Dominant Modes of Agricultural Production Helped Structure Initial COVID-19 Spread in the US Midwest

The spread of COVID-19 is geographically uneven in agricultural regions. Explanations proposed include differences in occupational risks, access to healthcare, racial inequalities, and approaches to public health. Here, we additionally explore the impacts of coexisting modes of agricultural production across counties from twelve midwestern U.S. states. In modeling COVID-19 spread before vaccine authorization, we employed and extended spatial statistical methods that make different assumptions about the natures and scales of underlying sociospatial processes. In the process, we also develop a novel approach to visualizing the results of geographically weighted regressions that allows us to identify distinctive regional regimes of epidemiological processes. Our approaches allowed for models using spatial weights (e.g., inverse-squared distances) to be meaningfully improved by also integrating process-specific relations (e.g., the geographical relations of the food system or of commuting). We thus contribute in several ways to methods in health geography and epidemiology for identifying contextually sensitive public engagements in socio-eco-epidemiological issues. Our results further show that agricultural modes of production are associated with the spread of COVID-19, with counties more engaged in modes of regenerative agricultural production having lower COVID-19 rates than those dominated by modes of conventional agricultural production, even when accounting for other factors.

Mapas, fome e planejamento territorial

Este artigo objetiva analisar os mapeamentos na interface da segurança alimentar e nutricional e do planejamento territorial. Para isso, consideramos a fome como manifestação da questão social, o retorno do Brasil ao mapa da fome durante a Pandemia de Covid-19, a importância do Estado no planejamento de políticas públicas e a literatura. O exame da literatura demonstrou uma frágil relação entre os campos da cartografia temática, do planejamento e da alimentação. Como procedimento metodológico, realizamos a análise crítica de estudos selecionados, mobilizando definições de desertos alimentares, pântanos e ilhas de abundância. Concluímos que, para a efetivação do direito humano à alimentação adequada, é fundamental um planejamento que contemple a pluralidade da alimentação e relacione aos territórios e suas populações por meio de mapeamentos temáticos intersetoriais.Alternate :The purpose of this paper is to analyze the interface in mapping territorial planning and food and nutrition security. To achieve this, we consider hunger as a manifestation of the social issue, the return of Brazil to the hunger map during the COVID-19 pandemic period, the importance of the State in planning public policies, and also the literature. The literature examination demonstrates a fragile relationship between the fields of thematic cartography, territorial planning, and food. The method used was the critical analysis of selected studies, mobilizing the following definitions: food deserts, swamps, and islands of abundance. We conclude that, for the realization of the human right to adequate food, it is essential that planning relates the plurality of food to territories and their populations through intersectoral thematic mapping.

One Year of COVID-19: Mapping the Spread of a Global Pandemic

The significance of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the availability of an unprecedented amount of data having become available unlike in any comparable health emergency before. Global situation updates were made available on a daily basis. This provides the unique opportunity to gain a better understanding of the underlying spatial patterns that developed during the spread of the virus. This contribution makes use of these data and provides a geographical overview of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the first year of the (known) spread of the virus. A main emphasis is put on the utilisation of innovative data visualisation approaches by deploying cartogram techniques as a method to emphasise the underlying quantities of global cases and deaths. The cartographic analysis is accompanied by a critical reflection on the sometimes problematic nature of the data and the patterns that have emerged from it. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Touring in the time of COVID-19: digital maps and the virtual teaching of Palestinian travel writing

