What Is This Class?
Content for Monday, August 25, 2025
Today we’ll focus on getting to know each other and the course structure. Before we get inundated with technical details and syntax, I think it’s important to remind ourselves why we need geographical analysis. We’ll spend some time on the various conceptualizations of place and space, how those things show up in geographic data, and their implications for the kinds of science we can do when we’re using geographic data. This session is meant to provide a bit of philosophical foundation for you to keep in mind as you work through various parts of the analytic pipeline.
Readings
Setting the Stage
Conservation biogeography: assessment and prospects by Whitaker et al. (2005) provides an overview of the of geography in understanding ecosystem function and shaping conservation strategies.
Economic geography, politics, and policy by Rickard (2020) provides a review of the role of geography in understanding responses to globalization.
Revolutionary and counter revolutionary theory in geography and the problem of ghetto formation by David Harvey (1972) offers a scathing critique of quantitative geography (though Harvey was one of the founders of the field). See (Barnes 2009) for a relatively recent attempt to reconcile these views.
Technical Details
The syllabus, content, examples, and assignments pages for this class
Happy Git and GitHub for the useR - all you really need to know to be a proficient user of git for version control and reproducible workflows.
Thinking Deeper
Does scale exist? An epistemological scale continuum for complex human–environment systems by Steven Manson (2008) is one of my favorite summaries of the various definitions and confusion surrounding scale as a concept invoked in many disciplines.
Spatial Scaling in Ecology by John Wiens (1989) describes the fundamental challenges of scale in Ecology.
Objectives
By the end of today you should be able to:
Describe the roles that geographic analysis in understanding the world.
Define what we mean by description, explanation, and prediction in geography.
Understand the organization of the course, the approach to grading, and the requirements for the final project
Access the course examples and assignments and know the process for submitting assignments
Slides
The slides for today’s lesson are available online as an HTML file. Use the buttons below to open the slides either as an interactive website or as a static PDF (for printing or storing for later). You can also click in the slides below and navigate through them with your left and right arrow keys.