. Overall, 21.4% of the land and 19.6% of road parts were categorized as highly appropriate for ecotourism. The integrated model indicates that ecotourism route planning can be enhanced by integrating environmental sensitivity with infrastructural availability. The findings expand the theoretical and practical discussion on spatial decision-making in sustainable tourism, offering a comprehensive, reliable approach for identifying potential ecotourism routes.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010022

Authors: Rosmery Ramos-Sandoval Ligia García Luis Huatay-Salcedo Denisse Chavez-Huaman Jonathan Alberto Campos-Trigoso Meliza del Pilar Bustos Chavez

The spatial–temporal impact of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon in Peru is characterised by marked regional variability, affecting the economy and general well-being. This study focuses on the Piura region, which is highly sensitive to ENSO events, with the aim of determining the implications for land management and climate adaptation in the Peruvian coastal region, particularly in the context of ENSO events. The objective of the study is to ascertain the correlation between sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in the region. The researchers employed a machine learning approach to model and predict monthly NDVI behaviour, incorporating spatial and seasonal variables from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) during two periods of ENSO occurrence on the Peruvian coast (2017; 2023) and the one-year post-occurrence periods (2018; 2024). The results demonstrated a correlation between NDVI and SST anomalies in coastal provinces such as Sechura and Morropón, indicating sensitivity to oceanic conditions. In contrast, high Andean provinces such as Ayabaca and Huancabamba exhibited more moderate values, indicating a weaker dependence on SST variability. The study also found that the NDVI exhibited a marked monthly variation associated with altitudinal gradients and climatic conditions. This research demonstrates the potential of remote sensing and GIS technologies in capturing climate-sensitive land-use dynamics and provides a framework for operational monitoring and decision support.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010021

Authors: Md Farhan Ishrak Adam J. Mathews Jay L. Newberry Wan Yu

Urban expansion has intensified concerns regarding land use efficiency and sustainable urban development worldwide. Despite growing global application of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 11.3.1, comprehensive assessments within the United States (U.S.) remain limited. This study evaluates urban land use efficiency in the contiguous U.S. between 2000 and 2020 by examining the relationship between land consumption and population growth using the ‘Land Consumption Rate to Population Growth Rate’ (LCRPGR) framework. Urban land expansion and population change were derived from integrating impervious surface data with gridded population estimates, respectively, and the indicator was calculated for 2229 urban areas to evaluate temporal and regional patterns. Results show that urban land area increased by 23% over the study period, while population grew by 31%, indicating an overall shift toward denser urban development. The median LCRPGR declined from 0.84 during 2000–2010 to 0.63 during 2010–2020, reflecting improvements in land use efficiency, although notable regional disparities remain. Cluster analysis reveals distinct spatial growth patterns, with older metropolitan areas and western cities generally exhibiting more compact development. Findings demonstrate the applicability of SDG Indicator 11.3.1 for evaluating urban land use efficiency in a U.S. context and highlight the importance of coordinated spatial planning and policy measures to support sustainable urbanization.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010020

Authors: Roberto Colonna Silvano Fortunato Dal Sasso

Coastal erosion is a growing concern along many Mediterranean sandy coasts, particularly where reduced fluvial sediment supply, relative sea-level rise and coastal development coincide. This study uses multi-mission Landsat 5/7/8/9 and Sentinel-2 data in Google Earth Engine to extract long-term shoreline series (1984–2025) from MNDWI-based composites. DSAS-style metrics quantify multi-decadal change, while a supervised linear regression forecasting model—validated against a 2013 orthophoto and an independent 2017–2025 test set using an RMSE-based acceptance criterion—is employed to forecast shoreline positions up to 2050. Using this framework, we reconstruct and forecast shoreline evolution along the ~38 km Ionian coast of Basilicata (southern Italy), a microtidal, sediment-starved littoral that has been affected by significant erosion over the past few decades, threatening natural habitats, infrastructure and economic activities. Results show pervasive erosion over the last four decades, with an average shoreline retreat of ≈47 m along the entire coast, and localized retreats exceeding 400 m, particularly at the mouths of the Agri and Sinni rivers and near the Metaponto sector. Forecasts, under linearity and trend-persistence assumptions, indicate further substantial retreat by 2050 in already critical sectors. Methodologically, this work provides a reproducible framework to inform scenario-based coastal planning in similar Mediterranean environments and the first multi-decadal, spatially continuous satellite-based analysis and machine learning-supported forecast for the Basilicata coast, offering a robust basis for regional coastal management.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010019

