J reading 2 2013 02

Editor in Chief: Gino De Vecchis (Italy)

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DIDACTICS IN GEOGRAPHY

Associate Editors: Cristiano Giorda (Italy), Cristiano Pesaresi (Italy), Joseph Stoltman (USA), Sirpa Tani (Finland) Scientific Committee: Eyüp Artvinli (Turkey), Caterina Barilaro (Italy), Giuliano Bellezza (Italy), Tine Béneker (Netherlands), Andrea Bissanti (Italy), Gabriel Bladh (Sweden), Carlo Blasi (Italy), Laura Cassi (Italy), Raffaele Cattedra (Italy), Claudio Cerreti (Italy), Giorgio Chiosso (Italy), Sergio Conti (Italy), Egidio Dansero (Italy), Martin R. Degg (UK), Giuseppe Dematteis (Italy), Karl Donert (UK), Pierpaolo Faggi (Italy), Franco Farinelli (Italy), Maurizio Fea (Italy), Maria Fiori (Italy), Hartwig Haubrich (Germany), Vladimir Kolosov (Russian Federation), John Lidstone (Australia), Svetlana Malkhazova (Russian Federation), Jerry Mitchell (USA), Josè Enrique Novoa-Jerez (Chile), Daniela Pasquinelli d’Allegra (Italy), Petros Petsimeris (France), Bruno Ratti (Italy), Roberto Scandone (Italy), Lidia Scarpelli (Italy), Rana P.B. Singh (India), Michael Solem (USA), Hiroshi Tanabe (Japan), Angelo Turco (Italy), Joop van der Schee (Netherlands), Isa Varraso (Italy), Bruno Vecchio (Italy), Tanga Pierre Zoungrana (Burkina Faso).

Secretary of coordination: Marco Maggioli (Italy), Massimiliano Tabusi (Italy) Editorial Board: Riccardo Morri (Chief), Sandra Leonardi, Miriam Marta, Victoria Bailes, Daniela De Vecchis, Andrea Di Somma, Assunta Giglio, Daniele Ietri, Matteo Puttilli

Dipartimento di Scienze documentarie, linguistico - filologiche e geografiche

UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione

Association of European Geographic Societies

With the support of:

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J - READING

J - READING JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DIDACTICS IN

GEOGRAPHY

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Sponsoring Organizations:

2013

GEOGRAPHY JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DIDACTICS IN

2

ITALIAN ASSOCIATION OF GEOGRAPHY TEACHERS (ASSOCIAZIONE ITALIANA INSEGNANTI DI GEOGRAFIA)

Vol. 2, Year 2, December 2013

ISSN online 2281-5694 ISSN print 2281-4310

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), Vol. 2, Year 2, December, 2013

J-Reading is an open online magazine and therefore access is free. It is however possible to make a subscription to receive the paper format

Copyright Š 2013 Edizioni Nuova Cultura - Roma ISSN online 2281-5694 ISSN print 2281-4310 ISBN 9788868122379 DOI 10.4458/2379

All rights reserved including translation into other languages.

This journal, or some part of it, cannot be reproduced in any form without permission.

Contents

Joseph P. Stoltman

Geography Education in the United States: Initiatives for the 21st Century Joseph J. Kerski

Understanding Our Changing World through Web-Mapping Based Investigations Margherita Azzari, Paola Zamperlin, Fulvio Landi

GIS in Geography Teaching Giuseppe Borruso

Web 2.0 and Neogeography. Opportunities for teaching geography Stefano Malatesta, Jesus Granados Sanchez

A Geographical issue: the contribution of Citizenship Education to the building of a European citizenship. The case of the VOICEs Comenius network

5 11

27 43 57

THE LANGUAGE OF IMAGES (Edited by Elisa Bignante and Marco Maggioli) Tania Rossetto

Learning and teaching with outdoor cartographic displays: a visual approach

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MAPPING SOCIETIES (Edited by Edoardo Boria) Rafael Company i Mateo

Making politics – and science – through maps. The “Europa etnografica” maps of the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano (1927-1940)

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GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND (PRACTICAL) CONSIDERATIONS Henk Ottens

Reflections on Geography Education in Europe Rome Declaration on Geographical Education in Europe

97 101

TEACHINGS FROM THE PAST Maurice Fallex, Alphonse Mairey

Chapitre I – Étude Générale de l’Australasie

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with comments by Dino Gavinelli

Une note sur l’Australasie d’hier et d’aujourd’hui : une comparaison fertile pour la didactique de la géographie REFERRED PAPERS FOR REMOTE SENSING (Edited by Alberto Baroni and Maurizio Fea) Maurizio Fea, Umberto Minora, Cristiano Pesaresi, Claudio Smiraglia

Remote sensing and interdisciplinary approach for studying glaciers

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Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 5-9 DOI: 10.4458/2379-01

Geography Education in the United States: Initiatives for the 21st Century Joseph P. Stoltmana a

Department of Geography, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA Email: stoltman@wmich.edu

In this editorial I will describe three initiatives within geography education in the United States. I am frequently asked by colleagues in other regions of the world to explain trends and the policy decisions that are responsible for the status of and changes in geography teaching. Among the three changes I will discuss are: 1) the second edition of Geography for Life (the national standards in geography); 2) the Road Map Project with its focus on research, curriculum materials and professional development, and assessment; and 3) the Social Studies Curriculum Framework for College, Career and Civic Life (C3). I will describe each of the developments briefly and discuss their importance to U.S. and perhaps the readers will make some linkages to issues in geography education internationally.

Geography for Life (GFL) (Geography Education Standards Project, 1994), the national geography standards, was introduced in 1994 during a period when U.S. educational policy was promoting the development of “world class” expectations for students in a range of disciplines. Geography was included due to its long standing and significant role within the kindergarten through secondary school curriculum in most of the 50 states and the Copyright© Nuova Cultura

District of Columbia. GFL was published as a geography content resource book for teachers, curriculum specialist, and educational policy makers in state departments of education and local school authorities. The reception of GFL was very positive, but the wheels of change in U.S. education turn slowly. Over the period from 1994 until 2004 there was a steady inclusion of the geography national standards by states within each of the state’s content standards in social studies and to a lesser degree in Earth Science. The adoption of standards often entailed a process whereby states identified components of GFL that were readily accommodated in the state standards structure and those became the focus for the state geography standards. The results were 51 sets of standards for the 50 states and the District of Columbia and the amount of geography ranged from significant to minimal.

One compounding effect for the 1994 national standards process was the curriculum structure that existed within the U.S. at the time and continues to this day. The curriculum within which geography is largely included is the social studies curriculum. State social studies frameworks, or curriculums, generally include history, geography, political science (civics), and economics, but not as equitable members of Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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the social studies. History has been and continues to be the dominant subject. Other topics are included within social studies content in some states, such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, and environmental studies. The question of equity among the content subjects that comprise the social studies is further confounded by the fact that many elementary teachers and a majority of high school teachers in the U.S. have considerably more history in their teacher preparation at the university level than they do in the other subjects. Since the founding of the U.S. educational system the school curriculum has been backward looking through history rather than forward looking. In a country of immigrants it has always been a policy priority to determine who we are and what we should resemble as an American civilization. This retrospective approach to the country and its people has the danger of imploding in a society where children arrive at school as digital natives with access to libraries of information on line that were never considered as viable for the curriculum just a decade ago. Social studies must emerge from maintaining storage barns of the past and turn to building launching platforms for the future. Geography has become the dancing partner with history and other social science and science subjects in curriculum design since the futuristic use of information (data) by geography engages the students in predicting and modeling elements of the social and natural systems that are not the main stream concern of history, yet they are systems that history affects and that, in turn affect history.

The content and skills necessary for the 21st Century are undergoing reconsideration for all content subjects, but it is geography that has ventured forward to begin clarifying the question: What is the value of geography education to American society? That response has progressed in several ways and each of them is discussed in the following narrative.

First, the national content standards entitled Geography for Life (Gallagher and Downs, 2012) was refreshed in 2012 by a 2nd edition after geographers studied the ways the first edition had been used and examined the ways that other curricular subjects, mainly language arts, mathematics and science, were presenting CopyrightŠ Nuova Cultura

their content. Geography educators then focused on the continued adoption of GFL content standards as the platform for sound curriculum development. The 2nd edition includes the original six elements and 18 standards as were presented in the original document in 1994.

However, while the discipline continues to have the same structure for it content, the means for addressing the content studied within geography have evolved to a new and more contemporary stage. It was decided that geography would need to capitalize on its use of technologies, such as remote sensing, GIS (Geographic Information Systems), web based mapping, geospatial data, field mapping using geospatial devices such as smart phones, and the means to use the spatial perspective to communicating the geographic analysis of local, regional, national, and global issues. The realm of geography includes issues that range from land use and its environmental role to cultural/ethnic enclaves and their role in determining the territory of a country. The diversity of geography has been given greater focus in the 2nd edition of GFL. The suggestions in the standards for teachers and the curricula they teach are prominent.

With the 2nd edition of GFL there remain huge challenges for geography education. First is the challenge of building a cohort of teachers who are committed to the role of geography as necessary to prepare students for civic engagement, or citizenship, which in the United States is a hallmark of the rationale for social studies. Secondly, there is a necessity to enact geography instruction in schools as the purveyor of geospatial technologies that are critical tools used for studying and explaining the global economies, resources distribution, urban agglomerations, and population dynamics and the future consequences of each. Those topics are usually studied within particular geographical contexts that are identified by the educational curricula from the local to national levels. Therein lies the importance of geographic information, evidence, and argumentation that is a product of a rigorous, reflective framework of standards that clearly define what students should know and be able to do upon completion of secondary school and what teachers should be able to teach upon endorsement as a social studies teacher. It remains a challenge for Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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geography educators to clearly identify the importance of the content we teach for developing reasoned expectations for the physical, natural, and human systems of the future. The national content standards are the most comprehensive means for teachers and students to pursue that futuristic objective in the United States.

Second, the Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education Project (National Council for Geographic Education, 2013) was completed under the auspices of the National Council for Geographic Education, Association of American Geographers, National Geographic Society, and American Geographical Society.

Those professional and academic organizations are the four most prominent proponents of geography education in the United States. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation. It was designed on the premise that: K–12 geography education is critical preparation for civic life and careers in the 21st Century. It also is essential for postsecondary study in a wide range of fields, from marketing and environmental science, to international affairs and civil engineering (p. 2).

The designers of the project further identified five foci for the project that defined the issues faced by geography education. They were: 1.

preparation and professional development of teachers,

2.

instructional materials to support classroom instruction,

3.

assessment of learning outcomes and instructional effectiveness,

4.

research on teaching and learning, and

5.

cultivation and maintenance of public support (p. 2).

The project appointed committees of geographers, educators, cognitive scientists, and teachers that initially reviewed and critically analyzed the literature regarding research, instructional materials and professional development, and assessment in geography education. The committees then recommended future research agendas that are, based on the analysis, high in priority to the discipline and to

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the teaching of geography in schools.

While the three reports are substantial in their review and recommendations, each is currently being used to further geography education on the three major instructional categories and in the garnering of public support. The Road Map reports are extensive and do not lend themselves to a review of the recommendations. However, they are available as web based documents with both executive summaries and full length reports available for review (National Council for Geographic Education, 2013). The Road Map for the 21st Century Geography Education is expected to have a major impact on the discipline that will continue for longer than a decade. It includes recommendations for collaborative research on the most critical issues that geography education is confronted with as curriculum, teacher preparation, student learning of geography, preparation of instructional materials, the uses of geospatial technology in geography education both in the classroom and in field study, and the developments in the discipline that, with time, may become forces of change for school level geography.

The third development in the U.S. is the Social Studies Curriculum Framework for College, Career and Civic Life (C3) (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013). It was a collaborative project among fifteen professional and academic organizations that are engaged in the general Social Studies Curriculum for Kindergarten through the end of high school in the United States. The special interests of the participating organizations ranged from history and civics to geography and law. The C3 represents the first attempt to collaborate by the diverse organizations that are participants in the social studies curriculum. The organizations either provide core content or supplemental materials for teachers and students to address important concepts that complement the disciplinary core content. The C3 document identifies the core content for social studies in the United States as civics, economics, geography, and history. The social studies curriculum is comprised mainly of the four core content subjects and the skills that apply to each.

In the United States, the Social Studies is a single curriculum, much as Science is a Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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curriculum, that is comprised of disciplines that contribute significantly to what students should learn and teachers should be able to teach in the preparation of students to make decisions, solve problems, and participate in a positive manner in their communities, referred to usually as civic life. The C3 document recognizes the limitations of time for the social studies curriculum. The document identifies the critical, yet realistic, information, concepts, theories, and skills from the core content disciplines deemed necessary for college, careers, and civic life for students in Kindergarten through secondary school. The reality of constraints limiting the time available to teach content has impacted each of the four core disciplines in the past decade. Taking time constraints into consideration, it was not practical of feasible within geography to include each of the 18 national geography standards from GFL in the C3 framework for social studies. Hard choice had to be made that repurposed the content of the 18 standards into four indicators of the geography that was deemed essential as a minimum for success in college, career and civic life. The C3 document builds the argument that the highly significant content of geography to be included within the social studies curriculum should be comprised of the following. 

Geographic Representations: Views of the World,



Human-Environment Interaction,



Human Population: Spatial Patterns and Movements,



Global Interconnections (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) (pp.

41-44).

Spatial

The four content foci recommended for geography within the social studies curriculum lend themselves to grade level progressions so that the complexity of the content and the case studies to demonstrate their applications are scalable from the earlier to the later grades of schooling. The selection of four rather than 18 as are presented in GFL permits greater in-depth study and application of content that prepares all students for civic life.

Of course, geographers in the United States

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would prefer if all students studied geography as the principal subject in each grade of elementary and secondary school. However, that is not a practical expectation, so the C3 Framework provides an expectation that has been agreed upon by 15 organizations engaged in the social studies regarding what students should know and be able to do as a result of geography education. Geography educators view it as the minimum that is expected in a social studies curriculum. The newly recommended C3 geography, when adopted, will add rigor to the social studies curriculum that currently displays considerable replication and “softness” in its content. The C3 Framework applies content specificity, an inquiry mode of learning, and skills that comprise a social studies curriculum that presents geography as a meaningful subject.

However, it is a minimum expectation, and there remains the opportunity for teachers and schools to delve more deeply into the content of geography than is represented in C3 by incorporating further content standards from Geography for Life. The goal of GLF and C3 is to provide students with a 21st Century experience studying modern geography within a 21st Century context.

The three developments in geography education in the United States have emerged within the past two years and have focused attention on the discipline for teachers, curriculum developers, geography educators, and educational policy makers. There is considerable work to be completed. It will take the support of the professional societies of geographers, the social studies community, early career scholars, and senior scholars to refocus the opportunities for geography education over the next two decades. It must be noted, however, that change in an educational system takes time, and two decades may be fast paced. Changes to the system of education in the United States, if not elsewhere in the world, are painfully slow.

References 1. Gallagher S. and Downs R. (Eds.), Geography for Life (2nd ed.), Washington DC, National Council for Geographic Education, 2012.

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2. Geography Education Standards Project.

Geography for Life, Washington DC, National Geographic Research and Exploration, 1994.

3. National Council for Geographic Education, “Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education Project”, Executive Summary, 2013,

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http://education.nationalgeographic.com/medi a/file/RM_ExecSummaries_and_Ch1-1.pdf.

4. National Council for the Social Studies, “College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards”, 2013, http://www.socialstudies.org/c3.

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 11-26 DOI: 10.4458/2379-02

Understanding Our Changing World through WebMapping Based Investigations Joseph J. Kerskia a Department of Geography, University of Denver, Denver Colorado, USA Email: jkerski@esri.com

Received: October 2013 – Accepted: November 2013

Abstract Maps have always been a rich source of information on a variety of topics in a medium requiring only a small amount of space. Today’s web maps show more than simply the locations of physical and cultural objects. They also allow students to do more with them. They foster understanding relationships, linkages, and patterns inherent between and among such phenomena as ecoregions, land use, demography, watersheds, commerce, natural hazards, and social networks. With the evolution of today’s mapping technologies into cloud-based platforms, educators and students as never before have a wide variety of data and tools at their fingertips that allow them to explore key issues of the 21st Century at scales from local to global. Students can upload their own data into these web maps alone or as part of citizen science projects, and share their maps with others in an online environment. These maps become multimedia-rich tools that students engage with while gaining critical thinking skills, career skills, and interdisciplinary content knowledge.

Keywords: Mapping, GIS, Spatial Thinking

1. Introduction People have always been fascinated with investigating their home – the Earth. For centuries, maps have stirred imaginations and inspired explorations of the unknown. Maps are a rich source of information, showing spatial relationships between climate, vegetation, population, landforms, river systems, land use, soils, natural hazards, and much more. Maps help us investigate the “whys of where” the essence of scientific and geographic inquiry.

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However, maps have never been confined to being useful solely for learning geography.

Imagine an epidemiologist studying the spread of diseases, a scientist studying climate change, or a businessperson determining where to locate a new retail establishment. In each case, maps are important tools for studying these issues and for solving real problems in these disciplines.

Furthermore, maps are of much greater use than simply indicating where things are. They explain far more than simply “what is where”. They are keys to uncovering the reasons for the location, interaction, and changes occurring over, on, and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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under our planet’s surface, and in addition, in social, cultural, and political networks that often cannot be seen or touched.

Maps were one of the first things that were placed on the web during the 1990s. Most of these maps were static documents that were digital versions of paper maps. However, over the past few years, maps have migrated into cloud-based environments that are running mapping services. Far from their static map predecessors, these new web maps are dynamic, customizable, and shareable. Because of these new capabilities, educators and students from a wide variety of disciplines are attracted to using them in their instruction, learning, and research.

They are being used in inquiry-driven settings to foster content knowledge, the spatial perspective, and skills in critical thinking and data management that are applicable to a wide variety of careers.

2. What are web maps, and why are they important in society?

For many years, I worked in a building that housed the world’s largest map collection – at the US Geological Survey’s National Mapping Program in Denver. The 50 million topographic maps and thematic maps about everything from watersheds to earthquakes stored there were so voluminous that they required a seven hectare building for storage on shelves stacked floor-toceiling and on pallets that could only be raised with a forklift. The maps stored there represented countless hours of field and office research and production that spanned more than an entire century.

However, as rich in content as these and other paper maps are, they are limited in their effectiveness for several reasons. First, the Earth is constantly changing. These changes include those brought about by physical forces such as volcanic eruptions, river meandering, and glacial movement, and those brought about by human forces, such as urban growth and the alteration of the chemistry of the atmosphere. Still other changes result from a combination of human and physical forces. For example, soil erosion, a natural process, can be exacerbated by human agricultural practices. Coastal erosion may be Copyright© Nuova Cultura

hastened by sea level rise and climate change brought about by human impact on the biosphere. River flooding may be more widespread due to decades of construction of artificial levees along river banks. Second, paper maps are limited not only because the Earth is changing, but because the map themselves cannot be changed. Additional data cannot be easily added to them. Their scales, symbology, and map projections cannot be altered, and they can only be examined in one medium – by holding and viewing the paper that they are printed on.

Because of these limitations, maps have been converted for use in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) frameworks. Once in a GIS, the utility of these maps is greatly expanded and can aid in making decisions in today’s changing world. These web maps are not simply digital versions of the paper they replaced, however.

They are tied to rich databases containing attributes of the objects on the map. These attributes may include the real-time temperature of the wildfire at specific locations, the magnitude and depth of an earthquake that occurred five minutes ago, the dissolved oxygen in the water in a series of wells collected during a recent field study, the type of mineral being mined along a rock outcrop at a specific angle and geologic age, or the median age and life expectancy of a group of people in a specific region. These maps are also tied to powerful analytical tools. These tools allow people to perform such tasks as compute the least cost path for goods to flow from Point A to Point B, calculate the viewshed from a specific hilltop, determine how many tropical storms have passed within 50 kilometers of a specific island over the past 100 years, or calculate the mean center of a set of soil test points taken in the field.

Each one of these phenomena described in the previous section – from population to soil chemistry, from erosion to eruptions – change across space and across time. Not only these issues, but nearly all issues and problems in our world, in our regions, and in our communities, have this “change component”. Change is at the heart of issues such as climate change, urban sprawl, crime, water quality, biodiversity loss, political instability, and natural hazards, just to Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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name a few examples. This change could be measured over a few seconds, minutes, days, years, or millennia. To analyze change temporally and spatially requires maps that are dynamic. Today’s decision-makers use dynamic web maps to solve problems on a daily basis.

Over the past few years, these web maps have become much more than just tools on the analyst’s tool belt: As more departments in an organization, such as a university, a government agency, a nonprofit organization, or a private business, realized how valuable maps and GIS were to their everyday decision making, they took steps to transform their organizations so that every department began to use the same common set of maps. As they did so, a curious thing happened: Web maps became a platform upon which organizations began to operate.

And as more organizations in society began to operate this way, and as geotechnologies made their way into the everyday devices that people use, maps began to change how societies viewed and valued maps.

And because of this new paradigm in mapping, what has become of the map distribution facility where I used to work at the US Geological Survey? No surprise: Most of those maps have been sent to be recycled. In the past few years, if someone comes into the building and wants a paper map, it is printed on demand for that person from a digital file. And then in October 2013, the map store was closed, so everything had to be ordered electronically.

The world has changed.

3. Why are web maps important in education?

At the same time as these societal trends were occurring, some educators and their students began to use web maps and geotechnologies to solve problems in their institutions. They no longer looked at maps as static documents that were useful only to find the locations of cities, countries, and rivers, but rather, as a part of the problem-based educational environments they were seeking to build. They found that using maps in this way was well aligned with their national educational standards and met their learning objectives

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(Kerski, 2003). Web maps began to be used in many subjects in which problems were being addressed and the locational component was important. These understandably included the disciplines of geography and Earth Science, but also, environmental studies, history, mathematics, chemistry, biology, literature, and other disciplines.

In addition, governments around the world have begun to recognize that geotechnologies, of which web maps are a part, are important technologies for societies to embrace. Therefore, educational institutions are being asked to educate their students in these technologies to fill the career positions in government, nonprofit organizations, academia, and private industry where they are critically needed. For example, geotechnologies were identified by the US Department of Labor (Gewin, 2004) as one of three major growth fields for the 21st Century, along with nanotechnologies and biotechnologies.

These geotechnologies are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore because they have become a part of our everyday lives.

Indeed, as GPS-enabled mapping services have found their way into smartphones, tablet and laptop computers, vehicles, public transport, and many other everyday experiences, educators as never before can use common devices to open the door to these careers for their students. No longer is a dedicated computer laboratory required to teach and learn with these tools: Rather, students can bring their own devices and begin exploration right away. It should be noted that the instructor’s role is still critical, however: It is the instructor that is helping guide the geographic inquiry process and preventing the process from being a random browse through data and maps. But at the same time, the instructors who are most successful with GIS are those who are open to learning the technological tools along with their students. The instructors who feel that they need to be the experts first before they can teach geotechnologies and spatial thinking to their students are hindered in their work and are not as successful (Demirci, Milson and Kerski, 2012).

Using tools in education may hasten the ability of educators to meet spatial learning Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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challenges as identified in the National Research Council’s (2006) report on GIS and spatial thinking across the primary and secondary curriculum. These tools can support standardsbased inquiry-driven methods of teaching and learning, while providing basic analysis tools for exploring geographic or scientific data (Milson, Demirci and Kerski, 2012). They can be key in addressing skills identified by the Partnerships for 21st Century Skills initiative (LeVasseur, 2005) and in recommendations on the value of thinking spatially (Bednarz, 2004; Gersmehl and Gersmehl, 2006). They have also been linked to key skills essential for careers, including personal, academic, technical, and workplace competencies (DiBiase et al., 2010).

To be sure, teaching with web maps is not without its challenges. These challenges include those related to technology, to educational policy, and to society. On the technology side, challenges include the Internet bandwidth required to support dynamic web mapping through multiple browsers by multiple students working simultaneously. It also includes access to smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers.

On the educational policy side, challenges include the lack of a home for “spatial analysis” in the curriculum.

Inquiry-based interdisciplinary tools already have inherent difficulty finding a home. In this era of standardized testing, it is difficult to assess results from inquiry-driven methods, and consequently, those results are not as frequently tested, and those methods are not as frequently used. Geography is a natural fit for spatial thinking, but geography has struggled against competition from other subjects vying for a place in the curriculum and still regularly faces becoming reduced or eliminated by policymakers who have an antiquated or false notion of what geography is. Another problem is the lack of teachers who are trained in spatial analysis and with web-based mapping and geotechnologies. Similarly, robust bodies of curriculum based on these tools and methods and linked to national educational standards, while more voluminous than in the past, still are not in place in each country. On the societal side from parents and lawmakers are related notions that taking geography courses will not enable students to compete for the Science, Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) positions that have received so much recent attention.

Because of these challenges, the adoption of GIS in primary, secondary, and university education proceeded at a slow pace from 1990 to about 2010. On the Rogers’ (1995) diffusion of innovations curve, the educators using GIS during those two decades were the “innovators” and the “early adopters”. However, a significant change occurred when GIS began to migrate to the web. The web reduced the number of barriers to educators seeking to implement spatial thinking methods and tools. No longer did they have to install software or fund, set up, and maintain a dedicated computer laboratory for this purpose. Now, the educator and student can analyze diverse phenomena – from population distribution to biomes to prevailing wind currents with an ordinary web browser.

Today, educators and their students have a wide variety of resources with which to enter the world of web mapping. Determining which resources and tools are most valuable and useful for the educational curriculum can be confusing.

The following section focuses on a selected number of resources with which to start. It is not an inclusive list but is gathered from educators around the world from a study of best practices from 33 countries (Demirci, Milson and Kerski, 2012). More importantly, the following section also seeks to model for the instructor how to teach with dynamic web maps. It should be noted that the web maps alone do not transform education from rote memorization to grappling with problems and issues. It is the instructors who are dedicated to inquiry-driven and constructivist methods who accomplish that, modeling lifelong learning for their students.

But the web maps are key tools to enable critical and spatial thinking.

4. Examining change over time using photographs and web maps We are rapidly moving into an era where everything on the Earth that is changing, moving, or occupies physical space is monitored and imaged. Indeed, even our very homes and workplaces are becoming infiltrated with sensors Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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of various kinds. As some of the earliest evidence of this movement, satellite images and aerial photographs are collected before, during, and after an Earth-changing event, such as a natural disaster. For example, hundreds of locations were photographed before and after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the USA in August 2005. Digital Globe, other private satellite companies, the NASA-US Geological Survey’s Landsat satellites, and airplanes commissioned by government agencies and private companies all collected imagery over the affected areas. These same resources make excellent teaching material to illustrate themes of coastal change and natural hazards.

What makes these images even more powerful is that they are linked to specific locations on the Earth, and therefore can be mapped in the dynamic web mapping environment.

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The pier, adjacent house on the beach, and the antebellum house adjacent to the beach are clearly visible in Figure 1 at Biloxi, Mississippi, taken in 1998. Figure 2 shows the same location on 31 August 2005, two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. As students grasp the impact that hurricanes have on people and the environment, these images can open a dialogue about natural hazards, public policy, and humanenvironment interaction, paving the way for further inquiry.

Educators in Geography, Earth Science, and Environmental Science have been using paper topographic maps and aerial photographs for years. Using these same resources inside a web mapping environment, such as through the use of Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform (http://www.arcgis.com/home) allows educators and their students to examine local to global phenomena (Kerski, 2012).

Figure 1. Oblique aerial image of Biloxi, Mississippi waterfront taken in 1998, before Hurricane Katrina. Beforeand-after images can be viewed at: http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/katrina/.

Source: US Geological Survey.

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Figure 2. Oblique image of Biloxi, Mississippi, USA waterfront in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina.

Source: US Geological Survey.

They could begin by examining their school or university campus, and the adjacent neighborhoods. But they can use the same ArcGIS Online platform to examine such phenomena as where the river meanders of the Danube River flow into the Black Sea or to measure the slopes of ancient glacial lakeshores in Scandinavia versus those of North Dakota USA. They could use the same tools to assess the amount of urbanization in specific cities on every continent or measure the offsets of the rivers along both sides of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain in California USA in a plate tectonics lesson. They could use the same tools to observe how metes and bounds survey systems established years ago in eastern North America and Europe affect current urban patterns and rural land use, compared to the Public Land Survey System in the Central and Western USA and in Canada. Working with this imagery can reinforce such content knowledge as glaciation, land use, agriculture, zoning, population, and plate tectonics.

general vicinity in which they were flown.

Either way, they allow students to understand the phenomena not in isolation but in the context of their region, along with other themes represented by other map layers that can be added and analyzed in the same environment.

Because maps and images were compiled at different dates, these map layers can also be used to teach about landscape change. For example, examine the following aerial photographs from the US Geological Survey for three different years for a school in Colorado USA (Figures 3-5).

In 1995, the school appeared as two concentric circles.

The educator could ask students to determine what time of day the photographs were flown.

With north at the top of each image, they can see that the 1995 photograph was flown in the morning and the 1999 photograph was flown in the afternoon.

These photographs can be added as multimedia to an ArcGIS Online map at specific points from latitude-longitude coordinates from where they were taken, or simply added in the

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Figure 3. Aerial photograph of a Colorado elementary school as it appeared in 1995.

Source: US Geological Survey.

Figure 4. Aerial photograph of a Colorado elementary school as it appeared in 1999.

Source: US Geological Survey.

.

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Figure 5. Aerial photograph of a Colorado elementary school as it appeared in 2002.

Source: US Geological Survey.

Next, the educator could ask students to determine whether the day of the photograph was a day when school was in session. School was in session during the 1999 image but not at the time of the 1995 image. Next, the educator could ask the students to determine why the 1999 image was so bright. This is because the school was under construction and renovation, and the resulting piles of soil and construction material reflected brightly in the photograph By 2002, reconstruction of the school was complete. The school looked new. But, was it completely new, or were parts of the old building retained? Also, what happened to the trees around the old parking lot?

Students can also compare the aerial photographs to a topographic map of the same area in different periods (Figures 6 and 7).

Topographic maps are available digitally as a layer called “USA Topo” on ArcGIS Online, and also via the Libre Map Project (http://libremap.org). Topographic maps are

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typically older than the aerial photographs or satellite images that cover the same area, and thus the combination makes for an excellent resource to compare land use change over time.

Even much older historical maps are often available online, such as those from the 19th Century from the Ordnance Survey in the UK (http://www.old-maps.co.uk/index.html).

In addition, some private companies and universities serve archives of historical topographic maps on the Internet. One such service (http://historical.mytopo.com) offers historical topographic maps for free download for much of the terrain from Maine to Ohio USA. NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey’s Historical Map and Chart Collection contains over 20,000 maps and charts from the late 1700s to present day. The collection includes some of the earliest nautical charts, hydrographic surveys, topographic surveys, geodetic surveys, city plans and Civil War battle maps, on: http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/csdl/ctp/abst ract.htm.

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Figure 6. New Albany, Ohio USA topographic map from 1904.

Source: US Geological Survey.

Figure 7. New Albany, Ohio USA topographic map from 1980.

Source: US Geological Survey.

Compare the topographic map of New Albany, Ohio, 1904 versus 1980. In 1904, New Albany was a crossroads of rural farm highways, but as it is not far from Columbus, Ohio, it has now experienced suburban growth from that city.

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that could be examined in every community.

Using historical and current maps and imagery, students could answer such questions as the following: What has changed in my community or in other communities, and why has it changed? Were the changes because of natural Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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forces or human-caused forces, or a combination?

What will this area look like in 10 years? What will it look like in 100 years? What did the landscape look like when my parents or grandparents were secondary school students? Is the area changing more quickly or more slowly than other parts of my community, or other parts of my country or elsewhere in the world? Why? What is the land use like in my neighborhood?

How does it compare to land use elsewhere in the world? What influence does population, climate, proximity to coastlines, or other phenomena have on land use? Can I estimate the population in the map or photograph of the area? What type of dwellings do people live in, and how do these dwellings compare in size and density to other parts of my community? How much terrain is visible at a resolution of 1 meter versus 2, 8, or 16 meters? How does detail change as the scale changes? What is the best scale at which to view a glacier, a school building, or a city? Examine aerial photographs taken in summer versus winter, spring, and fall. What are the differences in terms of vegetation and sun angle between those different seasons?

In a similar fashion, students can compare historical to current satellite images on the Esri Change Matters Viewer (http://changematters. esri.com/compare). This viewer uses Landsat satellite imagery. Because the Landsat satellites have been operating since 1972, over 40 years of change can be examined on the Earth’s surface.

Students can use the Change Matters Viewer to investigate the reasons for those changes.

Furthermore, since Landsat imagery is typically delivered in the infrared wavelength, it provides an excellent introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum and remote sensing.

For example, the complex issues surrounding irrigation, agriculture, politics, climate, and internal drainage can be introduced and analyzed by comparing satellite imagery of the Aral Sea as it has shrunk over the past 40 years using the Change Matters viewer (Figure 8). Similarly, urban sprawl, coastal erosion, the construction of dams and reservoirs, the development of irrigated agriculture in Saudi Arabia, and other developments can be examined with this same tool.

Figure 8. Aral Sea as seen from the Landsat satellite in 1975 (left) and 2000 (center) with changes between those two time periods (right).

Source: Esri and US Geological Survey.

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5. Further Investigations Using ArcGIS Online One of the most powerful web based mapping platforms to emerge is ArcGIS Online (http://www.arcgis.com/home). This platform supports local to global scale investigations with online mapping services placed onto the platform from local, regional, national, and international government organizations, private industry, academia, nonprofit organizations, and individuals. The base maps data is rich and detailed, including base layers such as satellite imagery, Open Street Map, topographic maps, and geologic maps. Thematic maps include watersheds, land use, ecoregions, voting patterns, median income, population growth rate, human health indices, natural hazards, energy, consumer preferences, and much more.

Many of these data sources in this platform are updated in real time, ranging from Twitter feeds on current political situations to wildfires to weather to earthquakes to stream hydrographs and much more.

Students can map their own data onto the platform via a wide variety of sources. These range from simple map notes tied to points, lines, or polygons that students can add to maps, along with text, images, videos, and URLs. Data sources can also be from Excel spreadsheets saved on a local computer to spreadsheets that are online. Another mapable data source are track points from a field trip recorded with a GPS receiver or an app on a smartphone.

Another capability is citizen science mapping: Through an “editable feature

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service”, students can simultaneously be collecting field data via the ArcGIS app on their smartphones, while the data they are collecting populates a single web map in real time.

Mapped data can be classified and symbolized in a variety of ways. Mapped data can be analyzed spatially through tools such as overlay, buffer, and measures of centeredness and proximity. The tabular data associated with map features can be sorted and queried just as it can in an ordinary spreadsheet program.

However, the results of the sort and query can be displayed on the map. Maps created through the platform can be created, modified, and shared.

Unlike the former days of GIS, the sharing is accomplished by sending a colleague a simple URL. Maps can also be embedded as live web maps into web pages or blogs, or embedded in the same interactive manner into PowerPoint slides. They can also be published as many different types of applications, including those with terrain profiles of the landscape, or through comparing maps side-by-side through “swipe” technology, and through customized templates that are optimized for tablet and mobile devices.

In an example at the global scale, students can examine country data from the World Bank in ArcGIS Online (http://www.arcgis. com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=5bb dd2f927fe4a5abc15beb71755208e ) to compare demographic variables (Figure 9).

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Figure 9. Percent land used for agriculture.

Source: World Bank and Esri.

What is the relationship between birth rate, life expectancy, and growth rate as shown on this map? How have these variables changed over time? By selecting specific countries and moving the arrow through resulting pop-up text box, the student has access to data from 1960 to the present. Alternatively, students can play the timeline underneath the map to see thematically how the pattern of specific variables change.

