Physical Geography and Environmental Sustainability

In this introduction to the Special Issue on Physical Geography and Environmental Sustainability, the links between a variety of physical landscapes located throughout the world and long-term wellbeing are considered from a systems approach. Twelve papers were published as part of this call, with half from Asia, especially China. They represent a contribution across topographic landscapes, from mountainous to estuarine, and cover models as well as case studies encompassing landscape and environmental changes. Remotely sensed data, statistical analysis, and GIS were often incorporated in the work, and this particularly conveys the importance of spatial analysis on inputs by physical geographers in sustainability research. Furthermore, scale variations from the local to global are presented as part of a geographical contribution. The connectedness of environments to humans and the reverse (of humans adapting to environmental change) is evident in several of the papers where human impacts and adaptation are concerned. Finally, the last paper provides a comprehensive summary of the potential contribution that physical geographers can make to environmental sustainability from a multidisciplinary approach.