Authors: Yanzhe Sun Ben Ma Sha Zhao Yaowen Xie Yitao Yu Wenle Hu

Urbanization in mountainous valley regions is constrained by rigid topography, generating complex correlations between spatial growth and ecological security. The coupling between urban expansion and landscape ecological risk (ERI) was evaluated for six representative valley cities in western China from 1985 to 2023. Annual land-cover data (CLCD) and fine-scale terrain models were integrated with expansion metrics, slope gradient analysis, and spatial statistics to identify growth trajectories and risk reorganization. Urban growth shifted from edge expansion to leapfrog development as valley floors became saturated. Two vertical trajectories emerged: a low-slope lock-in pattern (e.g., Lanzhou) where development remains largely on slopes < 6° and an uplift towards mid-slopes pattern (e.g., Chongqing), where expansion increasingly occurs on 6–25° terrain. ERI correspondingly showed three spatial typologies: valley contrast, heterogeneous mosaic, and high-risk background dominance. Although ERI generally declined, reflecting structural hardening with rising built-up land shares, the spatial clustering of risk remained stable. GeoDetector results indicate that terrain sets a baseline for ERI differentiation, but its explanatory power varies across cities and is often surpassed by land-cover composition. These findings support differentiated governance, requiring strict controls on slope disturbance in uplift cities and prioritizing corridor connectivity in lock-in cities.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010018

Authors: Arsan Nurrokhman Delik Hudalah Denny Zulkaidi Nurrohman Wijaya

The role of poverty, specifically the urban poor, in shaping the urban landscape is often solely linked to slums and informal settlements in urban centers. However, contrary to this common perception, this study aims to elucidate how urban poor residents contribute to shaping urban sprawl in developing countries. After identifying patterns of urban sprawl and poverty in the Jakarta Metropolitan Area (JMA) in Indonesia, the study used the Structural Equation Model (SEM) method to analyze survey data from 195 respondents with a per capita income of less than USD 2.15 (IDR 34,000) daily in Tangerang Regency, a western suburb of the JMA. This study shows that urban sprawl and poverty concentration overlap. The urban poor contribute to urban sprawl by purchasing affordable land on the urban periphery, traveling there with their motorized vehicles, and taking advantage of government subsidies. However, rather than gaining more land, they face increased public service costs, a lack of basic facilities, and habitat destruction. Most respondents own their own homes, but almost half of the respondents (41.54%) state that these homes are less than 48 m2 in size. It can be concluded that economically vulnerable populations can contribute to urban sprawl when confronted with ineffective planning institutions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010017

