Climate change in rural Pakistan: evidence and experiences from a people-centered perspective

Pakistan is home to a wide range of geographical landscapes, each of which faces different climate change impacts and challenges. This article presents findings from a National Geographic Society funded project, which employed a people-centered, narratives-based approach to study climate impacts and adaptation strategies of people in 19 rural study sites in four provinces of Pakistan (N = 108). The study looked at six climate-related stressors—changes in weather patterns, floods, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, drought, heat waves, and sea-level rise—in the coastal areas of Sindh, the desert of Thar, the plains of Punjab, and the mountains of Hunza, Gilgit, and Chitral. Speaking to people at these frontlines of climate change revealed much about climate suffering and trauma. Not only is the suffering induced by losses and damages to property and livelihood, but climate impacts also take a heavy toll on people’s psycho-social wellbeing, particularly when they are displaced from their homes. The findings further demonstrate that people try to adapt in various ways, for instance by altering their agricultural practices, but they face severe barriers to effective adaptation action. Understanding people’s perceptions of climate change and incorporating their recommendations in adaptation planning can help policy-makers develop a more participatory, inclusive, and holistic climate resilience framework for the future.

The Home River Bioblitz: A World-Wide Collaboration Between Citizens to Show the Importance of Free-Flowing Rivers

<p>One challenge in collaborating with citizen scientists is to keep them motivated to continuously collect data in the long-term. The Home River Bioblitz event overcomes this roadblock by engaging hundreds of citizens around the world in one single day. In general, a bioblitz is a communal citizen-science effort to record a wide variety of species at a specific location within a certain timeframe. This single-day commitment enables large-spatial resolution data to be collected. The Home River Bioblitz was created by the River Collective, National Geographic, Bestias del sur Salvaje, and iNaturalist as part of the citizen science program supported by the National Geographic Society. The first event took place on September 20<sup>th</sup>, 2020 on 43 rivers located in 24 countries around the world. Over 500 participants from five continents used the iNaturalist app to log 5245 observations and 1772 species of flora and fauna, with at least 14 species under IUCN status, contributing to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility repository.<strong> </strong>This method of low-temporal and high-spatial data collection is used to identify new species, IUCN red list species, local endemic species, and invasive species. Not only does this event engage citizen-scientists to contribute to biodiversity findings, but it also connects people to their local environments by having them zoom into details they normally pass by. By celebrating the diversity of rivers and meeting the people around them, we were able to bring communities closer to knowing the species of their local rivers and raise awareness about the importance of free-flowing and healthy rivers around the world. An online post-event was dedicated to sharing these local river species and the scientific impact of certain observations with the participants. This event also opens up the possibility to collect other types of short term, large-spatial data around river ecosystems. In the next edition of the Home River Bioblitz, we would like to encourage the participants to collect hydro-morphological and water quality data by using open-access and low-cost citizen science tools, such as the Discharge app and the Waterrangers kit. The Home River Bioblitz event will not only be used to engage and educate participants on their local rivers, but the biodiversity and potentially chemico-physical and hydro-morphological data that will be collected could serve to develop time-series to help assess temporal variations and stressors.</p>

The National Geographic Society Deep-Sea Camera System: A Low-Cost Remote Video Survey Instrument to Advance Biodiversity Observation in the Deep Ocean

There is a growing need for marine biodiversity baseline and monitoring data to assess ocean ecosystem health, especially in the deep sea, where data are notoriously sparse. Baited cameras are a biological observing method especially useful in the deep ocean to estimate relative abundances of scavenging fishes and invertebrates. The National Geographic Society Exploration Technology Lab developed an autonomous benthic lander platform with a baited camera system to conduct stationary video surveys of deep-sea megafauna. The first-generation landers were capable of sampling to full ocean depth, however, the form factor, power requirements, and cost of the system limited deployment opportunities. Therefore, a miniaturized version (76 cm × 76 cm × 36 cm, 18 kg in air) was developed to provide a cost-effective method to observe ocean life to 6000 m depth. Here, we detail this next-generation deep-sea camera system, including the structural design, scientific payload, and the procedures for deployment. We provide an overview of NGS deep-sea camera system deployments over the past decade with a focus on the performance improvements of the next-generation system, which began field operations in 2017 and have performed 264 deployments. We present example imagery and discuss the strengths and limitations of the instrument in the context of existing complementary survey methods, and for use in down-stream data products. The key operational advantages of this new instrument are spatial flexibility and cost-efficiency. The instrument can be hand-deployed by a single operator from a small craft concurrent with other shipboard operations. The main limitation of the system is battery power, which allows for 6 h of continuous recording, and takes up to 8 h to recharge between deployments. Like many baited-camera methods, this instrument is specialized to measure the relative abundance of mobile megafauna that are attracted to bait, which results in a stochastic snapshot of the species at the deployment location and time. The small size and ease of deployment of this next-generation camera system allows for increased sample replication on expeditions, and presents a path forward to advance cost-effective biological observing and sustained monitoring in the deep ocean.