Why do these variables change over time? Why do the variables for some countries change rapidly, while others do not exhibit change for some or all of the 53 years under study?

Students can compare these data to Gross Domestic Product, and to agricultural variables such as the percent arable land, and crop and livestock production indices. Why do certain variables vary the same way? Why do others vary in opposite directions?

In another example of the use of ArcGIS Online in an educational environment, this time at a regional scale, is through the study of a proposed new road through the Serengeti (Figure 10). Students review articles and CopyrightŠ Nuova Cultura

examine the map to understand the importance of the Serengeti, the distance to the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria and to sources of supply and demand, and consider the pros and cons of constructing the road.

Students measure the length of each of the two road proposals and consider which biomes the roads would impact. The lesson accompanying the map is embedded in the map’s metadata, and therefore the educator needs only to access a single URL for the map and the lesson (http://www.arcgis.com/home/ item.html?id=2c1da31c0ffd4790ad2dec830d4d1 eb3). The lesson includes links to background reading material and thought-provoking questions that require the student to think spatially and use the map as a source of investigation instead of a by-product of it. Upon the conclusion of the lesson, students use the map and the spatial perspective to present their argument, whether they are in favor of the road, not in favor of it, or whether they favor a different alternative.

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Figure 10. A new road in the Serengeti?

Source: Esri.

Figure 11. Mapping and analyzing trees from field-collected data.

Source: Esri.

In a third example of the use of ArcGIS Online in an educational setting, this time at the local level, consider the map created by a group of

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educators mapping trees in a county historical park (Figure 11). Educators gathered data on smartphones on tree height, condition, and species

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(http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.h tml?webmap=efc693e235dc4d959495875dd775 e33d). They gathered the data using the ArcGIS app on their phones, entering the tree height, condition, and species while recording the position of the tree from the GPS on their smartphone. This is an example of the “citizen science” mapping referred to earlier. They also took a photograph of each tree and added that as another attribute for the data point they gathered.

As they collected the data in the field, the educators could see their own collected points appear on the map on their phones, but they also could see points gathered by their colleagues at the same time in the same park. In a similar way, students can gather data on tree species and height, litter, social zones, cell phone reception, light poles, and other data on their own school campuses, in their communities, or in local parks.

If one of the points for whatever reason does not get added to the map while in the field, the map is also editable through a standard web browser.

Using the web browser, the data can be added in the lab or in the field with a tablet or a laptop.

When the project is finished, the educator who sets up the web map turns off the editing function of the map. The map remains interactive, but nobody can add data to it until the owner of the map turns the editing back on. Collaborative mapping efforts such as this can open new worlds to students in terms of working in teams, examining data, field methods, and critical thinking.

6. Telling Stories Through Maps Maps have always been a powerful medium for telling stories. Today’s web mapping tools place powerful storytelling abilities into the hands of every student. An easy-to-use and powerful set of these tools is the story maps platform (http://storymaps.esri.com). This platform enables students to tell their own stories, through text, video, audio, photographs, and live web maps. These stories can be used as an instrument by instructors to assess whether students have mastered specific content or skills.

A gallery of existing story maps is available on a wide variety of topics, from the voyage of and origin of each passenger on the Titanic to historical hurricanes, the proliferation of cell

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phones globally, the ecological “footprint” of each country, the cost of food transportation, host cities for the Olympic games, and much more. New story maps appear daily.

More importantly, students can publish their own story maps using this same platform, either as web applications or by downloading and customizing the provided story maps templates1.

Story maps are based on the Esri ArcGIS Online platform discussed earlier. Thus, when a particular map is updated, the story map based on that map is automatically updated. Story maps can be published as web applications on the Esri ArcGIS Online site or on the user’s own web server.

For example, students can create a map of a particular field trip, and upload photographs or videos of their trip, in a short of time (Figure 12). This is illustrated and explained in an essay entitled The 15 minute story map (http://blogs. esri.com/esri/gisedcom/2013/07/26/the-15-minutestory-map/) about a map that was indeed created in 15 minutes.

To create this map, a track from a smartphone was collected, along with five photographs, and these and their captions were uploaded to the ArcGIS Online environment, where they were published into the story maps web application and shared with the public. The themes for photographs tied to story maps do not have to be the “walk along a harbor” as was featured in this map, but they could be about cloud formations, invasive species, incidences of graffiti, or the presence of historical homes. For example, in “Lost Detroit”, a story map of famous abandoned buildings in that city was created to foster discussion about urban morphology, decay, and revitalization (http://www.josephkerski.com/storymaps/lostdet roit/).

The history and geography of specific villages or regions can be the themes of a story map, as was featured in the map for Bruges, Belgium (http://www.josephkerski.com/storymaps/brugge_s hortlist/). This map was created from the downloadable templates that exist on the story maps web page.

1

Story map templates can be downloaded and customized to meet specific needs, from the template gallery: http://storymaps.esri.com/templategallery/.

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Figure 12. An example of a story map highlighting a walk along a harbor to an airport.

Source: Joseph Kerski and Esri.

Specific landforms ranging from sand dunes to barrier islands can be examined and measured, as was done in this study of 10 landscapes: (http://www.josephkerski.com/storymaps/10landsca pes/). This map is linked to a lesson containing five questions on each landscape. What are landscapes and landforms? What forces created these landscapes and landforms in the past and continue to shape them today? What will these landscapes look like in 10, 100, or 1,000 years?

Why2? This type of lesson has been core to geography and earth science teaching for decades, but web mapping technologies invite students to measure, to investigate, and to discover in more meaningful ways than those based on paper maps (Kulo and Bodzin, 2013).

7. Conclusions Students can use these powerful web mapping tools and data to understand that the Earth is changing. Then, they can use the maps 2

For example, to see story maps that have been created on landforms, urban decay, and the history and geography of specific regions, see the story maps that the author has created on http://www.josephkerski.com/resources/web-maps/.

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to begin to think scientifically and analytically about why it is changing. Asking the questions and being inquisitive are critical to the successful use of web maps and GIS in education. Through the use of these web mapping technologies, instructors can help students to begin analyzing the “whys of where” – the essence of geographic inquiry.

As useful as these web mapping are today, they will be even more useful in the future. In fact, web maps and the technologies that drive them are expanding by the day. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Educators and students using these tools must be flexible, adaptable, and willing to learn in a rapidly changing and sometimes unpredictable environment. The most important characteristic, however, in educators and students using these tools is to cultivate the habit of curiosity. Being curious about the world will help frame the questions to ask, and those questions will drive the data that needs to be gathered, the tools that are used, the conclusions drawn, and action that takes place.

Asking questions about the whys of where is not the end of the story, however. After using these web maps, students need to ask and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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grapple with value-based questions. Should the Earth be changing in these ways? Is there anything we as a society can and should do about it? Is there anything that I should be doing about it? This captures not only the heart of spatial thinking, inquiry, and problem-based learning, but of education for activism – to make a difference in this changing world of ours.

Acknowledgements -

I would like to thank the Education Team at Esri for supporting GIS in education since 1992.

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I salute the many educators who are making a difference in their classroom by encouraging their students to investigate their communities and their world through web-based mapping technologies.

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With this article, I am expanding the considerations and analysis made in my previous work “Helping Educators Implement GIS in K-12 Education” presented at the Esri GIS Education Conference, July 2003.

References 1. Bednarz S.W., “Geographic information systems: A Tool to support geography and environmental education?”, GeoJournal, 60, 2004, pp. 191-199.

2. Demirci A., Milson A. and Kerski J.J., International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with GIS in Secondary Schools, Dordrecht, Springer, 2012.

3. DiBiase D. et al., “The new geospatial technology competency model: Bringing workforce needs into focus”, URISA Journal, 22, 2, 2010, pp. 55-72.

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4. Gersmehl P. and Gersmehl C., “Wanted: A concise list of neurologically defensible and assessable spatial thinking skills”, Research in Geographic Education, 8, 2006, pp. 5-38.

5. Gewin V., “Mapping opportunities”, Nature, 427, 2004, pp. 376-377.

6. Kerski J.J., “The implementation and effectiveness of GIS in secondary education”, Journal of Geography, 102, 3, 2003, pp. 128-137. environmental 7. Kerski J.J., “Spatial education: Teaching and learning about the environment with a spatial perspective”, Earthzine, 24, 2012, http://www.earthzine.org/2012/09/24/spati al-environmental-education-teaching-andlearning-about-the-environment-with-aspatial-framework/.

8. Kulo V. and Bodzin Al., “The impact of a geospatial technology-supported energy curriculum on middle school students’ science achievement”, Journal of Science Education and Technology, 22, 1, 2013, pp.

25-26.

9. LeVasseur M., “Geography: A 21st Century Skill”, Cable in the Classroom, 2005, p. 3.

10. Milson A., Demirci A. and Kerski J.J., International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with GIS in Secondary Schools, Netherlands, Springer, 2012.

11. National Research Council, Learning to Think Spatially – GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum, Washington DC, The National Academies Press, 2006.

12. Rogers E., The Diffusion of Innovations, New York, Free Press, 1995.

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Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 27-42 DOI: 10.4458/2379-03

GIS in Geography Teaching Margherita Azzaria, Paola Zamperlina, Fulvio Landia a

Laboratorio di Geografia Applicata, Dipartimento SAGAS, University of Florence, Florence, Italy Email: margherita.azzari@unifi.it Received: October 2013 – Accepted: December 2013

Abstract If it is true that every period of our history is marked by important revolutions which shaped its spirit and nature, today we can claim to live in what has been aptly defined, by a Pennsylvania State University project, as a “Geospatial Revolution”. Understanding the world in which we live, how it has changed and how the ways in which humans interact with it have changed, how people try to know, interpret and represent it, all provide crucial aspects for the planning of curricula, training courses and in the production of appropriate contents for them.

GIS represents an effective tool for teaching the understanding of space and place. GIS finds application in various fields from natural science and geology to sociology and anthropology, from political sciences, economics and urban studies to archaeology and history. The use of this tool enables the introduction of research methods in geography teaching, leading, for example, to the acquisition of the ability to create a conceptual model of reality that can be studied as well as to select the most useful data for this purpose, to interpret it independently, and to represent it effectively.

Keywords: Geospatial Revolution, Open GIS, Open Data, Geography Teaching, Geobrowser

1. Geo-literacy and Geo-skills If it is true that every period of our history is marked by important revolutions which shaped its spirit and nature, today we can claim to live in what has been aptly defined – by a Pennsylvania State University project – as a “Geospatial Revolution”1. PennState scholars have defined a set of complex scenarios, represented in a series of short videos, in which 1

http://geospatialrevolution.psu.edu/.

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possible uses and development of geotechnology, today increasingly immersive and pervasive, are unfolded. Accordingly, new forms of interaction between individuals, groups, and information technologies emerge.

Understanding the times and the world in which we live, how it has changed and how the ways in which humans interact with it have changed, how people try to know, interpret and represent it, all provide crucial aspects for the planning of curricula, training courses and in the production of appropriate contents for them.

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Recent surveys2 conducted in the United States and Canada show an overall scarce geographic knowledge – especially among the younger groups of the population. We lack similar surveys regarding our country, Italy.

Invalsi – the National Institute for the Evaluation of the Educational System – provides national data on reading, mathematics and Italian and OECD-PISA data refer to reading, mathematics and science skills only. Therefore, since we do not have statistical data to base our studies on, we have to rely on more or less structured reports and experiences carried out by teachers who are directly in contact with children and young people or base our assessments indirectly from published case studies. Generally speaking, the increasingly marginal role that geography is playing in the Italian school system does not lead to the conclusion that the need to master, or even develop, solid geographical knowledge is currently being perceived.

Thus, it might perhaps be timely, in this particular moment of history, to consider what Geography should teach, what studying Geography should mean, and what the most appropriate tools to achieve this are.

Geographical facts or concepts do not represent strong assets if nothing can be done with this knowledge. We could say that today’s main need is not to possess geographic information but, instead, to be able to do something useful with it. That is to say to be able to process this data and knowledge in order to produce geographical knowledge and to act geographically and globally; these capabilities constitute a further development away from the simple possession of geographical information.

This is what we mean by the term geographic literacy. The problem is that most teachers, for many reasons, mainly related to their initial training, lack of classroom time and general difficulties in the present Italian schools, often find themselves uneasy with the concept of what it means to “do geography” and are forced to adopt traditional teaching methods, in which the concept of geography is reduced to a list of capital cities, tables with numbers regarding 2

National Geographic Society - The National Geographic Education Foundation, 2006.

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inhabitants, gross domestic product and so on, with the final result of turning students away from geography books and mortifying their curiosity instead of stimulating it.

This picture changes totally, however, when it is realized that you can extract meaning from apparently sterile and boring information, when you can elaborate meanings, identify connections and relationships, in other words when you can manipulate information so as to produce knowledge.

“Everything happens somewhere” and everything that happens is in some way connected to a place, has geographic coordinates, is, in other words, geo-referenced, and, we must add, also refers to a specific historical moment. Space and time dimensions can be managed and represented within a Geographical Information System. Those who master and use a GIS know what it means to analyze and solve geospatial problems, because they are used to applying the analysis of spatialized information, in complex situations in order to understand geographical, social, economic, cultural phenomena.

Hence forecasting trends can be extrapolated, plans developed, decisions made. Doing geography while also using GIS means understanding how important the ability to do geography is for ourselves and even for the entire community.

“Knowing where things are is only the first step in attaining geographic literacy. Ultimately, geography is concerned with understanding why things are located where they are. To answer this type of question requires the use of a wide range of geographic themes, concepts, and skills” (Backler and Stoltman, 1986).

The National Geographic Education section has promoted the sharing of standards regarding skills related to geographic literacy, especially in view of “lifelong, life-sustaining, and lifeenhancing” learning. We all must be aware that the next generations will face problems regarding overpopulation, reduction of resources and energy production, market globalization, quality of life and food security. It is therefore vital that schools provide the instruments which enable responsible behavior and contribute to decisions useful for the well-being of the communities in which they will live and work.

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Below is the list of Associated Geography Standards, which can be traced back to the following macro-areas: the World in Spatial Terms (1-3), Places and Regions (4-6), Physical Systems (7-8), Human Systems (9-13), Environment and Society (14-16), the Uses of Geography (17-18): “1. How to use maps and other geographic representations, geospatial technologies and spatial thinking to understand and communicate information 2. How to use mental maps to organize information about people, places, and environments in a spatial context 3. How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places and environments on the Earth’s surface 4. Physical and human characteristics of places 5. People creating regions to interpret the Earth’s complexity 6. How culture and experience influence people’s perceptions of places and regions 7. Physical processes that shape the Earth’s surface patterns 8. Characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems and biomes on the Earth’s surface 9. Human populations, characteristics, distribution and migration on the Earth’s surface 10. Characteristics, distribution and complexity of the Earth’s cultural mosaics 11. Patterns and networks of economic interdependence on the Earth’s surface 12. Processes, patterns and functions of human settlement 13. How the forces of cooperation and conflict among people influence the division and control of the Earth’s surface 14. How human actions modify the physical environment Copyright© Nuova Cultura

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15. How physical systems affect human systems 16. Changes occurring in resources, meaning, use, distribution and importance 17. How to apply geography in interpretation of the past 18. How to apply geography to interpret the present times and plan the future”.

2. Why use GIS in teaching Geography?

Why use GIS in teaching Geography? Firstly, for the potential that GIS provides in the visualization, management and analysis of geographic data; for its effectiveness in producing and changing cartography; for the versatility in output production (maps, graphs, three-dimensional models, virtual scenarios); for its ability to integrate different databases; but, above all, for its effectiveness in teaching how to organize thought and research.

“Spatial thinking is as important as logical thinking or quantitative thinking; it is a cognitive skill necessary to understand the ubiquitous influence of location. Looking at a location is an inherently cross-disciplinary undertaking” (Stuart Sinton and Lund, 2007, p. 9).

Daniel Edelson, vice president of the United States of America National Geographic Society, writes – referring to his country but with observations that are valid for many other national contexts, including Italy.

“I believe that every [citizen] should understand how the attributes of a location and its relationship to other locations affect that location. Every adult should understand that his or her actions have predictable effects elsewhere and that what happens elsewhere affects them.

Today, [people] go from kindergarten through college without ever being taught how to trace causes forward or backward across space or to analyze spatial relationships in order to predict or explain. Without this analytic ability, how would we ever expect them to make good decisions about where to live and work, how to Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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transport themselves, what to buy and how to dispose of it, how to prepare for natural disasters, whether to go to war abroad, where to locate a store or factory, or how to market goods abroad?

The list goes on and on� (Edelson, 2009).

These questions can be answered if one acquires the tools necessary to evaluate the distribution, in a given territory, of a phenomenon, a characteristic, a criticality, or a resource.

The multifaceted influence of place should be studied for many reasons and a GIS represents an effective tool for teaching the understanding of space and place.

The use of this tool enables the introduction of research methods in geography teaching, leading, for example, to the acquisition of the ability to create a conceptual model of reality that can be studied as well as to select the most useful data for this purpose, to interpret it independently, and to represent it effectively3.

GIS finds application in various fields: natural science and geology, sociology, anthropology, political sciences, economics, urban studies, archaeology, history. One can explore social diversity or examine spatial patterns from global to local; assess neighborhood opportunities or build a geodatabase of an archaeological survey; promote environmental, cultural and landscape heritage; evaluate land use changes or investigate soil erosion.

3. GIS Open Source in Teaching Geography There are many GIS tools available4. All 3

This methodology has finally found acceptance in the new Italian ministerial programs related to basic education, as happened long ago in many foreign countries.

4 Among the most common applications, there are: ArcExplorer (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer); ArcGIS (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis); AtlasGIS (http://rpmconsulting.com/atlas); AutodeskMap (http://www.autodesk.com); GeoMedia (http://geospatial.intergraph.com/products/ GeoMedia/Details.aspx); GRASS (http://grass-italia.como.polimi.it/link.php); Idrisi (http://www.clarklabs.org); CopyrightŠ Nuova Cultura

products share the main functions, then each of them develops special features that enable it to carry out specific analyses or to treat specific data. Some of these products belong to Open Source Software (OSS) and are very suitable for teaching as they can be installed, used and customized freely while respecting the work of others and the user community. Among the most popular open source GIS software5 GRASS and QGIS are undoubtedly worth mentioning.

GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a very powerful GIS with functions ranging from spatial analysis to environmental modeling, from the generation of theme maps to DBMS integration, from two and three-dimensional spatial data viewing to the storage and management of information layers.

QGIS can display and edit vector data, raster, and database connections and can be used in different environments (Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows) and, thanks to a special plugin, as a user-friendly GRASS interface (Figure 1).

MapInfo (http://www.pbinsight.com/welcome/mapinfo/); QGIS (http://www.qgis.org).

5 Other valid open source software that can be used in teaching and research are: gvSIG which has a userfriendly interface allowing easy print layout creation and supports vector and raster formats (http://gvsig.org / web /). OSSIM (Open Source Software Image Map), a highperformance tool for remote sensing image and photogrammetry (http://trac.osgeo.org / OSSIM /) management and processing. MapServer excellent for building web applications dedicated to spatial data publication (http://mapserver.org/). DeeGree Java Framework provides the main software blocks for spatial data infrastructure construction according to the standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (http://www.deegree.org). Mapbender, created in PHP and Javascript and distributed through the GNU license allows for the creation of access portals to geographic data (http://www.mapbender.org / Mapbender_Wiki).

MapGuide allows web mapping applications and web services development and distribution, it includes an XML database for content management and supports all major formats of geospatial data and database connection. It runs on Linux and Windows and it is licensed through LGPL (http://mapguide.osgeo.org).

OpenLayer can display a dynamic map on any web page and provides navigation and search tools with no need for the user to install anything and it implements the WMS, WFS standards (http://openlayers.org).

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The release 2.0 contains new features both in terms of the user interface and in the data provider system.

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The map composer and the editing tools are much more powerful.

Figure 1. The new layout of the latest release of the Q-GIS 2.01 Dufour. In this picture, showing a work session with the teachers, you can notice the graph vector layers of the streets and the buildings in the city of Florence.

Thanks to this software, different format maps can be uploaded, overlaid, changed in projection, reference system and display characteristics. One can modify individual information layers, by adding or removing elements, create new vector layers (points, lines, polygons), create thematic maps, select specific areas, and create printing or screen viewing output6.

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Numerous projects of the Italian Association of Geography Teachers have been devoted to the use of QGIS, starting from the project “Geographic Information Systems. Opportunities for integration between nature and technology and new tools for the dissemination of scientific culture” carried out in Italian lower and upper secondary schools (2009).

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Yet having powerful, free, and easy-to-use software is not enough. It is also important to have reliable data which can be integrated into the system. New information layers can be easily produced thanks to the editing tools offered by any GIS but, in most cases, data must be obtained from organizations or businesses and then implemented into the system.

Learning how to convert different projections, reference systems, and tabular data integration from different formats, becomes then of paramount importance.

To ensure ever greater interoperability between systems and databases produced in different times and for different purposes, research communities and public administrations Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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are planning and creating infrastructures in which to share geographic data (Web Map Services) and they are standardizing documentation with the aim of sharing produced data and of certifying its quality (Metadata).

The main limitations to research product sharing are, as a matter of fact, due to the different data forms and formats used from time to time, the choice of the platform, and the documentation which is often missing or scarce.

For this reason, it is necessary to define beforehand standards and implementation specifications that allow for easy information exchange and ensure compatibility and interoperability between formats, platforms, and documentation devices.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) was created to satisfy these needs. It is an international consortium consisting of over 280 companies, research institutions and administrations whose aim is to develop, in an agreed upon manner, specifications that facilitate data interchange (http://www.osgeo.org).

These OGC specifications are public and available for free.

The Italian Digital Agenda has produced an important tool, the National Directory of Spatial Data (RNDT), to conduct research, through metadata, for spatial data available at public administration offices; to assess their compliance; and to obtain the necessary indications concerning the conditions of access and usage. This system was recently equipped with the possibility of harvesting metadata produced by each of the administration offices which now publish data in accordance to the given guidelines7.

Learning how to document produced and distributed data is of fundamental importance not only within the fields of public administration and research, but also in education. A layer of information can be reused in the future only if it is accompanied by a series of facts about the author, the purpose for which it was produced, the date of creation, the update frequency, the characteristics of the attributes related to the geometry, the projection and reference systems used, data accuracy, the 7

acquisition and the best display scales.

Documenting information also means to further verify it and, from an educational point of view, it is a useful exercise in order to consolidate knowledge and greater assessment of the work done. Every GIS provides tools to create specific documentation apparatus.

4. From WebGIS to WebService: an opportunity for teaching Geography Knowing the allocation, availability and limitations in the use of various layers of information that are considered necessary for a project is a need felt at all levels: from education to research and in the fields of land management. It is precisely for this reason that the greatest efforts have been made in the field of geographic data sharing.

Data publication and distribution strategies are ascribed to two technologies which are similar in appearance, but very different in substance: WebGIS and WebService.

A WebGIS enables the publication of geographic content through an interactive web page that does not require the installation of specific GIS software by the client. On the other hand, a Web Service allows interaction through GIS browsers or open source software only with geographic data expressed as specifically defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium.

Formats allowing such interaction are WMS (Web Map Service), WFS (Web Feature Service), WCS (Web Coverage Service), WMTS (Web Mapping Tile Service) and WPS (Web Processing Service).

A WebGIS provides information (maps and metadata), also allows you to interact with published data layers that can be selected or deselected to create custom maps, to measure distances or areas, but it does not allow you to download/edit the published geographic content.

On the contrary a WMS provides the user with a map defined in size and with geographic parameters. Its metadata can be “invoked” or called back up, viewed and modified via a GIS desktop.

http://www.rndt.gov.it/RNDT/home/index.php.

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Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Margherita Azzari, Paola Zamperlin, Fulvio Landi

In fact an OGC WMS, as specified in the vast online documentation, dynamically produces maps of spatially related data starting from geographic information. A map, in the sense of geographic information representation, can be turned into a digital image which can then be displayed on a computer screen. A map can be produced in an image format (PNG, GIF, or JPEG) or, more rarely, in vector format.

Through QGIS one can easily access resources provided by a WMS. One need only to open the programme, select the option from the Layer menu add a WMS layer, select a new connection, give it a meaningful name that allows you to recover it in the future, and copy the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in the provided space. When requesting a map the URL indicates what information should be displayed on it, which portion of the Earth must be represented, the desired coordinate system, the format and size of the output image. The URL can be simply copied from a cartographic portal web page which supports this service.

Different maps can be obtained from different servers and, if they are produced with the same parameters and geographic sizes, these can be overlapped to build customized maps capitalizing on the possibility to interact on the layer transparency.

Through this above-mentioned procedure, it is also possible to “invoke” via http a Web Feature Service (WFS). While an OGC Web Map Service allows the user to capture images from multiple servers, an OGC Web Feature Service allows you to retrieve geospatial data encoded in Geography Markup Language (GML) from multiple Web Feature Services. A WFS service describes the operations of research and processing of vector data.

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cartography and many other geographical data.

The strategic aim of the National Geoportal is “to promote and spread the use of Geographic Information Systems, to make environmental and territorial information available to a wide audience including non-experts, taking into consideration the projects and current activities at national and European level” and to allow “anyone with an Internet connection – scholars, researchers, administrators, private citizens – to view and use, for free, the desired cartography by selecting it as if it were on the shelves of a library”8.

All the maps provided by the portal are accompanied by a documentation (metadata) apparatus showing the exact content of the available data so that it can be effectively reused. All cartography is produced by public administration authorities, or made available by a network of peripheral offices which cooperate with the Ministry of Environment.

Maps produced by the Military Geographic Institute can be acquired; orthophotos, digital terrain models (DTM), information layers related to human territorial occupation (administrative boundaries, place names, railway lines, roads, ...); topics related to geology and geomorphology (geological map, bathymetric map, ...); land cover documents (CORINE); protected areas; physiographic units; risk of coastal erosion and numerous other data (Figure 2).

The National Geoportal is, in fact, the core of a technological infrastructure aimed at the efficient exchange of geospatial meta information, relating to territorial and environmental data, called Cartographic Cooperating System (SCC).

5. The National Geoportal and other geoservices Among the main online resources, the National Geoportal – which belongs to the Department of Land Defence within the Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea– is definitely worth mentioning. This resource allows the display and use of national

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http://www.pcn.minambiente.it/GN/.

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Figure 2. The National Geoportal WebGIS service. The image refers to a practice exercise with teachers. Some layout vectors showing the railway and road infrastructures and the distribution of schools in the city of Modena were superimposed onto the orthophotomap of Italy.

The Cartographic Cooperating System provides services and access to a set of information layers and data archives covering the whole nation (Reference Cartographic Base) and local areas hosted by local Cooperating Bodies, i.e. by public and research companies, institutions and public firms that have decided to join the project9. Through the INSPIRE Project (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe)10 this system is also available to 9

Among the cooperating entities there are local authorities, basin authorities, research facilities and universities. The Applied Geography Laboratory of the University of Florence joined the SCC thanks to the geodata service available at http://www.geografiaapplicata.it.

10 The INSPIRE Directive defines the system of the infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community, based on the infrastructures for spatial information established and operated by the Member States. This infrastructure is composed of: metadata, spatial data sets, data access services, network CopyrightŠ Nuova Cultura

European and international partners, aiming towards achieving the more effective coordination of Community environmental policies. According to the guidelines adopted as part of this project, those who create a new geographic data sharing infrastructure must ensure public services tailored to users’ needs, it must be easy to use, accessible via the Internet (desktop or mobile), and, in particular, it must provide collected and managed territorial datasets: metadata research services that must be visualized, consulting services, services for data download, conversion services enabling the transformation of spatial data sets (interoperability); services allowing recalling of spatial data services.

The metadata catalog is in fact the gateway to available data and services. A metadata relating technologies; sharing agreements, data access and use, coordination and monitoring processes and procedures.

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to a particular resource can be used in the identification and research of the resource itself, as well as in the understanding of the quality and information content.

Other interesting geo-services have been made available by some regions and municipalities.

The Toscana Region Geographic Service, for example, has developed GeoScopio_WMS (http://www.regione.toscana.it/-/geoscopiowms), a module for the consultation of maps, 2D based thematic geographic data, through userGIS. The Region of Sicily, the first among local governments, has published a GIS Regional catalogue according to the RNTD specifications that enable metadata harvesting (http://www.sitr.regione.sicilia.it/geoportale).

Other regions such as Piemonte, Veneto, Lombardia, Sardegna offer WMS services.

The aim of the OpenData Project of the Firenze Municipality (http://opendata.comune.fi.it/index.html) are improving the access and the integrated use of geographic data and information, promoting interdisciplinary approaches to sustainable development, improving the knowledge of the benefits of the geographic information. The opensource GeoNetwork allows to simply share geographic information (interactive maps, GIS data, satellite images) related to different themes (environment, demography, mobility, economics, culture and tourism, …) and regions among different organizations.

For teaching purposes the ISTAT portal can be very useful. It provides geographic data in shapefile format for the years 1991, 2001 and 2011 (administrative boundaries and local work systems), the territorial infrastructure statistical atlas, the geography and administrative statistics atlas; the municipal statistic atlas and the database data on municipal scale that allows the consultation, export and cartographic representation of information (from 1971 for population / housing and industry / services, from 1990 for agriculture) relating to territory, population, health, education, tourism, culture, credit, vehicles on the road.

Data can be extracted and viewed according to a vast set of pre-defined territorial partitions (regions, provinces, municipalities, mountain

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communities, local work systems, local health authorities, etc.), or through municipality customized selections.

Other useful national geoportals include Géoportail, the French mapping portal (http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil) and Geoinformació digital set up by the Cartogràfic Institut de Catalunya (http://www.icc.cat).

Thanks to these services one can add GIS project layers of information made available by organizations and institutions in order to obtain maximum sharing.

Not to be forgotten, finally, the UN Geoportal and the projects carried out as part of the United Nations initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UNGGIM).

The GEOPortal provides convenient access to the full range of GEOSS data and information, under the leadership of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). Operated by the European Space Agency and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, it provides a web-based interface for searching and accessing data, information, imagery, services and applications. It connects users to a variety of data bases, services and portals that provide reliable, up-to-date, integrated and userfriendly information – vital for decision-makers, managers and other users of Earth observations in their jobs. The content available through this Portal continues to expand at a rapid rate and bodes to reach a critical mass in the near future.

The UN Cartographic Section (UNCS) is developing global multi-scale geospatial datasets for rapid map production and web mapping in support to the Security Council and the Secretariat including UN field missions.

The Global Mapping Project, launched in 1996, is an international cooperation initiative that aims to develop a digital geo-information framework ensuring spatial resolution at 1 km, with standardized specifications and available to everyone at marginal costs. Global Map datasets consist of 8 basic layers (Boundaries, Drainage, Transportation, Population Centres, Elevation, Land Cover, Land Use, and Vegetation) for currently 71 countries and 4 regions, collectively covering 60% of the whole land area. Global

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maps of elevation, land cover and vegetation (% tree cover) layers wholly cover the globe land area.

The UN Cartographic Section (UNCS) is developing a GIS-based UN International Boundary Information System (UNIBIS) that provides a knowledge base of international boundary issues with treaties, relevant documents, maps and satellite images along with the actual status of disputed boundaries in support to the Security Council and the Secretariat as well as the Member States. The objective of this knowledge is to prevent potential conflicts, resolve border disputes and support border demarcations and to promote cross-border cooperation.

Another project, launched in 2001, the Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) dataset, is providing the international community with a working platform covering all UN Member States for the collection, management, visualization and sharing of data/information down to the second administrative level.

The UN Cartographic Section (UNCS) is developing a global place name database and search engine (or UN Gazetteer) in support to the Security Council and the Secretariat including UN field missions. Many place names have multiple spellings. A location search may not show up in the results even though a different spelling is in the database. Searching through phonetic spelling solves this problem.

Lessons learned indicate that in emergency situations it is difficult to locate the effected place on the map which of course hinders response time. Situational intelligence also depends on locating place named events. These challenges can be avoided/reduced through the development of a UN Gazetteer that would collect, update and validate place names with geo-coordination from UN field operations and NGOs as well as the Member States.

The World Geodetic System defines a reference frame for the Earth, for its use in cartography, geodesy and navigation. The latest revision is WGS 84, dated 1984 (last revised in 2004), which will be valid up to about 2010.

WGS 84 is the reference coordinate system used by the Global Positioning System. The US CopyrightŠ Nuova Cultura

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) develops, maintains, and enhances WGS 84.

6. Virtual globes Mapping services are increasing in popularity day by day, both those exclusively present on the web (Googlemaps, OpenStreetMap, Bing, Yahoo! Maps, Maps of Apple), and those with interfaces installed by users, such as virtual globes including Google Earth and NASA World Wind.

The ability to handle a large amount of geographic information in a very short amount of time has contributed to their success. This is possible thanks to technology that processes data in small 256 x 256 pixel tiles, organizing them in simple spatial coordinates.

This organized fragmentation helps reduce the load of handled data, which is rendered only in the windows visualized. In this way, one can quickly browse thousands of aerial photographs and satellite images, dozens of vector data layers such as place names, administrative boundaries, roads, infrastructures and natural emergencies.

Developers have paid particular attention to elaborating highly intuitive information search software, and to making these also available on mobile devices with touchscreen interfaces.

These applications have great educational potential thanks to the diversity and heterogeneity of the geographic data presented, and thanks to the presence of different reprocessing tools.

Let us now consider Google Earth, in its standard version, because of its popularity among the public in general. This software, privately owned but released as freeware, distinguishes itself from other unprofessional mapping programs, for the possibility it provides to customize data thanks to some of the most popular tools in the GIS field. It is therefore very suitable for exercises that can be conducted in computer labs in schools.

Firstly, it is clearly an environment of integrated consultation: an all-embracing territorial reading is possible, whether it is a

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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micro-area or a macro-area. For example one can start with a purely morphological survey observing the Earth’s tectonic development, moving then to the shape of the continental plates of the great continental formations, following their development on a threedimensional model, shifting then to human geography observations, analyzing satellite photos, and finally arriving at the changes which have occurred in the course of human history.

Already at this level of usage, which requires no special computer skills, but simply the understanding of the intuitive navigation tools like zooming and moving the line of vision, one can draw inspiration for any topic related to the school curriculum, thanks also to the image quality, which often “speaks for itself”.

There are, however, additional features in the software, which are oriented towards a purely educational use: one can even consult the catalogues of historical maps, like the famous David Rumsey collection, or even add current or

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old maps to the virtual globe thanks to the Add Image Overlay function on the GE toolbar, a tool that, in fact, allows georeferencing the image that you choose to overlap.

GE also allows you to interactively create your own maps and add precise, linear, polygonal, and even three-dimensional information layers. You can, for example, draw an itinerary through a polyline. It is a simple task that can constitute an initial introduction to the main features provided by a real Geographic Information System (Figure 3).

To create custom geometries you simply need to select the desired item from the toolbar in the icon section. Through this action a window opens where you can define the graphic properties of the element that you want to draw.

After each click on the background single marker elements are added, the vertices of a line or of a polygon.

Figure 3. Displaying a route on Google Earth geobrowser. These tools can be extremely useful in the enhancement of cultural and tourist routes, as one can add notes, additional information and customized symbology.

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Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Margherita Azzari, Paola Zamperlin, Fulvio Landi

There are several exercises that can be proposed to students, from the most basic ones like drawing a specific route, such as a school trip, to more complex ones such as articulated routes or even digitizing historical or environmental emergencies.

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teaching, perfectly suits the study of geography through such modern tools11.

You can import or export your files in a KML/KMZ specific format in GE files. KML is a language developed to manage geospatial data in three dimensions based on XML format. This means that a single KML file can be processed and also developed through editing tools such as Notepad provided by Windows or other similar software.