Authors: Mira Zovko Izidora Marković Vukadin Krešo Pandžić Tanja Likso

Understanding the impact of climate change on tourism is vital for the economies that rely on it. The tourism sector in Croatia, a country with diverse climatic regions, but also diverse features of tourism, is particularly sensitive to changes in climate variables such as 2 m air temperature and precipitation totals. This study analyzes trends in these two key climate variables from 1961 to 2024 across five representative climatic regions: the-mountainous Lika region (Ličko-senjska County), the Kvarner region on the northern Adriatic coast (Primorsko-goranska County), the Zadar region on the central Adriatic coast (Zadarska Counties), and northern continental Croatia (Varaždinska and Međimurje Counties). Linear trends, 5-year moving averages, and comparisons between two standard climate periods (1961–1990 and 1991–2020) were conducted. Using these data, the monthly self-calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index (sc-PDSI) and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for seven-time scales were calculated for the period 1961–2024 to assess drought conditions and their implications for tourism across the selected destinations. Frequencies of dry, near normal and wet months, estimated by SPI for a nine-month time scale (SPI-9) and a monthly sc-PDSI, were compared for two subperiods, 1961–1992 and 1993–2024. Meteorological data were contextualized for tourism stakeholders, with a focus on adaptation measures. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with tourism professionals in the study regions, providing qualitative insights into observed changes in climate and tourist behavior, operational challenges, adaptation strategies, level of community engagement, and opportunities envisioned. Objective climatological data were compared with the subjective perceptions of tourism experts using the principle of mixed methods, which allows for triangulation. The climatological data indicated a continuous trend of increasing mean annual air temperatures, as well as anomalies of average precipitation amount. The interviews revealed signals of emerging climate shifts, such as changes in the seasonality of visitors, concerns about water scarcity and heat stress. These findings were interpreted in the context of potential threats and opportunities for the tourism sector, highlighting region-specific adaptation strategies. By combining objective climate data with insights from tourism professionals, this study provides a comprehensive assessment of climate change impacts on tourism and informs for resilient tourism development across Croatia’s diverse regions. This paper presents a methodological framework for developing adaptation recommendations that draw on both empirical climate data and the lived experiences of tourism work practitioners.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010016

Authors: Rohit Mondal Sabrina Bresciani Francesco Michele Noera Francesca Rizzo

The growing recognition of the need for systemic approaches to urban climate transitions calls for comprehensive monitoring and evaluation frameworks that extend beyond Greenhouse Gas emissions to include measures that impact human behaviours, as well as process indicators that enable timely adjustments to climate action pathways. The extant literature offers limited insights into EU regional patterns and differences in the assessment of actions toward climate neutrality. This study examines indicators of process and co-benefit selected for the pilot projects of cities that aim to be climate neutral by 2030 in 21 European countries, and it aligns the indicators set utilised in the NetZeroCities pilot projects with the international frameworks of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and New European Bauhaus. The findings highlight the relevance accorded by cities in all European regions to learning, awareness and participation, and inform on potential regional differences in the prioritisation of specific sustainability goals across North, West, South and East Europe. The methodology contributes to the sustainability science and transdisciplinary literature by aligning cities’ indicators with the SDG and NEB frameworks. Findings suggest that the EU focus on engagement, participation and social learning is being taken up by cities; furthermore, they contribute insights for a potentially more geographically and culturally aware design of European urban climate transitions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010015

Authors: Gisela García-Morales María Sara Burrola-Sánchez David Urías-Laborín José Alfredo Arreola-Lizárraga

Evaluations of recreational beaches are necessary to guide their management. In this study, we conducted a socio-ecological evaluation to propose management guidelines for San Francisco beach in northwestern Mexico, using a beach quality index and recording user perceptions. The results showed that the beach quality is high, based on the recreational, natural, and protection functions considered in the beach quality index. This finding was consistent with user perceptions of beach services, environmental conditions, and cleanliness. The findings of this study can be applied to strategies focused on the use and preservation of San Francisco Beach, aiming to maintain the natural landscape and sanitary quality, provide public services, ensure cleanliness, subdivide recreational areas, and implement year-round surveillance.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010014

Authors: Zaya Chinbat Yongfen Wei

Land use change driven by accelerated urbanization in Mongolia has precipitated significant degradation of urban riverine ecosystems over the past two decades. This study investigates hydrological transformations in the Selbe River Catchment of Ulaanbaatar, a cold semi-arid urban system undergoing intensive densification. Using the Site-scale Urban Water Mass Balance Assessment (SUWMBA) framework, we quantified water cycle dynamics across four temporal intervals (2008, 2010, 2018, and 2023), capturing shifts in surface runoff, infiltration, and evapotranspiration associated with land use transitions. Calibration and validation employed discharge records from the Selbe-Dambadarjaa gauging station. Results show that total inflows increased from 223 to 312 mm between 2008 and 2023, driven by a more than twentyfold rise in imported water (from 1 to 22 mm). Evapotranspiration declined by roughly one-third, while infiltration displayed a threshold-type non-linear response—rising sharply between 2010 and 2018 before decreasing again in 2023 as imperviousness intensified. Model performance weakened after 2018, underscoring the limitations of conventional hydrological frameworks in rapidly urbanizing contexts. A redevelopment scenario for the Selbe Sub-Center, aligned with the Ulaanbaatar City Master Plan 2040, projected substantially reduced evapotranspiration (132 mm) and markedly increased stormwater runoff (270 mm), reflecting expanded impervious cover and diminished vegetation. Imported water and wastewater flows (each 386 mm) also increased due to full connection to centralized supply and sewerage infrastructure, indicating a shift toward engineered water pathways and reduced hydrological connectivity to the Selbe River. These findings highlight the urgency of water-sensitive urban design and provide evidence directly informing Mongolia’s 2040 Urban Master Plan and decentralization strategy. The study establishes methodological precedent for applying SUWMBA to cold, semi-arid catchments and contributes quantitative insights for integrated land–water management policies.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010013

