Practicing community geography in times of crisis.

Community geography emphasizes the centrality of community engagement to socially transformative research. This introduction to a special issue of GeoJournal on community geography outlines how this growing subfield provides a model for collaborative action with the crises of our time, from white supremacy through climate change. As the co-editors of this special issue, we summarize the contents of these 14 articles, grouping them by the shared themes of power, institutional partnerships, pedagogy, and methods.

Mapping marine debris across coastal communities in Belize: developing a baseline for understanding the distribution of litter on beaches using geographic information systems.

Monitoring of marine debris (also known as marine litter) is an essential step in the process to eradicate ecological dangers in marine ecosystems caused by humans. This study examines marine debris in the Caribbean country of Belize using geographic information systems (GIS) to develop (1) a detailed data library for use on handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) units and tablets with mobile mapping applications for deployment in the field and (2) a freely available, online mapping portal to share data with Belizeans to encourage future citizen science efforts. Four diverse communities were targeted ranging from larger more populated towns, to smaller villages across central and southern Belize: San Pedro, Caye Caulker, Punta Gorda, and Monkey River. Fieldwork was conducted over 1 month, during which data points were collected in 50-m surveys followed by debris cleanup and removal. Features in our database included material, quantity, item, brand, and condition. Over 6000 pieces of debris were recorded in GIS for further analysis, and 299 gal of debris were removed from the shores of Belize. The most abundant form of debris observed was plastic (commonly bottles) across all locations; plastic comprised 77.6 % of all debris items observed. Through GIS, a detailed snapshot understanding of debris patterns across multiple settings in Belize was documented. Ongoing collaborations with local organizations in Belize have demonstrated significant interest and utility for such GIS approaches in analyzing and managing marine debris. The data, methodology, visual representations, and online mapping platform resulting from this research are a first step in directly supporting local Belizean community advocacy and policy, while contributing to larger institutional strategies for addressing marine debris issues in the Caribbean.

Using GIS and perceived distance to understand the unequal geographies of healthcare in lower-income urban neighbourhoods.

Geographers play important roles in public health research, particularly in understanding healthcare accessibility, utilisation, and individual healthcare experiences. Most accessibility studies have benefited from the increased sophistication of geographic information systems (GIS). Some studies have been enhanced with semi-structured in-depth interviews to understand individual experiences of people as they access healthcare. However, few accessibility studies have explicitly utilised individual in-depth interview data in the construction of new GIS accessibility measures. Using mixed methods including GIS analysis and individual data from semi-structured in-depth interviews, we offer satisfaction-adjusted distance as a new way of conceptualising accessibility in GIS. Based on fieldwork in a predominantly lower-income community in Columbus, Ohio (USA), we find many residents felt neighbourhood healthcare facilities offered low-quality care, which suggested an added perceived distance as they attempt to access high-quality healthcare facilities. The satisfaction-adjusted distance measure accounts for the perceived distance some residents feel as they search for high-quality healthcare in lower-income urban neighbourhoods. In moving beyond conventional GIS and re-conceptualising accessibility in this way, we offer a more realistic portrayal of the issues lower-income urban residents face as they attempt to access high-quality healthcare facilities. The work has theoretical implications for conceptualising healthcare accessibility, advances the mixed-methodologies literature, and argues for a more equitable distribution of high-quality healthcare in urban neighbourhoods.

Predictable Changes in Eelgrass Microbiomes with Increasing Wasting Disease Prevalence across 23° Latitude in the Northeastern Pacific.

Predicting outcomes of marine disease outbreaks presents a challenge in the face of both global and local stressors. Host-associated microbiomes may play important roles in disease dynamics but remain understudied in marine ecosystems. Host-pathogen-microbiome interactions can vary across host ranges, gradients of disease, and temperature; studying these relationships may aid our ability to forecast disease dynamics. Eelgrass, Zostera marina, is impacted by outbreaks of wasting disease caused by the opportunistic pathogen Labyrinthula zosterae. We investigated how Z. marina phyllosphere microbial communities vary with rising wasting disease lesion prevalence and severity relative to plant and meadow characteristics like shoot density, longest leaf length, and temperature across 23° latitude in the Northeastern Pacific. We detected effects of geography (11%) and smaller, but distinct, effects of temperature (30-day max sea surface temperature, 4%) and disease (lesion prevalence, 3%) on microbiome composition. Declines in alpha diversity on asymptomatic tissue occurred with rising wasting disease prevalence within meadows. However, no change in microbiome variability (dispersion) was detected between asymptomatic and symptomatic tissues. Further, we identified members of Cellvibrionaceae, Colwelliaceae, and Granulosicoccaceae on asymptomatic tissue that are predictive of wasting disease prevalence across the geographic range (3,100 kilometers). Functional roles of Colwelliaceae and Granulosicoccaceae are not known. Cellvibrionaceae, degraders of plant cellulose, were also enriched in lesions and adjacent green tissue relative to nonlesioned leaves. Cellvibrionaceae may play important roles in disease progression by degrading host tissues or overwhelming plant immune responses. Thus, inclusion of microbiomes in wasting disease studies may improve our ability to understand variable rates of infection, disease progression, and plant survival. IMPORTANCE The roles of marine microbiomes in disease remain poorly understood due, in part, to the challenging nature of sampling at appropriate spatiotemporal scales and across natural gradients of disease throughout host ranges. This is especially true for marine vascular plants like eelgrass (Zostera marina) that are vital for ecosystem function and biodiversity but are susceptible to rapid decline and die-off from pathogens like eukaryotic slime-mold Labyrinthula zosterae (wasting disease). We link bacterial members of phyllosphere tissues to the prevalence of wasting disease across the broadest geographic range to date for a marine plant microbiome-disease study (3,100 km). We identify Cellvibrionaceae, plant cell wall degraders, enriched (up to 61% relative abundance) within lesion tissue, which suggests this group may be playing important roles in disease progression. These findings suggest inclusion of microbiomes in marine disease studies will improve our ability to predict ecological outcomes of infection across variable landscapes spanning thousands of kilometers.

Mapping the Hidden Hazards: Community-Led Spatial Data Collection of Street-Level Environmental Stressors in a Degraded, Urban Watershed.

We utilized a participatory mapping approach to collect point locations, photographs, and descriptive data about select built environment stressors identified and prioritized by community residents living in the Proctor Creek Watershed, a degraded, urban watershed in Northwest Atlanta, Georgia. Residents (watershed researchers) used an indicator identification framework to select three watershed stressors that influence urban livability: standing water, illegal dumping on land and in surface water, and faulty stormwater infrastructure. Through a community⁻university partnership and using Geographic Information Systems and digital mapping tools, watershed researchers and university students designed a mobile application (app) that enabled them to collect data associated with these stressors to create a spatial narrative, informed by local community knowledge, that offers visual documentation and representation of community conditions that negatively influence the environment, health, and quality of life in urban areas. By elevating the local knowledge and lived experience of community residents and codeveloping a relevant data collection tool, community residents generated fine-grained, street-level, actionable data. This process helped to fill gaps in publicly available datasets about environmental hazards in their watershed and helped residents initiate solution-oriented dialogue with government officials to address problem areas. We demonstrate that community-based knowledge can contribute to and extend scientific inquiry, as well as help communities to advance environmental justice and leverage opportunities for remediation and policy change.