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AAG West Lakes Division Meeting 2019

Introduction

The editors of IJGER invited submissions of papers to a special issue for the American Association of Geographers (AAG) West Lakes Regional Division. The special issue intended to be an outlet for manuscripts of the researchers who participated in the 2019 meeting of the AAG West Lakes Regional Division at the University of Norther Iowa. The special issue showcases the work of researchers in the region and is expected to enhance mutual understanding across a range of topics and methods. Six abstracts were submitted at the start, and eventually four articles have been published after regular peer reviews. They cover a range of topics including political ecology, agent based modeling, and environmental geography.

Zhang proposes an integrated framework to examine winter storm vulnerability in farming communities in Iowa using an agent-based model concept. Zhang developed graphical representation to facilitate understanding of agent relationships in winter storms, thus easing model modification. Blinnikov and Volkova examine changes over the last 10 years with respect to birds, insects, and plants within a few green spaces inside Moscow's beltway. Their political-ecology-based analysis contends that human and non-human actors are entwined in complex networks and the networks are reproducing sometime hotly contested places and practices. Brown-Amilian's article quantitatively examines environmental justice related to pollution near St. Louis. It finds that there is a strong double burden with poverty and respiratory hospitalizations and emphasizes a need for alleviating poverty. Kauten compares a series of corrosiveness indexes including chloride concentrations in Iowa to determine the extent to which trends in statewide databases detect local conditions. The findings suggest that local conditions may be worse and call for monitoring at varying scales.