The employment of digital media and e-materials in the classroom in the time of Covid-19 in Palestine has generated much attention among scholars, researchers and teachers. One of these electronic resources is digital maps which have recently become enriching and transformative ways of learning in different educational and pedagogical settings in Palestinian academic institutions. The lack of physical mobility due to continued governmental enforcements of lockdown laws in the Palestinian Occupied Territories hindered many teachers, students and researchers in the field of national cartography and human geography, many of whom were faced with dire challenges in exploring local landscapes outlined in Palestinian travel writing. This article examines the vital role of using digital maps in teaching Palestinian cartographic fiction. While it notes the value of students' geographic practices in the field, it explores the benefits of using digital maps in the higher teaching of Palestinian literary cartography. The article, in particular, reflects on the development and re-construction of the meanings of students' subjectivity and nationalism in the light of their virtual performance, responses and imaginary relationship to "place” during the outbreak of Covid-19. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Navigating (Post-)Anthropocenic Times of Crisis: A Critical Cartography of Hope

Departing from the (post-)Anthropocenic crisis state of today's world, fuelled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, various post-truth populist follies, and an apocalyptic WW3-scenario that has been hanging in the air since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this article argues for the possibility – and necessity – of an affirmative posthumanist-materialist mapping of hope. Embedded in the Deleuzoguattarian-Braidottian (see Deleuze and Guattari 2005 [1980];Braidotti 2011 [1994]) methodology of critical cartography, and infused with critical posthumanist, new materialist, and queer theoretical perspectives, this cartography of hope is sketched out against two permacrisis-infused positionalities: nostalgic humanism and tragic (post-)humanism. Forced to navigate between these two extremes, the critical cartography of hope presented here explores hope in nume-rous historico-philosophical (re-)configurations: from the premodern ‘hope-as-all-too-human', to a more politicised early modern ‘hope-as-(politically-)human' – representing hope's first paradigm shift (politicisation), and from a four decades-long neoliberal redrawing of hope as ‘no-more-hope' – hope's second shift (depoliticisation) – to a critical (new) materialist plea to de-anthropocentrise and re-politicise hope – hope's third and final post-Anthropocenic shift (re-politicisation). By mapping these (re-)configurations of hope, a philosophical plea is made for hope as a material(ist) praxis that can help us better understand – and counter – these extractive late capitalist, neoliberal more-than-human crisis times. © Edinburgh University Press.

A chorem-based approach to visualizing COVID-19-related data

Due to the increasing availability and openness of data from many countries worldwide, visualizations of the COVID-19 pandemic that aim to track the virus over time and across geographic areas are multiplying;geovisualization is proving to be an effective solution to better understand the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, due to the resulting "infodemic,” many visualization approaches are sub-optimal. For example, direct projections of COVID-19-related data on display are unsound from a cartographic point of view;the results are often overcomplicated, leading to cognitive overload, which may in turn, lead to misinterpretations. Thus, developing effective geovisualization methods is necessary to improve epidemiologists' and local authorities' decision-making abilities. This study proposes a novel approach to geovisualizing COVID-19-related data based on chorems. Our objective was to define a chorematic map that could represent, through visual summaries extracted from the analysis of COVID-19-related data, the origin of the first cases and evolution of the virus in Algeria during the first months of the pandemic. Accordingly, we propose a geovisualization methodology based on spatial data mining techniques and GIS technology. © 2023 Cartography and Geographic Information Society.

Mapping the trophic state index of eastern lakes in China using an empirical model and Sentinel-2 imagery data