In other words, Google Earth, when used under the guidance of a teacher, is a valuable tool to awaken the student’s awareness of space and geographical distances. It is also important in understanding the topological relationships between objects that persist in a given area, and most importantly, in learning about our world, without interpretation filters, but simply through direct image observation.

7. Teaching geography in schools with Smart Mapping, Interactive White Boards and GIS The Smart Mapping project was developed through the collaboration between the Applied Geography Laboratory and some Tuscan businesses that specialize in the development and diffusion of information technology (Figure 4).

It was created with the idea of showing geography teachers the intrinsic GIS and geobrowser potential when teaching the subject and, at the same time, it took advantage of the recently initiated educational innovation process which has provided multimedia interactive whiteboards or smart boards (IWB) in many Italian middle and high schools.

The “2.0 class” environment in fact, developed around the synergy between new technologies and rejuvenation of traditional

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Figure 4. The Home Page of the Smart Mapping project, set up by the Laboratory of Applied Geography of the University of Florence.

Source: http://www.geografia-applicata.it.

After all: “Geography teachers have always needed various tools for visual communication, which bring the world and its spaces into the classroom: large or small, near or far, related to the present or to the past. The teaching of geography can therefore benefit considerably from both the recent acquisitions of scientific research and from the new technologies for the representation of territory” (De Vecchis and Pesaresi, 2011, p. 16).

Specifically, Smart Mapping is configured as an innovative “container” of knowledge and tools, designed to explain in a clear and efficient way the history of cartography from its beginnings to the latest digital era achievements.

Thanks to hypertext and to the web-oriented nature of IWBs, many ideas can be provided on how to use the instruments, as extensively discussed in the previous paragraphs.

After all, we are all cartographers today: we can produce digital maps, post the places we 11

This term refers to the Cl@ssi 2.0 project, promoted by MIUR and INDIRE, aimed at the creation of: innovative learning environments, digital educational contents and teaching methods based on the use of the new technologies available to both teachers and students, first of all the IWB. For more information on this and other projects, please see: http://www.scuola-digitale.it/.

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stop at or where we live online, gather and send real-time information with our smartphones endowed with a GPS navigation system, transform the network into a geographical means of shared communication. So much so, in fact, that people talk of the GeoWeb, doing what a short time ago only professional cartographers could do: represent the world, helping spread geographical knowledge.

Despite all this, geographical knowledge has never been as underestimated as it is in schools today. We must therefore promote a new image of the subject that, starting from basic education, is able to bridge the gap between geographical research and teaching, so that knowledge and innovative methods can fully contribute in forming students’ critical personalities, autonomy, and self-awareness, according to their different ages.

The Smart Mapping Project takes its place in this scenario in which IWBs in the classrooms may be the key to a significant change in this unfavorable trend.

As is widely known, a multimedia board is an interactive surface on which the video output of a computer is reproduced. However, the board is able to operate simultaneously as an input device too, acting as a large touch screen12: this, together with the necessary Web infrastructure, allows the geography teacher to bring to class a number of tools for the production and study of geographic information, which then remains at the students’ disposal.

In this context, though, the first priority is the need to train the teachers, and not just the students, to manage and get the best use out of these tools, making them aware at the same time of its numerous opportunities, in terms of data and additional software, currently offered in internet.

In order to meet all the above-mentioned needs, Smart Mapping became a project structured in two distinct phases, one the 12

For more information on this device, among many other sources, please see: Betcher and Lee, 2009; Bonaiuti, 2009; Zambotti, 2010; Beauchamp and Parkinson, 2005, pp. 97-103; Magnaterra, 2010, pp.

20-26; Leonardi, 2012, pp. 11-17.

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continuation of the other, targeted at students as well as at their geography teachers. The initial program, dedicated to cartography and GIS knowledge using the IWB potential, was supplemented with a second and more technical phase, targeted at the actual training of teachers in the use of these new technologies.

Smart Mapping was presented for the first time as a workshop at the 2012 ABCD Congress on education, orientation and the working world in Genoa, where it received enthusiastic evaluations from teachers and experts. It later became the cornerstone in the teacher training course “IWBs and Geography”, sponsored by the University of Florence and AIIG - Tuscany.

It was included in the workshops organized for the TFA 2012/2013 regarding the A039 class – Geography, held at the University of Florence. It was during this first presentation stage, that the preconditions for the testing of the second part of the project were created, involving some geography teachers in technical institutes for tourism of the Florentine territory.

These meetings triggered the use of one of the leading GIS open source softwares currently available, QGIS, and led also to the acquisition of the logic and main features of this software, such as the technical knowledge necessary for the understanding of problems related to its management and the development of geographic information through this specific digital instrument.

Teacher training was done through the use of specific free tutorials downloaded from internet (such as Introducing GIS, http://linfiniti.com/ dla/) and other materials specially produced and shown to the teachers.

The IWB proved to be an extremely captivating instrument, fostering on one side better dialogue between trainers and teachers involved in the project, and on the other a clear vision of the tools and their operation.

Furthermore, part of the training was specifically dedicated to the use of online resources. Among these, for example, we should mention the geobrowser Google Earth Thematic Mapping Engine application

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(http://thematicmapping.org/engine/) 13, which provides the tools to generate thematic maps based on statistical data provided by the United Nations. On the web reference page it is possible to select a statistical indicator, set the data representation techniques (graphics, colours, scale indicators), choose the time frame (one single year, a group of years, all the way to a timeline animation), create the map layout by adding the title, comments, labels and key and, once the various parameters have been established, produce a specific .kmz file, viewable directly on Google Earth (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Smart Mapping, introductory page dedicated to virtual globes and their possible uses.

Source: http://www.geografia-applicata.it.

involving the same previously trained teachers who have expressed their willingness to continue this collaboration.

This didactic activity will be conducted following specific planning based, firstly, on the assessment of the students’ prerequisite knowledge, carefully measuring the contents, the educational strategies and the activities to be carried out.

Smart Mapping will be divided into three teaching units (What’s a map, A brief history of cartography, and We are all cartographers) calibrated for the first year of the Tourism Technical high school (Figure 6). In the first unit, discussion will be conducted on how to realize a plane which is a reduced, approximate or symbolic representation of a place, introducing the fundamental concepts of geographic coordinates, map projection, scale reduction and conventional symbols.

In the second unit the long and fascinating history of cartography will be summarized, and it will be closely linked to the evolution of its knowledge and techniques, but also to past and present political and cultural choices. Finally, in the third unit the foundation will be laid for the knowledge of the tools and cartographic techniques offered by internet, and more generally by all computer sciences.

The main purpose of this first phase of the project was therefore to get the teachers acquainted with the modern geographical and cartographic languages, necessary for the understanding of the many features of this subject’s contemporary communication: a complex vocabulary that uses multiple new sources, often to be integrated among themselves, so as to be able to effectively use the current geo-graphic languages.

We are currently working on the presentation of the project to the students inside classrooms, configured as a complete learning module, 13

This interesting project, conceived by Bjorn Sandvik, is based on the use of KML (Keyhole Markup Language) to create thematic maps. For further information on the author and on the methodology, refer to http://thematicmapping.org/.

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Figure 6. Smart Mapping, index of its three Teaching Units. Clicking on each icon, one can access each specific content.

Source: http://www.geografia-applicata.it.

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The defined objectives of the project will be discussed in class at the beginning of the activities and at the end in order to evaluate the skills effectively learned concerning: competence (in the use of appropriate geographic and cartographic language, how to correctly read a map, how to properly use web resources for basic geo-mapping operations) and knowledge (the main stages in the history of cartography, social and cultural causes underlying cartographic production, world exploration periods, distance planet vision and study of our planet through the use of geobrowsers, monitoring our surrounding environment).

In conducting these lessons effort will be made to limit the traditional frontal teaching methods in favor of more engaging teaching techniques, providing interactive exercises, online geography games and, mostly, the assisted use of everyday available tools such as the Google Geo Educational Package (Map Maker, Street View, Google Earth).

In this project the presence of an IWB in the classroom is essential in presenting the teaching units and the materials available for practice, providing with its tools added value to the lessons themselves, integrating and facilitating the presentation of the topics and stimulating the students’ attention through the activation of multiple perception and learning channels.

The IWB will allow for easy alternation between frontal teaching and individual or laboratory activities. In fact, this approach should be particularly appreciated by the students, who are now used to daily decoding information according to the modern communication rules of our digital world. Yet it will also be functional for the teacher, because the IWB will keep the students’ attention on the lesson thanks to the innovative methods. It will also use the instrument’s versatility and the connection to online educational resources and information available to help in introducing and explaining more complex concepts, making the best use of the classroom time.

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Acknowledgements Even if the paper was devised together by the Authors, P. Zamperlin wrote paragraph 1 and 6, M. Azzari wrote paragraphs 2, 3, 4, and 5, F. Landi wrote paragraph 7.

References 1. Anderson P., “What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education”, JISC Technology & Standards Watch, 2007, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/ documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf.

2. Andreucci G., Google Earth e Google Maps, Milan, FAG, 2011.

3. Backler A. and Stoltman J., “The Nature of Geographic Literacy”, ERIC Digest, 35, 1986, http://www.ericdigests.org/pre925/nature.htm.

4. Beauchamp G. and Parkinson J., “Beyond the ‘wow’ factor: developing interactivity with the interactive whiteboard”, School Science Review, 86, 313, 2005, pp. 97-103.

5. Betcher C. and Lee M., The interactive whiteboard revolution. Teaching with IWBs, Camberwell Victoria, Acer Press, 2009.

6. Bonaiuti G., Didattica attiva con la LIM. Metodologie, strumenti e materiali con la Lavagna Interattiva Multimediale, Trento, Erickson, 2009.

7. Crowder D.A., Google Earth Dummies, Hoboken NJ, Wiley, 2007.

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8. Department of Land Affairs – Eastern Cape – South Africa, Introducing GIS for Theachers and Learners, 2009, http://linfiniti.com/dla/.

9. De Vecchis G. and Pesaresi C., Dal banco al satellite. Fare geografia con le nuove tecnologie, Rome, Carocci, 2011.

10. Edelson D.E., Geographic Literacy in U.S. by 2025, 2009, http://www.esri.com/ news/arcnews/spring09articles/geographic -literacy.html.

11. Favretto A., I mappamondi virtuali. Uno strumento per la didattica della geografia e della cartografia, Bologna, Pàtron, 2009.

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Margherita Azzari, Paola Zamperlin, Fulvio Landi

12. Istituto Nazionale di Documentazione Innnovazione e Ricerca Educativa – INDIRE, Scuola digitale, http://www.scuola-digitale.it/.

13. Kerski J.J. and Clark J., The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data, Redlands, California, ESRI Press, 2012.

14. Lazzarin G., “I programmi per la visualizzazione delle immagini della Terra come ausilio didattico all’insegnamento della geografia: Google Earth e NASA World Wind”, Bollettino dell’Associazione Italiana di cartografia, 129-131, 2007.

15. Leonardi S., “LIM e pratiche di insegnamento: quali sfide per la valutazione?”, Form@re, 78, 2012, pp. 1117.

16. Longley P., Goodchild M., Maguire D. and Rhind D., Geographic Information Systems and Science, Hoboken NJ, Wiley, 2005.

17. Macchi G., Spazio e misura, Siena, Unisi Manuali, 2009, http://www.archeogr.unisi.it/ spazioemisura/.

18. Madsen L.M. and Nielsen T.T., “Learning to do geography? University students posing questions in GIS laboratory exercises”, Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift – Norwegian Journal of Geography, 67, 3, 2013, pp. 157-161, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00291951.2013.8032 59.

19. Magnaterra T., “La LIM in classe: un catalogo possibile”, Form@re, 10, 2010, pp.

20-26.

20. Masser I., Building European Spatial Data Infrastructures, Redlands, California, ESRI Press, 2010.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper 2006/findings.html.

23. Porter J.C., Encounter World Regional Geography, New Jersey, Pearson, 2011.

24. Porter J.C., Encounter Human Geography, New Jersey, Pearson, 2012.

25. Sandvik B., KML for Thematic Mapping, MSc in Geographical Information Science, University of Edimburgh, 2008a.

26. Sandvik B., Thematic Mapping Engine, MSc in Geographical Information Science, University of Edimburgh, 2008b.

27. Sandvik B., Thematic Mapping, http:// thematicmapping.org/.

28. Schultz R.B., Kerski J.J. and Patterson T.C., “The Use of Virtual Globes as a Spatial Teaching Tool with Suggestions for Metadata Standards”, Journal of Geography, 107, 1, 2008, pp. 27-34.

29. Schuurman N., “Tweet Me Your Talk: Geographical Learning and Knowledge Production 2.0”, The professional Geographer, 65, 3, 2013, pp. 369-377.

30. Stuart Sinton D. and Lund J.J., Understanding Place. GIS and Mapping across the Curriculum, Redlands, California, ESRI Press, 2007.

31. Tomlison R., Thinking About GIS, Redlands, California, ESRI Press, 2007.

32. Zambotti F., Didattica inclusiva con la LIM. Strategie e materiali per l’individualizzazione, Trento, Erikson, 2010.

21. National Academy of Sciences, Learning to think spatially: GIS as support systems in the K-12 Curriculum, Washington, The National Academy Press, 2006.

22. National Geographic Society – The National Geographic Education Foundation, Final Report, Washington DC, National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs, Geographic Literacy Study, 2006,

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Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 43-55 DOI: 10.4458/2379-04

Web 2.0 and Neogeography. Opportunities for teaching geography Giuseppe Borrusoa a

Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Aziendali, Matematiche e Statistiche, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy Email: giuseppe.borruso@econ.units.it Received: July 2013 – Accepted: December 2013

Abstract This paper is focused on the use of the geographical contents in Web 2.0 applications for didactics and particularly as a valuable source for many of the operations traditionally carried out when working with geographical data and issues in a GIS environment. The paper represents an introductory examination of to date well known topics concerning geographical data and software but with the focus of using them for teaching geographical issues and introducing them for the use of (online) Geographic Information tools.

In particular it will be pointed out how geographical questions can be raised and tackled by means of data and features spread over the web and containing geographical data. There is also an analysis of how they can be elaborated cartographically. The paper opens with a short introduction to the geographical “revolutions” that took place in the late XX and early XXI centuries in the digital age, with the advent of GIS and the so-called neogeography. A brief review on how GIS and geospatial technologies in general can be effectively used to disseminate geographical issues follows. The attention is then focused on an exercise, that can be proposed to geography students, or that is, the analysis of the Italian 2013 general election. The exercise foresees the use of geocoded tweets from Twitter, the popular social media, and some of the hashtags used in the pre-election periods (#elezioni2013) to observe their concentrations. The exercise also implies working with a free web GIS service such as GeoCommons, which together with other families of similar online software, make it possible to produce maps showing some thematic representations of the results obtained as well as analyzing the data with more than basic visualization functions.

Keywords: Geography, Cartography, Teaching, Neogeography, Twitter, Web 2.0, Italian Elections 2013, #elezioni2013

1. The revolutions of Geographic Information and support to teaching The advent of Geographical Information Systems in the last decades of the 20th century and the so called “Neogeography” at the

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beginning of the following century represent two revolutions in the (recent) history of cartographic representation. In both cases such revolutions are the offspring of the digital age and, although the two phenomena share some similarities, they do not have the only common element in the mere

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digitalization of geographical contents and must be considered separately.

The initial pioneer applications of Geographical Information Systems date back to the 60s of the twentieth century with the CGIS Canadian Geographical Information System (Coppock and Rhind, 1991) project, while the operational and commercial uses can be colllocated during the 90s and the early 21st century, when when there is a wide diffusion of commercial desktop GIS packages and a flourishing of journals, magazines and books (Longley et al., 1991; Burrough and McDonnell, 1998; Worboys, 1995 Iliffe, 2000 Robinson et al., 1995; Dorling and Fairbairn, 1997; Hearnshaw and Unwin, 1994; Raper, 2000). In these years the debate arises also on the consideration of Geographic Information as a “Science” rather than just “Systems” and on the relationship with the other disciplines (i.e., spatial analysis and quantitative geography: Cressie, 1991; Bailey and Gatrell, 1995; Fotheringham et al., 2000). These are also the years in which the relations with Internet and its applications start to spread. The teaching and dissemination side is generally occupied by courses at Master level on Geographic Information Science, delivered in a distancelearning fashion using the Internet, often at intercollegiate or international level (i.e., see the UNIGIS experience on distance learning GIS courses at EU level). Also we can recall the case of the US NCGIA (National Centre for Geographic Information Analysis) Core curriculum in GISystems (then evolved into GIScience) as a teaching environment for basic contributions on Geographical Information topics. The Internet also became the environment where Geographic Information applications start to be developed, particularly in terms of visualization of online geographical data or pre-prepared digital maps Longley et al.

(2001).

The years of 2000 consolidate what started in the previous decade with a growing integration of the GIS world with the other disciplines referring to some spatial components. In these years the bases are established for the following revolution. A vast majority of data becomes in fact available also, and often, freely, such as satellite imagery and vector data. A growing Copyright© Nuova Cultura

alphabetization of users can also be observed, with digital geographic application being used in media and devices. Internet also becomes increasingly available to many users and offers the possibility to broadcast and distribute geographic information, once limited by bandwidth dimension. Three elements in particular can be highlighted at the basis of the spreading of Neogeography. First of all, the diffusion of the low-cost Internet networks, at least in Western countries, with (relatively) high speed networks and a considerable volume of transferrable data. A second element is the decision by US president Clinton in 2000 to eliminate the Selective Availability from in-clear GPS signals, thus eliminating the induced error and therefore enhancing the precision available also for private users to a few meters. A third element is the unprecedented diffusion of handheld, mobile devices, starting from laptops and netbook computers, moving to ephemeral PDAs and now substituted by smartphones and tablets, now used not just for phone calls and text messages but for a wealth of applications related to Internet connections and personal location.

Such a combination of different elements allows a public, which is wider than the “traditional” GIS users, to acquire, elaborate and present data with a geographical content, linking various elements to a geographical location. It is in fact possible to georeference images, short videos, comments, documents and other sorts of data and information. It is also possible to redistribute and share such contents with other users through the Internet, thus sharing the categories of content creators and users, as in the logic of “wiki” or “web 2.0” applications.

Goodchild (2007) introduced “Volunteered Geographic Information” (VGI), as the harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic information provided by individuals voluntarily creating their own contents by marking the locations of occurring events or by labelling certain existing features, not already shown on the map. Goodchild (2007) introduced the concept of “citizens as sensors”, with neogeographers producing a small-g geography - different from the big-G Geography as the science of space and place focused on the personal and individual, while Turner (2013) in conversation with Goodchild, Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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extended the idea to cognizant individuals, with neogeography as “the domain of new possibilities that are now approachable by anyone”.

Goodchild talked about a democratization of Geographic Information, no longer just placed in the hands of a few professionals but available to a wide set of users.

The term of VGI - Volunteered Geographic Information is also used (Elwood, 2008; Elwood, Goodchild and Sui, 2012) implying the presence of volunteers updating maps and producing a geographical content on their own.

Eisnor (2006) interprets instead neogeography as a different “set of practices out or parallel from those of professional geographers, less related to standards and academics but more related to freedom of expression, this including also art”.

On the other hand, authors such as Turner highlight the technological aspects related to new devices and the ways of capturing geographical position and sharing it among different users and through the Internet.

Wilson and Graham (2013) recently stated scholars involved in geographical research are more and more admitting the power of what is referred to as “neogeography”, Volunteered Geographic Information, etc. In particular they notice how neogeography highlights social practices that are explicitly spatially referenced and particularly the fact that it, rather than just collecting and presenting geographic information – what is possible as a “basic” function in a standard GIS package – “enacts new relationships in the coconstruction of spatial knowledge”.

Neogeography appears therefore as something different from the “neo” initiatives in various periods of time attached to Geography as a discipline - let us recall terms such as “new geography” or “nouvelle geographie” – but more related to some technical and “fun” aspect of (geographical) data acquisition and manipulation. However, although Neogeography and Geography appear as separate phenomena, geographers and spatial scientists cannot ignore neogeography, particularly with reference to the possible interaction between the different communities and exchanges of expertise and knowledge.

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al. (2001) highlighted a relationship between complexity, number of users and costs of GIS and applications. A higher degree of complexity that could be found in professional and desktop GIS corresponded to a lower number of potential users and increasing costs for software. If this can be considered true for the period of the “first revolution”, recent enhancements of GIS and new solutions related to Web 2.0 and Neogeography can lead us to consider a different shape, where Internet GIS (2.0), virtual globes, mobile and Neogeographical solutions combine increasing levels of complexity, an increasing number of users and a reduction in costs (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The pyramid of complexity, costs and users of GIS solutions. Source: elaboration from Longley et al. (2001), in Borruso (2013).

Teaching geographical contents however finds fertile ground over these two decades, in which geographical contents are tackled and managed in parallel with the digital revolution.

In parallel the same events that favored the emerging of Neogeography are helping awareness and familiarity on the one side with technology, and with geographical issues on the other. The familiarity with mobile applications, together with the “democratic” use of digital imagery and other geographical data in the news and everyday applications, coupled with an increased interaction with the web paved the way for a new informed audience, able to visually explore and better understand geographical issues

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(Bellezza, 2009; De Vecchis and Pesaresi, 2011; Favretto, 2009 a and b; Giorda, 2006; Pesaresi, 2007a and b). Apart from the benefit of having, from the geography teachers’ point of view, an informed audience, the very spread of applications and phenomena implying “geolocation” (as coupling geographical coordinates to things on the Earth is today said in jargon) is increasing the need for prepared “volunteers” or simply “informed users” and therefore potentially increasing the actual audience for geographical courses. By way of example, a MOOC (Massive On-line Open Course) on the “Geospatial Revoultion” was recently produced by the Penn State University and broadcasted by the Coursera platform, reaching around 40,000 students (Robinson, 2013 a and b).

2. The geographical contents in web 2.0 applications So a question arises: How can the present Web 2.0 be characterized by a geographical content and how can it be used?

As a starting point we have to recall a definition of Web 2.0 that to date represents a new way in which users interact with the Internet. The different definitions are quite recent and date back to the beginning of 2000 and the general idea is that it represents a system different from the top-down centralized web site, therefore integrated with the desktop, allowing the user to actively interact with the official content creator (Graham M., 2005; Graham P., 2005). The web is still seen as a platform where users can operate some functions on the web and re-distribute them. Websites can therefore represent an environment where participation can take place, allowing users to add value to a content they produce – maybe retrieving the raw materials from the web itself – before sharing it with other users / creators (O’Reilly, 2005; Robb, 2005).

The examples provided for a differentiation between the “Web 1.0” and the following “Web 2.0” can be related to two famous encyclopedias.

The Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia.

The former represents the classical form of Copyright© Nuova Cultura

disseminating information in a top-down approach, with the different topics tackled by authors and readers just able to read them. The second one is characterized by being in a constant “draft” version, with contents being constantly updated by a wide community of authors, related to the Hawaiian word “wiki” meaning “quick” and aiming at a fast type of collaboration. Readers are invited to contribute and to update the different topics, so readers and contributors can coincide and therefore are part of a same community. As a result, there is a positive effect of the system of self-correction of errors, and early studies published on Nature (Giles, 2005) proved that the number of correct references was very close between the two encyclopedias.

Geographical and cartographical contents are strongly present in the Web 2.0 features and different families can be observed, all of these implying different types and characteristics. All these components can be considered also in terms of the use that can be made of them in academic teaching.

2.1 Active users’ cartographic behavior This is the most explicit work done by volunteers in creating geographical and cartographical contents in particular.

Cartographical products realized under a “wiki” logic are to date quite widespread in different projects, spanning from the most anarchical realizations, with the most important and well known one, the OpenStreetMap project, to the users contributing to the update and correction of both commercial and public bodies’ geographical data, as most car GPS receivers are doing in the private sector, followed by national mapping agencies in the other case (USGS, 2013). Projects such as OpenStreetMaps or Wikimapia plan the realization of a global cartography, with a logic of prosumers (= producers + consumers) realizing and updating maps adding details according to their knowledge of a certain place, helped by

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handheld devices hosting a GNSS (Global navigation and positioning satellite system like the US GPS) receiver as well as software capable of handling and managing the cartographic representation of such data. These data sources attracted the interest of GIS package vendors and Internet-related companies like Google now offering OpenStreetMap products as baselines for their search engines as well as a background cartographic layer where users can upload their own data.

Users however can be a valuable source also for official data producers as geographical data update is a costly and time-consuming activity, tackled with growing difficulties by both mapping agencies and private companies, with enormous risks of producing already out-of-date products and loss of market shares. So in many cases official producers are committed to producing the backbone of spatial data, allowing the users to highlight and update what has changed in time and therefore giving the official producer a role of validating body of crowdsourcing (outsourced to the crowd) activity. However, often such volunteers lack basic geographic skills, being more expert on the IT component. Also, “wiki” realizations are proving to be clustered in limited numbers of active users and locations (OSMstats, 2013).

2.2 Geographic informative content in social networks and media Another kind of content is the one present in social networks and media. The latter do represent expressions of the Web 2.0 as well, hosting individuals’ and organizations’ comments and contents being shared through the Internet and among the communities of users.

Documents, pictures, videos, text, news, etc. can be georeferenced and therefore located on a map. Social networks and media allow people to be in contact and share different kinds of contents. Recalling the graph theory, social networks (i.e., Facebook) in particular make it possible to establish some sort of relations

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among users by means of “friendship”, allowing the establishing of links among nodes (=users) and a certain level of interaction with both direct connections and indirect connections (friends of my friends). Through a relationship like friendship, comments, videos, pictures and even maps and geographical contents can be shared, often also in a working environment where social networks can remotely connect colleagues in other rooms, departments, countries, etc.

Social media (i.e., Twitter) can also be presented as a network as in graph theory with nodes, links and flows. However, here the network is oriented, as we are not dealing with “friendship” but people “following” others and people having “followers”, so a small number of people is followed by many other people, while most of the people follow more people than being followed. In this way a hierarchical structure of such network also arises, with quite a limited number of people expressing comments, ideas and images being followed and perceived by a vast quantity of public. Generally little space is given to a message that is no longer than 140 characters. Contents must be squeezed or readdressed to a website where broader information is stored.

Social networks and media host also a geographic component.

This can be spontaneously declared by the user once they log in or the positional information can be detected by the device a person is using. Smartphones and tablets can be located by cell phone identifiers, and also the presence of smartphones having integrated GNSS – GPS devices make it possible to locate users and features they interact with quite precisely. Such media have the advantage, from a researcher’s point of view, of producing a wealth of individual data and often such data is referred to quite a precise location.

However quite a limited number of messages sent through the social networks and media host a location. Recent data however demonstrate that just a small percentage – around 5% – of messages sent through social media (or tweets) have a geographical component (Cosenza,

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2013). In any case it is worth noting that, as these messages are public, this limited amount of locational information can also be useful in understanding, for instance, trends, moods and, going to the private markets, shopping habits of people fitted with a smart-phone or other portable device. Extra care needs to be taken with this kind of geographical data, as the level of detail is often very different from one kind of content to another, and the same goes for the quality – i.e., smartphones can use a GPS receiver or mobile network cell to locate themselves.

2.3 Cartographic productions 2.0 A third opportunity related to bottom-up, web 2.0 applications deals with the use of open source and open access software for traditional, as well as advanced, geographical analyses, coupled with the use of data freely available as those obtained – as outlined above – via crowdsourcing and volunteers. Desktop GIS packages used to offer a complete set of tools to operate on geographical data, while low-cost GIS and Internet GIS offered little more than

basic navigation functions and visualization. To date also “geocomputation” is becoming stronger in Internet based applications, so not always is there a need to rely on stand-alone GIS packages (both free or commercial) and many operations can be performed by a web browser.

In particular, solutions such as GeoCommons (http://geocommons.com/) can be considered to carry out GIS analysis and visualization, in many cases allowing the user to focus on the data and the analysis with a basic knowledge of what is happening in the “black box”. Such applications in fact allow the user to set a cartographic background on top of the one they can visualize the elaborations performed. GeoCommons allows the uploading of data from the user as well as the use of basic cartography and elaborations carried out by other users – still with a 2.0 approach.

Furthermore, GeoCommons makes it possible to control important cartographic elements like class intervals, display, colours, etc., as well as providing statistics on the data (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Thematic map of geocoded tweets hosting the hashtag #elezioni2013, via http://geocommons.com.

Source: elaboration on geocoded tweets.

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Other applications do exist allowing different levels of interaction with software and data.

Similarly to Geocommons, ArcGIS on line by ESRI (ArcGIS.com) makes it possible to put together data from a variety of servers and also to upload one’s own data, realizing thematic maps.

3. An exercise of geographic data retrieval and (web) mapping: general elections, tweets, cartography In this paragraph a demonstration of the use of Web 2.0 in terms of data and software is carried out with the scope of showing how geographical exercises and analysis can be made using data and tools that are today readily available.

In doing this exercise the aim is to use data and software that is freely available or easily retrievable through the web in order to produce maps of social phenomena.

The interest in in analyzing the “2.0” side of the 2013 Italian general elections, by means of the short messages (140 characters) broadcasted as “tweets” using the popular social media Twitter. The second aspect was related to the possibility of using “2.0” tools to carry out geographical analysis and visualization without relying on expensive data and software, thus opening up opportunities for educational activities too.

In this case we propose a workflow implying the following steps to be followed by geography students: 1. Retrieve tweets from the social media “Twitter” holding a geographical component and a particular hashtag or research key (http://pro.topsy.com); 2. Transform tweets into – basic – geographical data, geocoding them through an on-line geocoder (http://www.gpsvisualizer-com); 3. Load them onto a on-line GIS, taking care of the data consistency and meta-data organization (http://geocommons.com); Copyright© Nuova Cultura

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4. Visualize them in an on-line GIS environment; 5. Analyse the data and represent them in the on-line GIS environment; 6. Make some comments on the data and results obtained.

The test was carried out using data on the Italian General elections by analyzing Twitter.

In particular the tweets, or the 140 character text messages broadcasted to followers, containing a reference to the elections were analyzed. We analyzed those containing a hashtag – this is the name of a particular keyword with the “#” character at the beginning, useful for making queries on particular topics – like #elezioni2013.

The problem is that this kind of research cannot match all the tweets and messages related to elections, as not all the users use hashtags in their messages. Another problem relies on the fact that only a short percentage of tweets can be geocoded. Actually, most of the users tweet via mobile phones and in very few cases is the geolocation function kept active, either by means of embedded GNSS (Global Navigation and Positioning Satellite Systems) or by mobile telecommunication network cell identification, so just a 5% percentage of overall tweets can be geocoded (Cosenza, 2013).

As Twitter allows the recording of tweets and trends for a very short time, other web-based programs were chosen to retrieve tweets using hashtags and geographical location. We relied on TOPSY Pro a web-based service to retrieve information on search and to analyze social features over the web (https://pro.topsy.com). In particular we restricted our analysis on tweets published in the two-month period preceding and including the general election days, from 1 January 2013 to 28 February 2013. It was therefore possible to include all the period before the elections of 24 and 25 February.

In Figure 3 it is possible to see how tweets were broadcasted in the election period with quite a stable trend during the first month followed by a dramatic acceleration during the Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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weeks preceding the election and a peak in the election days.

Then the attention was focused on the geographical location of the tweets and different

levels of aggregation were chosen. An initial analysis was made on the spatial distribution in the world, in Italy and in the regions.

Figure 3. Exposure, or the number of times tweets with hashtag #elezioni2013 were displayed for twitter users, via https://pro.topsy. com.

Source: elaboration on geocoded tweets.

From Table 1 it can be seen that unsurprisingly most of the tweets were located in Italy, but other countries appeared (i.e., the US).

The absolute values concerning the Italian regions show Lombardy and Lazio prevailing as the top scorers in terms of tweets, followed by Emilia Romagna and Piedmont. Our tweets were than compared, as a distribution, with the ones of the overall population, this time aggregated to macro-regions like Northwest, Northeast, Centre and Southern Italy including the islands. The raw data can be observed in Table 2, while the percentage values are more interesting and can be observed in Table 3.

We notice in particular how a higher percentage of twitters is present in the Northwestern regions while in the Northeast and Southern Italy such values are lower than the CopyrightŠ Nuova Cultura

population percentage. This can be related to the presence of press agencies and important newspapers as well as political and social movers and shakers. It must in fact be said that ordinary people but mainly important figures in the social, economic and political arena, as well as journalists, use twitter as a social media to communicate thoughts, impressions and voting intentions and their weight, in terms of followers and message diffusion, is undoubtedly higher.

From Table 3 we can also see that Northwestern and Central Italy were the most active areas in terms of tweets hosting #elezioni2013 hashtags.

Among the areas considered, cities play an important role. Milano, Turin and Rome host the highest absolute values in terms of tweets, followed by Naples. Such data were used also for a cartographic representation.

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Locations Lombardy Lazio Emilia-Romagna Piedmont Campania Tuscany Umbria Veneto Sicily Liguria Apulia Sardinia Calabria Marche Abruzzo Friuli-Venezia Giulia Trentino-Alto Adige Basilicata Valle d’Aosta Molise Italy World

Estimated tweets 990 556 447 394 385 329 279 164 161 158 138 94 48 48 46 43 26 12 5 1 7427 8013

Table 1. Tweets estimated per geographical area with hashtag #elezioni2013.

Source: Istat, 2013; Twitter, 2013.

Population 2012 Northwest 15752503 Northeast 11442262 Centre 11591705 South and 20607737 Islands Area

Twitters 1330100 709700 916500

Tweets #elezioni2013 1547 680 1212

1475800

885

Table 2. Population, twitters and tweets estimated per macro geographical area with hashtag #elezioni2013.

Source: Istat, 2013; Twitter, 2013.

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% Population Northwest 26.52 Northeast 19.26 Centre 19.52 South and 34.70 Islands Area

% twitters 28.30 15.10 19.50

% #elezioni2013 35.78 15.73 28.03

31.40

20.47

Table 3. % of Population, twitters and tweets estimated per macro geographical area with hashtag #elezioni2013.

Source: Istat, 2013; Twitter, 2013.

In Figure 4 we can observe a screenshot of part of the procedure dedicated to importing data organized as a spreadsheet list of cities containing tweets hosting the hashtag #elezioni2013 aggregated at city level.

GeoCommons allow both the geocoding of data listed in a spreadsheet with two columns dedicated to geographical coordinates in decimal degrees, and the geocoding of data based on some geographical name, such as a city or region. In this case the list of cities was previously referenced using an automatic webbased geocoding system (GPSvisualizer http://www.gpsvisualizer.com).

Figure 5 represents the cartographic visualization of the tweets hosting the hashtag #elezioni2013 aggregated at city level.

GeoCommons makes it possible to choose the basic cartographic layer on top of which a user can overlay their datasets and elaboration. This simple example of point data can be used to present a graduated symbol map in which every city is plotted with a different dimension of dot, proportional to the value of tweets. The choice of class intervals can be made by observing the statistical distribution of the dataset. It is worth noting that such function is available also on destktop software but only a few years ago it needed to be operated outside the GIS environment and in standard spreadsheet packages, therefore keeping the process even longer even for expert users.

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Figure 4. Cities containing tweets hosting the hashtag #elezioni2013 aggregated at city level via http://geocommons.com.

Source: elaboration on geocoded tweets.

Figure 5. Graduated symbols of http://geocommons.com.

Source: elaboration on geocoded tweets.

