In the face of rapid biodiversity loss, attention has been increasingly focused on the application of maps towards the challenges of protecting biodiversity. Either in their predictive or monitoring applications, biodiversity maps have proven effective at describing some spatial and temporal phenomena pertaining to the natural world. To date, much of the ecological debate surrounding biodiversity mapping focuses on how to approach the problem of imperfect data and how the notion of biodiversity can best be modelled, in an effort to render the most useful and neutral picture of nature. However, we argue that, in the quest for neutrality, ecologists tend to neglect that biodiversity maps inevitably signify subjective and socially constructed human purposes rather than mirroring nature.
Likewise, from social scientists (for example, sociologists, geographers and critical cartographers), we know how even scientific maps are not only a product of the “rules” of the order of geometry and reason, but also of the norms and values embedded in social and historical traditions – such as those of ethnicity, politics, or dominant scientific paradigms. Simply stated, in their intentions as much as in their performative applications, biodiversity maps are reflective of and productive of power, which means that critical reflection on what they are for and what they may achieve is urgently needed. Otherwise, they risk upholding the very status quo that drives biodiversity loss to begin with.
This Research Topic is intended to mutually inform ecological and social scientists about critical approaches and rationales of biodiversity mapping for conservation and to ultimately foster the emergence of alternative and more viable ways of mapping where the assumptions of each discipline are constructively challenged.
We encourage the submission of inter- or transdisciplinary contributions in innovative formats, such as author teams, reflection essays, conversations with mapmakers, as well as traditional papers, ranging from methodological and applied research to synthesis, perspective or review papers. We welcome both explorations of the uncertainties and pitfalls deriving from the representation of spatio-ecological data or different measures of biodiversity, and contributions that explore the tension between the claimed neutrality of mapping and wider power relations and policy implications.
We also welcome decolonial and indigenous approaches to biodiversity mapping, in order to explore critical and creative ways of mapping differently – rendering representations of the spatial distribution of (wild)life more open to debates on conservation. Similarly, contributions exploring the intersections between mapping and different ways of knowing a territory (indigenous, local, embodied) are especially welcome. Lastly, we welcome contributions that focus on possible alternatives to dominant modes of understanding and generating biodiversity maps, including critical cartographic approaches, deliberative and open models, as well as artistic interventions.
In the face of rapid biodiversity loss, attention has been increasingly focused on the application of maps towards the challenges of protecting biodiversity. Either in their predictive or monitoring applications, biodiversity maps have proven effective at describing some spatial and temporal phenomena pertaining to the natural world. To date, much of the ecological debate surrounding biodiversity mapping focuses on how to approach the problem of imperfect data and how the notion of biodiversity can best be modelled, in an effort to render the most useful and neutral picture of nature. However, we argue that, in the quest for neutrality, ecologists tend to neglect that biodiversity maps inevitably signify subjective and socially constructed human purposes rather than mirroring nature.
Likewise, from social scientists (for example, sociologists, geographers and critical cartographers), we know how even scientific maps are not only a product of the “rules” of the order of geometry and reason, but also of the norms and values embedded in social and historical traditions – such as those of ethnicity, politics, or dominant scientific paradigms. Simply stated, in their intentions as much as in their performative applications, biodiversity maps are reflective of and productive of power, which means that critical reflection on what they are for and what they may achieve is urgently needed. Otherwise, they risk upholding the very status quo that drives biodiversity loss to begin with.
This Research Topic is intended to mutually inform ecological and social scientists about critical approaches and rationales of biodiversity mapping for conservation and to ultimately foster the emergence of alternative and more viable ways of mapping where the assumptions of each discipline are constructively challenged.
We encourage the submission of inter- or transdisciplinary contributions in innovative formats, such as author teams, reflection essays, conversations with mapmakers, as well as traditional papers, ranging from methodological and applied research to synthesis, perspective or review papers. We welcome both explorations of the uncertainties and pitfalls deriving from the representation of spatio-ecological data or different measures of biodiversity, and contributions that explore the tension between the claimed neutrality of mapping and wider power relations and policy implications.
We also welcome decolonial and indigenous approaches to biodiversity mapping, in order to explore critical and creative ways of mapping differently – rendering representations of the spatial distribution of (wild)life more open to debates on conservation. Similarly, contributions exploring the intersections between mapping and different ways of knowing a territory (indigenous, local, embodied) are especially welcome. Lastly, we welcome contributions that focus on possible alternatives to dominant modes of understanding and generating biodiversity maps, including critical cartographic approaches, deliberative and open models, as well as artistic interventions.