Od Robinsona do Neli Małej Reporterki. Recykling dziecięcego marzenia o podróży i przygodzie

Celem artykułu jest przyjrzenie się modyfikacji gatunku powieści podróżniczo-przygodowej w polskiej literaturze dziecięcej i młodzieżowej od XIX do XXI wieku. W centrum rozważań znajdują się XXI-wieczne realizacje gatunku, a ich analiza dokonana została na przykładzie serii o Neli Małej Reporterce (2014– ), wydawanej na licencji National Geographic Society. W artykule wykorzystano narzędzia z zakresu studiów postkolonialnych, odwołano się także do elementów badań socjologicznych nad zjawiskiem masowej turystyki zarówno dorosłych, jak i dzieci, poddając krytyce niektóre zjawiska prezentowane w analizowanej serii i wpisując je w kontekst kultury popularnej w jej umasowionym wydaniu.

National Atlases – an atlas type reconsidered

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The publication of the first National Atlas in 1899 marked the emergence of an atlas category that thrived over the upcoming century. The "Atlas de Finlande", successfully presented at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900, used to coin this title and being published in Paris by the National Geographic Society of Finland, had a true nation-building function.</p><p>In the same year, following the US victory in the Spanish-American War, the Atlas of the Philippine Islands (Atlas de Filipinas) was published by the US Coastal and Geodetic Survey, containing two front pages, one in English indicating the USC&amp;GS as publisher, the other in Spanish mentioning the supervision of the project by Father J. Algue, the director of the Manila Observatory. Never referred to as a national atlas, it comprises a series of maps on the Islands and a bilingual abstract on map conventions, a bilingual gazetteer and a thorough introduction into places, places names and their pronunciation. For these atlases, the publication circumstances remain somehow heterogeneous and cannot be compared with modern national atlases and even atlases published in the same period seem to have different hallmarks.</p><p>Why considering the Atlas de Finlande a national atlas but define the 1878 Statistical Atlas of the United States only a statistical Atlas? Because of the title? What atlases are more nationally defined than school atlases? Is an atlas published by a non-governmental executing agency a national atlas? Is governmental support and approval needed?</p><p>How national atlases fit into different approaches to thoroughly define them (e.g. Salischew 1967) has been subject to academic cartographic self-conception that ignored technological, institutional, economic and user-related developments over time. In addition, these approaches to categorise atlases solely focused structural elements, such as the number and topics of maps and their temporal and spatial sequence. The question of how atlases have been characterised by their publishers and have been perceived in closely following reviews is a possible approach to either situate national atlases as a strict category or a politically induced perception.</p><p>The article introduces a post-structuralist approach focussing the textual analysis of both, self-perception verbalized through introductions and prefaces in respective atlases and reviews, contemporarily published in the following years. Introducing common definitions and juxtapose the historical perception of national atlases tries to operationalize Harley's critical approach, that situates maps in their respective historical context. By regarding an atlas not only as a bound collection of maps but as a carefully organised selection of spatial information unveils the power of atlases, which maybe exceeds those of single maps. To analyse atlases in their historic context by including their self-definition and contemporary perception will identify so far unattended aspects and to alternative views on national atlases and their editing and production frameworks. Thus retrograde definitions can be reconsidered.</p>

COMIDA CHATARRA Y OBESIDAD: UN DULCE PERO NADA FELIZ CAMINO A LA DIABETES

Haciendo tiempo en un aeropuerto a mediados del pasado junio, aburrido de las lecturas habituales, decidí distraerme con un ejemplar de la revista de la National Geographic Society. Imprevistamente desde el índice me capturó el título de un artículo escrito por Tracie McMillan, una periodista independiente de los Estados Unidos, que trata temas relacionados con alimentación y equidad. El artículo se titulaba: “Do corn subsidies really make us fat?” (algo así como: “¿Es cierto que los subsidios al maíz nos engordan?”), y tomaba como punto de partida un trabajo científico publicado en 2016 en la revista JAMA Internal Medicine por un grupo de autores pertenecientes, entre otras instituciones, a los Centros de Control y Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC, sus siglas en inglés) de la ciudad de Atlanta.

Future of Food

The National Geographic Society (NGS) has always sought to incorporate new ways of media production into its working routine, thus defining standards of journalism both in technical and narrative terms. As a logical result, the NGS also relies on cross media strategies, focusing on transmedia storytelling in order to connect its audience. The “Future of Food” project is one of the largest transmedia projects in journalism. The chapter first outlines the concept of transmedia storytelling and discusses 10 qualities in the context of journalism. Secondly, the authors systematically discuss the case study “Future of Food” by applying the transmedia qualities to the project. This provides insights into the modes and combinations of story elements and allows to draw attention to challenges and opportunities for researchers, producers, and users.