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geocoded

tweets,

hosting

the

hashtag

#elezioni2013,

via

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The results can be stored and shared with other users that can rely on such data for visualization and research purposes. So GeoCommons as well as the data used in this application can also be of valuable use for training people in Geographic Information and Geography. However it must be stressed that attention must be paid to data pre-processing and preparation, as the web-based system allows little room for errors in misspelling data and organization, so some basic GIS skills should be used in order to correctly visualize and effectively use the data.

4. Conclusions In this paper we experimented a set of simple geographical analyses useful to analyze some aspects related to the recent Italian general election, in particular focusing on the spatial distribution of geocoded tweets, or messages broadcasted through the popular social media Twitter. The analysis showed a clustering of tweets using certain keywords or hashtags in some regions and cities, particularly the main cities and those hosting traditional media and political parties, such as Rome and Milan. A more in-depth analysis should be carried out, in order to better insert the usability of a limited amount of data like geocoded tweets with hashtags into the socio-demographic features of the Italian population. However at this stage such an analysis appeared mainly as an opportunity to perform operations that are now standard in a GIS environment using both data and software freely available on line and created with the contribution of users. Data were in fact collected as tweets aggregated at different geographical levels, like cities and regions. It was then possible to geocode them and to elaborate them into an on-line program allowing not just basic GIS and cartographic functions.

The paper therefore reached an objective of exploring the possibility of low-cost data management, elaboration and cartographic realization, without the need to rely on complex and costly stand-alone GIS packages and therefore of opening new opportunities for

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teaching geographical topics.

Critical aspects must however be considered, as the need to validate data obtained through social media on one side, and the need to rely on more robust software for more in-depth analysis on the other, although the web-service used here proved to be quite interesting at least to present simple cartographic representations.

This kind of exercise implied working with data and transforming them into geographical ones, adding extra-information on their position and locating them on (digital) maps. Such kind of activity, as well as getting accustomed to GI tools and operations and geographic phenomena, can represent a valuable support to teaching for students having the opportunity to work with their hands on real geographical contents.

Moreover, such activities could be promoted to train “neogeographers” and “volunteers” too, who often lack basic geographic skills and who could therefore act in their future data collecting activities with greater awareness.

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17. Favretto A., I mappamondi virtuali: uno strumento per la didattica della geografia e della cartografia, Bologna, Pàtron, 2009a.

18. Favretto A., “Vent’anni di World Wide Web: la cartografia è veramente di moda?”, Ambiente, Società e Territorio. Geografia nelle Scuole, 5, 2009b, pp. 8-13.

19. Fotheringham A.S., Brunsdon C. and Charlton M., Quantitative Geography – Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis, London, SAGE, 2000.

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21. Giles J., “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head”, Nature, 438, 7070, 2005, pp. 1-20.

22. Giorda C., “Il cammino della cartografia dall’astrazione al paesaggio: la Terra vista da Google Earth”, Proceedings of the 48 National Congress of AIIG – Italian Association of Geography Teachers (Campobasso, 2-5 September 2005), 2006, pp. 247-251.

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24. Goodchild M., “Citizens as Sensors: The World of Volunteered Geography”, GeoJournal, 69, 4, 2007, pp. 211-221.

25. Goodchild M. and Turner A., “Neogeography and Volunteered Geographic Information: a conversation with Micheal Goodchild and Andrew Turner”, Environment and Planning A, 45, 2013, pp. 10-18.

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37. OSMstats, http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com /index.php?item=countries.

38. Pesaresi C., “Punti di contatto tra informatica e geografia: approcci e nuovi orizzonti didattici per la scuola”, in Morri R. and Pesaresi C. (Eds.), Innovazione cartografica e geografia, Semestrale di Studi e Ricerche di Geografia, 1, 2007a, pp.

9-60.

39. Pesaresi C., “Google Earth e Microsoft Live Maps nella didattica della geografia. Uno zoom su alcuni paesaggi italiani”, Ambiente, Società e Territorio. Geografia nelle Scuole, 6, 2007b, pp. 40-41.

40. Raper J., Multidimensional Geographic Information Science, London, Taylor and Francis, 2000.

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Turner A., Introduction to Neogeography, Sebastopol, CA, O’Reilly, 2005.

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Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 57-66 DOI: 10.4458/2379-05

A Geographical issue: the contribution of Citizenship Education to the building of a European citizenship.

The case of the VOICEs Comenius network Stefano Malatestaa, Jesus Granados Sanchezb Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione “Riccardo Massa”, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy Global University Network for Innovation (UNESCO, United Nations University and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), Barcelona, Spain Email: stefano.malatesta@unimib.it a

b

Received: October 2013 – Accepted: November 2013

Abstract Citizenship Education is currently a consolidated issue within several European curricula. It has been integrated in national educational laws in different ways: as cross-curricular education (UK, Italy), as a subject (France, Spain) or as a skill (Ireland). Despite these differences, there is a common agreement on the ethical value of Citizenship Education and on its main aim: to foster students’ sense of local, national and European citizenship. In some ways this goal has been inspired by Morin’s path to a “plural” education and a planetary citizenship (Morin, 2000).

Social sciences, and in particular Geography and History, keep the function of giving tools able to show how a dialogue among the different scales is possible. Nevertheless European citizenship is undergoing a constant redefinition due to the European enlargement process, the role of Europe inside national jurisdictions and to the changes in national curricula. This evolution directly affects the guiding function conferred to school in terms of skills, aims and themes; therefore competences and methods adopted by teachers may have to be reconsidered.

This essay presents the first results of the updating of the state of the art of this issue that has been carried out by the Citizenship Education Research Group of the VOICEs Comenius network (The Voice of European Teachers).

The main aim of this international research group is to face the challenge of building a European citizenship by developing a comparative analysis of teachers’ practices and strategies in different local, regional and national contexts, aiming to contribute, with renewed ideas, to the debate on this promising field of research.

Keywords: European Citizenship, Geographical Education, Citizenship Education, National Curricula, Educational Structures, Scale, Place

1. Introduction: the VOICEs European Comenius network VOICEs (the Voice of European Teachers) is

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a European Comenius network which includes ten universities in ten different European countries (Table 1). The network includes university teachers, researchers, teacher training

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students and primary and secondary school teachers and their pupils. VOICEs is the continuance of two previous projects: Face-it (2007-2009) and ETSize (2010-2011). Both projects were focused on the development of the figure of the European teachers and their proper education. The overall aim was to develop both content and a methodology to enable students (of teacher training colleges and faculties) to acquire the knowledge and to develop the competences, skills and attitudes required to become a European teacher, professionally at international level.

The aim of VOICEs is to contribute to the development of quality lifelong learning by integrating the European Teacher model developed during Face-it and ETSize, which includes the focus on diversity, the multiperspectivity of identity, European citizenship in which respect and tolerance are keywords, and European professionalism which needs attitudes by teachers to combat racism, prejudices and xenophobia, among other things.

The purpose of the network is to foster the development of the following European teacher competences:  to cooperate with others: teachers work in a profession, which should be based on the values of social inclusion and nurturing the potential of every learner;  to work with information, knowledge and technology: teachers need to be able to work with a variety of types of knowledge;  to work in ways which increase the collective intelligence of learners and to co-operate and collaborate with colleagues to enhance their own learning and teaching;  to promote mobility and co-operation in Europe, and to encourage intercultural respect and understanding;  to work with and in society: teachers contribute to preparing learners to be globally responsible in their role as EU citizens.

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ITUNINSNI

YRSTNOC

Hogeschool Edith Stein / OnderwijsCentrum Twente

NhtaTtehteN ehT

HUB-EHSAL

mtNgleB

SeloteTle eateevevB a htam ertNve

Ui le

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

Ie NI

University of Derby

Seletha leghvB

Uludag University, Bursa

NeertI

PHZ Zentralschweiz Schwytz

UnlerteN eh

Pädagogische Hochschule Steiermark, Graz

teTeel

Universidade do Minho (UMinho)

lveeeg N

Palacký University in Olomouc (UP Olomouc)

YrtrhaOtiecNlr

Table 1. The VOICEs network.

A second aim of the network is to expand and deepen the goals, content, methods and learning materials for European teachers, and to develop a structure of a European master program.

Teachers’ work should be embedded in a professional continuum of lifelong learning, which includes initial teacher education, induction and ongoing professional development, as they cannot be expected to possess all the necessary skills on completing their initial teacher education. A master program for European teachers does not exist in any of the teacher training institutes involved. The network will develop an international platform for European teachers’ knowledge sharing, the acquiring and disseminating of articles, project examples and research projects to promote high

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performance and innovation, and to implement a European dimension in systems and practices.

The main VOICEs’ thematic research fields are: European diversity, European identity, European citizenship, European professionalism, language competences, new teacher education and early years development. A thematic research group carries out each issue.

In this paper we focus on the Citizenship Education Research Group. The group has been charged with proposing new horizons and new tools for teacher training, with a specific focus on Citizenship Education (CE) in a European perspective. The group includes members coming from five different countries (Italy, UK, Spain, The Netherlands and Belgium), and it involves students of teacher training, primary and secondary school teachers, university teachers and researchers specialized in a wide body of subjects such as Humanities, Geography, Biology and History. This is undoubtedly a potential source of difficulties, but also a stimulating and diverse challenging atmosphere for carrying on with the great job done during FACE-IT and ETsize, the VOICEs’ previous projects, (see www.europeanteachers.eu). During our preliminary working meeting, that took place in Brussels in 2013, we firstly stressed our starting key-points1:  Citizenship is a consolidated issue within several European curricula and it is often viewed either as a crosscurricular competence or as a transdisciplinary form of education.  CE has to cope with a transforming and evolving idea of Europe that affects the meaning of being a European citizen in the 21st Century.

These two key-points are both sources of complexities and possibilities, and therefore, by starting from these basic targets, the group set its own research’s drivers: to refresh and to compare.

Refreshing the idea of CE across a multinational continent and throughout a transforming era, requires a previous work of comparison among practices and structures teachers use and 1

These themes emerged after some workshop sections elicited using qualitative techniques such as mental map drawing, round tables and brainstorms.

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develop within their own geographical, social and cultural contexts. Achieving these aims is, of course, a demanding challenge. Therefore we tried to plan our “Road to 2015” by pinpointing our general aims and tasks in three phases. The first one consists in:  reflecting on the new horizons of CE across Europe;  defining common theoretical and methodological frameworks on CE; The research is structured on a series of parallel packages. This paper presents the results achieved by carrying out the first phase: a review of documents, declarations, reports and academic papers on CE in Europe, in order to produce a updated state-of-the-art.

As a second phase of the project, the research group aims to involve a number of schools and teachers coming from different geographical contexts, and makes an analysis of experiences, best practices and projects coming from the schools included in our network.

The final phase will consist in:  developing a CE Toolkit for primary and secondary school teachers;  promoting a teachers-oriented approach to CE across Europe.

2. Educating citizens: rethinking some pivots of Citizenship Education?

In this essay we read the pedagogical structure of CE by adopting some key-concepts of Political Geography: scale, State, region and place. Our goal is to stress the need for a geographical glance at CE across Europe.

In the last years a number of geographers have worked on the relationship between geographical education and CE stressing its pedagogical relevance (van der Schee, 2003; International Geographical Union, 2006) or its political dimension (Staeheli, Attoh and Mitchell, 2013); starting from a national perspective (Reid and Scott, 2005), followed by a European one (Keane and Villanueva, 2009), to a global one.

This relationship directly concerns the political dimension of school education, above all if we think of citizenship as acting at Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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different scales: the local, the national, the supra national and the global ones. In the contemporary debate two distinguished voices stressed some relevant issues regarding citizenship as a multi-scale concept: from a pedagogical point of view, Morin (2000) claimed the need to teach “la citoyenneté terrestre” both as a political and pedagogical attempt to build mutual relationships between humans and society and to think the global community as the only possible “citizenship horizon”. Habermas (2012) recently argued that Europe is facing a political transition due to the crisis of the “nation state” and that the Union has to decide between transnational democracy and post-democratic executive federalism. At the same time he asserted that we should “continue to cling to the European Union” (ivi, p. 1) against the “defeatism of the Eurosceptics” (ivi, p. 13), and that we should keep in mind that the “goal of a democratic constitution of world society calls for the creation of a community of world citizens” (ivi, p. 58). In other words we should consider ourselves as post-cosmopolitan citizens (Dobson, 2006).

Therefore, beyond the general agreement on CE’s structures, and beyond the mature legitimization of CE as a school subject, primary and secondary schools teachers and educators have to deal with the changing meanings societies and communities give to citizenship, identity, culture and belongings, as claimed by Habermas and Morin. Referring to this challenge, some years ago, Banks (2004) stressed the quest for common values in CE by arguing that: “the increasing racial, ethnic, cultural and language diversity in national states throughout the world, and the growing recognition and legitimating of diversity, are causing educators to rethink citizenship education” (Banks, 2004, p. 3). This perspective helps us to understand that the “educator’s role is to help students to better understand their cultural knowledge, to learn the consequences of embracing it, and to understand how it relates to mainstream academic knowledge, popular knowledge, and to the knowledge they need to survive and to participate effectively in their cultural communities, other cultural communities, the mainstream culture and in the global community” (ivi, p. 13).

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The quest for common values and the consideration of teachers and educators as sociopolitical actors are two key targets in the promotion of CE not just as a school subject, as it is often considered, but as a mighty driver of the Europeanization process. But before facing this challenge we need to rethink some pivotal axes of CE in the contemporary socio-political context.

According to Banks (2004), we can affirm that an important goal of CE in a democratic multicultural society is to help students acquire the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to make reflective decisions and to take actions to improve democracy and justice. Therefore, teachers in multicultural societies must teach the toleration and recognition of cultural differences.

This is in line with the official declaration of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers which stated that: “democracy is best learned in a democratic setting where participation is encouraged, where views can be expressed openly and discussed, where there is freedom of expression for pupils and teachers, and where there is fairness and justice” (2010).

These visions on CE point out two crucial overlaps that regard the education of European citizens. The first one concerns the difference between national and supra-national horizons. In fact, insomuch as CE has recently gained a concrete status within a number of European texts and syllabus, it remains linked to the Westphalian idea of nation-state or, in some cases, to the regional scale. CE refers mainly to actions, responsibilities, rights and duties at national or regional levels, while the European one and global one remain implicit, in fact: “there is no formal status as global citizen, although we are all holders of human rights.

There is coverage of human rights within the official curriculum, but an individual’s status as a holder of universal human rights and an exploration of what this might means in terms of global citizenship remains implicit” (Osler, 2011, p. 7).

The second overlap refers to the distance between subjects and society; this gap directly affects the legal meaning of “being” and “educating” citizens. As already mentioned, CE in the 21st century has to cope with the changing nature of citizenship as a political, social and legal term, in fact, as Castles pointed out, the principle of being a citizen of just one nation state no longer corresponds in reality for Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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millions of people who move across borders and belong in various ways to multiple places (Castles, 2004). Heater and Faulks have named it multiple citizenship: “Multiple citizenship suggest, in contrast to purely stated centred citizenship, that rights and responsibilities must reach across a range of political institutions ranging from the local to the global. If we are to take seriously the idea that all humans are equal, then we must embrace a citizenship that is internationalist and multi-layered in its obligations” (Faulks, 2006, pp. 132-133).

Heater, apart from considering that people belong to different political scales (from local to global), also highlights the idea of belonging to groups of identity or groups with common life objectives, sharing their allegiances to ideals, groups or institutions, both below and above the state, and which every person can join during just periods of time (Heater, 2004, p. 195).

Within this complex framework, as both teachers and academics, we have to stimulate the use of a dialogic or conversational pedagogy, which stresses the need for a renewed view of CE. The brand new tasks CE has to cope with, that is to face the multi-scale nature of citizenship (individual, national and European and even global), has been discussed by other authors. Feinberg and McNonough (2005) remind us that both local cultural allegiance and national loyalty are outdated ideals. According to this cosmopolitan view the greatest need is to establish global objects of loyalty that supersede local and national ones. Nevertheless, according to Osler (2011) and within the EU Member States this binary between education for national and global citizenship is troubled by the issue of European citizenship and belonging. Nuhoglu Soysal tried to point out the dimensions that, nowadays, separate the former idea of national CE from a renewed European one: “three qualities strike one about this formulation of European identity, and distinguish it from national identity, the type of identity we are most familiar with. First unlike national identities that locate their legitimacy in deeply rooted histories, cultures or territories, Europe is not past-oriented: it is future oriented” (Nuhoglu Soysal, 2006, p. 34). This framework reminds us of the well known, but not easy to achieve, vision

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of Beck (2000) and Habermas (1996) that there is no reason why there should necessarily be a tension between education for cosmopolitan citizenship and education for European citizenship.

Citizens of EU Member States enjoy the benefits of European citizenship, and these citizens need to learn about their rights and obligations as European citizens (Osler, 2011, p. 3) This approach brings us to the emerging idea of a plural citizenship across the EU, following the awareness that, as already mentioned, in the contemporary historical and geographical contexts, being a citizen of the so-called Westphalian model no longer corresponds with the daily experience of millions of people who belong to different places even crossing national boundaries. These political processes entail the need to rethink CE and “to include a kind of civic education that will prepare students to function within as well as across nations throughout the world, as well as the number of citizens in the world who are spending parts of their lives in different nation-state who have commitments to multiple places,” (Banks, 2004, p. 7).

We aim to promote this critical approach even to methods, didactics and practices. In fact in most cases syllabuses, texts, textbooks and teachers tend to trivialize the historical and political consequences of the Europeanization process, presenting Europe as a taking-forgranted object, rather than as a process built through the encounter, and in some cases through the clash between different social and cultural systems. We should foster the awareness that nowadays, as European citizens, we must deal with a pluralistic idea of citizenship due to the meeting of different social systems and to the coexistence, in the same space, of a number of overlapping socio-economic statuses: two phenomena depending on the recent evolutions of the so-called “enlargement” process. Banks criticizes this trivialization of Europe “because they [teachers] seem to forget that what is celebrated as the European legacy was born out of competition as much as cohesion. Europe’s history is about more than commonality; it is often about conflict and that should be admitted” (Banks, 2004, p. 7).

This provocative sentence reminds us that the Europeanization process, and above all the

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construction of a European citizenship, should be presented as a complex challenge and that it has to be taught by stressing the historical and contemporary transitions our countries are going through.

3. The institutional framework: CE as a school subject Within the last ten years several national school systems have incorporated CE as a part of their curricula. This incorporation has been carried out according to the EU 2007-2013 Europe for Citizen Programme, which aims to promote the Europeanization process through formal and informal education, as declared by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) in 2012: “imparting the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will enable to young people to become active citizens with the ability to shape the future of our democratic societies in Europe is one of the principal challenges faced by education systems in the 21st century. CE is one of the principal means by which European countries help young people acquire the social and civic competences they will need in their future lives”.

(EACEA, 2012, p. 97).

YINIPITUNIlaITa NNIaYSOOIYSHt Separate subject at secondary level

Separate subject at primary and secondary level Not a separate subject at either primary or secondary level

COUNTRIES Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, United Kingdom (England) Estonia, France, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Spain Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Sweden, United Kingdom (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales)

Table 2. Citizenship in the curricula across Europe.

Source: EACEA 2012.

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The periodic reports of EACEA (2005 and 2012) show a number of interesting issues regarding the “formal” status of CE across Europe. In general terms it is declared that: “very few countries have defined a set of common competences directly linked to citizenship that all newly-qualified secondary teachers should acquire, even though a majority of countries has now conferred a cross-curricular status on elements of this subject area”.

(EACEA, 2012, p. 15). More in detail the 2012 report clearly shows that CE is part of the curriculum within a large number of European countries (Table 2), and that national curricula adopted different kind of approaches in order to integrate traditional subjects, such as Geography and History, with cross-disciplinary knowledge and education, such as CE. Despite the evidence that, in the vast majority of countries, CE is included at all levels of education, by reading the text we can underline that elements related to CE are embedded “in the general objectives and values of the education system but there are no requirements for subject-based citizenship teaching nor introducing it through a crosscurricular approach” (ivi, p. 18). This dissociation is one of the most relevant weaknesses of CE as a subject among the contemporary European school systems.

Focusing on the formal position and role of CE within national curricula we can list three main approaches: CE is defined as a stand-alone subject; it is integrated into one or more subjects or curriculum areas; and it is declared, and taught, as a cross-curricular education. These are not separate and incompatible visions; in fact a large number of legislators combined more than one approach to CE. Nevertheless the Eurydice Report underlines a number of very interesting points regarding how CE is taught within national contexts: “when CE is taught as a separate subject, it is provided more often at secondary than at primary level. [...] In some cases, schools may decide which specific approach to use to deliver CE. [...] CE curricula in European countries cover a wide and very comprehensive range of objectives, knowledge and skills” (ivi, p. 38). Such kinds of emerging differences can be noted even if we analyse objectives and tasks conferred to CE within the national curricula, although there is a collective agreement on the ethical value of CE and on its Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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main aim: to foster students’ sense of local, national and European citizenship. As a Research Group we are reading these official documents and assessments in order to reelaborate, in the upcoming phases of the research, the body of themes and issues (recommended by European institutions) that can inspire and guide our proposal.

4. A common Portfolio?

In 2009 the European Commission declared: “a greater focus on practical skills, a learning outcomes approach and new methods of assessment supported by the continuing development of teachers’ knowledge and skills, are all crucial to the successful implementation of key competences. Furthermore, the European framework also demands greater opportunities for students to actively participate in, for example, school-based activities with employers, youth groups, cultural activities and civil society organisations” (European Commission, 2009, in EACEA, 2012).

The discussion on teachers’ competences and training is a central topic if we aim to develop a common background for CE across Europe, moreover this is also a crucial theme of VOICEs, because the network’s main goal is to build some guidelines, or even a critical portfolio, for upcoming European teachers. We must consider that “generally, teachers of CE at primary level are generalists, that is, they are qualified to teach all or most curriculum subjects. As a rule, the teaching skills required are common for all generalist teachers. In contrast, at secondary level, teachers of citizenship are specialists, usually qualified to teach one or two curriculum subjects (EACEA, 2012, p. 87). Then, the qualifications required to teach CE at primary level are not specific, while at secondary level they are subject oriented.

Furthermore, we can, also, observe that Geographical Education is considered as playing a key-role in CE’s teacher training.

Finally we would like to point out the recent guidelines proposed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (2010). According to these

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guidelines national and European institutions should work on ten key-aims useful to build a common CE portfolio for teachers and schools across Europe: 1.

2.

Social, political and civic institutions.

Respect for and safeguarding the environment.

3. Defending one’s own point of view.

4. Conflict resolution.

5. Citizens’ rights and responsibilities.

6. Participation in the local community.

7. Critical and independent thinking.

8. Participation in school life.

9. Effective strategies to combat racism and xenophobia.

10. Future political engagement

5. A socio-pedagogical agenda From a general point of view, as a Research Group, we aim to conceptualize a set of guidelines that can give teachers common values, skills and references to work on CE across Europe. Nevertheless this demanding challenge should be integrated with an analysis of the specificity of each social, cultural and geographical context. Also we move away from the idea of providing recipes; contrary we think in guidelines as orientations that are critical. In fact “EU education policies assume the idea that a common pan-European “culture” is inherent and inherited, despite the rhetoric of “unity in diversity”. These debates leave unexamined the ways in which Member States intertwine calls for a European and intercultural dimension with their existing national agenda which is the main focus of this comparative curriculum analysis”.

(Faas, 2011, p. 472).

Parker (2004) showed a possible way to develop this comparative analysis working both on social contexts and subject matters.

Comparing different contexts does not mean just reading national curricula in order to stress common values, skills and aims, it means starting from local and national backgrounds looking at the differences and the communalities between the social and cultural milieus we meet every day as European citizens. In other words

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“to educate students to be effective citizens in their communities, nation-state, and in the world community it is important to revise the CE curriculum in substantial ways so that it reflects the complex national identities that are emerging in nation-states throughout the world that reflect the growing diversity within them” (Banks, 2004, p. 13).

To educate effective citizens means, above all, thinking of students as active and operative subjects within their own lifetime places and their socio-cultural environments. This is the socio-pedagogical agenda schools should follow: as they are the places where students experience this activism and participation as citizens.

Reading the 2012 Eurydice Report, in the previous paragraph, we underlined how “the objectives most usually recommended in national curricula throughout all school levels relate to “developing values, attitudes and behaviours”.

The least recommended is the “active participation and involvement of students in school and at community level”, which is more often addressed at secondary than at primary level. From primary level, students must develop knowledge in various different areas related to citizenship. For instance, among the most recommended themes are the “national sociopolitical system”, “democratic values” and “tolerance and anti-discrimination” (EACEA, 2012, p. 38). These statements emphasize the role of schools as socio-political actors. In fact one of the emerging issues of the last Eurydice Report is the need to activate three different actors, or even scales, in CE: students, families and schools, each one of them viewed as an active player both in local and in supra-local contexts.

We should view schools as places where students, teachers and family can play their own role of citizens through the exercise of their agency, through their active involvement in debates, action-projects and decision-making processes. One of most common and practical ways to experience citizenship at school is through the election or nomination of class representatives or representatives to the student council or school governing bodies.

EACEA listed some priorities that institutions can follow to engage schools, teachers, families and students in concrete practices of citizenship within local contexts.

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These priorities regard national curricula that should offer “links with the community or on offering experiences outside school” (ivi, p. 13), and political structures that should provide “students with opportunities to elect representatives and the creation of forums for discussion on matters either strictly related to school issues or on any other social matter directly concerning children and young people” (ibidem); and, finally, nationwide programmes and projects that should be focused, for instance, “on working with the local community; finding out about or experiencing democratic participation in society; or on topical issues such as environmental protection, or cooperation between generations and nations” (ibidem).

6. A way to proceed not to conclude VOICEs is a long term project. We are just carrying out the first phase and therefore we would conclude this essay by resuming a few emerging considerations about new horizons regarding CE in Europe, and by proposing a “geographical glance” at CE. In the first part we evoked the challenge of reading CE in theoretical terms, and we stressed the need to refresh CE through a critical reading of its political and social relevance in contemporary local, national and supra-national contexts (specially the European one), adopting a perspective able to consider schools as active subjects. As geographers we think that a possible strategy to achieve these tasks is by scaling CE, or in other words by studying and teaching citizenship as a multi-scale category, applicable to different social and cultural contexts, and not as a concept trapped by dialogical oppositions between subject and society, local and national, national and supranational, juridical and identitary. The following phase of the project will be the development of a comparative analysis of teachers’ practices and strategies in different local, regional and national contexts, aiming to contribute, with renewed ideas, to the debate on this promising field of research.

Acknowledgements This paper was presented at the EUGEO 2013

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Conference in Rome (September 2013). We would like to thank all the members of VOICEs for the consistent work they are carrying out.

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7. Cowen R., “Afterword: The Seven Deadly Sins of Comparative Education?”, in Sprogøe J. and Winther-Jensen T. (Eds.), Identity, Education and Citizenship: Multiple Interrelations, Berlin, Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 379-384.

8. Dobson A. and Bell D. (Eds.), Environmental Citizenship, London, The MIT Press, 2006.

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10. EACEA/Eurydice, Citizenship education at school in Europe, Brussels, Eurydice, 2005.

11. EACEA/Eurydice, Teaching reading in Europe: Contexts, policies and Practices, Brussels, Eurydice, 2011.

12. EACEA/Eurydice, Citizenship education at school in Europe, Brussels, Eurydice, 2012.

13. European Commission, Key competences for a changing world. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, Brussels, Commission of the European Communities, 2009.

14. European Parliament, “Key Competences for Lifelong Learning: A European Reference Framework. Annex of a Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning”, Official Journal of the European Union, 30.12.2006/L394, 2007, http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/pu bl/pdf/ll-learning/keycomp_en.pdf.

15. Faas D., “The Nation, Europe and Migration: A comparison of Geography, History and Citizenship Education Curricula in Greece, Germany and England”, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43, 4, 2011, pp. 471-492.

16. Faulks K., “Rethinking citizenship education in England: some lessons from contemporary social and political theory”, Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 1, 2, 2006, pp. 123-140.

17. Feinberg W. and McDonough K., “Liberalism and the Dilemma of Public Education in Multicultural Societies”, in McDonough K. and Feinberg W. (Eds.), Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities, Oxford, Oxford Press, 2005, pp. 1-22.

18. Garratt D. and Piper H., Citizenship education, identity and nationhood: contradictions in practice?, London, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008.

19. Habermas J., Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1996.

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20. Habermas J., The crisis of the European Union. A response, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2012.

21. Heater D., A History of Education for Citizenship, London, Routledge Falmer, 2004.

22. International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, ICCS 2009 European Report. Civic Knowledge, attitudes, and engagement among lowersecondary students in 24 European countries, Amsterdam, IEA, 2010.

23. International Geographical Union, Commission on Geographical Education, “The International Charter on Geographical Education”, 2006, http://www.igu-cge.org.

24. Johnson L. and Morris P., “Towards a framework for critical citizenship education”, Curriculum Journal, 21, 1, 2010, pp. 77-96.

25. Keane M. and Villanueva M. (Eds.), Thinking European(s). New Geographies of Place, Culture and Identities, Newcastle upon Tyne, Scholars Publishing, 2009.

26. Kerr D., Citizenship education: an International Comparison, London, QCA, 1999.

27. Lorentzen S., “National Identities in Transition: an agenda for Educational Change”, in Sprogøe J. and Winther-Jensen T. (Eds.), Identity, Education and Citizenship: Multiple Interrelations, Berlin, Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 41-50.

28. Maitles H., “What type of Citizenship Education? What type of citizen?”, Improving Schools, 4, 2001, pp. 23-27.

29. McCowan T., “Curricular transposition in citizenship education”, Theory and Research in Education, 6, 2, 2008, pp. 154-172.

30. Ministère de l’Education Nationale, “Programmes d’enseignement de l’école primarie”, Bulletin Officiel, hors-sèrie, 3, 2008.

31. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, “ORDEN ECI/2211/2007 de 12 de Julio, por la que se establece el currículo y se regula la ordenanción de la Educación primaria”, Bolétin Oficial del Estado (BOE), 173, 2007.

32. Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, “Indicazioni per il Curricolo per la scuola dell’infanzia e per il primo

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Nuhoglu Soysal Y., “How Europe Teaches Itself?”, in Sprogøe J. and Winther-Jensen T. (Eds.), Identity, Education and Citizenship: Multiple Interrelations, Peter Lang, Berlin, 2006, pp. 33-40.

Osler A., “Teacher interpretations of citizenship education: national identity, cosmopolitan ideals and political realities”, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43, 1, 2011, pp. 1-24.

Parker W.C., “Diversity, Globalization, Democratic Education”, in Banks J.A. (Ed.), Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2004, pp. 433-458.

Reid A. and Scott W., “Cross-curricularity in the national curriculum: reflection on metaphor and pedagogy in citizenship education through school geography”, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 13, 2, 2005, pp. 137-158.

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Staeheli L.A., Attoh K. and Mitchell D., “Contested Engagements: Youth and the Politics of Citizenship”, Space and Polity, 17, 1, 2013, pp. 88-105.

UK Department for Education, “National Curriculum for England”, 2014, http://www. education.gov.uk/. van der Schee J., “Geographical Education and Citizenship Education”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 12, 1, 2003, pp. 48-53.

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THE LANGUAGE OF IMAGES Edited by Elisa Bignante and Marco Maggioli

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 69-83 DOI: 10.4458/2379-07

Learning and teaching with outdoor cartographic displays: a visual approach Tania Rossettoa Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Geografiche e dell’Antichità, University of Padua, Padua, Italy Email: tania.rossetto@unipd.it

a

Received: October 2013 – Accepted: November 2013

Abstract This article examines the intersection of visual studies and map studies within the academic didactics of cultural geography. In particular, it suggests that the practice of photographing outdoor cartographic signs emerging from the ordinary urbanscape might provide teachers with a playful way to introduce their students to theoretical speculation on the ontology and the practice of maps. Photographic portraits of public maps stationed in specific contexts could also be used to teach about cultural and social representations of places and landscapes.

Keywords: Geosemiotics, Geovisuality, Post-Representational Cartography, Street Photography, Wall Maps, Outdoor Maps

1. Cultural geographies going on around us: appreciating maps within streetscapes As a teacher of Cultural Geography, one of my main aims is to encourage my students to take seriously the exhortation so efficaciously expressed by Cloke, Crang and Goodwin in the Postscript to their volume Introducing Human Geographies (2012, pp.

602-603): “We would urge you to be much more sensitive to the human geographies going on around you. [...] Be aware of the human geographies wrapped up in and represented by the food you eat, the news you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the television you gaze at. Be aware Copyright© Nuova Cultura

of the places you live in, or travel to, or see images of”.

One of the innumerable applications emerging from this typically geographical teaching attitude is the reading of signs in streetscapes. Since my audience at the University of Padua is mainly made up of foreign language students attending the second-cycle degree in European and American Modern Languages and Literature, a particular object of interest for them are the written signs found in public spaces, such as visible multilingual phenomena displayed in multicultural cityscapes, which have become the focus of so-called “linguistic landscape” studies. Recent implementation of research Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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on linguistic landscapes, which goes under the term “geosemiotics” (Scollon and Scollon, 2003), has developed a more materialistic and ethnographic approach, stressing the need to consider signs as multimodal objects rather than strictly linguistic ones, and focusing attention on the specific spatiality of them (Blommaert and Huang, 2010). Urban public multimodal signs, it is argued, communicate to differentiated audiences depending on a myriad of spatial, material, contingent, lived aspects of their particular placement. Studies on the spatiality of public signs use photography to document signs and their locations (see, among others, Chmielewska, 2005 and Lou, 2007). Yet, little attention is paid to the photographic re-presentation of those emplaced signs (an exception being Cronin, 2010, for instance).

Maps are objects that take part in the ordinary visual environment in which we are immersed. In the present article I deal with outdoor cartographic displays and their photographic representation conceived as generative tools for the teaching of cultural geography. Maps displayed in school rooms are easily associated with the traditional imagery of elementary education, but by now, in an era of pervasive digital mapping, many of us do not take notice of the old wall maps still hanging without any evident function (not even decorative) in our academic lecture rooms (Figure 1). Wall maps in classrooms, regarded in the past for their efficacy or inefficacy (Renner, 1941), are now frequently considered residual historical entities, whose purpose “to reinforce accepted orthodoxies, whether religious, national or racial” or support “overt political propaganda” (Barber and Harper, 2010, pp. 146-147) has to be criticised, often by using classroom map potraits in paintings, photographs or films to illustrate this critique.

Maps in classrooms as emblems of authoritarian education are, indeed, a frequent subject of art works. This attitude towards maps displayed on walls is not restricted to classroom wall maps.

Cartographic public displays placed in typical indoor contexts, in fact, are normally studied Copyright© Nuova Cultura

for their ideological content and cultural power, which are conveyed through their location in distinctive spaces such as palace galleries, government offices and police departments.

Moving from the appreciation of indoor maps and their iconography, a less considered way of involving display maps in higher education is to go into the open in search of maps. More precisely, I used to involve my students in a selective reading of the urban visual environment aimed at collecting outdoor cartographic signs, mainly on city wallscapes. Of course, widespread mobile mapping technologies as well as pervasive digital displays have already drawn our attention to the presence of maps “in the open” in many different ways. Here, however, I am instead concerned with more conventional forms of map displaying.

Outdoor maps, indeed, have received scholarly attention mainly when they appear as “magnificent” works of public art (Barber and Harper, 2010, pp. 160-161; Minor, 1999), but the presence of more ordinary cartographic signs on urban surfaces still remains understudied (Rossetto, 2013).

