Geographers and sustainability: Five research challenges

Abstract

Advances in scholarly research are routinely associated with specific fields and traditional disciplines. New fields such as sustainability, climate change, gender studies and “green knowledge” emerge with inter- and cross-disciplinary subject matter, methods and techniques. Sustainability has emerged as an integrative research field on a global scale not only with contributions from the social and natural sciences in the past two decades but with contributions from the humanities and sciences. These breakthroughs present challenges to traditional fields and opportunities for better understanding of processes and impacts. The challenges facing geography include working with both visible and invisible worlds, going beyond “comfort zone” research boundaries, recognizing the importance of maps and mapping, and integrating politics in sustainability worlds at local, regional and global scales.

Keywords

Sustainability / Mapping / Planet Earth / Interdisciplinary research

Declaration of Competing Interest

The author declares that there are no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that influenced the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Donna and Dick Gilbreath for preparing the graphics and manuscript for publication. Their efforts are evident in the final product.

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