Authors: Natalya A. Skokova Anastasiya G. Narozhnyaya Artyom V. Gusarov Fedor N. Lisetskii

This paper presents the results of assessing the influence of siltation factors in 23 ponds in one of the most agriculturally developed macro-regions of European Russia—the Central Russian Upland. Key natural and anthropogenic factors determining the intensity of pond siltation have been identified, and a typification of ponds has been developed to predict the rate of accumulation of bottom sediments in them. For the typification, statistical methods such as correlation analysis (Spearman’s coefficient), cluster and factor analysis, and the Random Forest machine learning algorithm were used. Correlation analysis revealed that the percentage of catchment cultivation has a significant effect (r = 0.55, p < 0.01) on the volume of bottom sediments, while soil loss (r = 0.47, p < 0.05) and vertical terrain dissection (r = 0.43, p < 0.05) have a moderate effect. The most important factors in the siltation process are the average slope of the catchment (24.5%), the percentage of cultivated soils (18.8%), and the average annual soil loss (14.1%). All factors were grouped into three clusters, which explained 77.8% of the variance. As a result, four pond types were identified, differing in their dominant limiting factors: pond hydrological characteristics, catchment morphometry, and the degree of anthropogenic transformation of the catchment. Verification of the typification was carried out based on the calculation of annual soil losses considering the sediment delivery coefficient; the discrepancies between the calculated and actual pond sediment volumes were 1.2–10.0%. The proposed approach, which recommends a multi-scale assessment of potential sediment formation volumes using remote sensing data and thematic mapping, offers heuristic potential for identifying the most degraded water bodies. This enables the planning of priority sites and rehabilitation measures for their restoration within the framework of regional soil and water conservation programs.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010012

Authors: Monica Ballinas Bolívar Morales Pablo López-Ramírez

Atmospheric contamination and thermal pollution are two phenomena that impact negatively on the quality of life of residents in a city. Furthermore, exposure to these phenomena has a differential impact on socioeconomic strata, with the poorest being the most affected. Spatial and temporal analyses were conducted of PM2.5 pollution and air temperature, as well as socioeconomic variable. This characterization revealed that low-income people are more exposed to thermal pollution during the warm season with temperatures up to 32.6 °C, and to PM2.5 pollution with concentrations up to 205 µgm−3 during the cold season, focusing on the eastern part of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City (MAMC). High temperatures can persist for up to 6 h, while PM2.5 concentrations can persist for up to 5 h. The social backwardness index is a fixed variable that can change in the long term and is related to thermal pollution. This study will allow us to understand social and environmental vulnerability and, thus, to develop an appropriate mitigation methodology for these two phenomena and their impact on human health, with special attention to environmental justice issues.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010011

