07 December 2017

Grassroots Innovation Using Drones for Indigenous Mapping and Monitoring

A paper I co-authored under Jaime Paneque-Gálvez regarding the use of drones in indigenous territorial defense was just published in Land. The article describes several projects undertaken in Latin America to help indigenous communities adopt drone technology in their efforts to protect their territories, and discusses several issues that arise in this context.

17 November 2017

The Role of Geographical Landscape Studies for Sustainable Territorial Planning

A paper I co-authored with several colleagues under Iván Franch-Pardo discussing the role of different methods of geographic landscape delineation in territorial planning was just published in the open-access journal Sustainability. The paper examines the approach to landscape mapping and evaluation in five different methodologies situated along a gradient from predominantly physical to predominantly social (but still rooted in an epistemological approach that emphasizes material factors), and assesses how they contribute to territorial planning for "sustainability."

11 October 2017

The prospects of terrace agriculture as an adaptation to climate change in Latin America

A paper I co-authored with Dr. Bocco regarding the potential role of terrace agriculture in helping peasant farmers cope with the effects of climate change was just published in Geography Compass

08 May 2017

Visibility analysis and landscape evaluation in Martin river cultural park (Aragon, Spain) integrating biophysical and visual units




A paper a co-authored with Iván Franch-Pardo describing the use of biophysical and visual approaches to landscape mapping for land management in a park in Spain was published in the Journal of Maps.

03 May 2017

Informality and Geographic Rift in Latin America

Marginal Urbanisms: Informal and Formal Development in Cities of Latin America, a book I wrote a chapter for on geographic rift a few years back, has just been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The chapter I wrote, with Jaime Panaque-Gálvez, Claudio Garibay Orozco, and Antonio Vieyra, is titled "Informality and Geographic Rift in Latin America."



16 March 2017

Fundamentos de ecología política: Acumulación por reprodución amplia y sus contradicciones


Notas para discusión: Acumulación por reproducción amplia y sus contradicciones
Brian Michael Napoletano
Fundamentos de ecología política

Lecturas
  • Rosa Luxemburg. 1951. The Accumulation of Capital. Chapters 1 & 32.
Discusión
Las contradicciones de la producción capitalista y el problema de reproducción
  • El sistema capitalista es el único en que la producción puede parar a pesar de la disponibilidad de los medios de producción y la mano de obra
    • Una sobra de capital y mano de obra sin una forma para combinarlos para generar ganancias
  • También, es el única en que se puede tener una crisis de sobreproducción mientras no satisface las necesidades de los personas
  • La ganancia es lo que determina la producción, o, más especifico, la creación y realización de plus-valor (véase abajo)
  • La producción es por productores aislados sin un plan y coordinación
  • ¿Cómo demonios es posible la reproducción en estas condiciones?

Integrating Biophony into Biodiversity Measurement and Assessment

The book, edited by Almo Farina and Stuart H. Gage, that I wrote a chapter for regarding the integration of the biophony into biodiversity studies is scheduled to published in July 2017. You can find more information about the book, Ecoacoustics: The Ecological Role of Sounds, at the link below.

Wiley: Ecoacoustics: The Ecological Role of Sounds - Almo Farina, Stuart H. Gage

15 March 2017

Fundamentos de ecología política: Materialismo histórico



Notas para discusión: Materialismo histórico
Brian Michael Napoletano
Fundamentos de ecología política

Lecturas
  • Peet, Richard. 1991. “Historical materialism,” capítulo 5 de Global Capitalism: Theories of Societal Development. New York: Routledge.
  • Harvey, David. 2001. “On the history and present condition of geography: an historical materialist manifesto,” capítulo 6 de Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography, New York: Routledge.
Textos recomendados
  • Harnecker, Marta. 1969. Los Conceptos Elementales del Materialismo Histórico. Primera edición (México). 260 pp. México: Siglo veintiuno editores, S. A.
Vídeos
  • “Shit does not just happen: An introduction to Historical Materialism” (“La mierda no sólo sucede: Una introducción al materialismo histórico”). r21 – revolutionary socialism in the 21st century. YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ot3_Gs1UhFg

03 March 2017

Influences of horizontal and vertical aspects of land cover and their interactions with regional factors on patterns of avian species-richness

 Brian M. Napoletano, Bryan C. Pijanowski, John B. Dunning, Jr.

Influences of horizontal and vertical aspects of land cover and their interactions with regional factors on patterns of avian species-richness. 
Cogent Environmental Science: Vol 3, No 1,1296604.
We examined how both horizontal and vertical aspects of land-cover diversity influence patterns of avian species-richness across North America. Using count data from Breeding Bird Survey routes within the conterminous USA and land-cover data from the National Land Cover Data-set, we analyzed relationships between species-richness estimates, vegetative strata, landscape diversity and elevation and geographic position using both linear-regression models and a classification and regression tree. We found that latitude, the diversity of land-cover classes present, and the proportion of the landscape containing cover-classes representing 3 vegetative strata had the strongest influence on species richness. This illustrates that, while broad-scale biodiversity trends are strongly influenced by dominant regional factors, they are also sensitive to the structure of the intermediate-level landscape. Thus, factors at multiple scales must be considered when modeling spatial patterns of biodiversity such as avian species-richness.