Landscapes are important socio-ecological systems that play a central role in understanding and managing intricate relationships between humans and their environment. Over time, individuals and groups develop a sense of place and form deep cultural connections with landscapes, which in turn influence how people perceive and interact with them. This means that it is essential to incorporate a sense of place and cultural connections into landscape-related studies and landscape management efforts to ensure success. GIS are a useful tool for effectively mapping the biophysical and socioeconomic elements of landscapes and can integrate these representations through their shared geography. However, there are significant challenges in capturing and representing cultural perceptions and sense of place in a GIS. Since successful landscape management is participatory and collaborative, the limitations of GIS need to be acknowledged, but the strengths of GIS when used to support participatory work should be capitalised upon. A collaborative approach using participatory GIS can help to collect holistic data that can capture some of the cultural narratives intertwined with the landscapes we seek to manage within the spatial framework provided by GIS.
Marginal populations are those populations that are often overlooked by government, dependent upon non-governmental aid, and lack access to basic resources such as water, food, shelter, and security. However, these groups are increasingly included in partnerships to map their resources (or lack thereof), develop basic applications in geospatial data collection, and devise innovative approaches to participatory mapping using geospatial technologies to address local and regional problems. Rapid technological changes and increased access to mobile geospatial tools enhance data creation efforts to map marginal populations and identify their needs. However, such mapping activities reveal fundamental inequities in collecting, disseminating, and visualizing spatial data. This chapter defines marginal populations and provides an overview of data needs, geospatial tools, and ethical obligations necessary for these partnerships.
Participatory research is increasingly used to better understand complex social-environmental problems and design solutions through diverse and inclusive stakeholder engagement. A growing number of approaches are helping to foster co-production of knowledge among diverse stakeholders. However, most methods don’t allow stakeholders to directly interact with the models that often drive environmental decision-making. Geospatial participatory modeling (GPM) is an approach that engages stakeholders in co-development and interpretation of models through dynamic geovisualization and simulations. GPM can be used to represent dynamic landscape processes and spatially explicit management scenarios, such as land use change or climate adaptation, enhancing opportunities for co-learning. GPM can provide multiple benefits over non-spatial approaches for participatory research processes, by (a) personalizing connections to problems and their solutions, (b) resolving abstract notions of connectivity, and (c) clarifying the scales of drivers, data, and decision-making authority. An adaptive, iterative process of model development, sharing, and revision can drive innovation of methods, improve model realism or applicability, and build capacity for stakeholders to leverage new knowledge gained from the process. This co-production of knowledge enables participants to more fully understand problems, evaluate the acceptability of trade-offs, and build buy-in for management actions in the places where they live and work.