Authors: Remus Crețan David Chasciar Alexandru Dragan Marius Lupșa Matichescu

Postsocialist peri-urban spaces are characterized by a chaotic development as a result of the transition from communism to capitalism. Recent research has highlighted that liveability in peri-urban spaces encounters challenges of adaptation to the peri-urban areas. The aim of the present study is to identify and analyze patterns and contrasts that occur between age groups and gender in relation to the level of liveability as well as to better understand the daily mobility practices and commuting dependencies and how mobility shapes key contrasts and emerging tensions within Timișoara’s postsocialist peri-urban spaces. As liveability relates to local development, commuting, and accessibility to service facilities in the residential environment, the identification of patterns and differences is imperative when considering the perception of local residents on potential (un)sustainable liveability in peri-urban areas. This study utilizes a quantitative analysis, informed by a survey of considerable size (N = 954) conducted in peri-urban settlements of Timisoara, Romania, with a view to elucidating the distinctions and commonalities in the perceptions held by the local populace. The findings indicate that the elderly population exhibits a greater reluctance to adapt to the emerging peri-urban environment. In contrast, the younger and more educated demographic demonstrates a higher degree of adaptability to the contemporary challenges posed by peri-urban expansion and hazardous development. Daily mobility, including commuting, is directly influenced by the effects of dispersed and chaotic development (e.g., more than 79% of respondents rely on private cars for commuting), as well as the lack of facilities and services (e.g., 2.21 level of satisfaction regarding cultural events). This highlights Timisoara’s dependence on external services, as well as the significant role of personal vehicles in providing access to the city center and its neighborhoods. Therefore, we can observe the peri-urban area undergoing a transitional phase as it navigates the initial stages of sustainable urban development and pursues an enhanced quality of life. Finally, we propose several policy recommendations for local authorities, offering solutions for enhancing liveability in peri-urban areas.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010010

Authors: Liana Hakobyan Ruzanna Armenakyan Lilit Baghdasaryan Aida Martirosyan Svetlana Ratner

Understanding how global climate drivers manifest at regional scales is critical for designing targeted adaptation strategies, particularly in vulnerable mountainous countries. This study provides an integrated assessment of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, surface temperature, and precipitation trends at both global and Armenian levels from the early 20th century to 2024. Using long-term observational datasets and ordinary least squares regression models with HAC-robust errors, this study quantifies the magnitude and statistical significance of historical climate shifts. Results confirm pronounced global warming (+0.021 °C/year) alongside a moderate rise in global precipitation (+1.13 mm/year). Armenia, however, exhibits substantially accelerated warming (+0.052 °C/year) coupled with a non-significant and spatially heterogeneous precipitation trend, including notable declines in humid regions. CO2 emissions per capita strongly predict temperature change both globally (0.59 °C/ton) and, even more prominently, in Armenia (1.33 °C/ton), indicating heightened regional climate sensitivity. These findings align closely with Armenia’s Fourth National Communication to the UNFCCC, reinforcing the robustness of the analysis. By revealing how global climate forcings translate into region-specific outcomes—and by discussing the emerging thermal contribution of digital infrastructure—this study underscores the urgency of localized climate adaptation, water resource planning, and agricultural resilience measures.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010009

Authors: Fernando Medina Morales Pablo Máyer Suárez Feliciano Tavío Álvarez Lorenzo Quesada Ruiz

The island of Gran Canaria (Spain) has undergone a significant transformation in wildfire dynamics over the past two decades, characterized by a decline in wildfire frequency but a marked increase in the severity and spatial impact of extreme events, particularly within the wildland–urban interface (WUI). This study analyzes wildfire activity between 2000 and 2020 using official datasets and statistical trend analyses, incorporating robust severity indicators and measures of burned area concentration. Results show a statistically significant decreasing trend in the number of wildfires, while burned area is extremely concentrated in a small number of high-intensity events, with four large wildfires accounting for more than 97% of the total affected area. Climatic influences on wildfire activity were assessed through the analysis of long-term meteorological indicators, focusing on trends in extreme heat days and precipitation as proxies for thermal stress and fuel moisture availability. The results indicate a substantial modification of the background climatic framework under which wildfires develop, although no direct causal relationships are inferred. In parallel, territorial processes—such as rural abandonment, increased fuel continuity, and the expansion of dispersed housing beyond consolidated settlements—act as key amplifiers of wildfire risk. Overall, the findings highlight a transition from emergency-oriented fire suppression toward resilience-based wildfire management, emphasizing the need to integrate climate adaptation, territorial planning, and stricter land-use regulation in WUI areas.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010008