Lake eutrophication has become a critical environmental issue due to the global effects of anthropogenic activities and climate change, and has been comprehensively studied for many years. A series of models and indicators have been proposed to assess the trophic state of lakes. The trophic state index (TSI) is a synthetic index that integrates chlorophyll-a, water clarity, and total phosphorus and is widely used to evaluate the trophic state of aquatic environments. In this study, we collected in situ lake samples (N = 431) from typical lakes to match Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) imagery data using the Case 2 Regional Coast Color processor. Then we developed a new empirical model, TSI = -34.04 x (band 4/band 5) - 1.114 x (band 1/band 4) + 97.376. This model is valid for all of China, with good performance and few errors (RMSE = 7.36;MAE = 6.25) for the validation dataset. Recognizing that over 94% of the Chinese population located along eastern watersheds and large lakes have competing water uses, and given the TSI model on the seasonal scales, we further estimated the mean TSI and trophic state in eastern Chinese lakes (> 100 km2) from 2019 to 2020. The results revealed that more lakes were eutrophic in autumn (94.28%) than in spring (> 77.14%), indicating a serious eutrophication of eastern lakes. Although the eastern lakes have been studied in more detail, this study found that eutrophication still has markedly negative impacts on lake ecosystems. In addition, no significant improvement was observed in spring, most likely due to the months of curfew/lockdown from January 2020 onwards due to COVID-19. This may be due to the enrichment of nutrients deposited in sediment or watershed soil, which can be characterized as "autochthonous sources" of lake eutrophication, over decades with high rates of economic development. This study demonstrates the applicability of Sentinel-2 MSI data to monitor lake eutrophication as well as the feasibility of blue/red and red/red edge combinations. The framework and TSI model used bands available on MSI sensors to develop a novel approach for generating historical eutrophication data for large-scale evaluation of and decision-making related aquatic environmental changes, even in poorly studied areas.

The Becoming "literacy Chronotope": Mapping Translanguaging among Unaccompanied Minors as a Rhizome

In the present article, we draw on rhizomatic cartography and apply rhizomatic diagramming to palpate chronotopic diversity and dynamics in the "becoming"second language classroom. The context of the study is a hosting center for unaccompanied minors in Athens during the COVID-19 pandemic (June 2020 to March 2021). Through a chronotopic approach to literacy events, we examine a specific arts-and-crafts literacy event that includes four #Arabic-speaking minors and an intercultural mediator or "interpreter."Exploring "classroom"interaction moments rhizomatically, i.e., including interaction's socio-material aspects and dis-/continuities, we map the performed translanguaging space and problematize situated languaging and power relations among actors. We thus palpate intersections of striating and smoothing forces that shape this macroscopic "literacy chronotope"through an assemblage of microscopic chronotopes that we have come to call "transient sociolinguistic territoria."Our findings shed light on the diverse #Arabic (trans)languaging, making the language, cultural, and literacy brokering practices visible in the performed translanguaging space. Consequently, this study is expected to sensitize second language educators on the #Arabic sociolinguistic situation and the subtle nuances of translanguaging addressed in the literacy chronotope. © Common Ground Research Networks, Roula Kitsiou, Eleni Karantzola, All Rights Reserved.

Emergent variant modeling of the serological repertoire to norovirus in young children.

Human norovirus is the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis. Young children and the elderly bear the greatest burden of disease, representing more than 200,000 deaths annually. Infection prevalence peaks at younger than 2 years and is driven by novel GII.4 variants that emerge and spread globally. Using a surrogate neutralization assay, we characterize the evolution of the serological neutralizing antibody (nAb) landscape in young children as they transition between sequential GII.4 pandemic variants. Following upsurge of the replacement variant, antigenic cartography illustrates remodeling of the nAb landscape to the new variant accompanied by improved nAb titer. However, nAb relative avidity remains focused on the preceding variant. These data support immune imprinting as a mechanism of immune evasion and GII.4 virus persistence across a population. Understanding the complexities of immunity to rapidly evolving and co-circulating viral variants, like those of norovirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2), and dengue viruses, will fundamentally inform vaccine design for emerging pathogens.

Progress and Reflections of International Cartographic Education: A Bibliometric Analysis of ICCs Literatures Since 2000

