Nicholas Bauch

Food and Place: Consuming Parma, Italy

In the United States and Europe there is a growing consumer desire for geographically indicated food products, a type of "niche" food that has achieved recent market success. In 1992 the European Union passed a law that allowed food and beverage producers to register their products for trademark protection. In essence the law approved the branding of food products whose names bear their place of production, with the assumption that the specific place of production holds qualities that render the product irreproducible in any other geographic region. Marketers and geographers alike have identified numerous reasons for the market success of geographically indicated products, such as nature, heritage, and amenity resources, yet their analysis goes not much deeper. Sociologists have posited that class distinction and taste are motivating forces that explain the market success. These reasons no doubt contribute to explaining consumer motivation, but how might a geographer explain this market success, given that geographically indicated foods are clearly a geographical phenomenon. This paper uses the simple idea of "experiencing another place" to offer an explanation for the attraction to geographically indicated foods among a subset of consumers. Mental place-making through advertising, coupled with the visceral connection through the food products is one way that consumers can experience another place, an action that is fundamental to the human existence on earth.

Eric D. Carter

Socio-environmental dynamics of malaria control in Northwest Argentina, 1890-1950

Disease control campaigns construct coherent visions of the regions in which they act through a filtering process, in which readings of local geography (through tools such as surveying, mapping, and statistical measuring) are processed through cognitive models of the socio-environmental dynamics of disease. As this case study of malaria control in northwestern Argentina (1890-1950) suggests, these models are influenced by changing factors at varying geographic scales, combining local economic development concerns, national political ideologies, and international disease control theory and practice. Malaria control programs became a key element of a project of the federal government to effectively integrate the stagnant region of Northwest Argentina into the nation by "improving" the land and its people, thus creating conditions for increased settlement and development. Advocates of malaria control constructed the Northwest as a "diseased region," with malaria serving as metaphor for the region's ills in general. This social construct of the region was anchored to perceptions of mutually-degrading social and environmental conditions that, it was argued, had to be changed in order to stimulate regional development. This cognitive model of the diseased region was strongly influenced by foreign models of malaria control (particularly from Italy ) that emphasized wetland reclamation and social development. Eventually, a counter-model that was less socially ambitious but more suited to local conditions came to dominate malaria control efforts. Spatial-statistical analysis of archival demographic and public health data can be effective in evaluating historical models of the socio-environmental dynamics of malaria and other infectious diseases.

Kim Coulter

Good Bye, Lenin!: A tale of a unified Germany , for a unified Europe

Wolfgang Becker's nostalgic "tragicomedy" Good Bye Lenin! (winner of the 2003 European Film Award) playfully demonstrates media construction of national identity. Alex, a young East Berliner, films fake news broadcasts to conceal the demise of the GDR from his ailing mother. He rewrites history, explaining that it is West Germans who are scaling the wall, fleeing "the terror of consumption." While Alex needs only a video camera to record his images of homeland, the production of films like Good Bye Lenin! is much more complex: it requires that filmmakers, commercial industries, and territorial institutions align their interests. Just as the film Good Bye, Lenin! tells a tale about national storytelling, so do its production, distribution, and interpretation processes. Although often ambiguous and contested, both stories ultimately attest to the impotence of a socialist East and incorporate its residents into a unified capitalist West. Its well-researched details and sympathetic tone further serve to politically legitimize the German state both at home and within Europe.

Reece Jones

Sacred Cows and Thumping Drums: Claiming Territory as 'Zones of Tradition' in British India

Theories that seek to explain the origins of communal violence in South Asia often point to discourses that emphasized the differences between the categories of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' as playing an important role in their crystallization as the preeminent forms of political identification in the first half of the twentieth century. In this paper I argue that these theories often focus on imagined social boundaries while overlooking how these discourses were materialized and territorialized in everyday life through practice. In order to demonstrate the ways that group-making discourses are territorialized, I will look specifically at two prominent social movements in pre-partition British India that began to establish territorial boundaries between the populations through the public performance of religious rituals. In the process, activists and organizations attempted to establish areas where either Hindu or Islamic religious practices were reified into official tradition, what I will call 'zones of tradition', that could act as precedents when authorities sought to mediate disputes. First the cow protection movements that campaigned to institute local bans on the slaughter of cattle, a practice disallowed in Hindu custom, will be investigated. Then the conflicts over religious processions playing music as they passed in front of mosques will be considered. In both cases, as the religious practices were contested, 'zones of tradition' were established across British India symbolically and tangibly dividing the territory before it was officially partitioned.