Authors: Valentin-Florentin Jujea-Boldesco Mihnea-Ștefan Costache Anna Dakou-Chasioti Nicolae Crăciun Alexandru Nedelea

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) is a crucial indicator of environmental transformation and has significant implications for biodiversity, ecosystem services, and climate change. This study investigates land-cover changes between 2017 and 2023 in three distinct mountain regions: the Bucegi Mountains, the Allgäu High Alps, and Mount Olympus. Using remote-sensing data from Sentinel 2 and Geographic Information System (GIS) tools, we analyzed temporal shifts in land-cover types across these regions. The analysis highlights the varying rates and patterns of land-cover transformation in response to environmental and anthropogenic factors. Additionally, the MOLUSCE model was employed to predict future land-cover changes for the year 2029. The findings emphasize the dynamic nature of land-cover in these mountainous areas and offer insights into the potential environmental implications of predicted changes. The Bucegi and the Olympus regions experienced minor land-use changes, while the Allgäu High Alps have the most dynamic changes. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of land-cover dynamics and the applicability of remote sensing and GIS-based predictive models in ecological monitoring.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010007

Authors: Muhammad Rusydan Hi Arby Seth Appiah-Opoku Alfath Satria Negara Syaban

This study explores global experiences of capital relocation to extract lessons relevant to North Maluku, Indonesia, where Sofifi has yet to develop into a functional provincial capital. Drawing on six theoretical perspectives, including growth pole theory, polycentric development, institutional inertia, urban metabolism, spatial justice, and urban vitality, the paper analyzes how political vision, institutional integration, and social participation influence relocation outcomes. Comparative cases from Abuja, Brasília, Putrajaya, Naypyidaw, Randstad, and Nusantara show that successful relocations occur when governance reform aligns with spatial planning and participatory urban design. For Sofifi, enhancing urban vitality through connectivity, inclusiveness, and institutional coordination is essential to transform relocation from a symbolic decision into a functional urban system. The study contributes a conceptual framework linking spatial design, institutional reform, and social vibrancy in the pursuit of sustainable and equitable capital development.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010006

Authors: Alan Carlos de Souza Correa Fernanda Neves Ferreira Lorena Sousa Melo Paulo Amador Tavares

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), a rapidly expanding crop in northeastern Pará, first emerged in the 1970s as a crucial response to the global oil crisis. However, its swift expansion has subsequently generated significant socio-environmental conflicts, profoundly altering local socioecological dynamics. Therefore, we aimed to investigate land-use and land-cover changes within the headwater sub-basin of the Caeté River, focusing specifically on the municipality of Bonito, Pará. To achieve this, we employed remote sensing and geospatial analysis to accurately delineate the study area and perform supervised classifications. Specifically, we used the Random Forest algorithm to map five distinct periods: 1985, 1995, 2004, 2015, and 2023. In addition, we calculate an Anthropogenic Transformation Index (ATI) in order to observe the human influence in the landscape. Our classification models exhibited high accuracy, with overall accuracy values ranging from 0.63 to 0.87 and Kappa coefficients between 0.53 and 0.76, demonstrating consistent discrimination among LULC classes. The results revealed a marked transformation of the landscape, with oil palm monocultures progressively expanding at the expense of dense forest and human-modified vegetation. For instance, the ATI increased from 3.14 in 1985 to 5.56 in 2004, followed by a slight decline to 4.90 in 2023, suggesting a potential stabilisation—but not a reversal—of anthropogenic pressures. Nonetheless, the negative socioecological impacts of the oil palm monocultures in this Amazonian landscape remain severe, encompassing issues such as water pollution and ongoing socio-environmental conflicts. In conclusion, this research highlights the importance of understanding these dynamics to support sustainable management of the Caeté River basin. Furthermore, we underscore the urgent need for further research to rigorously evaluate effective mitigation strategies and foster genuinely sustainable development within the region.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010005