With the development of geospatial information science and technology and applications in numerous areas, cartography and geospatial information education is becoming increasingly more important in training graduates equipped with new capacities. Cartography and geospatial information education are crucial to cartography and geospatial information science, as a discipline and a profession. The contents have always gradually been changing, as well as corresponding effective approaches to deliver sustainable and resilient education. In the new normal era of post COVID-1 9, summaries and reflections on the progress of available practices and theories can support better design of effective and quality education. In this paper, the conference papers and s on educational topics published in the last 1 0 International Cartography Conferences are used to trace the path that educators in cartography and geospatial information have gone through. Bibliometric analysis is conducted on educational topics, authors, and regions. A domain term knowledge map is drawn showing that the number of publications on education in the International Cartography Conferences has been increasing. The geographic distribution of authors is very concentrated, with authors from European countries contributing about 50% of the publications and those from the top ten countries contributing 60%. Works in many other regions are less reported. The research topics are mainly focused on undergraduate and graduate education in geographic information systems, secondary education, education atlas, learning theories, learning environmental design, online education, etc. Pedagogies and experience of distance learning and online education in the last 20 years have been well applied. However best practices of online and distance education are rarely reported to support effective new normal education in the context of COVID-1 9 pandemics. © 2022, Croatian Cartographic Society. All rights reserved.

CARTOGRAPHIC PROVISION FOR THE STUDY OF TERRITORIAL FEATURES OF STUDENT IMMIGRATION IN RUSSIA

In the article, based on the statistical data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, a spatial analysis of modern student immigration in Russia is carried out at different territorial levels: subregions and countries of the world, federal districts and constituent entities of the Russian Federation. One of the most effective ways to study these processes is their mapping using geoinformation tools. A series of thematic maps has been constructed that reflect the territorial features of student international migration in Russia based on the principle of multi-scale. At each territorial level, maps were built for 2016 and 2021. three ways: quantitative background, dot and map charts. The main trend of recent years is the growth of student immigration in Russia, which has a beneficial effect on the sustainability of the demographic development of the state. The positive dynamics of international student flows in Russia was interrupted only in the first year of the covid-19 pandemic. The former countries of the Soviet Union, as well as non-CIS countries located in Asia and Africa, play a dominant role for Russia in terms of the exit of foreign students. The latest trend in student immigration flows in Russia is the declining role of Western countries. The geography of international student migration in Russia is characterized by significant territorial differentiation. A significant part of the flow of foreign students is concentrated in the capital universities of Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg), as well as in Tatarstan. In Asian Russia, the leadership in the admission of foreign students belongs to the Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Omsk regions. The main trend of recent years is an increase in the concentration of foreign students in many regional centers of Russia, which will increase the impact of student immigration on the sustainability of the demographic development of Russia's provincial regions. © 2022 Lomonosov Moscow State University. All rights reserved.

Future Education of Cartography and GIS: What Is Next?

Cartography and maps support the continuous rising of the awareness of the power of spatial data, which further lays a foundation for the popularity of various location based services and applications in society. Cartography and Geographic Information System education has been a core activity in the cartographic academic community for knowledge creation and transfer in higher education institutions. Maps in primary and high schools play a unique role across disciplines to build the spatial thinking capacities of young generations. Over years educators train students via lectures and lab works into which digital technologies are gradually incorporated. The COVID-19 pandemic has been fast forwarding our pace to employ digital technologies in online teaching and learning. Teachers are passively or proactively adapted to conduct their teaching online and redesign their lectures and assessments of students' performance. On another side, students are getting used to online learning even more quickly with various digital devices in an interactive and collective way. It creates opportunities for cartographic GIS educators to build a body of knowledge for cartography which can be used to build open source educational resources systematically. Further flexible curriculum can be designed and implemented for professional and continuous education and training at various levels. Future education of cartography and GIS can improve map literacy and make a sustainable education.

Google Maps' COVID-19 layer as an interface for pandemic life

The paper explores Google Maps' COVID-19 layer, a special feature launched by the cartographic platform in September 2020, and shut down two years later. Through the reading of promotional corporate blogposts and interfacial analysis of the layer, it critiques the layers' mediation of the pandemic, caught between public health needs and Google's overarching ethos. The analysis underscores three central claims: that interfacial choices endemic to the layer impose certainty and reduce necessary user hesitancy;promote data commodification regardless of its pandemic need;and stake unnecessary exceptionalism to the pandemic-spcecific information rather than integrating it into the maps' existing hybridity. The paper ends with design recommendation for a better COVID layer, centered around bottom-up community practices, higher degree of personalisation, and increased friction.

