Learning Desert Geomorphology Virtually versus in the Field

Statistical analyses of pre-test and post-test results, as well as qualitative insight obtained by essays, compared introductory physical geography college students who learned desert geomorphology only virtually, in the field and both ways. With the exception of establishing geographic context, the virtual field trip was statistically indistinguishable from real field trips in establishing basic knowledge about desert geomorphology. However, qualitative results reveal the deepest personal ownership of knowledge among field trip participants. These findings should not be construed as having validity beyond an introductory course.     

Student field experiences: designing for different instructors and variable weather

This study compares the field experience and development of sense of place (in this case, human attributed meanings and attachments to the field area) in geoscience students on three separate course sections of a six-day introductory geological mapping field trip. Students stayed in a small farm station within their 4 km² field area, worked in groups of three or four, and produced an individual final assessment. Findings from student interviews and pre-post surveys indicated that there were no significant differences in perceptions of the field trip purpose or sense of place between field trip sections, despite differences in instructor pedagogy and sense of place, as well as varied weather conditions. There were significant increases in student sense of place on all field trips, in contrast with previous work on a “roadside” (regional, multi-site) field trip where no significant change in sense of place occurred. In-field observations and instructor interviews identified key characteristics that supported similar sense of place and experiences on all trips: (1) consistent intended learning outcomes, (2) a carefully selected and immersive field area valued by instructors, and (3) an assessment connected to the landscape/field area with flexibility in its implementation, especially when faced with adverse weather conditions.     

Study Abroad Field Trip Improves Test Performance through Engagement and New Social Networks

Although study abroad trips provide an opportunity for affective and cognitive learning, it is largely assumed that they improve learning outcomes. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a study abroad field trip improved cognitive learning by comparing test performance between the study abroad participants (n = 20) and their peers who did not participate (n = 365). Test performance was statistically identical between these groups before and immediately after the study abroad program. On the final exam, the study abroad participants scored significantly higher. Qualitative methods were used to identify increased engagement with the course material and the creation of new social networks as likely explanations.     

What Has the Geography of Sleeping Arrangements Got to Do with the Geography of Our Teaching Spaces?

As geographers we are used to researching and teaching about those other than ourselves and it is timely to turn our gaze on the social and spatial practices of our own teaching spaces. One particular teaching space is the overnight geography field trip, a context in which geography fieldwork is ostensibly the main focus for two or more consecutive days. Teaching spaces such as classrooms and field trips, like all social spaces, are imbued with spoken and unspoken assumptions about sexuality, gender and 'race'. Geography field trips are one site in which to examine how social space is constituted via spoken and unspoken assumptions and how these assumptions shape field trip participants' understandings of themselves within these spaces. Simultaneously, field trips offer a site for the consideration of the socio-spatial relations of the reproduction of contemporary geographic knowledge. This article is one response to what Jon Binnie identified as an urgent need for geographers to understand how geography is being taught. Although sleeping arrangements are 'not formally notified' as part of fieldwork activity, the author demonstrates how sleeping arrangements conveyed important messages about sexuality, gender and cultural practices during seven overnight field trips held by two universities and two high schools in New Zealand. The concern is how apparently mundane arrangements such as the organisation of sleeping might reveal the ongoing hegemonic social and spatial relations of teaching and learning geography, as these are shaped by sexuality, gender and 'race', so that we might be better informed to challenge and change these practices.     

A Note on Trip Benefits in Spatial Interaction Models

We extend the well-known transport users' benefits measure (TUB) for the doubly-constrained spatial interaction model derived by Williams (1976). The original formula expresses the TUB as composed by two terms associated with the origin and the destination zones. First, the TUB is associated here with trips instead of zones, providing a natural interpretation as a rule-of-a-half measure of benefit under inelastic demand (for the short-run case). Second, a TUB formula for the long-run case is derived, that is, when the total number of trips, trip origins, and trip destinations change. We then propose updated measures of accessibility for location behavior.     

THE CONCEPTUAL LINKS BETWEEN RECREATION SITE DEVELOPMENT AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC IMPACTS*

ABSTRACT. Assessing regional economic impacts of recreation trips is important to public agencies' decisions about using recreation as a rural development tool. Minimizing the total cost of recreation trip production implies that households will spatially distribute their purchases of inputs to trip production, including both trip-specific inputs and durable recreation equipment. A recreation site contributes to a region's economic growth through household purchases of trip inputs. The site's cost effects, price information effects, and recreation and retail agglomeration effects cause changes in household recreation purchases and ultimately generate regional economic impacts.     