Authors: Solomon Beyene Sam Blumenfeld Elizabeth Guthrie Nichols

Western North Carolina (WNC), part of the Appalachian landscape, hosts a robust forest product industry but faces increasing challenges like land marginalization, warming temperatures and raw material shortages. This study evaluates the site suitability and cost-effectiveness of cultivating Populus species for high-value veneer–plywood (VP) production in WNC using the Veneer-Poplar Productivity and Economic Assessment Model (VP-PEAM). The model integrates site-specific variables (elevation, soil characteristics, landform and land-use history) to optimize site-species management strategies across diverse landscapes. Twelve scenarios are analyzed to assess how biophysical and land-use factors influence VP growth and profitability. The results show that VP productivity and profitability decline with increasing elevation, past land-use intensity, soil compaction and decreasing soil depth. All land-use types studied support profitable VP production. Yet, flood plain sites with medium-textured soils and moderate water table depths (0.61–1.83 m) offer optimal conditions. Even under suboptimal conditions, extended rotations maintain profitability, except on sites with persistent waterlogging or shallow water tables (<0.31 m). VPs generate higher annual equivalent opportunity benefits (USD 1568–USD 2763 ha−1 yr−1 in 15- to 18-year rotations) compared to non-forest land uses, suggesting their potential to enhance regional wood supply and land-use efficiency. These findings contribute to site-informed forest management and offer a modeling approach for assessing forest resilience and cost-effectiveness in Appalachian landscapes.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010004

Authors: George Iliopoulos Penelope Papadopoulou Vasilis Golfinopoulos Eleni Koumoutsou Ioannis P. Kokkoris Irena Pappa Panayotis Dimopoulos

Chelmos Vouraikos UNESCO Global Geopark is located in North Peloponnesus, Greece. As a member of the Global Geoparks Network, it is valued for its rich geoheritage in combination with its natural and cultural wealth. Several different landforms of international value are located in the area. The scope of this work is to present an overview of its geomorphological features, link them with biodiversity and highlight their value for geotourism. Its geology is complicated due to intense tectonism. Three geotectonic units of the Alpine Orogeny can be found along with post-Alpine sediments related to the Corinth Gulf rifting. The area is highly covered by limestone creating important karst landforms. High peaks surround river valleys and deep gorges create breathtaking landscapes. Some of them cut through high and steep conglomerate slopes. Remnants of past glaciation have been preserved on Mt Chelmos. The exceptional geodiversity of the area is linked with rich vegetation and high endemism. The many identified geomorphological sites highlight the Geopark’s strong commitment to geomorphology and its importance as a key geomorphological destination. Highly visible geomorphological sites with ecological value can also promote environmental awareness and contribute to the protection of biodiversity.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010003

Authors: Zaya Chinbat Yongfen Wei Ken Hiramatsu

Urban expansion in cold semi-arid regions poses significant threats to river ecosystems through land use changes and impervious surface proliferation. This study examined the Selbe River in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, integrating Landsat satellite imagery (2000–2020) with long-term water quality monitoring data (2012–2023) to assess land use change impacts on river water quality. Land use classification revealed that built-up areas expanded 3.5-fold from 16.20 km2 (2000) to 57.9 km2 (2020), driven primarily by informal Ger residential areas and high-rise residential zones. Over the same period, barren land decreased from 149.5 km2 to 64.80 km2, while green areas increased from 156.89 km2 to 200.11 km2, which was insufficient to offset ecological stress from impervious surfaces. Water quality analysis of five sampling sites along the river showed progressive deterioration, with the Water Quality Index (WQI) increasing from 1.08 (2012) to 7.24 (2023), classifying the river as “dirty”, the most severe pollution category in Mongolia’s national classification system. Downstream sites adjacent to high-rise residential and Ger districts exhibited elevated concentrations of NH4+, NO2−, NO3−, PO43−, and suspended solids, frequently exceeding permissible limits established by MNS 4586-98. These findings underscore the cumulative impact of unregulated urban growth on aquatic ecosystems and emphasize the urgent necessity for integrated land use regulation and watershed-based planning to safeguard urban water resources in cold semi-arid environments. The study provides a replicable framework for assessing land use impacts on water quality in rapidly urbanizing regions.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010002