Matt Liesch

Promotion of Place, Landscape and Regional Identity (Re)Invention: Gogebic Range as Case Study

This paper examines the consciousness of regional identity and discourse's effect on contributing to regional identity dynamism. The Gogebic Range , a former iron mining range, has faced economic decline. Temporally, research begins with 1880s land speculation and mining promotion. As mines gradually closed, the city of Hurley developed notoriety for its drinking, gambling and prostitution. This image was strong enough that present-day heritage tourism promotes aspects of Hurley's vice. Oftentimes, the dominant discourses by those off of the Gogebic were of cynicism and moral outrage. Trying to rejuvenate the economy, local power networks have promoted skiing, nature, and heritage tourism as economic alternatives. In doing so, text and images are projected in hopes of cultivating new social memories. The selectivity involved with promotion and ignorance of portions of the cultural landscape results in a contested landscape. Methodologies included involve discourse analysis, visual analysis, demographics, and a critical reading of the cultural landscape. This paper is merely intended to be a broad outline of a master's thesis proposal.

Melanie McCalmont

Communicating the Historical American West through Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Websites

An examination of public Lewis and Clark Exploration Bicentennial web communications uncovers two approaches to communicating the American West as historical place to the general public. A large sample and detailed analysis of current Bicentennial website communications categorizes their images and text into traditional or revisionist interpretative categories. Traditional text and image categories include weapons, exclusively white or male figures, or military symbols. Revisionist text and images include animals, diverse human groups, or natural environments. In image use, commercial and government Bicentennial sites had twice the frequency of traditional images as compared to organization or educational websites. Images on Bicentennial webpages set the tone for the text communication and indeed its entire American West message. Text on bicentennial webpages fleshes out the historical details of the place communication, and may either complement or conflict with the tone set by the symbology. Government and commercial websites used overwhelmingly traditional text by an 8-to-1 ratio, while educational and organizational sites used carefully neutral or revisionist text to describe the historical place of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Statistically, commercial and government websites employ traditional historical place interpretations while organizational and educational sites tend to present an inclusive and complex interpretation of the Expedition.

Marie C. Peppler

Evaluation of the Role of Native and Nonnative Vegetation for Streambank Stabilization in Great Lakes Tributaries

Vegetation plays an important role in the stability of banks through mechanical and hydrologic processes. Bank vegetation can protect against both hydraulic erosion along the bank toe and gravitational forces that acts upon the bank top. One of the benefits of vegetation is the increase in resistive strength of the bank soils due to the presence of roots. Characteristics of roots such as density, depth, area, and tensile strength are important features that determine the total strength of the roots. This project will involve quantifying and testing the root characteristics of several native and nonnative species of vegetation that are used in restoration projects along the banks of North Fish Creek and Whittlesey Creek. The relative ability of different combinations of native vegetation over given bank stratigraphies to resist bank erosion will be modeled. The study will determine which combinations of native vegetation work as well as or better than nonnative reed canary grass at maintaining bank stability. The results will give restoration managers a better understanding of how to use native plantings to provide maximum bank stability benefits.

Gordon Robertson

The Environmental Legacy of Historic Landuse in Western Scotland

The landscape of western Scotland contains extensive cultivation remains underlying the semi-natural vegetation. The popular association of relict cultural sites with 'greener' vegetation and 'better' soils will be tested. Traditional landuse consisted of intensive raised bed cultivation with an extensive pastoral transhumance component. The extremely marginal environment demanded significant soil amendment for crops including animal manure, seaweed, turf, and shell sand. Though abandoned mid 19th century, I argue that this past landuse still influences biogeography today. In the context of historic landuse, soil physical and chemical data will be presented showing differences between fields and non-field areas. Differences within relic fields are understood through a combination of environmental and cultural-ecological factors.

Noah Rost

(De)centralizations of Power and Meaning: The Yugoslav Nationalities Question and the Symbolic Place of a Museum 1970 - 1990

This paper explores the connections between theYugoslav nationalities question and spatial transformations within a key museum in Socialist Yugoslavia. In the wake of the Croatian Spring of 1971, the Yugoslav government entered a period of ?reform? during which political power was decentralized from the federal government to the six constituent republics, culminating in the 1974 constitution. This decentralization of political power was reflected in the changing physical spaces and display practices of the Kumrovec Memorial Park . This museum, located in Croatia and euphemistically referred to as the ?Balkan Bethlehem,? had originally focused on the early childhood and accomplishments of Josip Broz Tito, president of Socialist Yugoslavia until his death in 1980. During the period under investigation, however, the museum began to expand beyond its original commemorative purpose to include displays and workshops on the architecture and folk life of the nineteenth century Croatian peasantry. This shift in the spaces and practices of the museum represented a decentralization of meaning away from Tito, a symbol of Yugoslav unity, to a greater emphasis on Croatian national identity.

