Mapping the spatial distribution of ecosystem goods and services represents a burgeoning field of research, although how different services covary with one another remains poorly understood. This is particularly true for the covariation of supporting, provisioning and regulating services with cultural services (the non-material benefits people gain from nature). This is largely because of challenges associated with the spatially specific quantification of cultural ecosystem services. We propose an innovative approach for evaluating a cultural service, the perceived aesthetic value of ecosystems, by quantifying geo-tagged digital photographs uploaded to social media resources. Our analysis proceeds from the premise that images will be captured by greater numbers of people in areas that are more highly valued for their aesthetic attributes. This approach was applied in Cornwall, UK, to carry out a spatial analysis of the covariation between ecosystem services: soil carbon stocks, agricultural production, and aesthetic value. Our findings suggest that online geo-tagged images provide an effective metric for mapping a key component of cultural ecosystem services. They also highlight the non-stationarity in the spatial relationships between patterns of ecosystem services.

This paper describes a research project that aimed to translate complex spatial and scientific data about coastal change into accessible digital formats for general audiences. The project used fine-scale remote sensing techniques including airborne and terrestrial laser scanning to produce spatially accurate and realistic 3D digital visualisations of projected sea level rise at Cotehele Quay, a site on the River Tamar in Cornwall owned and managed by the National Trust. Area residents and stakeholders were involved in a series of focus groups which provided guidance on the integration of the spatial models into a short film. The paper focuses on how the participatory, iterative process adopted in the project shaped the content and design of the film. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this process enhanced the viability of the film as a communication tool for use in wider engagement activities.

Keywords: : Terrestrial laser scanning , heritage , sea-level rise , community engagement , multi-media

Geographers have begun to investigate the link between creative production and cultural memory-work, exploring how art interventions frame and facilitate engagements with the past in place. This paper builds on this emerging area of enquiry to examine the transformation of an industrial river landscape in Western Montana, and the production of a sound artwork which attempted to respond to the landscape’s unmaking with an interactive installation at a local museum. An interest in how cultural remembrance is practiced and performed in relation to processes of material disarticulation guides the analysis. In conclusion, the paper proposes that a form of kinetic memory characterises engagement with ephemeral sites and the cultural productions they catalyse. The researcher’s involvement in the installation process opens up an adjacent discussion about geographical research conducted on, and through, contemporary art practice.

In many discussions of how cities in the global North are changing, the growing importance of urban design is emphasised: that is, the production of visually and spatially coherent urban buildings and spaces seems to be increasingly central to urban change. To date, most attention has focused on exploring the reasons for this shift. Much less attention has been paid to the experiences of the people inhabiting and using such designed spaces. Although many authors acknowledge that, in theory, such encounters between human subjects and designed urban environments are richly various and unpredictable, few studies have examined this empirically and learnt theoretically from these encounters. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in the British city of Milton Keynes-the centre of which is a shopping mall, a designed environment par excellence-the authors argue that understanding experiences of contemporary urban change requires a relational and performative understanding of environmental encounters, and they suggest three intertwined implications for rethinking research on urban aesthetics: first, a multimodal and sensuously embedded understanding of vision; second, a practice-centred understanding of the environment; and third, a need for self-reflexive understanding of the researchers' position in the fieldwork.

The historical development of Scottish allotment gardens has invested these urban agricultural landscapes with an ambiguous diversity that persists today in both plot-level practice and in political representations. This paper examines how the ambiguity that pervades allotment practice surfaces as a liability in strategic appeals. I juxtapose a pair of narratives - the story of my involvement in a Scottish Parliament Allotments Inquiry and a history of a single Edinburgh allotment site - to draw out the survival of historical forms in contemporary political negotiations. Although a theory of `tactics' and ` strategies', adopted from Michel de Certeau, frames my discussion, I locate my analysis in the gap between these categories.