This interest in outdoor maps should be compared with the growing popularity of maps in our society as well as with the growing importance of maps in education (Wiegand, 2006, p. 1). However, while map and geo-information science pedagogy is often concerned with the development of technical map skills, the involvement of cartography in the teaching of cultural geography requires a consideration of maps in terms of ontology. Cultural geographers usually educate their students following a critical, “representational thinking” (Cadman, 2009) of maps. They teach them that maps are cultural, symbolic and ideological products imbued with power, and that the task of cultural geographers (and cultural geography students) is to critically deconstruct these representations, unmasking their presumed truthfulness. A mix of technical and critical map literacy, for example, can be found in the concise handbook by Spada (2007). Notwithstanding the prominence of the critical, Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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representational cartographic approach within cultural geography, as we will see in what follows, the appreciation of outdoor maps in their spatial contexts provides good opportunities to introduce students to the

recent advancement of cartographic theory towards a post-representational approach (Kitchin, 2010; Dodge et al., 2009; Rossetto, 2012).

Figure 1. Wall map hanging in a geography lecture room at the University of Padua (2013).

Photo: Tania Rossetto.

2. Intersecting map studies with visual studies: portraits of maps Excluding the long collaboration between art and map historians, the relationship between map studies and visual studies has been deficient in reciprocal communication.

Talking about the “visual” often means talking about photography, television, film, video or painting. “Visual media” is an expression that has been contested following the idea that “all media are mixed media” (Mitchell, 2005, p.

350), but a further problematic aspect of the expression “visual media” is that it is scarcely directed towards cartography. Cartography is basically understood as a static text-image object, but nowadays we experience cartography in very hybrid, dynamic, multimodal forms.

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With Mitchell, again, we could say that the repeated narrative of the visual turn as unique to our time is a fallacy (Mitchell, 2005, p.

348). It is indisputable, however, that our time is marked by an unprecedented repositioning of the status of maps and geovisualisation. The new status and appeal of maps and geovisualisation in our society, made possible by the ubiquity of digital cartography and the incorporation of maps in our everyday practices as well as within art, design, communication and many other fields, requires a new, complex appreciation of the “visual” with regard to maps as well as of the fluid relationship between the visual and the cartographic within digital devices.

Considering the geoweb as visual practice, for example, Elwood (2011) calls for the application of visual methodologies to virtual globe imagery.

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There are many different ways in which map studies should intersect with visual studies. Maps are visual objects of different sizes, materials and forms that are visually used in various kinds of indoor/outdoor, private/public spaces by individuals, groups and communities. The famous distinction introduced by Hall Fosters (Mirzoeff, 2006) between vision (sight as a physical process) and visuality (sight as a social fact), I suggest, could be profitably applied to cartography, thus promoting research on “geovisuality” rather than the strictly “geovisual” in cartography. The visual intersects with the cartographic also through the flourishing field of cartographic design (where cartographers and graphic designers converge) as well as the study of the aesthetic language of contemporary cartography (see the special issue Aesthetics in Mapping of Cartographic Perspectives, 2012).

One of the multiple possible intersections between map studies and visual studies is the depiction of maps. Maps, indeed, appear in works of art of different types. The emerging field of contemporary “map art” (Watson, 2009) surely implies forms of map visualisation. However, while the appearance of maps in films (Conley, 2007) and literary works (Rossetto, forthcoming) has recently gained a great deal of attention, the representations of maps in figurative paintings (see Welu, 1975 and Harley, 1988, pp. 295296) and above all in photography remains understudied.

I am here suggesting that photographing maps in the open could be a playful way to teach and learn about the life of public maps.

Photos here bring into view maps as objects, i.e. as cartographic images together with the material support in or on which they appear.

Maps, moreover, are caught by the photographic camera in their material and contingent spatial contexts. The focus is not, or not only, on the visual content of the map, but on the spatiality of the map-object. Therefore, maps do not cover the entire frame of the photographic image and are not reproduced, as usually happens, with particular attention to the problems derived from distortion. Instead, maps are intentionally distorted to be grasped Copyright© Nuova Cultura

“in action”. This photographic practice could be used to emphasise the powerful discourse of a map stationing in a peculiar site, but, as we will see, a more nuanced attitude is suggested here in the appreciation and representation of outdoor maps.

We may include this use of the camera among educational applications of visual methodologies, and “photo-documentation” of the field in particular (Bignante, 2011, pp. 7679; Sidaway, 2002). This activity, moreover, brings together two forms of the city-image relationship which have been classified by Tormey (2013, pp. 79-81) as “images IN the cities” on the one hand and “images OF the city” on the other. Here, in fact, the photographic documentation of the city involves an exploration of images which takes part in the fabric of the city. Furthermore, this kind of focus on urban signs typically requires a style of urban photo documentation that deliberately operates in allegorical, metonymical or metaphorical ways to present ideas beyond the subjects depicted (Tormey, 2013, p. 81). The practice of photographing urban objects such as street furniture or street advertising has its own tradition, dating back to the modernist photography of architecture of the 1930s, “conceptual photography” of the late 1960s, as well as the Townscape visual movement, emerging with the Architectural Review’s photographic campaigns from the 1930s to the 1970s (Aitchison, 2012). This last experience, in particular, was aimed at “realerting the eye” to the visual significance of things found in the urban scene by means of a selection of them “for deliberate display” (De Wolfe, 2013, pp. 111-112). In this sense, the device of juxtaposition, through which photographers make “telling points through the inclusion of discordant or empathetic elements within the frame” (Elwall, 2012, p. 679) is crucial.

At this level, one could see visual education intersecting with educational cartography.

Maps are treated as experienced, material objects, rather than mere images. They are used, mobilised, animated, re-opened in their meanings, perceived within contingent atmospheres. Nonetheless, this activity involves a reflection on images, an Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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understanding of what a visual mediation of map-objects through a picture may communicate. Map-objects are “deliberately placed before us” (Mitchell, 2005, p. 125) by photographs. It seems to me that treating maps in this manner may correspond to the idea of researching (learning and teaching with) pictures as living beings, rather than mere instruments of power, as Mitchell (2005) suggested. He called for a “poetics of pictures” (2005, p. 15) which studies “the lives of images”, thus challenging the critical attitude inherent in much of visual culture studies.

3. Geographers picturing maps: lessons from the urban visual environment In the following part of the article, I will display a number of photographs of outdoor cartographic displays to show different ways in which they have been or could be creatively employed in the teaching of cultural geography, with connections to landscape, visual and map education. The act of photographing maps proves to be a profitable way of interrogating maps’ meaning and power in a more dynamic and complex way than a simple close reading of those maps allows. If “vision is never a one-way street” (Mitchell, 2005, p. 352), neither is the appreciation of maps.

Maps prominently displayed in powerrelated contexts are typically used to provide evidence of the power inherent in maps (Barber and Harper, 2010). As for the Italian case, a major example is the fixed or movable maps displayed during the Fascist period. The most famous case of monumental cartography found in the open is the series of four map tablets showing the expansion of the ancient Roman Empire installed in 1934 on the outer wall of the Basilica of Maxentius overlooking the former Via dell’Impero (now Via dei Fori Imperiali) in Rome. A fifth lapidary map depicting Italy’s African possessions (the Fascist new empire) was attached in October 1936 to celebrate the conquest of Ethiopia and commemorate the fallen in the military campaigns. This fifth colonial map was removed in 1945 (Minor, 1999).

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Significantly, on the cover of a recent book titled Carte come armi (Maps as Weapons) authored by an Italian colleague, Edoardo Boria (2012), the photograph of a movable scenographic public map was chosen. The photograph (Figure 2), dated September 1940, shows a crowd looking up at a big cartographic panel featuring military operations in the African territories during the Second World War. A photo of the same map panel staged in front of the Duomo in Milan is included in Spada’s handbook (2007, pp. 111, 113) to illustrate the notion that “in every map there is a part of persuasion and propaganda. To stay alert is the only way not to be bewitched”.

However, if we take note of the way in which this map is represented in the photographs, we can observe that in both those pictures the crowd is portrayed as a whole, with almost all the people looking up together.

On the website of Mediateca Roma1, however, a different representation of the Roman map at Piazza Colonna can be seen.

People are scattered, wandering in front of the map, while some young boys look at the camera facing in the opposite direction from the map. This photograph does not communicate a sense of anxiety as the other ones do, but rather a sense of oddity. What I am arguing is that this is surely a propagandistic map in the intent of its producers, but in the first two cases we are above all in front of a propagandistic picture of the map, whose reception among common people should then be carefully studied, without confusing the propaganda with the reception of the propagandistic discourse (Labanca, 2002, pp. 221-222).

1

Permanent link http://www.mediatecaroma.it/ mediatecaRoma/ricerca.html?show=14&index=7056 &jsonVal=&filter=&query=archiveName%3AluceFo ndoLuceCronologico&id=IL0000014562&refId=12.

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Figure 2. Big map mounted in Piazza Colonna (Rome) to follow ongoing military operations (September 1940).

Courtesy of E. Boria.

Figure 3. Stone-marble map of the Italian colonies at Piazza delle Erbe, Padua (2013).

Photo: Tania Rossetto.

In Padua, a marble map very similar to the fifth map of Via dei Fori Imperiali was installed in the late 1930s on the façade of the town hall overlooking Piazza delle Erbe. The municipal hall, renovated in the first decades of the twentieth century, was conceived as a big memorial to the Paduans fallen during the major national conflicts of the nineteenth and CopyrightŠ Nuova Cultura

twentieth centuries.

Among the commemorative stones attached to the town hall, there are two maps: one depicting the bombings of the city of Padua during the First World War and another depicting the Italian colonies (Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Ethiopia, Albania, the Aegean archipelago of the Dodecanese). The map with the colonies has Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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never been removed, perhaps because it has not been the object of anti-Fascist sentiment like the Roman fifth map, because it is part of a diachronic series of commemorative stones, or simply because it hangs higher than at eye level. I have used several photographs of this map and the adjacent square to introduce my students to the specificity of the post-colonial debate in Italy, showing how this eloquent map is mostly neglected by the square’s users. More recently, I re-photographed the site, noting that a mobile cartographic sign has been integrated

within the semiotic landscape of the square (Figure 3). This photograph is not meant to communicate the power of the colonial map’s discourse. The angle chosen for this shot intends to communicate how the map of the colonies is defunctionalised in its rhetoric.

Another outstanding example of an outdoor map provided in Paduan public space is a tile map of Europe incorporated into a fountain situated in Largo Europa (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Tile map of Europe at Largo Europa, Padua (2013).

Photo: Tania Rossetto.

I often used this map to introduce my students to issues such as the symbolic policies of the European Union, the role of signs and symbols in the construction of a European identity, and the circulation of different icons and cartographic representations of Europe.

Knowing almost nothing about this fountain and its map (the plaque at its base is quite laconic), for years I used to treat it as a rhetorical, institutional commemoration of some important events in the history of the European Union, such as the Maastricht Treaty.

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More recently, however, through some interviews with politicians and other persons involved in the construction of this urban object, I found that I was wrong. The initiative came from a Europe enthusiast, who was president of the Northern Paduan Rotary Club in 1997-1998. The fountain is a memorial to the wars that took place within Europe (the conflicts in the former republics of Yugoslavia that so deeply affected Italian public opinion), as well as an exhortation to conceive of the European Union first of all as a potential peacekeeper. The location (Largo Europa) was chosen to enhance this message. Significantly, one of the politicians directly involved in the construction of the fountain told me that it was a monument to the entrance of Italy into the Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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Eurozone. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the artist who designed the tile map and the overall monument told me that the project, elaborated during a symposium of artists coming mainly from Eastern Europe, deliberately used a geographical rather than political figure of Europe, including doves of peace in a number corresponding to that of the members of the European Union at that time.

This public map, indeed, does not take part in what has been addressed as a form of “cartoimperialism” (Foster, 2013) carried out by the European Union through its cartographic representations on mundane objects.

This fountain, which also functions as a traffic divider, has been the object of criticism from city residents. Nowadays it is an unkempt urban object: the cement flower boxes, left desolately empty, seem to confirm that proEuropean sentiment is something distant from the everyday life of passers-by. My photographic portrait of the tile map in Largo Europa is meant to put into view the chaotic atmosphere that surrounds this map, which appears somehow “suspended” – just like the authentic European sentiment from which it originated.

Outstanding cartographic works of public art sometimes fail to be intensely felt by common people as well as experts. While I was talking about this article with a colleague (the linguist Franco Benucci), he pointed out the outdoor murals by Fulvio Pendini, an artist who authored many frescoed perspective plans of Padua in public indoor and open spaces throughout the city from the late 1940s to the 1960s (Banzato et al., 2007). In 1952 Pendini painted the so-called La Città del pensiero (The thinking city) on the portico overlooking Via San Francesco at the Palazzo Bo, the main historical central building of the University (Figure 5). Although I habitually walk under that map, I have to admit that I simply missed this macroscopic case study. I was well aware of the existence of this fresco, but it is not impressed in my visual memory.

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Figure 5. Frescoed map (Fulvio Pendini, La città del pensiero) at via San Francesco, Padua (2013).

Photo: Tania Rossetto.

This fact, however, corroborates the idea that outdoor maps are particularly conditioned in their existence and attractiveness by their material location. Pendini’s perspective plan, as a matter of fact, is placed very high under the shadow of the portico, therefore it is unlikely to be glanced at by passers-by. One could present this map as one of the last pieces of the vast work of art commissioned by the University of Padua since the early 1930s to proclaim and celebrate its magnificence.

Nonetheless, the presumed eloquence of this map is conditioned by its physical placement.

The photograph here forcefully places before its viewers what is normally neglected in the material, bodily, everyday experience of that transit space.

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Figure 6. Poster in subway map style at the entrance to the former Faculty of Political Science, University of Padua (2011).

Photo: Tania Rossetto.

Urban surfaces do not only host monumental maps. They are full of minor, lay, ephemeral cartographic signs such as those impressed on pieces of paper attached to the city walls, or fixed, ordinary, functional cartographic panels, such as transport maps at bus stops. Figure 6 focuses on the use of the transit network diagram style within a poster addressing students involved in protest movements. Pointing out the choice of this cartographic aesthetics is a good opportunity for introducing geography students to the growing centrality of cartographic language in graphic design and visual communication. The “subway style” of this map recalls the urban dimension of the protest. Moreover, the photo is aimed at questioning the local-global dynamics of those movements. The ubiquity of the transit diagram as a fashionable design form (Booth, 2011), in fact, suggests that the protest is an anti-global phenomenon which adopts global strategies of communication. In addition, the photo shows how the message is both amplified and made local through the linguistic landscape surrounding the poster. On the wallscape, “occupy the streets” is directly connected with “occupy Padova”.

Figure 7 is concerned with a recent trend in map studies, i.e. the ethnographic study of maps as objects around which people interact (Perkins, Copyright© Nuova Cultura

2009). The photo here hints at the solitary presence of the map among city users who are strangers to each other, but could be used to stimulate a reflection on the role of maps in activating dialogues between people. Furthermore, the photo could also be used to introduce the issue of contemporary urban relationality, recalling how urban subjects coexist in a shared material space rather than take part in an urban community. If within the city we experience a “mutual exposure to otherness through a shared relation to urban fabric”, then the presence of the transport map of the city among the people emphasises that while using public transport, people do not experience face-to face relations, but rather share a “surface of contact” (Coward, 2012, pp. 469, 479).

Figure 8 ironically reflects on the defunctionalisation of traditional educational devices such as plastic coated maps, which were frequently used in classrooms until recently. A pile of educational maps have been creatively re-used for purely decorative purposes by the owner of the shop. This photograph is also meant to recall how the consumption of maps (Dillon, 2007) as decorative tools has become a pervasive phenomenon in our societies.

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Figure 7. Transport map at the tram stop, Padua (2012).

Photo: Tania Rossetto.

Figure 8. Plastic coated maps folded into the shape of airplanes hanging down in a shop window, Padua (2013).

Photo: Tania Rossetto.

4. Beyond the city: teaching about places and landscapes through outdoor map photographs While I was writing this article I asked some of my colleagues to think about their own use of photos of outdoor maps in their teaching and to provide telling examples of

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this. Taken during research fieldwork in places and landscapes other than the typical urban realm, those pictures are more concerned with teaching something about a place or a landscape, than something about the ontology and practice of maps.

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My colleague Federica Letizia Cavallo, a teacher of cultural geography, provided me with a photograph of a “spontaneous” mural map she snapped at a filling station along a street on the Spanish island of Minorca (Figure 9).

The photograph holds such a significance for my colleague that she put it on the cover of her monograph devoted to Minorca (Cavallo, 2007).

Figure 9. Mural map at a filling station in Minorca (2005).

Courtesy of F.L. Cavallo.

The photograph frames the map “besieged” (as Cavallo told me) by a refrigerator of a well-known ice-cream brand and a Coca-Cola vending machine. These objects are strategically included within the frame with the aim of highlighting the touristic commercialisation of the island.

As for the map, the picture intentionally conveys contrasting messages: while the map seems to be aligned with the powerful processes of touristification in showing a public of tourists a selection of main roads and settlements, the airport and the filling station itself, it nevertheless testifies to a naive, genuine, joyful homemade act of mapmaking.

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My colleague Benedetta Castiglioni, a teacher of landscape studies, provided me with an interesting photograph of two panels near a construction site at Segusino in the Piave river valley (Figure 10a).

She displayed this photograph during lectures as a means of teaching about conflicting (or potentially conflicting) projects and representations of a place or landscape. The fixed panel on the left (Figure 10b), authored by the “youth group of Segusino”, features a perspective plan of the village at the foothills of the Alps, with a flowering branch in the foreground. The panel welcomes visitors telling them about amenities and local traditions.

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The other panel (on the right, Figure 10c) has been temporarily installed by a development company to inform the inhabitants about a project for a “new centre of Segusino”, which combines conservation of local features with modernisation.

Significantly, the 3D rendering of the new centre of the village does not include the oldfashioned panel with the bird’s-eye view and leaves us wondering if this fact simply means that the panel will be removed from the new piazza or if it symbolically means that the “old” idea of the village will be replaced by a new project for the community.

Finally, my colleague Mauro Varotto, a teacher of cultural geography and mountain studies, provided me with a portrait of map viewers at Passo Fedaia, at the foot of the Marmolada, the so-called Queen of the Dolomites (Figure 11). As Varotto found out while listening to a conversation taking place in front of the map, the couple rode 300 kilometres to reach this renowned crossing place. Once they arrived, however, the attention of the couple was not directed to the surrounding landscape, but to the pictorial map of the ski slopes.

Figures 10 a, b, c. Panels near a construction site at Segusino, Treviso (2008).

Courtesy of B. Castiglioni.

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If the paper pocket map which lies on the bench was used by the bikers as a wayfinding tool, the ski map is here defunctionalised and used as a mere panorama of the mountains.

The framing of the photograph is critically aimed at emphasising the virtual consumption of the landscape through the inclusion of a piece of the mountains in the background. The bikers, therefore, are portrayed as evidence of the new and controversial branding of the Dolomites, and Passo Fedaia in particular, as a paradise for bikers.

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Figure 11. Map viewers at Passo Fedaia, Belluno (2012).

Courtesy of M. Varotto.

Since Varotto’s research is concerned with a critical appreciation of the tourism and representational practices of the Alps, the photo highlights the coexistence of contrasting urban and traditional imageries, which emerge from the juxtaposition of the welcome panel at the bottom of the map and the design of the wooden window on the right. Curiously, then, my colleague framed the female biker while she was photographing the map. Her picture, which intentionally excludes any disturbing element beyond the edges of the ski map, could be profitably compared with the geographer’s one, the former telling of a tourist practice, the latter telling of a complex act of framing and displaying a cartographic object used in a specific situation.

5. Conclusions In cultural geography, maps are a “popular political antagonist”; yet, following Mitchell’s (2005, p. 33) invitation to “scale down the rhetoric of the power of images”, we may recognise that we perhaps want maps to be more powerful than they actually are.

The interpretation (semiotics, hermeneutic, rhetoric, discourse analysis) of maps’ signs Copyright© Nuova Cultura

may not be suspended, but carried out from a different perspective, i.e. one which sees images not as detached “sovereign subjects or disembodied spirits” (Mitchell, 2005, p. 46) but as mundane, vital, relational, complex, living individuals that we encounter in our everyday experience. Mitchell (2005, p. 351) proposes “a more nuanced and balanced approach located in the equivocation between the visual image as instrument and agency: the image as a tool for manipulation on the one hand, and as an apparently autonomous source of its own purposes and meanings on the other”. He sees visual images as “gobetweens” or subaltern entities which operate within the realm of “vernacular visuality or everyday seeing” (p. 356).

Photographing maps in the open seems to give paths to this nuanced and balanced approach by revealing the multifaceted, often unpredictable, life of cartographic representations captured in their lived contexts. The pictures displayed with this article are in their turn representations grounded in specific displaying contexts (a book cover, a slide show within a cultural geography lesson), but remain nonetheless open to the multiple interpretations made by viewers encountering them.

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References 1. “Aesthetics in Mapping”, Cartographic Perspectives, Special Issue, 73, 2012.

2. Aitchison M., “Townscape: scope, scale and extent”, The Journal of Architecture, 17, 5, 2012, pp. 621-642.

3. Banzato D., Baradel V. and Pellegrini F. (Eds.), Fulvio Pendini: i volti di Padova, Milan, Skira, 2007.

4. Barber P. and Harper T., Magnificent Maps. Power, Propaganda and Art, London, The British Library, 2010.

5. Bignante E., Geografia e ricerca visuale.

Strumenti e metodi, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2011.

6. Blommaert J. and Huang A., Semiotic and spatial scope: Towards a materialist semiotics, Working paper in Urban Language & Literacies, n. 62, London, King’s College, 2010 http://www.kcl.ac. uk/innovation/groups/ldc/publications/wor kingpapers/download.aspx.

7. Booth C., “Transit Diagrams”, Cartographic Perspectives, 69, 2011, pp.

79-82.

8. Boria E., Carte come armi. Geopolitica, cartografia, comunicazione, Rome, Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2012.

9. Cadman L., “Non-Representational Theory/Non-Representational Geographies”, in Kitchin R. and Thrift N. (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 2009, ad vocem.

10. Cavallo F., Isole al bivio. Minorca tra balearizzazione e valore territoriale, Milan, Unicopli, 2007.

11. Chmielewska E., “Logos or the Resonance of Branding. A Close Reading of the Iconosphere of Warsaw”, Space and Culture, 8, 4, 2005, pp. 349-380.

12. Cloke P., Crang P. and Goodwin M., “Postscript: your human geographies”, in Cloke P., Crang P. and Goodwin M. (Eds.), Introducing Human Geographies, second edition, Abingdon-New York, Routledge, 2013, pp. 602-603.

13. Conley T., Cartographic Cinema, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

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14. Coward M., “Between us in the city: materiality, subjectivity, and community in the era of global urbanization”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30, 2012, pp. 468-481.

15. Cronin A.M., Advertising, Commercial Spaces and the Urban, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

16. De Wolfe I., The Italian Townscape, London, Artifice, 2013 (first edition 1963).

17. Dillon D., “Consuming Maps”, in Akerman J.R. and Karrow W. (Eds.), Maps. Finding Our Place in the World, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 290-343.

18. Dodge M., Perkins C. and Kitchin R., Rethinking Maps. New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory, London-New York, Routledge, 2009, pp. 20-243.

19. Elwall R., “‘How to Like Everything’: Townscape and Photography”, The Journal of Architecture, 17, 5, 2012, pp.

671-689.

20. Elwood S., “Geographic Information Science: Visualization, visual methods, and the geoweb”, Progress in Human Geography, 35, 3, 2011, pp. 401-408.

21. Foster R., “Tabula Imperii Europae: A Cartographic Approach to the Current Debate on the European Union as Empire”, Geopolitics, 18, 2013, p. 371-402.

22. Harley J.B., “Maps, Knowledge, and Power”, in Cosgrove D. and Daniels S. (Eds.), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 277-312.

23. Kitchin R., “Post-representational cartography”, Lo Squaderno. Explorations in Space and Society, 15, 2010, pp. 7-12, http://www.losquaderno.professionaldream ers.net/?cat=144.

24. Labanca N., Oltremare.

Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2002.

25. Lou J., “Revitalizing Chinatown Into a Heterotopia. A Geosemiotic Analysis of Shop Signs in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown”, Space and Culture, 10, 2, 2007, pp. 170-194.

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26. Minor H.H., “Mapping Mussolini: Ritual and Cartography in Public Art during the Second Roman Empire”, Imago Mundi, vol. 51, 1999, pp. 147-162.

27. Mirzoeff N., “On Visuality”, Journal of Visual Culture, 5, 1, 2006, pp. 53-79.

28. Mitchell W.J.T., What do pictures want?, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2005.

29. Perkins C., “Performative and Embodied Mapping”, in Kitchin R. and Thrift N. (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 2009, ad vocem.

30. Renner G.T., “Educational Revisions of Wall Maps”, Journal of Geography, XL, 1941, pp. 13-19.

31. Rossetto T., “Embodying the Map. Tourism practices in Berlin”, Tourist Studies, 12, 1, 2012, pp. 28-51.

32. Rossetto T., “Mapscapes on the urban surface. Notes in the form of a photo-essay (Istanbul, 2010)”, Cartographica, 48, 4, 2013, pp. 309-324.

33. Rossetto T., “Theorising Maps with Literature”, Progress in Human Geography, forthcoming (and published online on 19 November 2013).

34. Scollon R. and Scollon S., Discourses in place: Language in the material world, London, Routledge, 2003.

35. Sidaway J.D., “Photography as Geographical Fieldwork”, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 26, 1, 2002, pp. 95-103.

36. Spada A., Che cos’è una carta geografica, Rome, Carocci, 2007.

37. Tormey J., Cities and Photography, Abingdon-NewYork, Routledge, 2013.

38. Watson R., “Mapping and Contemporary Art”, The Cartographic Journal, 46, 4, 2009, pp. 293-307.

39. Welu J.A. “Vermeer: His Cartographic Sources”, The Art Bulletin, 57, 4, 1975, pp.

529-547.

40. Wiegand P., Learning and Teaching with Maps, Abingdon-New York, Routledge, 2006.

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Italian Association of Geography Teachers

MAPPING SOCIETIES Edited by Edoardo Boria

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 87-94 DOI: 10.4458/2379-08

Making politics – and science – through maps.

The “Europa etnografica” maps of the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano (1927-1940) Rafael Company i Mateoa Department of Education, Museu Valencià de la Il·lustració i la Modernitat – MuVIM, Valencia, Spain Email: company.rafael@gmail.com

a

Received: October 2013 – Accepted: November 2013

Abstract During Mussolini’s fascist regime, the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano – produced in Milan (1927-1938) and widely recognised far beyond the borders of Italy – included among its plates two maps of European ethnic groups. The makers of the TCI’s atlas passed on to us a specific approach to determine the kind of collective that ought to be considered an ethnic group.

The enigmatic second reprint of the fifth edition (1938) was inexplicably not accompanied by the symbolic features required by the fascist authorities, but, after World War II started, the new version of the “Europa etnografica” map – on a 1:12.000.000 scale – clearly showed the changes that occurred in the political context.

Keywords: Ethnolinguistic Maps, Fascism, Europeans, Italians, Ethnic Groups, Languages, TCI, Consociazione

1. The ethnolinguistic maps Country maps are among the symbols that incarnate the world as it is divided into nationstates. These graphic representations of state borders have been and continue to be perceived as logos (Anderson, 1991; Boria, 2012), as has been and is the case with flags or national coats of arms1.

“The second avatar was the map-as-logo. Its origins were reasonably innocent – the practice of the imperial states of coloring their colonies on maps with an imperial dye. In London’s imperial maps, British colonies were usually pink-red, French purple-blue, Dutch yellow-brown, and so on. Dyed 1

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this way, each colony appeared like a detachable ‘piece’ of a jigsaw puzzle. As this ‘jigsaw’ effect became normal, each ‘piece’ could be wholly detached from its geographic context. In its final form all explanatory glosses could be summarily removed: lines of longitude and latitude, place names, signs for rivers, seas, and mountains, neighbours. Pure sign, no longer compass to the world. In this shape, the map entered an infinitely reproducible series, available for transfer to posters, official seals, letterheads, magazine and textbook covers, tablecloths, and hotel walls. Instantly recognizable, everywhere visible, the logo-map penetrated deep into the popular imagination, forming a powerful emblem for the anticolonial nationalisms being form” (Anderson, 1991, p. 175).

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But along with these cartographic representations of political borders (administrative or legal), as well as physical maps that show landforms, we find thematic pieces “[...] showing ethnic structure based on language” (Wilkinson, s/d [1957], p. 548a); maps which may become logos for the corresponding realities. Thus, I am not referring to specimens like the “ethnographic map of Europe based on racial criteria” (Wilkinson, s/d [1957], p. 549a) by the German ethnographer settled in Scotland, Gustav Kombst, who had no qualms in accompanying his cartographic contributions with decidedly unjustifiable comments (Robinson, 1982, pp. 139-140)2.

The boom of ethnolinguistic cartography dates back to the XIX century: “It was only in the course of the nineteenth century that they began to proliferate, a reflection of technological advance, the coming of sophisticated statistics gathering and the growing importance of nationalism” (Barber, 2005, p. 272)3.

But it is not just that these maps – “Völkerund Sprachenkarten” in German – proliferated to the beat of the nationalisms surging in Europe: “Until detailed ethnographic mapping began to reveal the extent of various groups in Europe from about 1840 onwards, the idea of the nation The “Ethnographic map of Europe according to Dr. Gustav Kombst” (1841), reprinted and turned into “The most widely distributed ethnographic map at that time” (Robinson, 1982, p. 137), was bound for the first time in The National Atlas of historical, commercial and political geography from 1843, a volume published under the direction of Scottish cartographer and geographer Alexander Keith Johnston (1804-1871).

3 “The idea of depicting the location of real or imagined races and ethnic groups on maps may be traced back to medieval times. [...] / Although such general maps included much dispersed and selective information, ethnographical mapping proper dates from the 17th century; and language, as a test of ethnic affinity, assumed great initial importance” (Wallis and Robinson, 1987, p. 106). But Peter Barber pushes this date back to “the late sixteenth century” and the earliest precedents of the cartographic representation of ethnic groups to ancient history: “As the Babylonian world map [conserved in the British Museum] demonstrates, maps have contained ethnic information from the earliest times” (Barber, 2005, p. 272).

2

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had remained the romantic preoccupation of a relatively few intellectuals” (Wilkinson, s/d [1957], p. 551b). As the logical conclusion of all of the above, several authors have come to claim that “Inherent in the production of many of these maps is the presumption that the ethnic groups so identified have a right to a separate or independent cultural and political identity” (Wallis and Robinson, 1987, p. 105) (Figure 1).

Thus, there was a time when the maps of the “Peoples of Europe based chiefly on language”4 abounded, and it was customary to include them in atlases and even in the educational versions of the latter. All of this, we ought to reiterate, much before the emergence of the Nazi obsession with the matter; and all of this furthermore brought forth by individuals who did not necessarily have far-right leanings: “[...] [the] elemento etnico o lo spazio culturale mitteleuropeo, [were] temi ricorrenti nelle carte e negli atlanti prima dell’avvento del nazismo al potere e non certo monopolio del pensiero dell’estrema destra” (Boria, 2012, p. 102).

2. Italy between the Wars The Italian cartography of the 20th century peaked in the Interwar period, during Mussolini’s fascist regime – “il Ventennio” – supported by the House of Savoy between 1922 and 1943. The account of Edoardo Boria, in Cartografia e potere. Segni e rappresentazioni negli atlanti italiani del Novecento, allows us to conclude that from a technical standpoint, and for a few decades in the past century, leafing through certain Italian atlases would be as advisable, if not preferable, as consulting the best past or contemporary German, French, or British atlases.

4

The title comes from a wall map conceived in the United States and published in Chicago by DenoyerGeppert: Peoples of Europe based chiefly on language. Political boundaries and language areas as of January 1938.

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Figure 1. Detail of the general map of Europe with ethnographic borders (“Übersicht von Eüropa (sic) mit ethnograph. Begränzung [...]”, 1855), found in a copy of the second edition of the Berghaus’ Physikalischer Atlas published in Gotha by Justus Perthes. In the map – 310 x 410 mm, approximate scale 1:18.500.000 – we can observe, marked with light blue ink boundaries, the areas populated by the Greeks in Europe and Asia: the areas adjacent to the Ionian Sea (including Corfu), the Aegean Sea (from the shores of Thrace to Crete and Rhodes in the South), the Eastern Mediterranean (including Cyprus, and the two islands previously mentioned), the Sea of Marmara (between the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus), and the Black Sea. A Greek state straddling two continents and the five seas mentioned above, with its capital city in Constantinople (today’s Istanbul), was the highest aspiration of the Greek Pan-Hellenic nationalism, summarised in the irredentist expression “Megali (Big) Idea”. To bring to life this idea, which seemed to lean toward restoring the Byzantine Empire and had been developed in 1844 by the Greek prime minister Ioannis Kolettis (1773-1847), required obtaining – either through diplomatic channels or by the use of armed forces – many lands held by the Ottoman empire. The map also shows the adjacency of the Greeks to the Albanians, the Ottoman Turks, and the Bulgarians (who speak a Slavic language and are nowadays split between Bulgarians and Macedonians). It is also worth mentioning that the map showed no Turkish population in Cyprus, and also that Crete was depicted with most of its territory coloured with the hue corresponding to the Turks.

They reached their peak in 1927, with the publication of “i tre più eccellenti atlanti prodotti dalla cartografia italiana del Novecento” (Boria, 2007, p. 8): in one instance, the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano produced in Milan (Bertarelli, Marinelli and Corbellini, 1927), the edition was widely recognised in the academic world far beyond the borders of Italy, and could be considered “[...] come la più grande opera di questo genere apparsa nel sec. XX e ha assicurato al nostro paese un primato non facilmente superabile” (Almagià, 1930, p. 215a).

The atlas published by the Touring Club Italiano (TCI) included among its plates two maps of European ethnic groups with a shared

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title: “Europa etnografica”. The first of the two (pp. 15-16, scale 1:12.000.000) was devoted to the whole of Europe; the second one (p.16 bis, scale 1:6.000.000) dealt exclusively with Central and Eastern Europe. Both maps were the result, on one hand, of the work of a few determined Italian mapmakers (who were finally immersed in the fascist dictatorship and its mechanisms of ideological pressure, whether subtle or overpowering), and, on the other, of the perspectives of ethnographers and philologists of various nationalities. Furthermore, and as one would expect, these careful representations constituted a deposition of the ideological frameworks that promoted their making and diffusion during that period in history: the time following the great border shifts in Central and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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South Eastern Europe after the 1919 Peace Conference.

3. The ethnic groups and the Atlante internazionale Nevertheless, the makers of the TCI’s Atlante internazionale passed on to us a specific approach to determine the kind of collective that ought to be considered an “etnia”, or ethnic group: they sought to transcend the traditional and practically exclusive consideration of language as the determining factor in the

delimitation of ethnicities, and in some cases acted with utmost consistency (for instance, by including the representation of the Slavic Muslims of Yugoslavia in the 1:6000.000 scale map). Although the resulting map was not that different from the linguistic map of Europe also included by Touring in the Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere e arti a few years later, in 1932, that drive for renovation and the modernisation of ethnolinguistic cartography must be underscored and judged in a positive light (Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2. Fragment of the “Europa etnografica” map, on a 1:12.000.000 scale, included on pages 15 and 16 of the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano. The image comes from a first-edition copy from 1927. The peoples speaking Romance languages in Western Europe were represented with blue or purple hues; the peoples speaking Germanic languages in various pink (and some orange) tones; and those speaking Slaving languages (except for the Bulgarians, and the Montenegrins in this and the following edition) were depicted in a range of green tones; peoples speaking Celtic languages were all represented with a single mustard yellow hue, Hungarians are differentiated with a yellow tone, the Basque people represented with a colour of their own, etc.

