Introduction to Cartographic Reflections

For centuries, the knowledge bases of geography and cartography have revolved around spatial thinking and reasoning. This skill set is one critical to earth-writing (geo-graphy) and includes the ability to collect data from one’s biophysical and human surrounding, to analyze that data, and to make informed decisions about surrounding sites and circumstances. A recent report of the National Research Council (NRC, 2005) defined spatial thinking as ‘a cognitive skill that can be used in everyday life, the workplace, and science to structure problems, find answers, and express solutions using the properties of space’. Since the 1990s, attention to spatial skills has regained importance in many disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary endeavors, as scholars, professionals, and activists attempt to make sense of our often rapidly changing world in the twenty-first century. In science and technology fields, spatial skill sets inform data visualization, vehicle navigation systems, and satellite communications. In the social sciences and humanities, scholars across diverse fields are re-engaging with spatial data to map, for example, cultural heritage or the role of place and place-making in society (Goodchild & Janelle, 2010)

The spatial perspective, it would seem, has renewed value as a critical skill for analyzing and acting in our ever-changing world. Critical spatial thinking, then, ‘can never be rote, but must always involve the mind of the researcher in an active questioning and examination of assumptions, techniques, and data’, meaning scholars must always be reflective, skeptical, or analytical when applying this perspective to issues such as ‘scale, accuracy, uncertainty, ontology, representation, complexity, projection, and ethics’ (Goodchild & Janelle, 2010, p. 8).

Additionally, many geographers argue that there is no time more critical than the present to address spatial thinking because of the uncertainties facing society and the environment in the twenty-first century. Bednarz and Bednarz (2008) argue that the great uncertainties of our times – climate change, terrorism, armed conflict, globalization – require spatial skill sets that may assist in understanding the patterns and processes that shape local–global lives and social and physical environments, especially if they use geographic information systems, remote sensing, or global positioning system data. All of these ‘big data’ sets, as well as maps, graphs, images, diagrams, models, and visualizations can be used to help people understand, assess and act regarding vulnerability and risk for human and natural environments. Maps, which are testaments to our historical spatial understanding of the world, can be thought of as dusty documents of the past or as ‘important lessons and huge contributions’ that ‘can inform everything from design principles to teaching and learning’ (Goldsberry, 2013).

Scholars of polar regions would argue that there is no time more critical than now to address uncertainties noted by Bednarz and Bednarz (2008), especially to understand the drivers, patterns, processes and outcomes of change in the Arctic and Antarctic regions because the pace of biophysical, social, and cultural transformations are unprecedented and seemingly unceasing. The Polar Regions are of critical concern for people and environments everywhere and deserve our spatial attention. Climate change is perhaps the best-documented transformation in polar regions, with ongoing attention paid to changes in the carbon cycle (Fisher et al., 2014), atmospheric and snow/ice cover (Yang, Losa, Losch, Jung, & Nerger, 2015), species distribution (Fuller, Morton, & Sarkar, 2008) and species numbers (Southwell et al., 2008), and with useful summaries comparing the geographies of both poles (e.g. Anisimov et al., 2007). The intersection of physical change with human lives is documented regarding infrastructure stability in the Arctic (Streletskiy, Shiklomanov, & Nelson, 2012) and with attention to understandings of social risk, vulnerability and response to environmental change in the North (Hovelsrud & Smit, 2010) and in Antarctica (Kriwoken & Rootes, 2000). Globalization is also noted as inducing uncertainty in human societies (Heininen & Southcott, 2010) disturbing identities for communities in certain polar places, especially those of the Russian North (Thompson, 2008; Graybill, 2013). The possibility of conflict has also been addressed by scholars (Keil, 2014; Young, 1992), as has the need for increased attention to sustainability and resilience (Petrov et al., 2016).

Given the uncertain future of polar environments, deeper engagement with maps and other spatial skill sets can only work to ‘support scholarly description, explanation, and discussion of the function, structures, relationships, and operations of spatio-temporal processes’ (Bednarz & Bednarz, 2008, p. 316) of the people, places and phenomena in our highest latitude world regions. Amidst so much uncertainty, vulnerability and risk, it seems time to (re)engage a critical spatial understanding of polar regions.

The Polar Geography journal introduces this new section to provide a place for short submissions (3000 words or less) that examine spatial representations of place using critical spatial thinking skills. As Brigham (2014) shows in the first foray into this kind of writing in Polar Geography, historical cartographic endeavors can tell us much about our histories, the trajectories we have taken to get to our present, and perhaps where we might go in the future. While historical maps such as those explored by Brigham (2014) and Stern, this issue, may come to mind first for this new Cartographic Reflections section, we welcome your engagement with multiple spatial representations of polar places from multiple time periods, sources, or formats. Please contact the Editor with potential submissions and for specific submission guidelines.