What constitutes a ‘trip’? Examining child journey attributes using GPS and self-report

Active travel is associated with improved health and development outcomes in children. Accurate detection of children's travel behaviors and routes, however, is problematic. Travel diaries are often used to collect information on children's travel behaviors, yet no evidence for the accuracy of this methodology exists. This study investigated the validity of children's self-reported trips (origin, destination) compared with an objective criterion (global positioning systems units; GPS). Children (n = 10, 9–11 y) wore the GPS units for seven consecutive days between March and June 2011 and completed travel diaries daily with researcher assistance. Affinity group interviews were conducted in December 2011 with 30 children from two schools to garner perspectives on trip definition, neighborhood perceptions, and to illuminate GPS and travel diary findings. GPS journeys were manually compared with travel diary journeys for destination sequencing, start times, and travel mode. Accuracy in trip sequencing was compared by day type, and journey type using percentage differences and the chi-square (χ²) statistic. Of the 380 trips captured, 54.5% of journey sequences were fully or partially matched, 22.4% were GPS only trips and 23.2% travel diary only. Greater accuracy (full/partial match) was observed for weekdays than for weekend days and for the journey to or from school than for other journeys. Travel mode agreement existed for 99% of matched trips. Although children's travel diaries may confer contextual journey information, they may not provide completely accurate information on journey sequencing. Thematic analysis of affinity group data revealed that reasons for this are multifaceted, including differing concepts of what constitutes a ‘trip’. A combined approach of GPS and travel diary is recommended to gather a comprehensive understanding of children's journey characteristics.     

A Generalization of the Utility Theory Approach To the Problem of Spatial Interaction

The derivation of the gravity model from utility theory is reformulated and generalized in order to show (1) how both the number of trips to individual destinations and the total travel budget may be determined simultaneously, and (2) how the effect of both distance and destination quality on trip distribution and total budget may be analyzed. Results are compared with the revealed space preference approach and are found to be superior in dealing theoretically with trip frequency and the effects of spatial context. For empirical applications, however, the revealed preference approach is advantageous.     

A TRANSLOG APPROACH TO CONSUMER SPATIAL BEHAVIOR*

With the view that travel behavior stems from the principle of utility maximization, in this paper I present a spatial translog demand model that accounts for interdependence among travel alternatives and that handles varying elasticities of substitution for various destination pairs. Using simulation as the mode of inquiry, this model describes the effect of spatial size, spatial configuration, and spatial substitution on spatial interaction. In addition to indicating how varying spatial sizes and configurations affect the average trip length and the trip making pattern, the simulation results also point out the possible effect of having spatially dependent locations in the system. Competing destinations increase the attractiveness of nearby locations, and complementary destinations reduce the impeding effect of space. The model is primarily relevant to the demand for shopping trips.     

Engaging with the (Un)familiar: Field Teaching in a Multi-Campus Teaching Environment

Field trips have long been central to geography, but have been subject to assessment of the role of the ‘field’ in teaching. At the same time, academics face barriers to running field trips. Distance education and enhanced educational access for non-metropolitan students represented such an obstacle at an Australian university. These obstacles were taken as an opportunity to draw on the regional nature of the students and staff to enhance teaching goals, run critically informed field trips by and manage academic workloads. We evaluate the field trips by conducting surveys and interviews with students and tutors, and as an example of innovation within constraints.     

Substitute or addition to hypermobile lifestyles? Second home mobility and Finnish CO2 emissions

Tourism produces an increasing share in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These are mostly derived from transport emissions, and long-haul air travel in particular. Short-haul domestic tourism is believed by some to be a potential substitute for long-haul tourism. Using the example of Finland this paper examines the extent to which domestic second home tourism can substitute for other leisure trips and therefore contribute to reductions of travel-generated GHG emissions. Survey data are used to evaluate the CO₂ emissions caused by travel to domestic second homes, and to create statistical models that verify if the owners of domestic second homes travel to other leisure destinations less frequently than others, and if they cause less emissions by their leisure mobility than others with comparable economic and demographic background. We find that although the owners and users of domestic second homes travel for other leisure purposes less frequently than others, this does not mean their leisure mobility generates less emissions. Overall, owners of second homes produce significantly more CO₂ by their leisure mobility than non-owners. The use of second homes does not seem to be a substitute for high emission long-haul travels, but rather a part of an overall highly mobile leisure lifestyle. It is therefore necessary to better understand and influence the entire range of individual mobility behaviours in order to reduce travel-related GHG emissions.     

A Continuous Model of Traffic Flow

Traffic flow over continuous space is analyzed in an abstract one-dimensional city. A negative exponential attraction function, a quadratic exponential distribution of trip origins and a negative exponential distance-decay function are combined, and expressions are derived for traffic flow between arbitrary intervals in the city. With appropriate choice of the trip-origin function, the model may be applied to single and multipurpose trips. The resultant “contact fields” for individuals are briefly described, and the main results comprise algebraic approximations for aggregate flows between intervals. Numerical examples are given.     