Robert Roth

Locating Optimal Lands for Reforestation in the Baraboo Hills

The Baraboo Hills, found in Wisconsin 's Sauk and Columbia counties, is one of the most ancient rock formations in North America , containing some of the state's most diverse habitat of natural forest flora and fauna. Unfortunately, development and deforestation in the area over the last half century has severely fragmented this forest, creating pockets of smaller forested areas scattered across the landscape. Such division of the forest block reduces the total amount of isolated interior forest, providing a greater edge for invasive species to enter and thus alter the original ecosystem. The Nature Conservancy identified this problem early on and has purchased thousands of acres of land in the area since the 1960s in hopes to protect and revitalize the forest habitat. Using research drawing from multiple disciplines, the Conservancy has developed criteria for reforestation based on several spatial attributes. The last remaining issue is to determine which non-forested lands in the area contain these attributes and prioritize their reforestation over time. This project seeks to locate these optimal lands for reforestation using a variety of GIS techniques and then prioritize their reforestation in eighty acre segments a year over ten years. The Conservancy will use this analysis in conjunction with other studies to implement a strategy for reforestation within the next several years.

M. Beth Schlemper, Geography-Geology , Illinois State University

The Making and Unmaking of Wisconsin's Holyland

Relationships between the processes that shape the construction of identity and borders are revealed through an examination of regional constructs. This paper examines the political, social, cultural, and institutional forces that were most significant in the construction of identity and of borders in a region known as the Holyland in east central Wisconsin . This study provides a glimpse into how identity is formed and transformed at various scales. An examination of community life can reveal the ways in which a regional consciousness and identity emerges over time. In the case of immigrant communities, pre-migration experiences, social relations, power structures and public memory play significant roles in the creation of regional identity. The transplantation of several communities from the Eifel in Rhenish Prussia to Wisconsin 's Holyland in the nineteenth century provides the opportunity to study transfer and acculturation at a regional scale. An analysis of change, particularly as related to the acculturation process, reveals the variables that were important in shaping community life, and provides further insight into the ways in which acculturation and the construction of identity and borders are interrelated.

Kevin Spigel

Preliminary interpretations of sediments from a varved lake in south-central Wisconsin using environmental magnetism and loss-on-ignition

Lake-based sediment studies offer the geomorphologist an opportunity to integrate multiple cause and effect physical processes into a single, basin-wide investigation focused on the determination of hillslope hydrologic behavior. Results are presented from the analysis of lake sediment obtained from Emrick Lake , a varved lake formed in the recessional moraine complex created by the Green Bay Lobe and located near the prairie-forest border. The overall objective of the project is to determine how erosion and sedimentation of a Wisconsin lake basin have responded to Holocene climate and vegetation change as well as to wildfire and historical anthropogenic activity. Soil magnetic properties undergo transformations and/or additions/removals by a number of pathways that can be quantified by careful laboratory analysis to provide insight on the spatial and temporal variability of erosion under an evolving vegetation and climate regime.

Loss-on-ignition (LOI) can provide evidence of changes in lake productivity and identify periods of erosion occurring on the surrounding hillslopes. A modified version of the Livingston corer was used to obtain a 9 m core from the deepest portion of the lake (24 m.). Basal radiocarbon dates on charcoal and algae samples returned ages indicating the lake sediment sequence spans the period of time from the late-glacial to the present (11600 +/-320 and 9930 +/-70 yr). The analysis of a lake sediment record from a sensitive area such as the prairie/forest border is critical for understanding how and why lake-basin erosion and lake sedimentation vary over time, especially in the eyes of perceived global warming and its implications for environmental change.

Travis Tennessen

Exploitation, Stewardship, and the Shaping of North Dakota's Little Missouri Badlands

During the early twentieth century, two environmental narratives arrived in the Little Missouri badlands of western North Dakota. The first-hailed by railroads, homesteaders, and the U.S. government-called for the unlimited exploitation of the region's resources. After a homesteading boom between 1905 and the early 1920s, however, the drought of the 1930s spawned the arrival of a new narrative. Stewardship and conservation of the desiccated landscape, according to FDR's New Deal government, was the only way people and the land would survive. During the late 30s, the government purchased most of the badlands from bankrupt settlers, began the process which would eventually create a national grassland and national park, and limited grazing and cropping activities. In this preliminary paper, I argue that the era immediately following the recovery from the 1930s drought, roughly from 1937 to 1945, holds the key to our understanding of the land uses and ideologies of today's badlands residents and managers. During this era, neither the narrative of exploitation nor of stewardship could dominate; the two narratives commingled and competed in minds of lands users and on the landscape itself, forging the tensions and factions that exist today. The rapid and successive arrival of these two narratives into an unforgiving landscape like the Little Missouri badlands provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between environmental narratives and landscape change, while a close examination of years immediately following the dirty thirties will reveal the foundations for today's conflicts over the proper use of the region.