Infrastructure for spatiotemporal exploration of interregional and international interaction of epidemiological data (DEMO PAPER)

The recent waves of COVID-19 highlighted the importance of understanding and quantifying spatiotemporal interactions to infer, model, and predict disease spread in real time. In this demonstration paper, we present a robust infrastructure for interactive exploration of interregional and international spatiotemporal interactions via time-lagged correlations of increases in COVID-19 incidence. This infrastructure consists of: (i) an operational data store (ODS) coupled with automated scripts for downloading, cleaning, and processing data from heterogeneous sources;(ii) a server application handling on-demand analyses of the database data through a RESTful API;and (iii) a web application providing the interactive dashboard to explore various correlation and geostatistical metrics of the integrated data in spacetime. The environment allows users to study focal spatiotemporal trends and the potential of regions to export and import the virus. Moreover, the application has the potential to reveal the effect of the national border to mitigate the interaction, particularly the spread of the virus. The infrastructure serves COVID-19 data from Germany, Poland, and Czechia, with the possibility of extension to other regions and topics. The dashboard is under active development and accessible on www.where2test.de/correlation. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Cartographic imaginaries of the COVID-19 crisis in Mexico – a typology of disease maps

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the news reports on it have been accompanied by maps. Similarly to weather maps, they became part of our daily news feed. The newspapers' maps reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic often use the same or similar data to depict the current state of the spread within a national territory. However, the designs of the maps vary between different news outlets. These differences were analysed using the documentary method introduced by sociologist Ralf Bohnsack, using the case study of six COVID-19 maps published in Mexican national newspapers. The analysis resulted in a typology of maps, which proposed different readings of the infographic itself when it comes to the aspects of (1) the cognitive process it supposedly triggers, (2) the kind of information it contains, (3) the usefulness for the viewer/reader, and (4) whether the author or the reader has the authority over the reading/learning process. © 2022 Human Geographies;The authors.

Antigenic cartography of well-characterized human sera shows SARS-CoV-2 neutralization differences based on infection and vaccination history.

The rapid emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants challenges vaccination strategies. Here, we collected 201 serum samples from persons with a single infection or multiple vaccine exposures, or both. We measured their neutralization titers against 15 natural variants and 7 variants with engineered spike mutations and analyzed antigenic diversity. Antigenic maps of primary infection sera showed that Omicron sublineages BA.2, BA.4/BA.5, and BA.2.12.1 are distinct from BA.1 and more similar to Beta/Gamma/Mu variants. Three mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations increased neutralization of BA.1 more than BA.4/BA.5 or BA.2.12.1. BA.1 post-vaccination infection elicited higher neutralization titers to all variants than three vaccinations alone, although with less neutralization to BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5. Those with BA.1 infection after two or three vaccinations had similar neutralization titer magnitude and antigenic recognition. Accounting for antigenic differences among variants when interpreting neutralization titers can aid the understanding of complex patterns in humoral immunity that informs the selection of future COVID-19 vaccine strains.

Interactive Map of Coronavirus Spread in Croatia

At the beginning of any crisis, including pandemics, it is very important to provide timely information to expert headquarters at the local and global level so that they can make daily decisions about measures and behavior of the population. Support for this can be a combination of analytical and statistical data together with the locations from which these data were collected. Part of the cartographic visualization deals precisely with the ways of designing and visual presentation based on which it would be clear to the user where the biggest hotspots and the biggest changes are compared to the previous period. The paper describes the origin and proposal of the original dashboard for monitoring the COVID pandemic in Croatia. The dashboard contains and combines thematic data and displays it with the layout and design carefully determined. The goal is for the data to be implemented as soon as it is available to the public. Similar works available on the Internet are also shown. The entire course of making the dashboard for the COVID pandemic and dissemination data is described, as well as data sources, software, problems encountered and solutions.