Authors: Valentina Nikolova Radostina Rizova Ivan Dimitrov Jan Babej Dimitar Dimitrov Ana M. Petrović

Torrential flows are hazardous hydro-geomorphological phenomena characterized by sudden water discharge and intense sediment transport. They occur in mountainous areas where hydrometeorological monitoring is often limited or absent. The lack of such data hinders the identification of flow types and sediment transport conditions, reducing the effectiveness of mitigation measures. To address this issue, the current study focuses on geomorphic characteristics of torrential watersheds and identifies indirect indicators of torrential activity. The sedimentological and geomorphic signatures of torrential flows in the lower Damdere River catchment (Eastern Rhodopes Mountains, southern Bulgaria) were characterized. To capture inter-annual variability in torrential activity and differences between the Damdere and its tributary the Duandere, we sampled riverbed deposits. We also sampled areas upstream and downstream of the check dam to assess its influence. Samples were analyzed for grain size distribution, petrography, and mineralogy (X-ray diffraction). Results show contrasting controls on sediment supply and transport: the Duandere delivers relatively coarse material, whereas the Damdere attains higher transport capacity during torrential events. The check dam is largely infilled and exerts only local effects by trapping finer sediments upstream. Downstream, the channel retains its torrential character. Inter-annual comparison upstream of the structure shows sediment fining linked to lower flows. Petrographic and XRD data point to mechanically driven erosion and rapid sediment transfer. The results underline the importance of geological–geomorphological indicators in the lack of long-term monitoring in similar mountain catchments and can support flood risk management.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies6010001

Authors: Khusna Ainul Mardliyah Kenji Taniguchi

Jakarta frequently experiences flooding due to several sources. To address this, the Indonesian government initiated the Great Garuda Seawall (GGSW), a structural countermeasure to protect the city from floods. This study assesses the effectiveness of the GGSW using a storm surge model. Four events were simulated to evaluate storm surge variations: without the GGSW, and in three construction phases (initial, intermediate, and completion phases). The results derived from the model depict the maximum storm-surge heights near the Jakarta coastline as 10 cm, 12 cm, 14 cm, and 24 cm for the events of Borneo Vortex, Hagibis–Mitag, Peipah, and Cold Surge, respectively. The effects also extended slightly to the Kepulauan Seribu Regency. Among the construction phases, the intermediate phase was identified as the most critical because the eastern reservoir gate remained open. In the completion phase, attention is needed for the gate connection between reclaimed lands and the Jakarta mainland, especially near the Bekasi region, where coastal erosion risk is high. Overall, the GGSW is not yet fully effective in preventing coastal flooding because some areas still experience no reduction in storm surge height. Furthermore, an evaluation based on GGSW construction phases is also important because this project generally involves reclamation islands and water pumps, which must be carefully cross-engineered.

Geographies doi: 10.3390/geographies5040078

Authors: Hugo Castro Noblejas Álvaro Daniel Rodríguez Escudero

The study examines the recent transformation of traditional agricultural landscapes in the transition zone between Sierra de las Nieves and the Western Costa del Sol (Andalusia, Spain), one of the European regions where urban development pressure has reached its peak in replacing agricultural land with residential and tourism uses. Through a diachronic analysis of historical orthophotos (1956–2025), statistical sources (Agricultural Census, SIGPAC), and fieldwork, land-use changes and their impact on ecological functionality and territorial resilience are quantified. Results reveal a widespread loss of agricultural land—exceeding 68% overall—particularly severe in Benahavís, where more than 70% of farmland has disappeared, largely converted to urban areas. In contrast, in Istán and Ojén, the predominant trend is the renaturalization of abandoned agricultural land. These dynamics illustrate a coastal–inland territorial model that epitomizes the Mediterranean “territorial consumption” process, in which tourism-driven urbanization fragments traditional agroforestry mosaics. The study concludes that, despite their regression, traditional agricultural landscapes continue to play a key role in water regulation, soil conservation, and wildfire risk mitigation. Their restoration and maintenance are proposed as a replicable strategy for climate change adaptation and for reconciling territorial sustainability with economic development in other Mediterranean regions under intense urban pressure.