Mid-summer. The Florida sandhill is a desperate location for any living thing. The sun is unrelenting and all of the recommendations about a wide-brimmed hat, drinking plenty of water, donning light clothing, and being ‘summer smart’ seem ineffective. Not a single bird sings in the tremendous heat and the only sound comes from the brush of wiregrass, the crackle of last fall’s turkey oak leaves, and the crunch of longleaf pinecones under foot. The environment offers fewer obstacles here than an oak hammock or a pine flatwood system, and a kicked pinecone soars into the goal of a patch of saw palmetto twenty feet from my boot. I throw up my arms indicating ‘goal!’ before the heat reminds me who is boss around here. Then a rumble of thunder, gathering clouds and the promise of a rain offer a possible respite. But first I retreat a couple of hundred feet to the banks of the slow, gathering waters of the Withlacoochee River.
I have hiked in the Florida Panhandle, slogged through the marshes of the state’s northeast coast near St. Augustine, enjoyed bracingly cold swims in springs and rivers in the state’s heart, baked in the humid cypress domes of the Everglades, and snorkeled for delicious lobster in the Keys. The Sunshine State is rich in natural wonders, but my favorite Florida place is just minutes from downtown St. Petersburg: the mangroves of Tampa Bay.
Orlando-based graphic designer and writer Rick Kilby is no stranger to Florida springs and other waters. In 2013, the University Press of Florida published his trim and well-illustrated Finding the Fountain of Youth: Ponce de Leon and Florida’s Magical Waters. That book uses a few hundred images (photos, drawings, old brochures and other promotional material) to reveal the impact of the sixteenth century Spanish conquistador on Florida’s twentieth and twenty-first century landscapes—especially those where people have long sought to capitalize on Ponce de Leon’s fabled search for a fountain of youth. As Kilby (2013, p.31) suggests, “If you visit the many places in Florida that have claimed ties to the Fountain of Youth, you might get the impression that Ponce de Leon stumbled across the peninsula, drinking from every spring he could find in search of the elusive elixir.” Kilby’s recent book, Florida’s Healing Waters, is equally well-illustrated, but it is no coffee table book. Kilby clearly builds on our understanding of the historic development and continuing evolution of tourism in Florida. He contends that better understanding the history of Florida’s Victorian-era springs, spas and sanitariums will help us see “how they fit into the larger context of human history and our relationship to water” (Kilby 2020, p. ix).
We present seven legendary origins of the word “Caribbean.” Much confusion exists concerning the definition and use of this term and region. This situation has spawned a number of equally poorly defined and vague replacement terms (e.g., Greater Caribbean Region, Wider Caribbean Region). The term “West Indies” may be the best name for this region, but since World War II it has been largely replaced in the popular lexicon by “Caribbean” due to confusion with the “British West Indies,” colonial connotations, and ambiance. Some of the Caribbean fauna and flora are distributed too widely to be of use in defining the region. We review the major English definitions of the Caribbean (Antillean, Caribbean Basin, Caribbean Proper, Greater Caribbean, West Indies, and Wider Caribbean), discuss their short comings, and present a new definition for what we understand to be the modern term “Caribbean” in order to help resolve geographic confusion. We define an area based on physical geography that is concise and unambiguous, has almost identical physical conditions and biota, possesses interconnectivity, has definable and recognizable borders and physical isolation, and use an inoffensive and appropriate term. Many of the disagreements about what is and is not “Caribbean” have nothing to do with physical geography, but involve a complex mix of cultural, economic, emotional, ethnic, mystical, political, and religious circumstances that no one can fully understand or address. Merely proposing a definition is not the same thing as having it adapted. Even if our definition is not accepted, our effort, at least points out the need for a precise and usable definition for the Caribbean.
As you enter Wekiwa Springs State Park, keeping to your left along the main park road, you can’t help but notice a landscape that looks quite different from much of the surrounding region. Rolling hills with hundreds of widely-spaced longleaf pine trees and a continuous blanket of tall, golden wiregrass are punctuated by elevated mounds of brilliant white sand. This is the Wekiwa Sandhill, a roughly 1800-acre remnant of an ecosystem that once covered much of the southeastern United States.