We can observe the differences in the treatment of the internal – or regional – diversity of the main ethnic groups in Western Europe: for instance, while we find denominations at two levels in German lands, with ethnonyms of a smaller geographic range than the “basso tedeschi”, “medio tedeschi”, and “alto tedeschi”, in Italy (needless to say, with the exception of “islands” and patches of other ethnic ascriptions) we only find demonyms for the “ladini” and the “friulani”; the latter, furthermore, were featured only in the first and second editions.

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Figure 3. Detail of the map “Europa. Carta linguistica” of the Enciclopedia Italiana on a 1:20.000.000 scale, 258 x 312 mm, featured on pages 604 and 605 of volume XIV (VV.AA., 1932). The most notable differences in this fragment when compared to the corresponding ethnographic map of the Atlante internazionale are the following: the Dutch and Flemish territories do not display a specific colour to set them apart from the general German area (the map key, however, notes the “olandese” next to the “Tedesco”); the Welsh and Breton areas appear invaded by strips that denote the presence of the English and French languages, respectively; Walloon speakers are not set apart with their own tone (they are also absent from the map key); although there were borders between them, Galician and Portuguese, and Castilian and Catalan, were not given different colours (the map key only omits the reference to Galician); the territory of the Romansh language – the Rhaeto-Romance language of Switzerland – is only noted by the use of the number “1”, and therefore is not represented graphically; Czech and Slovak areas share the same colour, unlike what happens with Czechs and Slovaks in the ethnographic map, something that also occurs with the Croatian and Serbian languages (and with Croatians and Serbs in the atlas).

4. The lost atlas The editions and reprints of the Atlante internazionale – with successively modified versions of the “Europa etnografica” maps – were published from 1927 in Milan as well as Barcelona (where Montaner y Simón published its Edición especial hispanoamericana of the atlas with the title and introductory pages in Spanish: Atlas internacional del Touring Club Italiano). Completing the print runs of the Touring atlas prior to the start of World War II were the two 1938 runs: on the one hand, the first reprint – prima ristampa – of the fifth Milan edition, in which the title was changed to Atlante internazionale della Consociazione Turistica

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Italiana to reflect the new name of the institution, in adherence to the Italianization of proper names mandated by the fascist regime since 1937; on the other, the second reprint – seconda ristampa – of the fifth Milan edition, which shows the date of 1938 that was inexplicably not accompanied by the year of the Fascist Era, or Era Fascista, and also inexplicably had the original title of the work, that is, Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano (Figure 4).

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5. Ideology, cartography and… power, of course

Figure 4. Cover of the second reprint of the fifth Milan edition of Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano, 1938.

Another fact that we cannot account for is that this second print did not include the dedication page to the Italian dictator featured in all the other Milan prints, and its existence was not mentioned in the reference work about the history of the first six decades of the TCI, the book I sessant’anni del Touring Club Italiano 1894-1954 by Giuseppe Vota (1954, p. 437), nor, for instance, in the miscellaneous commemorations of the 90th anniversary of the same institution (Touring Club Italiano, 1984, p. 205).

However, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. included the seconda ristampa in their 1958 catalogue: p. 439 (reference 6968) of A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress.

Volume 5 Titles 5325-76235. In 1992, the list of authors for this work (A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress. Volume 9 Comprehensive Author List)6 once again mentioned the existence of this print run on p. 258. At any rate, there do not seem to be any references to the 1938 Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano in the cartography research works that have been produced to this day.

In the previous paragraph I mentioned in passing that the ethnographic maps of the Atlante internazionale modified some of their contents in the successive editions and reprints of the atlas. But here I would like to underscore that after World War II started, the new version of the “Europa etnografica” map on a 1:12.000.000 scale, published by the Consociazione Turistica Italiana7, clearly showed the changes that occurred in the context of fascism, be it due to the prevailing ideological climate or to the direct pressure of those in power; cartographic productions seemed to have been ceded to the regime as reflected in three aspects: the rather unitarian perspective of Italian nationalism (which made no concessions whatsoever to ethnic diversity), hints of an expansionist will toward territories adjoining the Regno, and the colonial ambitions toward the Maghreb, three core points of Mussolini’s discourse and other visions of Italy that had been formulated previously (Figures 5 and 6).

Acknowledgements This article is based on a work of the author (Company, in press) devoted to the ethnolinguistic cartography of the Italian atlases of the fascist times and of the Touring Club Italiano atlas in particular.

The book, Cartografia, ideologia i poder. La Mediterrània nord-occidental i els mapes etnogràfics del Touring Club Italiano (1927-1940), written in Catalan, gives particular attention to the treatment of the inhabitants of the Eastern Iberian peninsula, Southern France, and the city of Alghero (Sardinia), as well as to some characteristics of an inexplicable 1938 print of the Atlante internazionale, and the suppression of the Italian ethnic groups in the Consociazione Turistica Italiana map following the start of World War II.

5

The title of the catalogue continues as follows: With Bibliographical Notes (A Continuation of Four Volumes by Philip Lee Phillips). Compiled by Clara Egli LeGaer, Map Division.

6 In this case, it is recorded that the volume is compiled by Clara Egli LeGaer, Geography and Map Division.

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7

As an individual map whose purpose was to update the atlas (folded vertically once), or as an annexe map to no. 1 (January 1940, year XVIII of the Fascist Era) of the CTI magazine (Le Vie d’Italia, with four folds).

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Figures 5 and 6. The images show the convergence of North Eastern Italy and the neighbouring territories in two successive prints of the TCI “Europa etnografica” map on a 1:12.000.000 scale: to the left we observe belts of Germans and Slovenes, positioned in Alto Adige/South Tyrol and in the Italian lands adjoining Yugoslavia, respectively (the detail is from a copy of the seconda ristampa of the fifth edition of the Atlante internazionale del Touring Club Italiano dating from 1938); to the right, in the aforementioned version of the Consociazione Turistica Italiana (printed by Le Vie d’Italia, early 1940), the border between Germany and Austria has been removed (as the latter had been annexed by the Third Reich in 1938) and the Italian state is represented in a single hue to indicate the – presumed – fact that Italy was populated exclusively by “italiani”.

We must add that bands similar to those that appear in Figure 4 had also been featured – in the representation of the presence of the German and Slovenian languages – in the language map produced by Touring and published in 1932: the “Europa. Carta lingüistica” map of volume XIV of the Enciclopedia Italiana (Figure 3).

References 1. Almagià R., “Atlante – Geografia –”, in VV.AA., Atlante, Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere e arti, vol. V (assi-bals), Rome, Istituto Giovanni Treccani, pp. 213b215a, 1930 (MCMXXX – VIII [E. F.]), Reprint (“ristampa fotolitica”), Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 1949 [also in internet: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/atlante_r es-c2f30670-8baa-11dc-8e9d-0016357eee51 _(Enciclopedia-Italiana)/].

2. Anderson B., “The Map”, in Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Second augmented edition, London, Verso, 1991, pp. 170-178.

3. Barber P. (Ed.), The Map Book, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005.

4. Bertarelli L.V., Marinelli O. and Corbellini P., Atlante Internazionale del Touring Club Italiano. Centosettanta tavole principali · centotrenta carte parziali e di sviluppo.

Opera redatta ed eseguita nell’Ufficio Cartografico del T. C. I., Milan, Touring Club Italiano, 1927 (MDCCCCXXVII).

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5. Boria E., Cartografia e potere. Segni e rappresentazioni negli atlanti italiani del Novecento, Turin, UTET Università, 2007.

6. Boria E., Carte come armi. Geopolitica, cartografia, comunicazione, Rome, Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2012, pp. 31-35.

7. Company i Mateo R., Cartografia, ideologia i poder. La Mediterrània nord-occidental i els mapes etnogràfics del Touring Club Italiano (1927-1940), Valencia, Publicacions de la Universitat de València, in press.

8. Robinson A.H., Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1982.

9. Touring Club Italiano, 90 anni di turismo in Italia 1894-1984, Milan, Touring Club Italiano, 1984, pp. 198-218.

10. Trevi E., “Canti, preghiere e nessuna bandiera. Quel rito potente anche per chi non crede”, Corriere della Sera, 8 September 2013, p. 3.

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11. Vota G., I sessant’anni del Touring Club Italiano 1894-1954, Milan, Touring Club Italiano, 1954.

12. VV.AA., Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere e arti, vol. XIV (eno-feo), Milan, Edizioni Istituto G. Treccani (TrevesTreccani-Tumminelli), 1932.

13. Wallis H.M. and Robinson A.H. (Eds.), “Ethnographic Map”, in An International Handbook of Mapping Terms to 1900, Tring (Hertfordshire), Map Collector Publications

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and International Cartographic Association, 1987, pp. 105-107.

14. Wilkinson H.R., “Ethnographic maps”, Proceedings. Eight General Assembly and Seventeenth International Congress (Washington DC, 8-15 August, 1952, International Geographical Union), Washington DC, The United States National Commitee of the International Geographical Union and National Academy of SciencesNational Research Council, s/d [1957], pp.

547-555.

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GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND (PRACTICAL) CONSIDERATIONS

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 97-100 DOI: 10.4458/2379-09

Reflections on Geography Education in Europe Henk Ottensa a

President of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG and of the Association of European Geographical Societies EUGEO Email: hfl.ottens@gmail.com Received: November 2013 – Accepted: December 2013

1. Introduction My engagements with activities of the Association of European Geographical Societies EUGEO over the last months were often related to Geography’s place and role in education.

They give rise to thoughts about possible ways to reconsider the profile of Geography in schools as well as the institutional position of the subject in order to improve the contribution of the discipline to Europeans and the European society.

The EUGEO 2013 congress brought many hundreds of geographers and persons interested in Geography to Rome. With modest fees, a nice and convenient university venue and great social events, it was a pleasure to attend. It also was a major success for Italian Geography and geographers and a boost for the cooperation of the Italian Geographical Societies and Associations. Many sessions were initiated by Italian geographers and filled with presentations from all over Europe and beyond.

The conference program included many interesting keynotes and sessions, including sessions dealing with Geography Education.

Representatives of AIIG, the Italian Association of Geography Teachers, EUROGEO, the European Association of Geographers, and the

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IGU Commission on Geographical Education organized three sessions on current challenges of Geography Education in Europe. The lively sessions, with interesting papers on themes like competences and capabilities, (global) citizenship and teacher education, also led to discussions about the state of Geography education and resulted in the Rome Declaration on Geographical Education in Europe.

A second confrontation with the state of Geography Education in Europe was my participation on behalf of EUGEO in a project of the Education Office of the European Space Agency ESA. The Italian company Bshape initiated and coordinates the project. The project concerned, “How to Teach Geography at School through Remote Sensing”, aims at exploring the possibilities for introducing or strengthening the use of remote sensing data and methods when teaching themes of the Geography curriculum.

In this project, relevant information on Geography curricula and the experiences, needs and wishes of geography teachers was gathered and analyzed (Bshape, et al., 2013)

2. Rome Declaration on Geographical Education in Europe The Rome Declaration is a joint response of Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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the European Geography Community to recent threats to reduce or even abolish geography content from school curricula. In a number of European countries these threats are real. The Rome Declaration is a first step, a wake-up call to warn about the negative consequences for young persons and for society at large of this development. But Geographers also have the societal task of keeping the profile of Geography curricula and teaching methods up to date and to regularly and convincingly prove to the outside world the value of geographical knowledge, tools and skills for personal development and empowerment, for good and responsible (global) citizenship, for efficient business and for good and effective governance. Therefore, follow-up actions are necessary and have been scheduled by a committee in which IGU, EUROGEO and EUGEO are represented.

The Rome Declaration, addressing governments and educational institutions in the European countries, sets out the minimum requirements for the presence of Geography in schools. These are: - formal recognition of Geography as an essential school subject; - acknowledgement of the strategic role of Geography education for key societal issues like globalization and sustainable development; - sufficient time for teaching Geography in schools; - well qualified teachers to provide Geography education.

within countries, especially in countries with a federal/regional governance structure for education. Furthermore, individual schools often have a certain level of autonomy in the way they position Geography in their programs. Finally, teams of geography teachers and of course individual teachers have quite a lot of influence on how the subject is tackled in daily practice.

Despite the national and regional differences, Geography is almost always considered a school subject that bridges knowledge about the earth as the natural resources base for human living and the world as the home of human societies. Common goals found in most geography curricula are: -

-

-

-

-

3. Diversity in Geography Curricula and Teacher Experiences in Europe In the Remote Sensing for Geography Teaching project, the curricula and teacher experiences in nine European countries (Ireland, United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, and Italy) were analyzed. Primary and secondary education was covered, but the project does not claim to be able to give a representative picture for Europe of the state of Geography Education. The countries studied showed quite considerable variety in the way Geography is dealt with in schools. Besides, there are regional differences Copyright© Nuova Cultura

acquiring a basic knowledge and an understanding of man’s living environments at relevant spatial scales (from local to global); becoming aware of Geography relevant issues, problems, and solutions at different time/space scales, in particular those related to sustainable development (with its environmental, social, economic, and political dimensions); ability to formulate and answer geographical questions (spatial thinking); acquiring, organizing, analyzing and presenting geographical information; preparing pupils for effectively using geographical knowledge and skills in daily social and professional life; contributing to solving geography relevant problems in society and the ability to assess the consequences of alternative actions.

The main obstacles teachers experience in reaching the often very ambitiously formulated goals for Geography education are: time available for geography teaching, the quantity and quality of initial training for teachers, and the lack of adequate refresher training. The introduction of computers, Internet and recently smart-boards in schools appears to change Geography teaching profoundly.

This development is difficult to follow for many teachers as they are not always (also) science and technology trained and oriented, do not have

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sufficient facilities and lack adequate dedicated ICT training and support.

4. Towards a Roadmap to follow up the Rome Declaration For an effective follow-up of the Rome Declaration, it seems desirable to develop content, teaching time and teaching method standards for Geography. For Europe, these standards need to acknowledge the different contexts in which Geography is taught in European countries. Another aspect to consider is the cooperation with other school subjects or academic disciplines. This will often be both necessary and useful to attain the always relatively broad aims of Geography education.

Equally important will be the task of developing an action plan to carefully but also assertively pursue the aim to strengthen Geography and make it more relevant. Again, the historical and institutional diversity in Geography teaching will have to be taken into account. A European strategy will have to be complemented by at least national strategies.

IGU, EUROGEO and EUGEO do not need to start from scratch in this project. Many European countries and regions have developed elaborate standards, frameworks and methods.

Also, very good examples exist outside Europe.

The cooperation with IGU will make it possible to link the European project to the IGU initiative for a United Nations International Year of Global Understanding (IYGO). The IYGO will focus the world’s attention on the connections between local actions and global consequences, on global sustainability of local actions, on social and cultural aspects of the transformation of nature and on the integration of natural and social sciences (IGU Brochure). Much can also be learned from the so far successful actions of IGU to have its initiative accepted.

Finally, I would like to mention two other resources for inspiration. In the United States, a very well considered and elaborated standard for the content of Geography Education has been developed over the last decades. The fist version of the standards was published in 1994 (GENIP, 1994). The well-known and still useful Five

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Themes of Geography (location, place, region, movement/spatial interaction, humanenvironment interaction). The standards were thoroughly updated and elaborated recently (NCGE, 2012). The new standards aim at specifying what it means to be geographically literate. The American standards distinguish perspectives, knowledge and skills. The 18 knowledge standards are grouped into 6 essential elements: the world in spatial terms, places and regions, physical systems, human systems, environment and society and uses of Geography. Five skills are described: asking Geographic questions, acquiring Geographic information, organizing Geographic information, analyzing Geographic information, and answering Geographic questions. All standards are clearly described and well disseminated and form a excellent example how to deal with this subject matter.

Another important phenomenon to keep an eye on is the rapid development of international education. International schools are established in many cities worldwide and the International Baccalaureate Standard (IB) is often used as a framework for designing curricula. The International Baccalaureate is a non-profit educational foundation that works with more than 3600 schools in 146 countries. Geography content is well included in broader defined subjects at primary and middle level, as can be expected in internationally oriented education.

In the Diploma Programme, for students from 16 to 19 years preparing for a university education, Geography is a separate course. It is useful to analyze how geography is dealt with in this advanced and rapidly growing form of education.

5. Conclusion The EUGEO congress in Rome was an important event for European Geography and geographers. We can look back on it with satisfaction. But the congress will become even more memorable when it turns out to have been also the start of some sort of revival for teaching Geography. Let’s work together on that.

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References 1. Bshape, AIIG, SGI, EUGEO, How to teach Geography through remote sensing, Report WP1: Analysis of the Geography Curriculum and Practice in Schools, Report for the European Space Agency, Rome, Bshape, 2013.

2. GENIP, Geography for Life: National Geography Geography Standards, Education National Implementation Project, 1994.

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3. IB, “International Baccalaureate”, http:// www.ibo.org/.

4. IGU, “UN International Year of Global Understanding, An Initiative of the International Geographical Union”, IGU Brochure, http://www.global-understanding. info.

5. NCGE, Geography for Life, National Geography Standards, Second Edition, Washington, National Council for Geographical Education, 2012.

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Rome Declaration on Geographical Education in Europe IV EUGEO Congress 2013 Geographical education provides students with essential capabilities and competences needed to know and understand the world. Responsible and effective uses of geographical information are vital for the future of Europe. Therefore, all European citizens need to understand how to deal with it.

Geographical education provides them with the knowledge and skills to do this. For example, an appropriate use of geospatial data and technologies is necessary to help analyse and address problems related to water, climate, energy, sustainable development, natural hazards, globalisation and urban growth. Most of these big issues also have a distinct European dimension. Geography also deals with the daily living environment of citizens where issues such as housing, employment, transportation, provision of services and green spaces are important. These must all be addressed but in an integrated way, which only the study of Geography provides. Geographical knowledge is indispensible for well informed citizens, successful businessmen and policy makers.

The representatives of the Italian Association of Geography Teachers (AIIG), the Association of Geographical Societies in Europe (EUGEO), the European Association of Geographers (EUROGEO) and the International Geographical Union (IGU), gathered for the congress session “Geography education’s challenges in response to changing geographies”. In this declaration, we underline clearly and strongly that the teaching of Geography in schools is fundamental for the future of Europe.

With this firm conviction, we are committed to take initiatives in the countries of Europe and with the relevant European institutions to provide standards and guidelines that will help authorities develop relevant syllabuses and school curricula, methods and approaches in Geography that: 

apply geographical knowledge, skills and understanding to the main issues linked with processes of change in society, nature and environment at local, national, European and global levels; and



highlight the educational values and the role of geographical education in a changing world.

We urge those responsible in European governments and educational systems: 

to recognise the educational value afforded by the study of Geography as an essential school subject; and



to acknowledge its strategic role for realising active citizenship and balanced social, economic and environmental development.

We therefore request that: 

sufficient time for the teaching of Geography is allocated in curricula for primary and secondary schools;



the teaching of Geography is limited to teachers with a qualified training in Geography and Geography Education.

Gino De Vecchis, President of the Italian Association of Geography Teachers (AIIG); Karl Donert, President of the European Association of Geographers (EUROGEO); Vladimir Kolossov, President of the International Geographic Union (IGU); Henk Ottens, President of the Association of Geographical Societies in Europe (EUGEO); Joop van der Schee, Co-chair of the Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographic Union (IGU-CGE) Rome, September 5th 2013 Copyright© Nuova Cultura

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TEACHINGS FROM THE PAST

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 105-112

Une note sur l’Australasie d’hier et d’aujourd’hui : une comparaison fertile pour la didactique de la géographie Dino Gavinellia a

University of Milan, Milan, Italy

La Librairie Charles Delagrave de Paris commença a publier des livres pour l’enseignement de la géographie à l’école primaire et secondaire à partir de 1896. L’accent mis sur la qualité et la rigueur pédagogique de ces ouvrages amènera, dans les décennies suivantes, à la parution de nombreux manuels scolaires traitant de géographie générale et de géographie régionale1.

Les succès arrivèrent assez forts et ces manuels de géographie non seulement furent publiés à plusieurs reprises et en différentes éditions, jusqu’aux années Vingt, mais animèrent aussi, à l’époque, un vif débats sur les revues de géographie et jouèrent le rôle de livre de chevet pour de nombreux instituteurs et professeurs.

L’extrait ici présenté fait partie de cet ouvrage régional très vaste, qui a laissé son empreinte sur la En général les auteurs de ces livres de géographie “ Maurice Fallex et Alphonse Mairey, Amérique Australasie au début du monde, Paris, Librairie Delagrave, 1904 ” étaient deux et le plus actif d’entre eux fut Maurice Fallex (1869-1929), un professeur d’histoire et géographie aux lycées qui travailla pour Delagrave, dans sa collection de géographie régionale, à : L’Europe, moins la France, au début du XXème siècle (1896) ; l’Asie au début du XXème siècle (1900) ; L’Afrique au début du XXème siècle (1904) ; L’Amérique et l’Australasie (1904) ; Les Grandes Puissances au début du XXème siècle ; La France et ses colonies au début du XXème siècle (1909).

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longue route parcourue par la géographie française dans ses diverses échelles territoriales et temporelles et selon de multiples approches. En Amérique Australasie au début du monde, paru en 1904 et réédité plusieurs fois2 comme nouveau cours de géographie, les auteurs Maurice Fallex et Alphonse Mairey parlent, dans leur introduction, d’une géographie devenue “ description et explication pour remettre en contact les faits que d’autres sciences ont étudié isolement et replacer dans la complexité des conditions naturelles, dans le mouvement de la vie, les phénomènes du monde physique et organique ”. L’idée de ces auteurs est d’utiliser la capacité de synthèse de la géographie pour étudier les rapports, les enchaînements, les expression profondes de ces “ jeunes continents ” pris par une évolution territoriale qui continue et montre comme “ la vie des plantes et des animaux s’harmonise avec les forme terrestres et comment cet ensemble se reflète et s’imprime dans les phénomènes vitaux de l’humanité ”.

Cette approche caractérise notre extrait qui d’ailleurs contient non seulement des aspects strictement géographiques mais aussi des instances pédagogiques très claires. Cet extrait est nécessairement limité en longueur et le lecteur contemporain pourrait en tirer un sentiment d’insatisfaction devant les nombreuses perspectives et suggestions ouvertes et aussitôt refermées. Cependant, le langage utilisé, les valeurs traités et la méthodologie suivie permettent aussi d’avoir un bon échantillon de la période la plus connue de l’école française de géographie régionale, la plus exposée aux discours coloniaux et aux synthèses disciplinaires qui ont portés à la fondation d’une géographie universitaire française 2

Le succès fut assez fort et on rééditait le manuel déjà l’an suivant (1905) et encore en 1908, 1910 e 1912.

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par Paul Vidal de la Blache et de celles des lycées et des collèges qui continue jusqu’à nos jours. On retrouvera, dans le sillon la tradition de la monographie régionale “ à la française ”, de nombreux passages où l’on souligne l’harmonie des formes continentales et océaniques, l’importance et les dimensions des “ Mer du sud ”, la ceinture des archipels, les îles si belles et nombreuses que déjà Ritter appelait “ la voie lacté des eaux ”. Tous les peuples mentionnés dans l’extrait, extraordinairement divers, ont cependant en commun de constituer, sur les très vastes aires de l’Australasie, de faibles densité de population, d’entretenir avec l’espace de leurs vies des rapports très fluides, de dessiner des paysages mixtes où modernité et traditions s’entrelacent. Les quelques passages ou opinions qui feront sourire ou froncer les sourcils à certains lecteurs contemporains et aux professeurs seront utiles pour réfléchir sur la géographie d’aujourd’hui et ses outils qui ont largement bénéficié, depuis plus d’un siècle du progrès général des connaissances humaines : la découverte des “ Paradis du Sud ” a été achevée et le mystère du long voyage d’exploration vers “ l’exotisme ”, “ la tropicalité ” et “ l’insularité ” a laissé la place aux séjours dans les complexes touristiques modernes ; les cartes géographiques, à toute échelle, sont devenues plus exactes que les anciennes “ cartes ” des Micronésiens sur de fins bambous qui se croisaient sur des petites pierres symbolisant les îles du Pacifique ; la télédétection spatiale permet un approche pluridisciplinaire à ces régions lointaines. De cette connaissance plus profonde et scientifique du milieu physique et de la cartographie a bénéficié à son tour la géographie humaine avec son étude sur les multiples manifestations des hommes sur cette partie de la planète longtemps marginalisée et où se croisent aujourd’hui les intérêts stratégiques des grandes puissances politiques et économiques.

La didactique contemporaine de la géographie pourra parcourir plusieurs pistes, à partir du toponyme “ Australasie ”, dont la définition est très floue et pas figée et qu’on utilisait souvent au début du siècle dans la géographie francophone et qui trouve aujourd’hui plus de partisans dans le monde anglo-saxon très intéressé à la montée en puissance du plus grand océan de la planète.

Comparer dans un parcours didactique l’Australasie d’hier et d’aujourd’hui implique un engagement dans les champs de l’histoire (colonialisme, explorations, diffusion du

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christianisme, histoires de l’outre-mer et des mentalités, etc.) et de la géographie dans ses différentes composantes humaines, économiques, politiques, sociales, culturelles, environnementales.

Un parcours utile à surmonter les visions stéréotypés d’hier et d’aujourd’hui sur l’Australasie et pour passer des hétéroreprésentations aux autoreprésentations, les seules capables de montrer les permanences et les transformations survenues dans cette région longtemps à l’écarts.

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Chapitre I – Étude Générale de l’Australasie Maurice Fallex et Alphonse Mairey

I. Situation et Dimensions. Les terres appelées Océanie n’ont de commun que leur situation dans le Grand Océan. On préfère aujourd’hui leur donner le nom d’Australasie, car elles sont les annexes australes du continent asiatique.

Le Grand Océan a 175 millions de kilomètres carrés, mais les terres n’en occupent que 9 millions : c’est le quinzième des terres émergées.

Comprises entre 32° Lat. Nord et 48° Lat. Sud, puis entre 108° Long. Ouest et 111° Long. Est, elles ont une importance très inégale : à l’Ouest, l’Australie, ou même la Nouvelle-Guinée, et la Nouvelle-Zélande sont de vrais continents, mais les terres de l’Est ne sont qu’une poussière d’îles éparpillées sur la plus vaste des surfaces océaniques.

II. Structure du Pacifique. L’Océan Pacifique est constitué depuis des temps très anciens.

Il date du début de l’ère secondaire. A l’ère primaire, un immense continent s’étendait de l’Amérique du Sud, par l’Afrique et l’Inde, à l’Australie ; il se morcela aux temps secondaires. Au début du crétacé, une triple presqu’île se détachait de l’Asie vers le Sud, en forme de fourche, en constituant l’Australie de l’Ouest, la Nouvelle-Guinée continuée par l’Australie orientale, et la Nouvelle-Zélande. A l’ère tertiaire, l’Australasie prit sa forme actuelle, et l’immense ébranlement, correspondant aux plissements alpins d’Europa et d’Asie, en

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déterminant le relief définitif, amena un volcanisme intense, qui dure encore, tant sur tous les bords qu’au centre même du Pacifique.

Le Pacifique est une immense aire d’effondrement.

C’est une fosse aux bords très relevés ; le rebord oriental est très régulier ; les cordillères américaines forment un bourrelet continu, qui, prolongé en pente brusque sous la mer, constitue un ressaut d’un seul jet d’une altitude totale de 12.000 mètres. Le rebord occidental, moins continu, plus tourmenté, est néanmoins très net ; car les lignes d’archipels qui s’y succèdent en forme d’arcs convexes ne sont que les sommets d’anciennes chaînes en grande partie submergées. Ce parallélisme des montagnes et des lignes de rivage forme ce que l’on appelle la structure Pacifique.

Il faut distinguer deux parties dans le Grand Océan. La partie orientale est formée d’une plaine sous-marine régulière profonde en moyenne de 4.500 mètres, avec quelques fosses : une de 7.000 mètres en face du Chili et une de 6.000 mètres le long du Pérou. La partie occidentale est constituée par un socle, où s’élèvent des îles en archipels allongés du Nord-Ouest au Sud-Est, mais disloqué et coupé par les fosses les plus profondes du globe : celle du Tuscarora atteint 8.513 mètres à l’Est des Kouriles ; celle du Penguin, découverte en 1895 au Sud-Est des Tonga, a 9.427 mètres ; celle du Nero, découverte en 1899 entre les îles Midway et les Mariannes, a 9635 mètres.

Les lignes de grandes profondeurs se juxtaposent ainsi aux lignes de grandes altitudes, et marquent les grandes lignes de dislocation de la surface. Les îles du Pacifique se divisent en deux catégories, les îles continentales et les îles océaniques. Îles continentales. - Les mouvements orogéniques ont séparé du continent asiatique les terres australes, et formé une première catégorie d’îles, les plus grandes. Les unes ont été détachées par la simple érosion marine, par le choc des vagues et des marées : telles sont les grandes îles de la Sonde. D’autres sont dues à des effondrements, comme les petites îles de la Sonde, les Moluques, Célébès. D’autres enfin sont les vestiges d’anciens continents disparus : ainsi la Nouvelle-Guinée, la Nouvelle-Calédonie, la Nouvelle-Zélande sont les restes d’un immense arc insulaire, en grande partie submergé : ce sont des îles témoins. Îles océaniques. - La plupart des îles du Pacifique sont de petites terres isolées en pleine mer. Ce sont les îles océaniques, les unes de formation volcanique, les autres de formation coralligène.

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a) Îles volcaniques. - Les matières de l’intérieur du globe ayant fusé le long des lignes de fracture, où la résistance de l’écorce est plus faible, le Pacifique est entouré d’une ceinture ininterrompue de volcans : c’est le fameux cercle de feu du Pacifique. Sans parler des volcans asiatiques, américains ou antarctiques, l’Australasie offre sur sa bordure les groupes volcaniques des îles Salomon, des Nouvelles-Hébrides, des Samoa, des Tonga ; et de l’île Nord de la Nouvelle-Zélande ; mais ce sont surtout les îles du centre même de l’Océan, les Mariannes, les îles Sandwich, les Fidji, les îles de la Société, qui fourmillent de cratères ; la plupart sont d’ailleurs éteints, quelques-uns ont encore une activité terrible. b) Îles coralliennes. - Les coraux sont l’œuvre de colonies d’organismes inférieurs, qui ont la propriété de sécréter un squelette calcaire, et dont les débris accumulés forment le récif corallien.

Ces architectes infiniment petits, mais groupés par myriades, ne vivent que dans les mers où la température des eaux de surface se maintient entre 18° et 20° ; d’autre part ils ne se développent guère au-dessous de 35 mètres. Ils aiment les eaux pures et redoutent les eaux troubles des embouchures des fleuves. Ils s’établissent sur les fonds solides, rocheux, point trop abrupts. Ils ont donc pu s’appuyer dans la zone centrale du Pacifique, aux côtes solides des îles continentales et des îles volcaniques.

Quand les coraux édifient leurs constructions au bord même de la côte, et s’ils s’y accolent, le récif est un récif côtier ou frangeant. Ces récifs sont des bancs rocheux qui n’affleurent qu’à basse mer ; ils dessinent une ligne de brisants frangés d’écume, une “ ceinture blanche et vaporeuse ”, que les vagues viennent heurter de leur bruissement monotone et éternel, et c’est contre l’un deux, à Vanikoro, que La Pérouse brisa son navire en 1788. Si le banc est plus éloigné de la côte, il constitue un récif-barrière, séparé du rivage par une étendue d’eaux calmes : tels sont les récifs des Fidji, ceux de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, et surtout la grande Barriere australienne. Si enfin le récif est annulaire, si l’intérieur en est constitué, non par une masse rocheuse, mais par une lagune, on a un atoll. De ce genre sont les îles basses du Pacifique : les archipels des Touamotou, des Gilbert, des Marshall, des Carolines.

L’atoll a une pente brusque vers l’extérieur - la base s’accumulent les débris triturés par les vagues - et une pente très douce au contraire vers l’intérieur ; si

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dans les grands atolls la lagune intérieure atteint une profondeur de 100 mètres, la plupart du temps elle est beaucoup moins profonde. Les vents reprennent les débris triturés par les vagues et déposés par la marée ; ils en forment des dunes qui ont parfois une hauteur de 10 mètres, et qui cheminent en comblant la lagune central e l’îlot devient alors habitable, quoique presque au ras des eaux.

La formation des atolls est encore très discutée.

DARWIN et DANA l’attribuent à des affaissements lents. Selon eux, les coraux ont bâti sur un socle rocheux, émergé ou situé à moins de 30 mètres sous l’eau ; ce socle s’est enfoncé lentement, si bien qu’on trouve des roches coralliennes à des profondeurs de 600 mètres, mais les coraux élevaient à mesure leurs constructions. Les atolls sont donc des “ monuments funéraires d’îles englouties ”. La lagune centrale correspond à l’ancien socle rocheux, et c’est ce qui explique leur forme annulaire et régulière. Mais MURRAY et AGASSIZ, ayant visité presque tous les archipels de coraux du Pacifique, ont constaté que la plupart des régions coralliennes sont en voie de soulèvement. D’après eux, dans la grande majorité des cas, les coraux sont construits sur des îlots volcaniques, autrefois émergés, puis rongés par les vagues jusqu’à 20 mètres sous l’eau et même au-delà ; quand le fond rocheux est à de plus grandes profondeurs, c’est que la sédimentation calcaire, naturelle dans des eaux saturées de chaux, où meurent sans cesse des myriades de petits êtres organiques, a exhaussé la masse jusqu’au niveau où les coraux peuvent vivre. Quant à la forme annulaire des atolls, elle tient à ce que la partie centrale, morte, dépérit peu ù peu, et est rongée par les organismes vivants qui vivent sur le pourtour du récif.

III. Climat. Si l’on excepte l’Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande qui seront étudiées plus loin, on peut définir le climat de 1’Australasie, un climat tropical adouci par la mer. Situées à cheval sur 1’équateur, les terres du Pacifique ont une température régulièrement chaude.

Les variations journalières et annuelles sont faibles : Wilhelmshafen, en Nouvelle-Guinée, a 25°2 en juin et 26°7 en février ; Souva, aux îles Fidji a 23°5 en août et 27°7 en janvier ; Yap, dans les Carolines, a 23°6 en hiver et 26°6 en été. - Les minima et les maxima eux-mêmes sont loin d’être excessifs : Wilhelmshafen a un minimum absolu de 19°3 en juillet et un maximum absolu de 35°3 en septembre ; les extrêmes moyens sont à Papeete (Tahiti), 16°8 et 33°1 ; à Apia (Samoa), 17°5 et 32°9 ; à Nouméa, 13° et 35°5. Ce sont en somme de faibles écarts.

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Cette régularité et cette uniformité tiennent au régime des vents et des courants marines (Cf. Géographie générale, classe de Sixième, pages 80 et 81). Sur cette aire immense, on voit s’appliquer les lois générales des pressions : il y a un minimum à l’équateur, deux maxima aux tropiques, et de nouveaux minima aux régions tempérées. Mais la distribution des terres et des mers introduit des modifications : dans la partie orientale du Pacifique, existent deux maxima, l’un à l’Ouest de la Californie, l’autre à l’Ouest du Chili, et on y observe un régime très net de vents alizés ; dans la partie occidentale par contre, le continent asiatique et le continent australien, tour très chauds et très froids, produisent un véritable régime de moussons.

En janvier, c’est l’hiver boréal, l’été austral. L’alizé du Nord-Est, souffle très fort de l’Amérique froide vers l’Équateur ; de même la mousson sèche du Nord-Ouest souffle violemment de la Sibérie orientale vers les régions équatoriales. Dans l’hémisphère austral, l’alizé du Sud-Est, parti de la région de hautes pressions de l’île de Pâques, va jusqu’à 2° Lat. N., et les îles Marquises en marquent la limite. Dans 1’Ouest, l’Australie surchauffée forme un foyer d’appel, que renforce la mousson asiatique : la Nouvelle-Guinée subit donc des vents du Nord. La Polynésie est une région de calmes, car l’échauffement de l’eau et la faible différence des températures ralentissent les vents de l’Est et les transforment en une brise légère.

