Heritage event as tourist attraction: the case of Dymarki Swietokrzyskie, Poland.

While previous research has focused on heritage visitor attractions few studies have examined visitation to and experience of ancient industrial sites as geographical tourist spaces. This article profiles visitation to Dymarki Swietokrzyskie, a heritage reenactment of past events and ancient industrial traditions of iron smelting held in the Polish town of Nowa Slupia. Visitor survey analysis showed visitors perceive the event is a significant tourist attraction. It attracts tourists, is an element of the local heritage industry and contributes to the development of tourism services as part of the heritage tourism sector. The event in Nowa Slupia forms a tourist attraction based on heritage used for creating a contemporary heritage event, evoking specific tourist behaviors and therefore bringing economic profits. Creating the heritage tourism experience here was possible due to the influence of the mix of the elements in a heritage tourism behavioral model consisting of: politics, conservation, authenticity, impact management and interpretation. Examination of the event confirmed the validity of this framework for the analysis of heritage site visitation as well as providing practical insights for both site managers and future researchers.

A new method for selecting sites for soil sampling, coupling global weighted principal component analysis and a cost-constrained conditioned Latin hypercube algorithm.

Analysing spatial patterns of soil properties in a landscape requires a sampling strategy that adequately covers soil toposequences. In this context, we developed a hybrid methodology that couples global weighted principal component analysis (GWPCA) and cost-constrained conditioned Latin hypercube algorithm (cLHC). This methodology produce an optimized sampling stratification by analysing the local variability of the soil property, and the influence of environmental factors. The methodology captures the maximum local variances in the global auxiliary dataset with the GWPCA, and optimizes the selection of representative sampling locations for sampling with the cLHC. The methodology also suppresses the subsampling of auxiliary datasets from areas that are less representative of the soil property of interest. Consequently, the method stratifies the geographical space of interest in order to adequately represent the soil property. We present results on the tested method (R2 = 0.90 and RMSE = 0.18 m) from the Guinea savannah zone of Ghana. •It defines the local structure and accounts for localized spatial autocorrelation in explaining variability.•It suppresses the occurrence of model-selected sampling locations in areas that are less representative of the soil property of interest.

Geografia e saúde coletiva no Brasil / Geography and public health in Brazil

Resumo Este artigo faz uma reflexão a respeito da importância da geografia para a pesquisa em saúde coletiva no Brasil. Por meio de uma revisão bibliográfica narrativa, o autor descreve os principais temas abordados, agrupando os artigos selecionados de três das principais revistas brasileiras da área - Revista de Saúde Pública, Cadernos de Saúde Pública e Saúde e Sociedade - por escolas do pensamento geográfico. Discute também os avanços alcançados, assim como os desafios teóricos e metodológicos da saúde coletiva com base nos conhecimentos geográficos. Observou-se a importância do geoprocessamento em saúde para estudos de distribuição espacial, principalmente de doenças infectocontagiosas e parasitárias. Da mesma forma, foi possível identificar o crescimento da produção científica em estudos com base no pensamento crítico, com destaque para as publicações recentes na revista Saúde e Sociedade. A comparação dos trabalhos publicados também proporcionou a identificação de desafios metodológicos a serem enfrentados para o estudo da saúde coletiva com embasamento ainda maior de conhecimentos geográficos, como o uso de modelos preditivos e análise de superfícies de tendências, assim como o desenvolvimento de novas ferramentas cartográficas para a compreensão da realidade social em transformação e movimento.

Abstract This article analyzes the importance of Geography for research in Public Health in Brazil. Through a bibliographical narrative review, the author describes the key topics addressed, grouping the selected articles of the most important Brazilian journals in Public Health - Revista de Saúde Pública, Cadernos de Saúde Pública e Saúde e Sociedade - by geographical approaches. It also discusses the progress achieved, as well as the theoretical and methodological challenges of Public Health based on geographical knowledge. The importance of health geoprocessing for spatial distribution studies was observed, especially those on infectious and parasitic diseases. Similarly, it was possible to identify the growth of the scientific production in studies based on critical thinking, especially recent publications in Saúde e Sociedade. The comparison of published works also provided the identification of methodological challenges to be faced for the study of Public Health with an even better basis of geographical knowledge, such as the use of predictive models and trend surface analysis, as well as the development of new cartographic tools to understand social reality in transformation and movement.