The University of North Florida (UNF) was founded in 1972 on a 1000-acre tract of land in southeastern Jacksonville. Since then, the university has grown to 28 buildings, five residence halls, with an all-time high of 17,000 students. This study examines the comprehensive footprint growth of the UNF from 1970 to 2017. Utilizing remotely sensed aerial imagery and GIS techniques, we map and measure the expansion of infrastructure, as well as the loss of natural areas on campus. In light of the university’s approaching 50th anniversary, our geospatial analysis provides the framework by which we chronicle the history of UNF’s expansion.
The concepts of land use and land cover convey information about a landscape. Although land use and land cover are different concepts, the terms have become intermingled and often used interchangeably in GIScience, resulting in a simplified one-to-one relationship that can be visualized using univariate mapping techniques. This research posits that the relationships between land use and land cover are complex, many-to-many relationships, and can be represented bivariately. Land cover is determined by the direct observation of the earth's surface, resulting in categories such as forest, wetland, and development. Land use by contrast is a socioeconomic interpretation of the activities that take place on that surface, with categories such as residential, commercial, and agricultural. Complications arise when these categories overlap. For example, a forested area can be used for recreation, grazing, or timber production. A residential area can be located within a forest, a grazing plain, or a developed area. A bivariate representation can be useful in conveying these overlapping categories. The research described in this article demonstrates complex interactions between land use and land cover in Florida. Land use data were obtained from the 2014 Florida Department of Revenue database and land cover data from the 2010 National Land Cover database. The resulting geovisualization consists of three parts: 1. A bivariate map using color theory and symbology based on Gestalt principles to represent and differentiate the two data sources; 2. A two-dimensional statistical legend to inform the data combinations and data distributions; 3. Visual analytics using Sankey (flow) diagrams to show the relationships and frequencies of categorical data interactions. This combination of visuals advances cartography and GIScience and gives new perspectives to the many-to-many relationships between land use and land cover.
Peoples from various cultures and locations have been living on the edge or margin of water-land interfaces in floating houses of various types, either permanently or part-time. In some cases, people build these to access natural resources from both water and land environments. Through fieldwork on the Apalachicola River and branches, including the lower Chipola and Brothers Rivers in the Florida panhandle, a large variety of floating camps were observed. The purposes of this paper are to: 1) review historical information on the occurrence of floating dwellings and camps worldwide to give context to the study area; 2) map patterns and change since 1994 in different parts of the basin, including whether adjoining public or private lands to interpret potential areas of concern; and 3) examine the vernacular architecture of floating structures. Much of our discussion concerns current policy regarding floating structures in light of the need to maintain the ecological integrity of the river. The earliest known references to floating homes or camps in the study area date back to the Great Depression of the 1930s, when society was in need of low-cost housing. Rather than being clustered in communities, the fish camps of the Apalachicola River and branches are spaced across this system. The number of floating camps along the Apalachicola River and some of its major branches, as measured using Google Earth and historical aerial photography, has increased from 63 in 1994 to 132 in 2004 to 177 in 2015. Since dredging associated with the Navigation Project stopped in 2002, 78% of the growth or 34 of 45 new floating structures has been on the main-stem Apalachicola River, compared to 54% or 37 of 69 from 1994 to 2004. Nearly half of the fish camps are located next to public lands, which in some cases are impacted by people residing within the camps. The rustic structures typically are built of reused building materials; amenities can include air conditioning and satellite dish television, and decorations include flags or name plaques. Studies of floating dwellings elsewhere, and communication with local officials, provides some guidance on the benefits and concerns for these increasingly numerous dwellings in terms of public safety, crime, and environment in relation to existing and potential policy.