Challenges in the teaching of Cartography during the COVID-19 pandemic: use of Minecraft in the remote classroom setting

The multi-tasking and technological phenomena of modern society form the basis for so-called active methodology options, which engage students through several different teaching strategies. Among these strategies is game-based learning, very appealing to the younger generation of students and with great didactic potential in the teaching of Cartography and Geography. With the increase in versions of games available on different platforms, their lower cost and the introduction of devices such as mobile telephones, smartphones, tablet computers and desk top computers into the school environment, it has been possible to introduce a sandbox-type game in the didactic approach to the teaching of Geography, which includes cartography content. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the potential of a methodology based on use of the digital game Minecraft for the learning of cartographic concepts related to geographical themes in primary education during the period of social isolation, in which schools remained closed in Brazil, due to the advancing COVID-19 pandemic. This didactic concept was applied to 178 students at a private school in the city of Ribeirao Preto/SP [ Sao Paulo] in the context of remote learning, between the months of October and November 2020. The outcomes were assessed based on the students' comprehension of the different viewpoints and the function and importance of scale in representations they created using Minecraft. The study demonstrated that, by "constructing" their representations, students could become the protagonists of their own learning process, connecting theoretical concepts to everyday practice and, thus, giving meaning to what they were being taught.

Geographic Factors for Managing Cruise Ship Destination Port to Attraction Passenger Transfer in the Caribbean Region

The Cruise Line industry (CLI) is working on plans to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19. Along with the expected benefits of a post COVID19 surge in cruise tourism, destination ports have an opportunity to mitigate potential impacts that come with the tourist economy. In this study, we expand on our previous work on four CLI destination sites (two in the Caribbean and two meso-American) to a larger regional study area in the Caribbean Sea and investigate the sustainability of destination marine infrastructure and near port transportation resilience. Twenty-Eight destinations were analyzed in the study. All the CLI destinations ports in the study are considered mature for cruise tourism and have tourist attractions of interest (including historic, natural, shopping, and other areas with sociocultural authenticity), which can be reached during a one day ship visit. An analysis of the marine traffic and geographic settings provides a more complete picture on key parameters that can potentially impact the commerce and livelihoods of local communities near destination ports. The results of the study also provide potential solutions for mitigating these impacts. As a baseline for fully operational cruise industry in the Caribbean Sea, the 2019 cruise year was analyzed since it was the last full year without impact from COVID-19. This paper offers a wider empirical view of CLI impacts on the Caribbean region once the industry resumes to full capacity following the COVID-19 pandemic, and it presents results and recommendations to build a framework for continued study of CLI sustainability.

The Project to Complete the Regional Topographic Geodatabase in Lombardy, Italy

The Regional Topographic Geodatabase (DBTR) was officially defined in 2005 as the multi-scale (1:1,000 - 1:2,000 - 1:5,000 - 1:10,000) cartographic reference for urban and regional planning in Lombardy Region. The DBTR had been previously introduced at national level to take over traditional numerical topographic maps adopted for urban planning, with the aim to provide a base map to be implemented either at regional level (Regional Geoportal) and by local administrations. The DBTR is structured by following some national guidelines that define either the content and the topological structure, that makes simple its implementation in GIS environment. The construction of the entire DBTR has historically gone through different phases, with the consistent support of the regional subsidiary policy. But when the effects of the world economic crisis in 2008 became tangible in the budget of public administrations, the growth of the project faced an important break. In 2017 the administration of Lombardy Region has promoted and financed a new project finalized to the completion of the DBTR. A temporary association of mapping companies won the tender and completed the project by summer 2020, despite of the difficulties related to the COVID-19 pandemic. A team led by Politecnico di Milano was appointed for the quality assessment. The proposed paper would like to present this project and the operational solutions applied for the production of the new subsections of the DBTR, as well as its quality assessment/validation.