广州市高峰小时居住用地交通产生与分布——基于出租车GPS起讫关联的分析

本文以广州为案例,通过通勤高峰期间出租车GPS数据的时空挖掘,分析基于GPS起讫关联的居住地交通产生与分布特征,并讨论其所隐含的城市职住空间关系及在交通需求分析中的潜在价值。研究发现居住用地交通产生的出行距离存在ZIPF法则所表现的衰减规律,到达工业、商业金融和公共服务等用地的距离依次降低,而空间上距离呈中心城区向郊区增加的同心环模式。此外,本文还尝试从交通模型参数设定、职-住关系等方面探讨本文研究的应用方向。     

The joke is on us: Irony and community in a Beirut scrapyard

The Lebanese scrap metal industry – one of the country's largest exports – relies heavily upon marginalized young boys displaced from their homes in Syria. These underage waste pickers are not supposed to be working, and yet work is the only legitimate reason for their presence in Lebanon. Workers engage in different types of trip as they journey across Beirut, discreetly rummaging through rubbish. These trips allow them to cover up play under the guise of work while fostering a community of complicity that functions according to age hierarchies, rites of passage and codes of conduct.     

Buffon's Needle and the Probability of Intercepting Short-Distance Trips by Multiple Screen-Line Surveys

For transport planning purposes, information on origin-destination movements may be obtained by stopping traffic at the roadside and interviewing drivers. The roadside interview stations are usually located so that they lie on one of a number of lines (called screen lines) that cross from one side of the survey area to another. In this way, all movements with the origin on one side of a screen line and the destination on the other are intercepted. For regional surveys, a grid of screen-lines may be used. The movements intercepted are not, however, representative of all those in the region. That is because shorter-distance movements are underrepresented; the coarser the grid, the worse the effect. The extent of this underrepresentation is estimated in this paper by calculating the probability of intercepting a trip of given direct length, under the assumption that the screen lines constitute a uniform rectangular grid, and that trips of a given length are distributed over the region at random. The result is an extension to the Buffon needle problem. Ways in which such a result, obtained for an idealized situation, may be extended to apply to more realistic situations, are discussed: in particular it is shown how the trip-length frequency distribution of all trips may be estimated from that of intercepted trips, using a simple formula that is applicable to a much more general pattern of screen lines.     

国外旅游线路空间模式研究进展

旅游线路空间模式实质上是游客在目的地区域对停留空间和消费空间的理性选择与线性组合,是具有典型空间属性的社会文化地理现象和经济地理现象,涉及了作为旅游景点和旅游目的地的点状地理要素和作为旅游线路的线状地理要素以及旅游目的地体系构成的区域等面状地理要素。从文献综述的角度对不同尺度旅游线路模式的空间模型、目的地类型、游客旅行行为特征、模式选择影响因素以及理论基础进行了总结,在此基础上结合国内研究对旅游线路模式今后的研究方向提出了建议。     

Teaching and learning in the tropics: an epistemic exploration of “the field” in a development studies field trip

Development studies employs theories, tools and methods often found in geography, including the international field trip to a “developing” country. In 2013 and 2014, I led a two-week trip to Ethiopia. To better comprehend the effects of “the field” on students’ learning, I introduced an assessed reflexive field diary to understand what the field trip experience teaches students about themselves and their relationship to the field. In this paper, I present critical reflections on “the field” that speak to a provocative concept – “the tropics”. These reflections illuminate prevailing challenges in the study and practice of development and suggest a way forward.     

The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

Twenty years after the publication of John MacKenzie's Empire of Nature, his characterisation of sport hunting tourism as a symbol of elite and imperial privilege remains strong. Using the example of two white hunters from New Zealand and their trip to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1926, this article elaborates upon MacKenzie's brief mention of hunters in Africa from cultures other than Britain. In particular, the article argues that ‘home’ hunting cultures—in this case of New Zealand—need to be considered thoroughly when examining meanings of hunting tourism, and, second, that hunting trips could serve a range of purposes beyond the notion of reinforcing colonial rule.     

Minimum-Cost Distances in Spatial Analysis

An axiomatic approach to distance is developed which focuses on those behavioral concepts of distance related to movement in space. In particular, spatial movement by behaving units is postulated to involve a choice from among some set of abstract trips in space, and implicitly, to involve the minimization of some relevant notion of trip costs. In this context, the relevant behavioral notion of distance in space is taken to be the minimum-cost distance generated by this choice process. These trip-cost concepts extend the classical notions of paths, path lengths, and shortest paths in metric spaces. Hence many of the analytical results of the paper involve extensions of classical shortest-path distance properties to minimum-cost distances. In addition to these extensions, a characterization theorem is given which specifies the possible functional relationships between trip costs and their associated path lengths. These relationships include most functional forms which are commonly employed in the literature.     

Incorporating “virtual” and “real world” field trips into introductory geography modules

The “field trip” is a key pedagogical tool within geographical education to encourage deep learning, though they are increasingly difficult to implement due to reduced budgets, safety concerns and increasing class sizes. We incorporated three field-learning activities into a large introductory module. A traditional staff-led trip was the most effective activity in terms of enjoyment, knowledge, and deep thinking and awareness. Self-paced field activities and video podcasts had less pedagogical value, though can still support lectures and the staff-led field trip. An integrated approach will best maximize deep learning opportunities.