Yen-Chu Weng

Spatiotemporal Changes of Landscape Pattern in Response to the Process of Urbanization

With more than half of the world's population living in cities, the importance of understanding the urban ecosystem and the effect of urbanization on the environment has been increasingly recognized. Urbanization has caused some negative impacts on the environment, such as the introduction of exotic species, the fragmentation of habitats, and the alternation of ecosystem processes. This study adapted a combined method of urban gradient analysis and landscape metrics to analyze the changes of landscape pattern in Dane County, Wisconsin, in relation to the degree of urbanization. Spatially, a 60 km transect cutting through the City of Madison was set up in the study area, representing a continuum of rural-urban-rural landscapes. Temporally, historical land-use data were compiled in GIS format every decade from 1970 to 2000. Changes of landscape pattern were analyzed by FRAGSTATS with six metrics, percentage of landscape, Shannon's evenness index, patch density, mean patch size, edge density, and shape index. The behavior of landscape metrics varied among different metrics and different land-use types. Overall, the results revealed an increase in landscape fragmentation, heterogeneity, and complexity paralleling the degree of urbanization. The trend of change was consistent both spatially and temporally. The study demonstrated the application of landscape metrics to the analysis of urban landscape pattern. This approach has huge potential in the monitoring and assessment of ecological consequences of urbanization and can assist urban environmental design with the aim to mitigate negative effects of urbanization on the urban ecosystem.

Pete Witucki

Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? Wildlife fencing and agriculturalist response in Aberdares Conservation Area, Kenya

Electric wildlife fencing is an increasingly popular strategy to mitigate conflict between people and wildlife when the needs of each cannot be reconciled. In the Aberdares Conservation Area, Kenya, managers have completed one-half of a 380+ kilometer enclosure fence to keep wildlife inside the protected area and out of the surrounding agricultural landscape, and to curtail unsustainable extraction of forest products for subsistence and commercial use. Though an integration of satellite image analysis and household interviews, I investigated the impact of fencing on (1) crop and livestock losses to wildlife, (2) local access to subsistence resources, (3) forest and agricultural extent, and (4) local residents' tolerance of wildlife and conservation initiatives. Overall, the fence has been largely successful in limiting the movement of dangerous wildlife into agricultural areas, though select species remain a problem. Forest access has been restricted and this has frustrated some resource users, but many are compensating by producing timber products on private lands. Initial digital image analysis suggests that agriculture has expanded and forests contracted in the landscape outside of the protected areas, but the growth of small woodlots suggests a more nuanced response to fencing. Wildlife fencing is an opportunity for managers to meaningfully integrate forest-adjacent communities with a high-profile conservation initiative. Wildlife managers have improved their public relations since beginning the project, but improving opportunities for inclusion is recommended.

Anu Vaidyanathan

Mis-educating the Pixel

Classic debates in people-environment geography have emphasized that human variables cannot be left out of the equation. In analyzing reasons for land-use, agricultural intensification, etc., which affect the greater wheels of world hunger and the treatment of labor (running harder to stay in the same place), there are several human and environmental variables to be considered. A good way to think about this would be to tell the story of the process rather than presenting the effects and inferring the process from those effects. GIS is rapidly becoming a catch phrase in the halls where decisions are made. Using GIS in people-environment geography comes with its unique challenges. Encoding the human attributes meaningfully to inform the outcomes, and considering temporal locality (or non-locality) of the data in extrapolation are some of these challenges. Most prior work in modeling land-use change is limited in the human variables available to them. In this work, we propose to evolve an older GIS to a newer one, aptly named Goodfellow, in a top-down fashion. Starting with the theoretical and methodological umbrellas we are working under, we present a small case in question, a 500km2 area in the Fakara region of Western Niger. We try to evaluate how, very detailed information about a small region in this area, informs the changes in land-use, rather than land-cover in this region. Using this as a starting point, we move on to evaluating how well we can extrapolate these results to a larger area, beyond the 500km2 area that we have the data for. As a grand goal, we wish to answer whether there is room for an evaluation framework for models within people-environment.