The description of land-use dynamics provides insights into the ecological and biogeographical processes. Additionally, the relationship of human and biological components, as well as climatic conditions, are well incorporated in land-use analysis. In the present communication, we analyse forest and land-use land cover (LULC) changes at various spatial and temporal scales in order to better understand the geo-ecological and socio-cultural complexities using aerial photography, satellite imagery and topographic maps. Evidence of forest cover change was found to occur over time. Community based forest management systems aided restoring forest cover whereas overexploitation and human migration led to forest degradation. However, more recently (between 2010 and 2016), the cover of forest increased slightly, which is consistent with the countrys’ efforts to improve forest cover., These findings serve as a hope of better human-nature interactions in the future and suggests more integrated and periodic research is needed for precise forest cover monitoring.
The growth of environmental education (EE) programs in the U.S. has produced a wide array of curricula, offered by a range of agencies. Approaches to the human-nature relationship vary within this diverse movement, as do goals and pedagogical strategies. Weaknesses in the environmental education movement persist, and given recent shifts in the political climate of the U.S., must be addressed if EE is to be an effective tool in stimulating the systemic change demanded by our current environmental crises. An increase of synergy between geography educators and environmental educators could strengthen both. This paper examines the goals, actions and curricula of EE organizations in Florida through an online survey and curricular analyses to identify dominant target levels of environmental literacy being emphasized within Florida’s EE community. Findings support the existences of a strong non-formal environmental education sphere, which retains a heavy emphasis on lower levels of ecological literacy, such as immersion in nature and fundamental scientific knowledge. More efforts to foster systemic and critical thinking are needed. The EE community must collaborate to determine which organizations and sites are best suited to these efforts.
There is an increasing awareness of the human need for green spaces within cities as more people move to urban areas. This issue is of particular importance in highly polluted areas, such as Shanghai, China. This study addresses the human/nature intersection within metropolitan green spaces in Shanghai and asks the question; are Shanghai parks designed to be people friendly? To answer this question I collected observational data in relation to park structure and use, focusing on lawns. Analyzed with a framework of environmental justice, my observations show that although Western and Asian traditional intertwine in garden design and park layout, cultural differences remain for park use, creating a partial landscape of exclusion. Urban parks in Shanghai provide a welcoming place for its residents in the more traditionally Asian spaces, but not in the Western influenced landscape of lawns.
The outdoors provides opportunities to experience nature first-hand, serving as a critical alternative to traditional educational facilities for community members and stakeholders to acquire a more intimate understanding of what natural resources are, while becoming increasingly aware of their interconnectedness with those resources. It is used as a tool by researchers, educators, resource managers, and government officials in demonstrating “hands-on” methods that vastly enhance any curriculum by simply moving outdoors. The outdoors as a classroom can radically enrich an educator’s prospects to diversify concepts and teach skills, objectives, models, and results introduced in either Powerpoints, research articles, or textbooks. In this study, we identify where public schools intersect with government parks within a five-mile radius and aquatic preserves within a one-mile radius. According to the 2014 census in the state of Florida, there are currently 7,423 K-12 schools and institutions of higher education. We report that of those schools, only 536 schools are within a five-mile radius of a government park and 524 are within a one-mile radius of an aquatic preserve. As a result of this study, we make the case that these protected areas should be integrated into institutional curricula for the aforementioned benefits. Moreover, this will facilitate the passing of cultural knowledge to the emergent generation of environmental stewards and Floridians, enhancing both the stakeholders’ worth and the environments’ intrinsic value. We conclude that incorporating these habitats and natural resources into institutional and community-wide activities can be economical and sustainable.
This paper explores the registered sexual offender (RSO) residency requirements, restrictions, and issues within Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties in Florida. While Florida statute 775.215 does not allow RSOs to live within 1,000 feet of a school, childcare facility, park, or playground, county and local ordinances often impose more restrictive residency requirements. Because of these requirements as well as more extensive residency restrictions on a county and city level, RSOs abiding by the requirements often end up living in clusters and/or colonies like the infamous Julia Tuttle Causeway cluster. As a result, these restrictions create clusters of SROs within socially disorganized areas, higher levels of transient SROs, and SROs who abscond and fail to report. This paper examines, though the use of ArcGIS 10.3, the number of registered RSOs that violate the state statute by where they live; and investigates the hot spots and residency clusters where they are in violation as well as in regulation as it pertains to the statute. Using the baseline of 1,000 feet, there are 905 RSOs (31% of the overall total RSOs) violating Florida statute within the tri-county area of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties.
