| Abstract: | Understanding the Changing Planet was commissioned by the National Research Council to assess, for an audience of policymakers and funding agencies, key ways in which the “geographical sciences” can help address pressing issues facing society. In keeping with the charge, the report shows how particular empirically focused research initiatives in the geographical sciences can advance understanding of a set of selected major societal issues. Although constrained by a charge focused on the geographical sciences, the committee took an ecumenical approach to science, highlighted many mixed-methods studies, and framed questions that cut across traditional subdisciplinary divisions. It is important to take the report on its own terms and not to view it either as an assessment of the entire discipline of geography or to see it as an effort to encourage geographers to adopt a particular methodological or theoretical stance. Instead, the report should be seen as a study demonstrating, for a broad audience, the types of contributions the geographical sciences can make to addressing major issues of the day. |