En juillet, l’alizé américain du Nord-Est est très affaibli ; celui du Sud-Est, très fort au contraire, monte jusqu’à 5° Lat. N., et s’avance à 1’Ouest jusqu’aux Nouvelles-Hébrides. De l’Australie froide les vents rayonnent et s’en vont d’abord au Nord-Est, puis au Nord-Ouest où les appelle la mousson asiatique, due au continent surchauffé. Les vents d’Ouest des mers australes eux-mêmes sont attirés plus au Nord ; tandis qu’en été ils ne touchent que l’île Sud de la Nouvelle-Zélande, en hiver ils envahissent l’île Nord, et, déviant en partie au NordOuest, vont rejoindre en Nouvelle-Guinée l’alizé du Sud-Est et le mousson d’Asie.

Les courants marins renforcent les courants aériens.

Au Nord, le Kouro-Chivo va longer la côte américaine, en descend sous le nom de courant de Californie, et, parallèle à l’alizé, rejoint le courant Nord-Équatorial qui s’en va aux Philippines. Au Sud, le courant Sud-Équatorial, sensible déjà sur les côtes du Pérou, court à l’Ouest, dépasse l’équateur de 6

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degrés, se morcelle en ramules nombreuses au milieu des îles Polynésiennes, et, après avoir longé les côtes d’Australie et de Nouvelle-Zélande, retourne à l’Est dans la grande zone des vents réguliers de l’Ouest.

Entre les deux, près de l’Equateur, il y a un contrecourant, allant à l’Est, très net, et doué d’une grande vitesse quand le soleil est au tropique Sud.

Les vents, chargés de vapeur d’eau, lorsqu’ils heurtent les îles, y déversent des pluies abondantes.

Wilhelmshafen reçoit 3 m. 56 d’eau en 218 jours, de novembre à avril ; Yap reçoit 2 m. 78 ; dans les îles Sandwich, si Honoloulou ne reçoit que 776 millimètres, Pepeeko à une altitude de 25 mètres reçoit 3 m. 56, et Volcanohouse, situé à 1.260 mètres, 4 m. 33. C’est qu’il faut attribuer une grande importance au relief : tandis que le versant soumis aux vents pluvieux est très arrosé, l’autre, qui se trouve à l’abri, l’est beaucoup moins. “ A Tahiti, les petits nuages errants que le vent alizé promène sur la grande mer sont arrêtés au sol ; ils viennent s’amonceler contre le parois de basalte, pour redescendre en rosée, ou retomber en ruisseaux et en cascades... La pluie tombait, une de ces pluies torrentielles, tièdes parfumées, qu’amènent là-bas les orages d’été ; les grandes palmes cocotiers se couchaient sous l’ondée ; leurs nervures puissantes ruisselaient d’eau ; il passait des rafales qui courbaient ces grands arbres comme un champ de roseaux ” (LOTI).

Quoique le Grand Océan soit souvent d’une tranquillité relative qui lui a valu son nom de “ Pacifique ” donné par Magellan, aux changements de saison, quand les vents tournent brusquement, il se produit des cyclones dont les ravages rappellent ceux de la mer des Indes ou des Antilles.

Le 24 janvier 1880, la Nouvelle-Calédonie, la pression barométrique était descendue, 715 millimètres ; le vent courba, brisa, faucha les arbres sur d’énormes étendues ; l’Océan monta de 8 mètres au-dessus du niveau des pleines mers ; une pirogue fut retrouvée dans les terres à 1.200 mètres de la plage. Sur les îles basses coralliennes surtout, les dégâts sont épouvantables : en 1878, une vague rasa le chef-lieu des Touamotou, Anaa ; aux Touamotou encore, du 11 au 17 janvier 1903, la mer envahit les plantations et fit périr 500 personnes, le dixième de la population.

IV. Vie végétale. Si on laisse de côté l’Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande, qui seront étudiées à part, la flore offre une grande unité : cette unité est due Copyright© Nuova Cultura

aux vents et aux courants qui ont dispersé uniformément les graines. En Nouvelle-Guinée domine encore la flore indo-malaise, et non la flore australienne : il n’y a ni Eucalyptus, ni Acacias.

Les îles océaniques ont une flore pauvre en espèces. Sur les îles coralliennes : il n’y a en fait d’arbres que le Cocotier et le Pandanus. Mais dans chaque espèce les individus sont nombreux. Sur les îles volcaniques et montagneuses, le versant arrosé se couvre de forêts puissantes, tandis que le versant sec est occupé par la savane aux hautes herbes. La végétation offre donc en général une apparence de richesse exubérante, qui la fait rentrer dans la catégorie des forêts tropicales. “ A Tahiti, les pluies, les brumes épaisses et tièdes entretiennent dans les gorges une verdure d’une inaltérable fraicheur, des mousses incontenues et d’étonnantes fougères.... L’air est chargé de senteurs énervantes et inconnues ; des broussailles de mimosas et de goyaviers sort un léger bruit de feuilles qui se froissent... mais on n’entend aucun chant d’oiseaux dans les bois tahitiens... Sous cette ombre épaisse, dans les lianes et le grandes fougères, rien ne vole, rien ne bouge ; c’est toujours le même silence étrange qui semble régner aussi dans l’imagination mélancolique des naturels ” (LOTI).

V. Vie animale. Les animaux sont venus de l’Ouest comme les plantes. La faune fait partie de la Région australienne de Wallace. En dehors des sous-régions néo-zélandaise et australienne, qui seront étudiées plus loin, il y a en Australasie deux divisions nettes. La sous-région papoue est celle de la Nouvelle-Guinée et des îles voisines. Dans ses forêts humides pullulent les Insectes et les Papillons aux couleurs nuancées, ainsi que les Oiseaux aux brillants plumages, dont le roi est l’Oiseau de Paradis. Dans les savanes voyagent les Casoars, ces oiseaux coureurs aux ailes atrophiées.

La sous-région polynésienne se distingue par sa pauvreté en Reptiles et en Mammifères, ce qui est naturel, car il leur est difficile de franchir les mers ; le seul mammifère commun à toute la Polynésie était le Rat ; or il a presque disparu. Au contraire les vents dispersent les Insectes et les Oiseaux.

Ceux-ci ne chantent pas ; autrefois même ils n’étaient pas sauvages, “ ils se laissaient cueillir comme des fleurs ” ; et l’un des grands étonnements de l’Européen qui se promène parmi les forêts suspendues aux montagnes sombres, au milieu de cette solitude majestueuse et sans bornes du Pacifique, est sans contredit le silence éternel des bois de la Polynésie.

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VI. Vie humaine. A part les Australiens, qu’on étudiera plus loin, les terres océaniques comprennent deux sortes de populations, les Mélanésiens et les Polynésiens.

Les Mélanésiens forment une race bien caractérisée qui se rattache au type nègre. De taille moyenne (1 m. 65 environ), ils ont la tête très allongée, la peau de couleur brun chocolat, les cheveux noirs crépus, avec cette frisure naturelle qui frappe si fortement les Européens, les arcades sourcilières proéminentes, le regard féroce et méfiant. Essentiellement agriculteurs, ils ne s’aventurent qu’à peine en mer. Ils offrent donc une grande unité et comme race et comme civilisation. On peut néanmoins les diviser en deux catégories : les Papous, de figure plus allongée, avec le nez crochu, habitent la Nouvelle-Guinée et quelques îlots côtiers ; les Mélanésiens proprement dits, qui ont la face plus large et le nez retroussé, occupent les îles de l’Amirauté, la NouvelleBretagne, les îles Salomon, Santa Cruz, les Nouvelles-Hébrides, la Nouvelle-Calédonie (Canaques) et même les Fidji où ils se mêlent aux Polynésiens.

Ce sont avant tout des agriculteurs ; leur culture essentielle est le Bananier.

Le tubercule du Taro, extrêmement nourrissant, est l’aliment de la saison des pluies ; l’Igname, qui vaut moins, est l’aliment de la saison sèche. En quelques endroits on y ajoute encore le Maïs, la Batate.

Comme les engrais manquent, le même coin de terre ne peut être cultivé que tous les huit ou dix ans ; aussi chaque village est-il entouré de grandes zones défrichées et le mode de défrichement est primitif, c’est l’incendie. On cultive à la main : les Indigènes de Port Moresby se rangent en ligne un bâton dans chaque main et piochent ainsi par mouvements d’ensemble. L’élevage est un peu près inconnu : le porc est le seul animal domestique, et dans quelques endroits seulement. La chasse et la pêche procurent un supplément de ressources. Habiles à poser des pièges et à empoisonner les étangs, les Papous construisent de beaux navires à voile quadrangulaire, les “ Lakatoi ”, et de belles pirogues ; mais ils n’osent s’aventurer en pleine mer et se contenent du cabotage. La nourriture animale leur fait donc souvent défaut ; leur régime presque exclusivement végétarien leur donne un ventre proéminent, mais, comme le besoin de viande est un des plus urgents de l’homme, quand les animaux manquent, les Mélanésiens vont à la chasse à l’homme : leur anthropophagie a donc avant tout des raisons physiologiques. Ils mangent les prisonniers,

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ils s’en distribuent les morceaux avec une grande équité “ comme chez nous le pain bénit ” et leur plat le plus apprécié est un mélange de Taro, de Noix de coco et de cervelle humaine. Un autre besoin physiologique est celui des alcalins, comme le sel chez nous : c’est ce qui explique l’usage général de chiquer le bétel, et celui plus rare, de manger de l’argile. Le vêtement est très simple ; il consiste en une ceinture ou pagne d’écorce battue ; les femmes portent un tablier en herbes sèches ; quelques tribus vont nues.

Les maisons sont construites sur pilotis, même dans l’intérieur des terres.

Dans l’Ouest de la Nouvelle-Guinée, il y a de grandes maisons de 30 il 150 mètres de longueur ; dans l’Est, elles sont plus petites. Le plancher, établi sur des pieux, est fait de petites poutres entrelacées de lianes, le foyer repose sur une couche de terre glaise, une sorte de véranda court autour de la maison, et les enfants y jouent, tandis qu’au-dessous, dans les marais, les crocodiles attendent les débris de cuisine.

En Nouvelle- Calédonie, le type de maison est autre : les huttes sont circulaires avec un toit conique.

Les Mélanésiens en sont encore à l’âge de la pierre polie. Leurs armes sont des massues, des haches, des arcs et des flèches, en pointes de silex ou en os barbelés, qu’ils savent empoisonner avec les sucs des plantes. Ils sont très vaniteux ; comme tous les sauvages. La chasse à l’homme, ou “ chasse aux têtes ”, en dehors du besoin de manger de la chair, a pour cause l’orgueil des chefs qui veulent avoir leurs cases ornées de crânes suspendus. Ils recherchent tous les ornements : peignes dans les cheveux, baguettes en os dans la cloison du nez, bracelets, colliers, dessins sur les ceintures d’écorce. Leur tatouage, assez grossier, consiste en brûlures et en incisions. Ils ont en somme une mentalité primitive, ils sont groupés en tribus, mais beaucoup ignorent même la poterie ou le tressage des fibres des plantes. Sans avoir de religion, ils sont très superstitieux : ils égorgent les prisonniers pour que leur âme protège les champs et favorise la pêche ; ils s’effarent aux cris d’oiseaux ou au moindre bruit de feuilles dans les forêts. Ils sont envahis par l’islamisme et par le christianisme, mais le contact des Européens leur est funeste, et ils ne tarderont peut-être pas à disparaître, sinon dans les régions immenses et tropicales de la NouvelleGuinée, du moins dans les îles plus petites et tempérées, comme la Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Les Polynésiens occupent les îles océaniques, des Sandwich à l’île de Pâques et à la NouvelleZélande. Ils présentent une unité tout à fait Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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extraordinaire pour des îles séparées par des espaces immenses, et qui est due à leurs actives relations commerciales et à leurs migrations incessantes. - Ils ont une grande taille (1 m. 74 en moyenne), le teint clair, jaune ou tirant sur le brun, la tête ronde, les cheveux droits ou ondés, un peu rudes, le nez court et droit, les pommettes saillantes, les arcades sourcilières peu prononcées, les yeux d’un noir roux, le regard d’une douceur câline et langoureuse ; ils forment en somme un des plus beaux types des races humaines.

Agriculteurs habiles, même avant l’arrivée des Européens, ils pratiquaient l’irrigation dans les îles montagneuses comme Tahiti ou la Nouvelle-Zélande.

Dans les îles basses ils vivaient des produits du Cocotier et du Taro ou arbre à pain. Pour cuire les aliments, ils les plaçaient entre deux pierres chauffées, dans un trou où ils accumulaient des lits alternatifs de feuilles sèches et de fruits et obtenaient en une demi-heure un mets délicieux. Ils y ajoutaient des poissons, des coquillages, de la viande de porc, leur seul animal domestique, ou des rats qu’ils chassaient à l’arc, tant la viande était rare. La boisson nationale était le “ kava ” ; pour l’obtenir on se rangeait en cercle autour d’un grand plat on mâchait des feuilles de poivrier, et 1’on crachait dans le plat, puis on faisait fermenter ce liquide original, et, paraitil, tout à fait délicieux. Leur nourriture, exclusivement végétale, leur donnait une obésité générale et le besoin de manger de la chair en avait fait des cannibales ; mais, naturellement, l’arrivée des Européens a transformé complètement et la culture et le mode d’alimentation. Leur costume est fait d’écorce battue de mûrier à papier (Broussonetia papyrifera). Ils font de ses fibres de beaux travaux de tressage, et les Tahitiens s’attachent aux reins le “ pareu ” aux couleurs éclatantes, aux dessins multicolores, qui leur retombe jusqu’aux pieds. Leur type d’habitation est un abri contre la chaleur et non contre le vent, qui rafraîchit plutôt agréablement : c’est une claie de branches entrelacées soutenue pur des pieux.

Les Polynésiens sont avant tout des marins. Le manque de vivres et l’excès de population les ont jetés, volontairement ou non, à l’aventure, et ils ont construit de magnifiques navires. Ces navires sont de deux sortes : tantôt ce sont des pirogues à rames, le plus souvent accouplées et réunies par des plates-formes, de grandes pirogues de guerre, qui ont 100 pagayeurs pour 40 guerriers, analogues aux galères méditerranéennes ; tantôt ce sont des pirogues à balancier, ce balancier servant pour utiliser le vent de côté sans perdre de force. Sur

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toutes s’étale la voile en nattes, de forme triangulaire. C’est là-dessus, emportés, comme leurs oiseaux, par les vents engouffrés dans les grandes ailes de leurs navires, qu’ils ont sillonné l’immensité du Pacifique, se guidant soit d’après les astres, soit avec des cartes, souvent très bien faites, comme celle du Tahitien Tupaïa.

Ils en étaient encore à l’âge de la pierre à l’arrivée des Européens. C’était tout naturel, car la plupart des îles n’ont pas de gisements métalliques ; dans celles qui en possèdent, les métaux sont difficiles à extraire ; en outre, isolés et à l’écart, ces peuples n’ont pu imiter des voisins plus heureux et pourvus du bronze ou du fer. Leurs armes étaient non pas l’arc, qui servait seulement pour la chasse, mais le javelot, la fronde, surtout la massue en bois ; ils ignoraient le bouclier. Très braves, ils aimaient le corps-à-corps et méprisaient le combat à distance.

Les Polynésiens sont vaniteux et orgueilleux. De tempérament joyeux, ils aiment la danse et les Tahitiens adorent la “ oupa oupa ” au son du tamtam.

Ils pratiquent la sculpture ; on a trouvé dans l’île de Pâques, à l’intérieur d’un cratère volcanique, d’énormes statues en basalte, sans doute des idoles funéraires, dont l’une a 7 mètres de hauteur et dont l’origine est encore discutée. Ils couvrent de peintures leurs vêtements et leurs outils. Ils dessinent fort joliment. Mais le grand ornement est le tatouage : il se pratique non par entailles, mais par piqûres ; il se fait à l’aide d’un pigment extrait de la graine d’un oléagineux, l’aleurite ; très douloureux, mais très artistique, faisant valoir harmonieusement les formes, et “ exigé par les Dieux ”, il est devenu un véritable art, surtout en Nouvelle-Zélande.

Cette race si intelligente a manqué malheureusement de ressources, et c’est ce qui lui a laissé certains traits de sauvagerie : d’abord le cannibalisme ; puis l’usage du tabou, qui réserve aux hommes les meilleurs plats et l’usage de certains objets, en les interdisant aux êtres inférieurs, femmes et enfants ; et l’infanticide, qui respecte les enfants mâles, mais supprime beaucoup de filles, en qui l’on ne voit que des bouches inutiles.

Les nécessités matérielles ont engendré les habitudes sociales, on a déclaré “ tabou ” une foule d’objets par religion ; par religion encore on a sacrifié des enfants aux dieux. Les Polynésiens sont en effet un peuple très religieux. “ Taaroa est l’Etre suprême, le Dieu créateur du monde. Les ‘ toupapaou ’ sont des fantômes tatoués qui viennent terroriser les vivants, et la vieille religion maorie comprend une

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quantité de mots mystiques, de ces mots tristes, effrayants, intraduisibles qui expriment là-bas les terreurs vagues de la nuit, les bruits mystérieux de la nature, les rêves à peine saisissables de l’imagination ” (LOTI).

D’où vient cette race voyageuse? Il y a entre tous les Polynésiens communauté, non seulement de race, mais de langage, et un Tahitien arrive vite à comprendre les dialectes des îles Sandwich, des Marquises ou de la Nouvelle-Zélande. Aujourd’hui on attribue à toutes ces populations une origine asiatique.

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Italian Association of Geography Teachers

REFERRED PAPERS FOR REMOTE SENSING Edited by Alberto Baroni and Maurizio Fea

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 2, Dec., 2013, pp. 115-142 DOI: 10.4458/2379-10

Remote sensing and interdisciplinary approach for studying glaciers Maurizio Feaa, Umberto Minorab, Cristiano Pesaresic, Claudio Smiragliad a

Italian Geophysics Association, Rome, Italy Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra “Ardito Desio”, University of Milan, Milan, Italy c Dipartimento di Scienze documentarie, linguistico-filologiche e geografiche, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy d Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra “Ardito Desio”, University of Milan, Milan, Italy – Comitato Glaciologico Italiano b

Email: claudio.smiraglia@unimi.it Received: November 2013 – Accepted: December 2013

Abstract Remote sensing, which provides interesting input and approaches for multidisciplinary research and wide inventories, and which represents a very important tool in the strictly related fields of research and didactics, shows great potentialities in the specific area of the studies of glaciers (extension, balance and variations), glacier morphology and climate changes. In time, remote sensing applications for the analysis of glaciers and climate change have considerably increased, using different methodologies and obtaining significant results. In this paper, after a synthesis of some basic elements, we provide a detailed literary review, which sets out to underline the steps and results achieved and also to stimulate didactical considerations and hypothesis of work.

Successively, we resume the main characteristics of specific glaciers, for which the European Space Agency (ESA-ESRIN) has provided images ad hoc and for each glacier we propose an interpretative analysis of these images. According to the scheme proposed by Fea et al. (2013), the principal aim is to define research of referral and some interpretative guidelines useful for interdisciplinary frameworks focussed on glaciers, where geography can play the role of collector between different sciences with the support of various geotechnologies.

Keywords: Climate Change, Glaciers, Ice and Snow, Interdisciplinary Study, Remote Sensing, Satellite and Aerial Images

1. Introduction The modern knowledge of the planet Earth describes it as an integrated system of six basic components, namely atmosphere, cryosphere, Copyright© Nuova Cultura

hydrosphere, geosphere, biosphere and anthroposphere, each of them in a permanent and complex interaction with all the others. The evolution of the Earth is characterised primarily by this interactivity, even if in the medium- and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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long-term an important role is played by external forces, such as solar wind and cosmic rays, and sometimes by sudden interplanetary events, for instance by the impact of a celestial body.

Nowadays, major scientific challenges are concerned with the apparent acceleration of the evolution of the Earth’s climate, the increased occurrence of extreme meteorological events and atmospheric global warming. The real concern comes, in particular, from the actual impact that is caused to the above-mentioned natural evolution by the parallel exponential increase of the world population and human activities.

Specifically, two terms have become very popular: climate change and global warming, implying in reality with them the impact on natural phenomena (climate variability and atmospheric greenhouse effect) of human activities. Therefore, climate change and global warming are now first priority targets (among others, of course) for scientific research and world-wide operational observing systems.

General and specific phenomena and parameters have been identified for an effective monitoring through measurements and observations at all scales and with all means, from ground devices to airplane and satellite instruments.

In the above context, the accurate monitoring of the cryosphere plays a very important role, as ice in all its forms, such as sea-ice, permafrost, glaciers, icebergs, snow cover and so on, has a fundamental role in the variability of key physical and chemical parameters, like for instance temperature, albedo, sublimation, pollution. Therefore, glaciers are very important scientific and operational indicators, as will be shown and demonstrated in the next chapters.

One last consideration concerns remote sensing, that is to say methodology, procedures and tools for observing a target without getting into physical contact with it. It uses devices (sensors) that measure the electromagnetic energy irradiated by the observed targets in different parts (spectral bands) of the electromagnetic (e.m.) spectrum, defined by their related wavelengths. The most common bands used to observe the Earth’s surface are the Visible (VIS, which contains all the colours of a rainbow), Near-, Medium- and Far Infrared Copyright© Nuova Cultura

(NIR, MIR and FIR), the Thermal Infrared (TIR) and the Microwaves (MW).

The energy measured in each spectral band carries a different type of information about the observed target: for example, in the Visible the physical input is the fraction of sunlight (albedo) reflected by the target surface towards the sensor. Simultaneous use of different VIS bands provides information that is very useful to “recognise” the observed target and, therefore, to “classify” it through a multispectral observation. Each spectral band used by an observing instrument has a number assigned, specific to that instrument; the same band with a different instrument could have a different number. The data are then visualised on a screen by inserting the values measured in a spectral band in one of the three colour channels (Red, Green and Blue) that drive the screen; the visualisation model is then identified by specifying RGB and the band numbers used to visualise the band values: for example, RGB 321 indicates that the data acquired by the sensor in the spectral band No. 3 of the used instrument are shown in Red colour tones on the screen.

Visualisation in natural (or true) colours means inserting into the RGB channels of the screen respectively the values measured by the sensor through the spectral bands of the corresponding red, green and blue colours of the rainbow in the Visible bands. Any other combination would provide a false colour image on the screen. Natural colour images provide a “human” view of the scene; false colours are very much used to help the interpretation of the data or to quickly identify a specific target (thematic images).

This paper, conducted on the basis of the scheme proposed by Fea et al. (2013), focusses the attention on specific elements that would help to better understand the potentialities of remote sensing in the double and strictly related fields of research and didactics, resuming the methods and results of many studies carried out on different glaciers and examining various glaciers under a geographic, glaciological and geomatic point of view.

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2. Remote sensing for the study of mountain glaciers. A literary review and some didactical considerations International literature has shown many interesting and useful functions and applications regarding remote sensing for the study of glaciers (extension, balance and variations) and glacier morphology, also providing input for the analysis of climate change. In fact, there is a very large amount of research which has focussed the attention on different glaciers, providing important estimates regarding the dimensions and variations recorded over a number of years or decades. For example, the glaciers of the Himalayas and the Alps are precious sources of information and data because they have been analysed considering many aspects and points of view. In other cases, remote sensing has been used as a support for the assessment of hazards from glacier lake outbursts and for the origination of potential ice avalanches and debris flows and also for the evaluation of permafrost-related hazards in high mountains (Huggel et al., 2002; Kääb et al., 2005; Frey et al., 2010).

In order to collect a set of images that are explanatory and of considerable use both in research and didactics, it is very important to have images obtained over a period with a reduced blanket of snow and without cloud cover; similarly, in terms of evolution analysis, it would be recommended to make comparisons among images taken in the same month in different years so as to permit maximum comparability.

For some decades now many papers have underlined the potential added value of remote sensing for the study of glaciers, highlighting particular aspects and providing relevant contributions for different kinds of analysis, and in the last ten years an intense proliferation of studies has been recorded, stimulating the need to define synthetic frameworks of knowledge and results.

As affirmed by Berthier et al. in 2004, mountain glaciers can be considered a reliable indicator of climate change and remote sensing can provide “a suitable way to increase the

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number of monitored glaciers, especially in remote areas”. Focussing the attention on the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in the French Alps, as “test area”, the approach used has adapted “the geodetic method to satellite images.

The first step calculates the DEMs. Some adjustments and corrections are needed to reduce the biases between the DEMs. The mean thickness change is then extracted for each altitude interval on the glacier” (p. 1).

Considering two time intervals (1994-2000 and 2000-2003), the study has made it possible to “show a rapid thinning of the Mer de Glace during the last 10 years below 2500 m” (p. 4).

A couple of years later, Bolch and Kamp stated that: “Glaciers are sensitive climate indicators and thus subject to monitoring of environmental and climate changes. Remote sensing techniques are often the only way to analyze glaciers in remote mountains and to monitor a large number of glaciers at the same time” (2006, p. 37). Their study has shown “the capability of accurate glacier mapping using multispectral data, digital elevation models (DEMs), and morphometric analysis for the Bernina Group in the Swiss Alps and for the northern Tien Shan in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan” (p. 38).

Another interesting investigation regarding glacier variation was conducted using data from Indian Remote Sensing satellites by Kulkarni et al. in 2007. “This investigation was carried out for 466 glaciers in the highly glaciered Himalayan basins, namely Baspa, Parbati and Chenab” and “has shown overall 21% reduction in glacial area from the middle of the last century. Mean area of glacial extent was reduced from 1.4 to 0.32 sq. km between 1962 and 2001”. Nevertheless, “the number of glaciers has increased between 1962 and 2001” (due to fragmentation), but the “total areal extent has reduced” (pp. 73-74).

In the same year, glacier changes in the Alps were observed by satellite in research conducted

by Paul et al. and the “qualitative analysis of multispectral satellite imagery revealed clear but indirect evidence of massive glacier downwasting in the European Alps since 1985. The changes can easily be detected with animated

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multitemporal false colour images which only require relative image matching” (2007, p. 120).

Furthermore in 2007, the old topographic maps of Svalbard and a modern digital elevation model were compared by Nuth et al. to study the glacier geometry and elevation changes on Svalbard (seven regions for a total of about 5,000 km2) over a long time interval (54 years), showing a significant area decrease and loss of mass for the 1936-1990 period.

Still in the same year, starting from the consideration that “Alpine glaciers dynamics may serve as an indicator of Climate Change”, the results of research aimed at developing “a true temporal GIS able to manage, visualize and analyse” different type of data which require a synthesis were exposed by Villa et al.

Particularly, the aims to create a complex and articulated geodatabase were resumed in an “analysis of mass balance in relation to geographic parameters (aspect, slope, bedrock morphology, ice thickness), moraines mapping and analysis to support field reconstructions, mapping of different kind of features (seracs and crevasses i.e.) to support glacier dynamics analysis. Furthermore, it can be a useful base point for a web-mapping use of this data (environmental paths, geosites descriptions etc.).

Moreover a more integrated quantitative analysis can be carried out by the use of a geosensors network” which can be defined as a system of tools “to acquire different kind of spatiotemporal data. GPS, total stations, digital cameras, laser scanners can be therefore defined as geosensors. GIS will be able to integrate this network of several sensor data type, offering to the research an added value in terms of a common ground for the fusion of data and in a forecasting perspective” (2007, p. 103).

Then in 2008, Malinverni et al. “developed a study process to analyse the status of some Alpine glacier groups (Adamello, OrtlesCevedale and Bernina) localised in the North of Italy, the ‘water tower’ of Europe. The investigation was based on a set of three multitemporal Landsat scenes acquired with the sensors MSS, TM and ETM+ combined with other types of information (2D, 3D and thematic data). The GIS based analysis, supported by remote sensing processing, allowed the Copyright© Nuova Cultura

extrapolation of the meaningful parameters for the glacier dynamism in the temporal displacement of observation” (p. 120). They showed that: “More refined classification methods, principal components analyses and image rationing can produce a classification which is supported by a rigorous accuracy assessment and can facilitate the production of accurate maps of glacier extension useful for glacier inventory, for change detection studies and also for analysing the influence of climate change and global warming. The acquired location and the extent of each glacier derived by remote sensing techniques can update the data-base, adding information about the accumulation and ablation areas from which the accumulation area ratio (AAR) can be derived.

Furthermore, the integration of the digital elevation model with the dataset could facilitate the derivation of some other important glacier inventory attributes” (pp. 130-131).

One year later, Knoll and Kerschner applied a “new approach to glacier inventory, based on airborne laser-scanner data”, to South Tyrol (Italy): “it yields highly accurate results with a minimum of human supervision. Earlier inventories, from 1983 and 1997, are used to compare changes in area, volume and equilibrium-line altitude. A reduction of 32% was observed in glacier area from 1983 to 2006.

Volume change, derived from the 1997 and 2006 digital elevation models, was –1.037 km3” (p. 46). So, modern Earth-observation methods and technologies (laser-scanning and radar remote sensing) have shown their importance for estimating and monitoring variations recorded in areas and volume, offering interesting “opportunity to investigate glacier changes” (2009, p. 50).

In 2010, Bolch et al. provided “a comprehensive multi-temporal glacier inventory for British Columbia and Alberta, a region that contains over 15,000 glaciers, for the years 1985, 2000 (for about half of the area) and 2005, generated in a time frame of less than 1 year”.

Regarding the technologies and tools used, they worked with satellite imagery, DEM and digital outlines of glaciers from 1985 and the results showed that: “Glacier area in western Canada declined 11.1±3.8% between 1985 and 2005.

The highest shrinkage rate in British Columbia Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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was found in the northern Interior Ranges (−24.0±4.9%), the lowest in the northern Coast Mountains (−7.7±4.6%). The continental glaciers in the central and southern Rocky Mountains of Alberta, shrank the most (−25.4±4.1%). However, the shrinkage rate is mostly influenced by glacier size. Regional differences in ice loss are smaller when glaciers of any given size class are examined […]. The shrinkage rates have possibly increased across the study area in the period 2000–2005, with the highest increase in the Rocky Mountains” (pp.

135-136).

Recently, in the study conducted by Negi et al. “Gangotri glacier [Himalaya, India] was monitored using Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) LISS-III sensor data in combination with field collected snow-meteorological data” for the period 2001-2008 (2012, p. 855), testing the potentialities and add value of the satellite remote sensing for a temporal interval of seven years. “The observed changes in snow cover area and snow characteristics were validated using field collected snow-meteorological data and field visit” (p. 864). The results of the investigation underlined an “overall decreasing trend in the areal extent of seasonal snow cover area (SCA)” (p. 855) and confirmed “the retreat of Gangotri glacier” (p. 864). Moreover: “This study has shown that the changes on glacier surface are due to climatic and topographic (local geomorphology) factors, which decreased overall glaciated area by 6% between 1962 and 2006” (p. 864).

Another contemporary paper, using also false colour images which have demonstrated their importance both in snow mapping and in identifying various glacial landforms, presented “the results obtained from the analysis of a set of multitemporal Landsat MSS, TM and ETM+ images for the monitoring and analysis of Gangotri Glacier main trunk change”. The investigation and data analysed by Haq et al. have shown an overall significant reduction in glacier area between 1972 and 2010 (2012, p.

259).

Owing to its relevance and numerous applications, it is worth noting the “GLIMS” project (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space) coordinated by Jeffrey S. Kargel and Copyright© Nuova Cultura

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finalised “to monitor the world’s glaciers primarily using data from optical satellite instruments, such as ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and reflection Radiometer)” (http://www.glims.org).

In fact, the main applications of GLIMS concern (http://www.glims.org/About): - Global Change Detection and “GLIMS’ mission to establish a global inventory of ice will provide the community with data for later comparison. Monitoring glaciers across the globe and understanding not only the cause of those changes, but the effects”, the project will provide important steps “to a greater understanding of global change and its causes”; - Hazards Detection and Assessment because “outburst floods, landslides, debris flows, and debris avalanches can destroy property and take lives in a sudden rush of water, ice, sediment, rock, soil, and debris”, provoking relevant problems and damages to the communities exposed to risk; - Glacier Monitoring and “through the long-term monitoring of the world’s glaciers” the GLIMS project has also the purpose to “build a base of historical data, detect climate changes early, and predict and avoid hazards to human communities living in the proximity of glaciers”.

The GLIMS project “has implemented a database of glacier outlines from around the world and other information about glaciers that includes the metadata on how those outlines were derived” (http://www.glims.org/glims blurb.html). The GLIMS database is thought “to be a logical extension of the World Glacier Inventory (WGI) of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS)” (http://nsidc.org/glims/). For more than a century, WGMS and other predecessor organizations “have been compiling and disseminating standardized data on glacier fluctuations”. Particularly, “WGMS annually collects glacier data through its scientific collaboration network that is active in more than 30 countries” (http://www.wgms.ch/).

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Moreover, as supplementary element, the Randolph glacier inventory (RGI 3.2) was produced, which is a global inventory of glacier outlines (http://www.glims.org/RGI/randolph.html).

However, we have to remember that interesting input and considerations for the study of glacier variation based on remote sensing were already being carried out at the end of the 70s and 80s (Rabagliati and Serandrei Barbero, 1979; Della Ventura et al., 1982, 1983; Dozier, 1984), when for example remote sensing and geotechniques for the automatic analysis of digital images were applied to evaluate the glacier surfaces of Mount Disgrazia (Alpi Retiche, Italy) and to estimate fluctuations over time (between 1975 and 1980) (Della Ventura et al., 1985).

Therefore, papers like these represent “guide studies” which have provided elements and input useful for future research and developments in the general framework of knowledge.

New interesting contributions successively produced in the 90s when:

were

- Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data of some glaciers in the eastern Alps of Austria were acquired every two years (in 1984, 1986, 1988 and 1990) and studied in detail in order to observe and quantify the glacier variations (Bayr et al., 1994, p. 1733); - a specific algorithm was developed to map global snow cover using Earth Observing System (EOS) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data (Hall et al., 1995, p. 127); - the capability and potentialities of Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) to map seasonal snow covers in alpine regions were tested (Shi and Dozier, 1997, p. 294); - the SIR-C/X-SAR was used to map snow and glacial ice on the rugged north slope of Mount Everest (Albright et al., 1998, p.

25823).

Also at the beginning of 2000 a great amount of increasingly detailed research on these topics was published and relevant contributions were for example focussed on the Swiss and Austrian Alps.

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Particularly, in 2000 a methodology based on remote sensing for analysing the distribution of glacier mass-balance was presented by Hubbard et al. as far as concerns Haut glacier d’Arolla (Valais, Switzerland, between September 1992 and September 1993).

In 2001 aerophotogrammetric techniques and data and DEMs were used by Kääb to reconstruct a 20-year mass-balance curve (19731992) of Grubengletscher (Swiss Alps).

In 2002 a trend analysis of glacier area between 1969 and 1992 was conducted by Paul for 235 glaciers in the Tyrol (Austria), using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery and data from the Austrian glacier inventory and the results showed that: “The total loss in area in this period is about 43 km2 or -18.6% of the area in 1969 (230.5 km2). Glaciers smaller than 1 km2 contribute 59% (25 km2) to the total loss although they covered only one-third of the area in 1969” (p. 787).