Many of Florida’s native orchids, a onetime abundant and valuable Florida treasure, have been lost in light of overharvesting, habitat loss, and global climate change. Despite its diminishing presence in the Florida wild, the orchid still retains a form of cultural capital in the imaginations of laypeople, orchid enthusiasts, and writers alike, two of whom, Susan Orlean and Craig Pittman, have composed comparable yet nuanced accounts of Florida’s orchid obsession.
This paper focuses on a mixed-method approach to quantifying qualitative data from the results of an ongoing NIDA-funded ethnographic study entitled "Migration, Tourism, and the HIV/Drug-Use Syndemic in the Dominican Republic". This project represents the first large-scale mixed method study to identify social, structural, environmental, and demographic factors that may contribute to ecologies of health vulnerability within the Caribbean tourism zones. Our research has identified deportation history as a critical factor contributing to vulnerability to HIV, drugs, mental health problems, and other health conditions. Therefore, understanding the movements of our participants became a vital aspect of this research. This paper describes how we went about translating 37 interviews into visual geographic representations. These methods help develop possible strategies for confronting HIV/AIDS and problematic substance use by examining the ways that these epidemics are shaped by the realities of people's labor migration and the spaces they inhabit. Our methods for mapping this qualitative data contribute to the ongoing, broadening capabilities of using GIS in social science research. A key contribution of this work is its integration of different methodologies from various disciplines to help better understand complex social problems.
We know that where a person lives has an impact on the person’s health, but how much do we know about the criteria for assessing the health of a neighborhood? Socioeconomic status (SES), derived from census data, is an important factor in measuring the health status of neighborhoods. It is the contention of this paper that for a more accurate measurement, SES should be considered in context with other criteria. Where neighborhood health is concerned, communication among health researchers, communities, urban planners, and policy experts is necessary. With the largest elderly population in the country, Florida faces specific challenges for neighborhood health. This paper is a starting point for identifying neighborhood factors contributing to the health quality of a neighborhood. Further study is needed to evaluate the importance of these neighborhood factors. Assessing the health of neighborhoods can help professionals better target educational programs and allocate resources that could improve health care and reduce costs. This paper proposes the development of a weighted multi-attribute index to be used in conjunction with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a proven visualization and analysis tool. Analysis using this GIS data can be used to assess a variety of factors determining neighborhood health and inform the development of public health solutions that can more accurately identify specific areas of concern. Introduction The connection between health and housing has been well known for over a century. Florence Nightingale once wrote, “The connection between health and the dwelling of the population is one of the most important that exists” (Hood, 2005). We know that where a person lives has an impact on the person’s health, but how much do we know about the criteria for assessing the health of a neighborhood? Socioeconomic status (SES), derived from census data, is an important factor in determining the health status of neighborhoods, and it is the contention of this paper that a more accurate measurement should consider SES in context with other criteria. This paper examines numerous factors that should be used in context with other criteria when measuring the health of neighborhoods. Expanding factors beyond SES will provide a more complete picture of the health of the area. These resulting factors can be used to create a weighted index to quantify neighborhood health according to selected attributes and their estimated contribution to health. The resulting index can be used in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to help analysts target areas directly regarding their area of specific interests. Furthermore, having well-rounded, contextual information will enable health care professionals to better target education campaigns and allocate resources that could result in improved health care and reduced costs. The research question for this review is: what neighborhood attributes (other than socioeconomic status) could be related neighborhood health? The purpose of this article is two-fold: to provide a discussion of attributes mentioned in the literature as possible contributors to neighborhood health; and to suggest the use of a weighted indexing technique in conjunction with a GIS to assess a variety of factors in measuring neighborhood health.
