AQUATIC TRANSITIONS: TRACKING THE NATURE AND TRAJECTORIES OF ANTHROPOGENICALLY FORCED CHANGE IN FRESHWATER AND COASTAL ECOSYSTEMS

Call for papers for a special issue of Geo: Geography and the Environment

Aquatic ecosystems have become increasingly vulnerable in recent years due to interactions between climate change and human activity such as nutrient enrichment, microplastic and organic pollution, extraction, salinization, and catchment modifications. Long-term ecosystem research and monitoring (LTERM) are crucial in the debate of timing, extent, and causes of human-related impacts on aquatic ecosystems, and are key to understanding the complex nature of ecological responses to stressors and related transitions within aquatic ecosystems. Key LTERM approaches include monitoring and modelling, palaeolimnology,  and  analysis of historical and documentary records.  Moreover, investigations involving multiple components of the biological and geochemical records of aquatic systems can help disentangle the impacts of multiple stressors on an ecosystem, develop an understanding of synchronous ecological impacts within ecosystems, allow for an understanding of the sensitivity of ecosystems to anthropogenic impacts, and may result in the development of more robust palaeoenvironmental reconstructions.

The collection of papers will explore multidisciplinary approaches in determining the timing, extent, and nature of ecological responses to recent anthropogenic stressors within aquatic ecosystems. We encourage papers that explore the relationship between various biotic and abiotic components of inland freshwater and/or coastal brackish ecosystems in response to external forcing. We especially welcome investigations across a variety of temporal and spatial scales, and which explore the use of multiple indicators in multi-stressor systems.

Geo: Geography and the Environment has an international and interdisciplinary reach, making it ideally placed to facilitate the results of palaeolimnological studies which have implications for further study and international aquatic resource policies.

Geo publishes articles gold open access only, making an author’s work immediately and fully accessible to publics, stakeholders, policy-makers and other academics internationally. The journal is funded by article processing charges (APCs). Information on this can be found here.  Geo is keen to encourage as many working within the geographical and environmental sciences to make use of the grants (see institutional funding policies here) and waivers (for information see here) that have been distributed to institutions to fund authors to make their work open access. A small number of waivers are available for authors who are not otherwise able to access funding for APCs; APC waivers will be considered on a case-by-case basis.  The editors do not have any involvement in the APC process for individual papers to keep editorial decisions separate, so specific queries about APCs will be forwarded on to the managing editor at the RGS-IBG, Fiona Nash.

The submission deadline for manuscripts is May 2018. We welcome enquiries to the collection editors:

• Jennifer Adams: j.adams@utoronto.ca.
• Izzy Bishop: i.bishop.11@ucl.ac.uk
• Peter Gell: p.gell@federation.edu.au
• Lucy Roberts: lucy.roberts.09@ucl.ac.uk

GEOGRAPHIES OF THE MICROBIOME

Call for papers for a special edition of Geo: Geography and the Environment

Microbial communities are fundamental components of every ecosystem and every species on the planet. Although recent advances have been made in understanding their interactions with human, animal and environmental well-being, many of the specific geographies and functional roles of microbial life remain uncertain. Answering these questions requires new forms of enquiry which reach across the domains of life, spaces, and disciplinary perspectives.

We are seeking high-quality contributions (original scientific papers, reviews, perspectives and data papers) about the geographies of the microbiome. Papers would bring the different sub-disciplines of geography into dialogue in seeking to make sense of these patterns and processes. We are interested in the range of interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches (e.g. human / physical / biological / citizen science practices) which are helping to further our understanding of the connections between microbial communities and spatial processes at different scales. We encourage submissions which discuss the methodological challenges of mapping microbiomes and managing microbial data, including engaging with the complexities of taxonomies and metagenomics. We also welcome studies which focus on managing microbes, as well as recent perspectives on both antimicrobial resistance (e.g. practices of spread, containment, evolution) and the recognition of microbes with respect to questions around more-than-human geographies. We are interested in contributions that explore the social dimensions and political ecologies of microbiome science and its translation.

Geo: Geography and the Environment has an international and interdisciplinary reach, making it ideally placed to facilitate exchange on emerging work on the microbiome across the spectrum of geographical and environmental research.

This RGS-IBG and Wiley journal publishes open-access articles, funded through Article Processing Charges (APCs). These are normally available through your Higher Education Institution; you can check your eligibility by submitting your institution and funder here. There are also a series of discounts and waivers available from Wiley. Further full-fee waivers will be considered for high-quality submissions for this special issue on a case-to-case basis, where authors are unable to access other institutional funds for APCs. Please contact journals@rgs.org for queries relating to APCs. To ensure that editorial decisions are never influenced by ability to pay, the editors are not involved in correspondence with authors regarding payment of APCs.

The submission deadline for manuscripts is February 2018. We welcome early enquiries to the special edition editors:

Arwyn Edwards: aye@aber.ac.uk
Jamie Lorimer: jamie.lorimer@ouce.ox.ac.uk