In the same year, a new Swiss glacier inventory was compiled from satellite data for the year 2000 and the most important tasks described by Paul et al. were: “(1) an accuracy assessment of different methods for glacier classification with Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data and a digital elevation model (DEM); (2) the geographical information system (GIS)based methods for automatic extraction of individual glaciers from classified satellite data and the computation of three-dimensional glacier parameters (such as minimum, maximum and median elevation or slope and orientation) by fusion with a DEM” (2002, p. 355). This work, applying different glacier-mapping methods, has shown the relevant role obtained by the synergic interaction between remote sensing and GIS in a context where the digital elevation model can provide other useful information and offer almost two main functions: “the orthorectification of the satellite imagery, and the derivation of three-dimensional glacier parameters within a GIS” (p. 358).

And then again in 2002, another study connected with the previous one and conducted

by Kääb et al. concluded that: “The new Swiss Glacier Inventory 2000 confirms the clear trend in area-loss of Alpine glaciers. A drastic acceleration of retreat since 1985 can be Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Maurizio Fea, Umberto Minora, Cristiano Pesaresi, Claudio Smiraglia

observed for the entire glacier sample analysed here (< 10 km2). Although this drastic area loss of small glaciers is not equivalent to drastic volume loss with respect to the total ice volume […] it has significant effects on processes involved in surface energy balance, hydrology or landscape evolution. The behaviour of the small glaciers shows a high spatial and temporal variability which can completely be assessed only by remote sensing methods”.

Regarding aerophotogrammetric techniques applied to glacier inventory and studies on relationships between glacier changes and climate evolution, two recent studies combining registered colour orthophotos with differential GPS (DGPS) field measurements described the evolution of the two most glacialized Italian regions (Aosta Valley and Lombardy). Diolaiuti et al. recorded a mean area loss of Aosta Valley glaciers during 1975-2005 of about -27% (-9% per decade) (2012a, p. 17). In Lombardy glaciers’ area reduced from 1991 to 2003 by 21% and glaciers “smaller than 1 km2 accounted for 53% of the total loss in area” (Diolaiuti et al., 2012b, p. 429).

To add some other recent results based on remote sensing methods, it must be remembered that Mihalcea et al. tested in 2008 the possibility of using ASTER satellite and ground-based surface temperature measurements to derive supraglacial debris cover and thickness patterns on debris-covered glaciers. “The comparison between field and remotely sensed data serves four purposes: 1) to compare different temperature data sources, assessing their reliability and accuracy; 2) to assist in the interpretation of the spatial variations of surface temperature on a debris-covered glacier; 3) to develop a method for mapping supraglacial debris cover distribution and thickness from ASTER data; 4) to assess the validity of the satellitederived debris thickness map using field debris thickness measurements” (p. 342). The results obtained on Miage glacier confirmed the “validity of ASTER-derived surface temperatures of debris-covered” (p. 353).

Moreover, a contribution to analyse some particular glacier evolutions (i.e. the “Karakoram anomaly”, where a situation of general stability has been recently depicted) has been added by Minora et al. in 2013. They Copyright© Nuova Cultura

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focussed “the attention upon the glacier evolution within the Central Karakoram National Park […] to assess the magnitude and rate of such anomaly”. Using remote sensing data (for example Landsat images), they “analyzed a sample of more than 700 glaciers” and “found out their area change between 2001 and 2010 is not significant (+27 km2 ±42 km2), thus confirming their stationarity” (p. 2892).

To sum up, literary review shows that remote sensing is a powerful tool for the study of glaciers from many points of view and it can be used in a synergic approach with GIS, GPS and other geospatial technologies.

It also represents a very useful didactical tool making it possible to: - understand mountain and glacial environments and recognize peculiar forms and elements which in many cases would require lot of direct experience acquired during field surveys to be acknowledged; - see with one’s “own eyes” the changes recorded over time in terms of areas affected by glaciers; - search for common points and different elements among mountain environments and glaciers; - understand the hazards related to particular aspects of glacier environment in high mountains; - visualize images with strong “visual impact” which can capture the attention, stimulating hypothesis, considerations, dynamic participation in class and lively discussions with classmates and teachers; - promote laboratorial and professional didactics, a kind of start-up of research in didactics and research for didactics, which represent crucial points, an essential symbiosis to show and spread the “real face” of modern geography.

From the didactical perspective, some examples of image visualizers from the air and satellites for the study of mountain environments, which highlight the differences between various contexts, have been given by

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De Vecchis and Pesaresi in 2011 (pp. 79-90), also comparing this kind of images with topographic maps and simulating a geography cycle of geography lessons which can be supported by these very interesting iconographic materials.

New perspectives can moreover be opened up by the function of ArcGIS Online which can be added to ESRI’s GIS software. In fact, thanks to this modality, it is possible to visualize many images and applications already made to be shared, satisfying relevant didactical aspects concerning: the availability of the images; the overlay of related layers which use different sources or referred years, permitting the monitoring of glacier retreats and variations; the observation of prepared elaborations which can also provide input for similar elaborations and for new research in other contexts; the possibility of uploading one’s own elaboration to share with other users, giving enthusiasm and increasing the sense of responsibility of single students and the group working on the research.

Further important applications can be obtained by the integration between satellite images and GIS, importing georeferenced images in a GIS software able to re-elaborate, analyse and compare the acquired images. Thus, by the combined use of various geotechnologies it is possible to undertake many interesting didactical investigations, promoting and supporting innovative interdisciplinary studies, where specific methodologies and tools can be tested.

3. Miage glacier The Miage glacier is a typical debris-covered valley glacier of the upper Veny Valley (Aosta Valley, Italy), that drains the southwest slope of the Mont Blanc massif. A valley glacier means that the ice body has such a long tongue as to flow along a valley. A debris-covered glacier means a glacier where part of the ablation zone has a continuous cover of supraglacial debris across its full width. Some authors apply a more rigorous definition of debris cover over at least 50% of the ablation zone (Kirkbride, 2011). This can greatly influence ablation values all over the glacier. In particular, a thin and dispersed layer of supraglacial debris is able to enhance ice melting above clean or uncovered ice rates Copyright© Nuova Cultura

because low-albedo rock surfaces absorb much of the incoming short-wave radiation (Kirkbride, 2011). On the contrary, under a continuous clastthick cover, exceeding a “critical value” (Mattson et al., 1993), heat transfer to the debrisice interface is reduced due to the low thermal conductivity of the void-rich debris layer (Kirkbride, 2011; Nakawo and Rana, 1999; Adhikary et al., 2000; Mihalcea et al., 2006; Mihalcea et al., 2008; Scherler et al., 2011).

With its 11 km2 of surface, Miage represents the largest glacier of the Italian side of the Mont Blanc, and the third in Italy (after the Adamello and Forni glaciers).

The Miage glacier can be divided into three distinct zones: i) the upper part, characterized by numerous steep and narrow ice confluences, ii) the central part, almost flat, where the glacier tongue is canalized between steep slopes, and iii) the lower part, which flows into the Veny Valley, flanked by the Little Ice Age lateral moraine system.

The main flow line goes linearly North-West to South-West, bending in the very last portion to become parallel to the valley profile (SWNE). The glacier extends from around 4,800 m a.s.l. (top of Mont Blanc) down to 1,770 m a.s.l.

The supraglacial debris cover of the Miage glacier mainly derives from landslides, and it is then redistributed by ice flow and snow avalanches all over the ablation tongue. Debris thickness increases from a few centimeters of dispersed cover on the upper tongue to >1 m at the terminus at 1,770 m a.s.l., although debris cover is patchy or absent in localized areas of crevasses (Brock et al., 2010; Diolaiuti et al., 2005; Deline, 2005). The different distribution and thickness of the supraglacial debris cause an increase of the so-called “differential ablation” (i.e. the ratio between the melt rate of debris-free ice and that occurring at debris-covered ice at the same elevation). Debris distribution (together with its different size and lithology) can lead to peculiar geomorphological features of the glacier surface. Among others, medial moraines, glacier tables, dirt cones, and cryoconites are the most common epiglacial features found on the Miage glacier (Smiraglia and Diolaiuti, 2011).

A marginal ice-contact lake is also present, near the southern extremity of the Miage glacier.

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The ice-water contact increases calving rates of the glacier cliffs, possibly leading to flood hazards and consequently calving waves. Thus, lake monitoring is very important for visitors’ safety, as it represents a popular tourist destination. For this purpose, we recall the tragedy that was avoided of 1996, when 11 tourists close to the lake got seriously injured because of a calving wave generated by an enormous ice wall which suddenly separated from the glacier and fell into the water below.

3.1 Analysis of the Miage glacier satellite images The sector of the Western Alps where the Miage glacier is located is illustrated in this satellite medium resolution image (Figure 1), acquired on 18 April 2013 by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) instrument, carried by the Landsat-8 satellite, and visualized in natural colours. The dendritic appearance of the French, Swiss and Italian valleys in the North-Western Alps is well depicted in greenish-brownish colours. The Landsat scene covers an area of 180x180 km2, from lake Geneva (top-left) to almost Turin (bottom-right), where the Aosta Valley rising from Turin towards the centre of the image and the opposite valley of the river Arve rising from Geneva arrive from opposite directions to the Mont Blanc massif in the center-left of the image. The Miage glacier can be recognised in this winter image as a very narrow white oblique line NW-SE between the end of the two valleys (zooming electronically the image would facilitate the analysis).

The same Landsat-8 multispectral image but in a different band composition is shown in Figure 2. Here, the false colours come from the RGB 753 visualization, that is to say by displaying the Band 7 (Short Wavelength Mid Infrared [MIR] at 2.100-2.300 µm in Red colour, the Band 5 (Near Infrared [NIR] at 0.8450.885 µm) in Green colour and the Band 3 (Green Visible at 0.525 – 0.600 µm) in Blue colour. This false colour combination has the advantage of showing ice in tones of light blue (that means no Red nor Green colours, therefore very little reflected radiation by MIR and NIR spectral bands), thereby giving an immediate idea at first glance about ice and snow (white) coverage

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in the area and their topography. In this image, the Miage glacier can be recognised as a bright light blue segment in the NW-SE direction between the two valleys mentioned above.

Focusing on the glacier itself, an ALOS multispectral satellite image, acquired during the summer season on 31 August 2009 and visualised with band combination 431, is analysed (Figure 3). The scene includes all the glaciers belonging to the Mont Blanc massif, both on the Italian side and the French one.

Figure 3 is a FCC (False Composite Colour) image, namely a combination of two visible (3, 1), and one NIR (Near InfraRed) (4) satellite bands in the RGB colour model (i.e. R=4; G=3; B=1). The resulting colours are: i) red for vegetation (as visible wavelengths are highly absorbed by plants and NIR (band 4) radiometric values are visualized in the Red channel); ii) greysh-blueish for rocks (and debris) (the latter making the distinction between debris covering ice and debris without ice below not so easy) , and very dark blue for water (see supraglacial small lakes and the ice contact lake) (because the latter has high absorption for the radiation in these three spectral bands); iii) light blue for ice (well detectable on the ice falls or seracs); iv) white for snow (i.e. total reflection, both for visible and NIR wavelengths) (only small avalanches patches on both the flanks of the valley and the upper zones of the ice confluences).

The Miage glacier is immediately recognizable owing to its peculiar shape (see in particular the three lobes of the terminus) and for being the unique glacier to be almost totally covered by debris. It is in fact one of the largest debris-covered glacier in the Alps (Deline, 2005). Moreover, in Figure 4 the absence of a real and large accumulation basin in its upper section can be clearly seen, while its accumulation is mainly based on the avalanches deriving from numerous narrow ice tongues (Mont Blanc, Dome, Bionassay, Col du Miage, Tète Carrée) flowing into the main ice body. Those characteristics make it easy to define the Miage glacier as a

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Himalayan-type glacier. Clearly visible are the medial moraines, which below form tributary confluences between 2,500 and 2,600 m a.s.l., and then develop into continuous debris cover below 2,400 m a.s.l., which has a varied lithology dominated by schists and granites on the western (dark grey on the image) and eastern sides (light grey) of the tongue, respectively. It is easy to observe that the glacier surface has not significantly retreated with respect to the Little Ice Age maximum, as attested by the lateral moraines, much less than at nearby debris-free glaciers owing to the insulating effect of the debris cover.

At the southern limit of the glacier, just where the ice stream turns sharply toward NorthEast, the ice contact lake (Miage lake) is also well visible. In the image the lake appears to be composed of two distinct parts.

The one in contact with the glacier is light blue, is almost empty and supplied by glacier melting water.

The colour depends on its turbidity, which absorbs only a little quantity of sunlight, thus strongly reflecting it back to the satellite sensor.

The southern part of the lake appears dark blue instead, due to the absence of the direct ice melting water supply. That is to say, a turbid water is more reflective than clear water at all visible and near infrared wavelengths (Moore, 1980). Moreover, the different colours of the two parts of the lake indicate there is likely to be no connection between the two zones.

In facts, bathymetric surveys showed that the lake consists of two basins separated by a largely submerged moraine (Diolaiuti et al., 2005). The lake is characterised by rapid drawdown episodes that have occurred with varying frequency in its history. The last rapid draining event (September 2004) was probably caused by sudden and temporary failure in the ice floor (Masetti et al., 2009).

Figure 1. Landsat-8 multispectral image acquired on 18 April 2013 (RGB 432).

Source: ESA.

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Figure 2. Landsat-8 multispectral image acquired on 18 April 2013 (RGB 753).

Source: ESA.

Figure 3. ALOS multispectral image acquired on 31 August 2009 (RGB 431).

Source: ESA, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).

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Figure 4. Zoom of Figure 3 on Miage glacier.

Source: ESA, JAXA.

4. Freney glacier The Freney glacier is a steep mountain glacier of the Mont Blanc massif (Graian Alps), in the upper Veny Valley, close to Courmayeur (Aosta Valley, Italy). A mountain glacier, contrary to a valley glacier is a glacier type that has no tongue or only a short one and does not flow down enough to reach the main valley. The Freney flows down the southern side of Mont Blanc de Courmayeur, between the ridge of Peuterey and the ridge of Innominata, along a deep narrow hanging valley. The ridge of Innominata separates it from the twin glacier of Brouillard, that flows parallel to it. Not far from the Freney glacier, the two main debris-covered glaciers of the Italian Mont Blanc massif (Miage southwestward) and Brenva (northeastward) extend their long black tongues. The discharge waters of these glaciers together feed the Dora di Veny River, which flows into the Dora Baltea River and finally into the well-known Po river.

The Freney glacier covers a surface of about 1.4 km2 and its length is of 2.3 km ca. It extends from 3,700 m to around 2,400 m a.s.l. Above, within a small cirque, there is a glacieret (a very

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small glacier or ice masse of indefinite shape in hollows which has little or not movement for at least two consecutive years) which discharges ice into the Freney glacier below feeding it and until the 1970s was still connected with the main trunk. Even during the peak of the Little Ice Age the Freney glacier did not reach the main bottom valley of Val Veny and its snout remained hanging on a steep rock belt. At present the snout is very thin and flows down up to a few score meters from the rock step where a small frontal moraine has been deposited. The entire surface of the glacier is broken and dissected by a grid of crevasses and seracs. The Freney could represent a significant sample of small size glacier (around 1 km2); concerning this type of glaciers, one debated argument is about their fate in the forthcoming decades in the context of climate change. Italian glaciers underwent a generalized retreat in the 20th century (Citterio et al., 2007) and in particular the Aosta Valley glaciers lost 44.3 km2 during 1975-2005, i.e. c.

27% of the initial area (Diolaiuti et al., 2012a).

Small glaciers contributed considerably to total area loss; in fact the smaller the glacier the faster the reduction in size, so their extintion is more

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than a mere conjecture. On the other hand, glaciers flowing down along a narrow valley in steep mountain topography, such as the Freney, are subject to a slightly stronger shading. So, these shrinking glaciers are becoming less sensitive to climatic change and might thus be able to stabilize their extent. In any case, the southward aspect and the climatic forcing on one hand, and the protecting shading effect of vertical peaks on the other hand, could play opposite roles in the Freney glacier fate, and therefore it is hard to make any prediction.

4.1 Analysis of the Freney glacier satellite images The Freney glacier is located very close to the Miage glacier, so that in the Landsat-8 images used to illustrate this alpine region (Figures 1 and 2), it can be identified almost parallel to it, just on the right hand side of the latter, after the Brouillard glacier, nearly touching the north-western end of the Aosta Valley, not too far from Courmayeur.

The image used here to describe the Freney glacier is the same one utilized for the Miage glacier, namely an ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) scene acquired on 31 August 2009 (Figure 5, left part). In Figure 5, glaciers are represented in light blue colour and snow in white, while rocks (and debris) are grey and vegetation is red. This colour contrast is due to the RGB combination of bands 431 of the AVNIR-2 (Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2) sensor, and this allows an easy identification of glacier bodies.

It is not difficult to identify the snow line that divides the accumulation basin (the white narrow upper cirque) from the ablation basin (the light blue tongue): note the grey debris cover on the lowest part of the ablation basin, which has increased in the last decade, due to

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more effective cryogenic processes on the granite bare rock walls of Mont Blanc. The debris cover is quite complete and diffused on the lower zone of the ablation basin, while in the medium zone of the glacier it is reduced to two lateral active moraines, supplied by the debris production of the lateral rock walls.

In spite of the quite similar colour of debris still covering ice, of deposited debris and rocks, it is not particularly difficult to detect the exact glacier terminus position; the different grey tone of supraglacial debris (darker because of the higher humidity) and the evident ice step of the snout makes the glacier lower limit easily identifiable. The convex features of the terminus are also evident due to differential ablation (i.e. the ratio between the melt rate of bare or debris free ice and the melt rate occurring at debriscovered ice at the same elevation). The ablation gradient is opposite to that due to altitude, and the ice melt rate is smaller at lower altitude than that of the bare ice at higher altitude; therefore supraglacial convex morphologies began to develop and are well detectable on satellite images.

Although Landsat satellites are more utilized for glacier studies, ALOS has a higher spatial resolution (10 m against 30 m of the NASA satellites), and therefore is more suitable to study such a small glacier as the Freney one.

Otherwise spatial resolution would not make it possible to recognize glacier outlines properly.

As said above, the fate of the Freney glacier is uncertain, therefore the study of remotely sensed high resolution images taken at periodic intervals is necessary to monitor its state (also taking into account the difficulty or even the impossibility of collecting reliable field data).

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Figure 5. ALOS scene of 31 August 2009 showing the study area of the Freney glacier (left) and a zoom with black glacier outlines. Band combination is 431.

Source: ESA, JAXA.

5. Kilimanjaro glaciers Kilimanjaro is the Africa’s highest peak (5,895 m) (the “white roof of Africa”). It is a huge dormant stratovolcano located close to the Kenya-Tanzania border, 370 km ca south of the Equator and about the same distance from the Indian Ocean (Kaser et al., 2004). It consists of three volcanic centers, active in sequence from the Pleistocene: Shira, Mawenzi and Kibo, the latter being the highest. The summit of Kibo forms quite a flat caldera, where along the southern scarp the Uhuru Peak, the highest point of the volcano, is found and which emerges from the flat plain with its snow capped iconic bulk.

Snow and glaciers of Kilimanjaro were discovered in 1848 by the German explorer Johannes Rebmann, but English geographers were incredulous about its snowcap until 1889, when Hans Meyer climbed the summit and made the first observations of glaciers.

At present, glaciers only exist on Kibo, with an extent of 1.76 km2 in 2011, roughly half of that remaining on the continent (Hardy, 2011).

The majority of the glacier bodies are bunched

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within two main ice fields, namely the Northern Ice Field (NIF, the largest ice body), and the Southern Ice Field (SIF). Even if from a glaciological point of view this classification (Ice Field) is now rather incorrect, it is still diffused and traditionally accepted.

Kilimanjaro’s glaciers may be distinguished in plateau or horizontal (>5,700 m) glaciers and slope (<5,700 m) glaciers. The first group on the Kibo summit has flat surfaces unbroken by crevasses; their margins are vertical or nearvertical and are fluted. The slope glaciers extend down from the crater of Kibo in only a few cases (among which Kersten glacier represents the largest remaining one, Mölg et al., 2009). They are all inclined at 30-40° and are all remnants of the former Southern Ice Field; their surface is today quite dirty, due to the wind-blow dust.

The area extent of the glaciers just prior to Meyer’s observations has been estimated to be about 20 km2 (Osmaston, 1989). So they have shrunk by more than 90 percent in little more than a century and become a global-warming poster child. The break up of ice bodies had just begun very likely at the end of the 19th century Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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and the drastic shrinkage continued throughout the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. During the last Pleistocene glaciation the extent of moraines on Kibo and Mawenzi suggests that a large ice cap blanketed the mountain, covering an area of at least 150 km2 (Osmaston, 1989).

In spite of air temperatures always below freezing, areal reduction of plateau glaciers is caused mainly by melt on vertical walls that characterize their north and south margins, induced by solar radiation (Mölg et al., 2003; Cullen et al., 2006). The beginning of the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the 19th century can be attributed to an increase in net shortwave radiation, accompanied by a decrease in cloudiness and snowfall (Hastenrath, 2006). It appears likely that by midcentury the plateau glaciers will disappear from the mountain summit (Kaser et al., 2004; Cullen et al., 2012).

5.1 Analysis of Kilimanjaro glacier satellite images A recent Landsat-8 satellite image dated 27 August 2013 is here used to describe the Kilimanjaro glaciers. Bands 742 are combined in the RGB model to emphasize ice and snow in the scene. In this way glaciers are indeed brought out by a bright light blue colour, in contrast with the other elements of the image (lava flows of different ages, vegetation, dry zone). In fact, Kilimanjaro’s glaciers are immediately recognizable in the middle-right part of Figure 6, right in and around the volcano’s crater, easily visible in the complete extent of the Landsat scene, even if it is not possible to distinguish the features of both the types of glaciers and to diversify snow from ice.

The acquisition time is 11 am and afternoon clouds are coming to encircle the north-western and the southwestern slopes of the massif. This atmospheric phenomenon is more pronounced during the dry seasons and it protects ice from direct solar radiation. Thus, ablation is more apparent on the eastern margins of the cliffs than on the western ones (Kaser et al., 2004).

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there is the NIF, while SIF is South-East. The recent longitudinal fracture of the NIF is easily detectable, splitting the ice cap in two totally separate portions. Various slope glaciers are also present down to the slopes, especially southward, ice bodies derived from the fragmentation of the SIF. NIF and SIF tall ice cliffs, and slope glaciers are very sensitive to melt/no-melt cycles. In fact, during the boreal (austral) summer north-facing (south-facing) cliffs are irradiated by direct sunlight during daytime, which provides enough energy to initiate melting at the cliff faces although the air temperature is below freezing. In contrast, during the boreal (austral) winter north-facing (south-facing) cliffs are irradiated by direct sunlight only at very low angles, thus reducing ablation significantly (Kaser et al., 2004).

6. Harding Icefield The Harding Icefield is the largest of the icefields in the Kenay Mountains (Kenay Peninsula, Alaska) and the largest icefield entirely contained within the boundaries of the United States.

An icefield is defined as a mass of glacier ice, usually smaller than an ice cap and lacking a dome-like shape (http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/words/ glossary.pl).

The Harding Icefield is about 80 km long (northeast-southwest) and 50 km across.

Including the outlet glaciers, it covers an area of about 1,800 km2. Slightly more than half of the icefield lies within the present boundary of the Kenai Fjords National Park; the remainder lies within the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. At least 38 glaciers of different sizes and types flow from the Harding Icefield, terrestrial and tidewater (i.g. glaciers that terminate in the sea, http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/glossary/indexen.html); the most important being the Bear glacier, Exit glacier, Skilak glacier, Tustumena glacier and the Chernof glacier (Aðalgeirsdóttir et al., 1998).

Figure 7 is a zoom in the crater zone, where glaciers are situated. North-West of the crater Copyright© Nuova Cultura

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Figure 6. Area of Kilimanjaro, Operational Land Imager, Landsat-8, 27 August 2013, RGB 742.

Source: ESA.

Figure 7. Kiboâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crater and glaciers therein, Kilimanjaro.

Source: ESA.

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Amongst them, lake- and land-terminating glaciers are present in the west side, where the two huge lakes of Skilak and Tustunena drain some glaciers, while tidewater glaciers lie in the east.

Some of the latter flow at high speed continuously (as much as 35 meters per day). Moreover, they may advance and retreat periodically, independently of climatic variation (as the surging glaciers, Jiskoot, 2011). Nowadays, recent studies have found that most of the glaciers in the Harding Icefield have receded (since 1973), some dramatically (Hall et al., 2005).

6.1 Analysis of Harding Icefield satellite images The visible colour Landsat image is shown below where northeastward the smaller Sargent Icefield and southwestward the Harding Icefield are visible. Along the coast the plumes from the

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light grey glacial sediment are detectable as well. As the surface of the Harding Icefield is so large (1,800 km2), Landsat resolution (30 m), is suitable for the purpose of glaciological studies in this area, even if it is impossible to describe the local morphological features such as the medial moraines. In the lower-left part of Figure 8, the Harding Icefield is well recognizable, with its tidewater glaciers on the eastern side touching the Gulf of Alaska waters. Here, the Pacific Ocean provides copious precipitation in the form of snow. On the opposite side, at the same (or higher) altitude, snow is still present but less. This is visible looking at the snow patches getting smaller as we move downward (or westward), towards the major lakes. In general, the Harding Icefield receives at least 10 meters of snow each year (http://www.kenai. fjords.national-park.com).

Figure 8. Landsat-8 scene of 11 June 2013 showing the Harding Icefield in the lower-left part.

Source: ESA.

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7. Aletsch glacier

7.1 Analysis of theAletsch glacier satellite images

The Aletsch glacier with a length of 23 km, surface area of about 80 km2 and a maximum thickness of about 900 m, is by far the longest, the largest and the deepest glacier in the Alps and the most important of the Berner Alps (Valais) in Switzerland. The volume of the Aletsch was roughly 15 km3 in 1999, representing about 20% of the entire ice volume in Switzerland (Farinotti et al., 2009). It is a typical example of compound basin valley glacier, that is to say two or more individual valley glaciers (four in the case of the Aletsch) issuing from tributary valleys and coalescing (WGMS, 2012). They all converge in the Konkordia Platz, where the ice reaches its maximum thickness of 900 m and starts the huge curved tongue (Jouvet et al., 2011). The tributary glaciers (Grosser Aletschfirn, the bigger one, the Jungfraufirn, the Ewigschneefeld and the smaller one, the Grüneggfirn) flow down into the main tongue through steep ice fall (seracs), crossed by numerous crevasses. Along the sides of the hanging valleys joining the Aletsch tongue, there is also a great amount of surface debris forming lateral moraines, a result of accumulations of debris falling from the sides due to freeze-thaw activity and glacier flow.

Where the lateral moraines of these tributary glaciers join the lateral moraine of the Aletsch, medial moraines are formed, which give the glacier the appearance of being divided into neat lanes or black paths. Over the course of the twentieth century, such as most of the Alpine glaciers, the Aletsch, the largest Alpine glacier, receded by more than two km. During the Little Ice Age (between 1600 and 1860) the glacier reached its maximum area (145 km2) and the tributary valley glaciers of Mittelaletsch and Oberaletsch still joined the main tongue. In 1957 its surface area reached 130 km2. Then the link with the Mittelaletsch was interrupted. According to the median climatic evolution, the actual Aletsch glacier is expected to lose 90% of its ice volume by the end of 2100 (Jouvet et al., 2011).

The multitemporal image acquired in early Spring by Landsat-8 on 18 April 2013 (Figure 9) illustrates the southwestern part of the Central Alps, covered by snow, as a diagonal, dividing the Swiss territory on the left hand side from the Italian northwestern part of the Piedmont and Lombardy regions. The Aosta Valley penetrates the white alpine mountains from East to West just below the center of the image, whilst the Rhone Valley starts almost in the upper left corner, comes down towards the southwest and in the town of Martigny turns up to then enter lake Geneva in the area of Montreux. Mount Cervino (the Matterhorn) and Monte Rosa are located in the mid-right part of the image, and the Mount Blanc massif at one third along the south-west diagonal.

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The same image, but in a false colour visualization RGB 542 (Figure 10), enhances the white alpine snow-ice coverage, the black water of the lakes and the reddish vegetated valleys.

The multispectral image acquired by ALOS on 31 July 2010 (RGB 321) (Figure 11) shows the entire Berner Alps (Swiss Alps) from the Brienzersee to the Rhone Valley, in particular the Jungfrau-Aletsch massif (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) in the center-left. Enclosed by the high summits of Aletschorn, Junfrau, Mönch and Fiescherhorn (amongst others), flows the huge Aletsch glacier with its “sword-like” shape, arriving at just some 20 km from the town of Brigue. Northeastward the other giant glaciers of the Berner Alps are well detectable with their valley tongues: Fiescher, Oberar and Unteraar (the last two with their long artificial lakes). The complex structure of accumulation basin of the Aletsch is clearly observable. Actually it is formed by four accumulation basins: clockwise the Grosser Aletschfirn represents the bigger one, then the Jungfraufirn, the Ewigschneefeld, and the smaller one, the Grüneggfirn, follow.

Together they converge in the Konkordia Platz forming a semicircle, then flowing along the big curve of the ablation tongue (changing the main direction from southwestward to southeastward).

They reach the glacier snout separated the one

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from the other by medial moraines, well visible in the ALOS image; these moraines run along the ablation tongue like railways tracks, slightly enlarging toward the terminus, quite parallel to the lateral moraines. A visible grey line (trimline) (Figure 12a) follows the border of the ablation tongue, indicating the limit between well-vegetated terrain that has remained ice-free for a long time and scarcely vegetated terrain that until recently (at least from the Little Ice Age) laid under glacier ice.

This image was taken in the summer period (31st of July, 2010), to limit the covering effect of the snow as much as possible. Using band combination 431 (Figure 12b) as RGB (that is to say by combining the NIR channel with two visible bands), a major colour contrast between snow (in bright white), and ice (in light blue), makes it possible to distinguish between these two features much more easily than simply looking in natural colour. Detecting the

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approximate position where ice makes room for snow is only possible using the FCC image (on the right of Figure 12b), while there is no way to do the same for the natural colour image (Figure 12a, on the left), because there is no change in colours. The reason why this occurs is because light is all reflected back by the albedo effect of snow and there is no radiation (colour), absorption in both images (i.g. pixel colour is white). On the other hand, ice is very weakly absorptive in the visible but has strong absorption bands in the near infrared. Thus the resulting FCC image has a greater colour contrast between snow and ice, making it possible to detect their boundary quite well. This is not only true for snow and ice, but also for the enhanced capacity to recognize glacier boundaries in the accumulation zone, or (for instance), for distinguishing mountain ridges.

Figure 9. The western part of the Central Alps imaged by Landsat-8 on 18 April 2013 (RGB 432).

Source: ESA.

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Figure 10. The same image as in Figure 9, but in a false colour visualization RGB (542).

Source: ESA.

Figure 11. ALOS image acquired on 31 July 2010 (RGB 321).

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Figure 12. Aletsch glacier shown in two enlargements of the Figure 11, visualised in natural colours RGB 321 (a), and in false colours RGB 431 (b), respectively. Red lines in “b” are examples of snow-ice boundary detection.

Source: ESA, JAXA.

8. Drygalski ice tongue The Drygalski ice tongue is the floating seaward extension of David glacier, the largest outlet glacier in the Victoria Land part of the East Antarctic ice sheet, draining from the Talos and Circe Domes of the East Antarctic ice sheet (Frezzotti and Mabin, 1994).

An outlet glacier is a tongue of ice that extends radially from an ice dome; within the dome it can be identified as a rapidly moving ribbon of ice (an “ice stream”), while beyond the dome it occupies a shallow depression (Arora, 2011).

The David glacier – Drygalski ice tongue area covers a surface of about 224,000 km2 (Frezzotti and Mabin, 1994). The grounding line (GL: the transition between the inner grounded ice and its outer floating counterpart, i.e. where

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the Drygalski ice tongue begins), is about 50 km inland from the coast.

The Drygalski ice tongue floats on the west side of the Ross Sea and forms the southern coastline of Terra Nova Bay. The Drygalski tongue is fed by a faster flow (580 m per year) coming from the Circe Dome and a second slower moving flow (300 m per year) coming from the Talos Dome. These different and contrasting flow rates could probably be considered responsible for the characteristic rifts that open along the northern margin of the ice tongue (Frezzotti and Mabin, 1994).

As we move seaward starting from the David Glacier’s grounding line (GL) the thickness decreases (from 1,500 to 150 m) (Tabacco et al., 2000).

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The ice tongue plays a crucial role in the persistent development of the Terra Nova Bay polynya (area of open water surrounded by sea ice, Stringer and Groves, 1991). In fact, its formation and persistence is thought to be caused by the combined effect of the strong persistent offshore katabatic winds that prevent sea ice from forming in the bay, and the blocking effect of the Drygalski ice tongue, which stops sea ice from entering the Terra Nova Bay from the South (please, note the area of free ice water below the ice tongue in Figures 13 and 14) (Frezzotti and Mabin, 1994).

Outlet glaciers such as the David glacier, and in particular the Drygalski ice tongue, which is the part subjected to fast sea-contact dynamics, play a major role in the determination of the Antarctic ice sheet mass balance. The mass balance ablation components consist in calving and basal melting. A major calving event (calving is the process whereby masses of ice break off to form icebergs) occurred in December 1957, when the Drygalski ice tongue lost the outer 40 of its 110 km (estimated length from aerial photographs, Frezzotti and Mabin, 1994). Between 1997 and 2000 the Drygalski ice tongue advanced 2,200 m, increasing its area by almost 45 km2 (Wuite et al., 2009). The basal melting rates (that is the melting at the base of the ice floating tongue) are higher close to the GL owing to thermoaline circulation by High Salinity Shelf Water. The basal melting rate is determined by the difference between net snow accumulation and ice discharge across the GL into the ocean (Frezzotti et al., 2000). About 90% of the snow that falls inland is drained by

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outlet glaciers and ice streams (Morgan et al., 1982). In 2005 and 2006 two huge icebergs coming from a calving of the Ross Ice Shelf collided with the ice tongue breaking off some large pieces.

8.1 Analysis of the Drygalski ice tongue satellite images Figure 14 represents the Drygalski ice tongue as recorded by band 7 of the Landsat-8 satellite.

That is to say that, it is the view of the same area as in Figure 13 (RGB 543), but filtered only through the Short Infra-Red wavelengths (from 2.11 to 2.29 µm). The result is an image where it is easier to distinguish the Drygalski ice tongue limits. Along the coast the sea ice is grey and darker with respect to the white floating ice tongues (the main Drygalski and the other minor ice tongues). The dark part of the medium Drygalski tongue and the many small other areas (that appear in light blue in Figure 13) are surfaces of the so called “blue ice”, where the wind ablation is particularly active and the snow has been blown away. In the lower sector of both the images the polynya is well visible and its free ice open sea contrasts with large areas of sea ice, strongly fragmented, accumulated along the northern-side of the ice tongue. This sea ice can be also multi-year ice that often remains attached to the Drygalski ice tongue for many years and is carried out into the Terra Nova Bay, giving the ice tongue the appearance of being several km wider than it really is.

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Figure 13. Landsat-8 scene of 26 November 2013 showing the Drygalski ice tongue (lower-right part).

Multispectral band combination is 543.

Source: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/.

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Figure 14. Single band (band 7 of Landsat-8) representation of the Drygalski ice tongue (lower-right part).

Source: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/.

Acknowledgements

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Even if the paper was devised together by the authors, M. Fea wrote paragraph 1 and supported paragraphs 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 8.1; U. Minora and C. Smiraglia wrote paragraphs 3, 3.1, 4, 4.1, 5, 5.1, 6, 6.1, 7, 7.1, 8, 8.1; C. Pesaresi wrote paragraph 2.

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