Understanding the systemic complexity and broad scope of societally important geoscience challenges, such as climate change and environmental degradation ranging from deforestation to groundwater depletion, requires that teams of researchers collaborate to address large-scale questions. The discipline of geography—encompassing not just the geosciences but also remote sensing, geospatial techniques, and the social sciences—has exemplified this collaborative approach for decades.
Part of geography’s success depends on the involvement of researchers with a range of scientific expertise, but it also depends on progress toward including scholars representing a diverse cross section of personal backgrounds, races, and ethnicities, an issue that has increasingly concerned geographers [e.g., Solís and Miyares, 2014; American Association of Geographers (AAG) Council, 2021].
However, the discipline’s broad scope means that priorities and trends within geography as a whole do not necessarily reflect those seen across all its various subfields. And progress toward increasing diversity in the overall discipline may actually disguise a lack of such progress in certain areas. Indeed, the demographics of subfields associated with physical geography—principally, geomorphology, biogeography, and climatology—continue to be far more homogeneous than those of the general U.S. population. In other words, physical geography in the United States has a diversity problem.
The mere absence of intentional discrimination is not enough to ensure diversity.
The persistent lack of diversity in the geosciences overall has been documented and has received substantial attention recently [Bernard and Cooperdock, 2018; Dutt, 2020], although less attention has been directed toward physical geography. The scarcity of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) faculty in physical geography reflects the fact that few students pursue the field as undergraduates or graduates. (We recognize that a complete consideration of diversity would include specific attention to gender, disability, and LGBTQIA+ identities, but our discussion here primarily focuses on the BIPOC demographics.)
In our several decades of collective experience as participants and leaders in the geomorphology, biogeography, and climatology communities, we have observed that BIPOC geographers are concentrated in human, not physical, geography. This disparity presumably reflects the fact that BIPOC students are often drawn to, and remain in, human geography because of social justice elements prevalent in that field, as well as their greater exposure to it compared with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines.
Although we hope that deliberate racial exclusion in academia has been eliminated, the mere absence of intentional discrimination is not enough to ensure diversity. Transformational change will require conscious effort, and we believe that without intentional interventions at multiple scales, physical geography will fail to effect demographic change.
Diversity Is Valued, but Barriers Remain
Increasing diversity within physical geography should be a moral imperative driven by fairness and social responsibility. But if additional incentive is needed, greater diversity can also fundamentally improve the quality and impact of the science produced and the long-term health of the discipline. Further, widening the talent pool of physical geographers is critical for addressing the complexities of environmental systems and their relations to human society.
The diversity of physical geographers influences the research questions asked and the methodologies used to answer those questions, because researchers’ experiences, backgrounds, perspectives, values, motivations, and identities all inform what questions they find important. The community of science frames which questions, problems, and possible solutions are important, and members of this community also determine the types of acceptable methods of investigation and how we can ascertain truth and fact [Urban, 2013].
Efforts to incorporate Traditional Ecological Knowledges into biogeographic research demonstrate the value of including a multiplicity of perspectives. These efforts, when collaborative rather than one-sided, can foster respectful and mutually productive partnerships with Indigenous Peoples, whereby their traditional expertise and values are integral to both the objectives and outcomes of research.
The current lack of diversity in physical geography reflects both the lack of awareness of the field among BIPOC students and the challenges these students face upon entering it.
An example is the partnership of University of Minnesota and U.S. Forest Service scientists with members of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe to develop a history of how cultural use of fire has affected “natural” forests, with a goal of “reinterpret[ing] cultural history through the development of ecological records that inform the protection, enhancement, and restoration of tribal eco-cultural resources in cultural landscapes that are also multiple-use forested lands with diverse ownerships” [Star Island Partnership, 2021].
The current lack of diversity in physical geography reflects both the lack of awareness of the field among BIPOC students and the challenges these students face upon entering it. In this field, as in the geosciences overall, members of marginalized groups deal with ongoing stressors such as overt racism, hypervisibility, tokenism, and microaggressions [Dutt, 2020; Morris, 2021; Shepherd, 2020].
The culture of physical geography has historically forced BIPOC students and scientists (and those from other marginalized groups) to assimilate to the norms of the dominant group: white males. That pressure creates stress for individuals that undermines their scientific potential and personal well-being.
In addition, outside their academic settings, students from historically marginalized groups may be deterred by the demographic or cultural homogeneity or the high cost of living of the communities where many universities with graduate programs in physical geography are situated.
From a Pipeline to Pathways
Failures to diversify are often attributed to “leaky pipelines.” In this conception, STEM fields lose diversity as students from marginalized groups do not move directly through bachelor and graduate degree programs into careers within their degree fields. However, the pipeline metaphor is overly simplistic, as it implies that there are definitive points of entry into higher education and only one appropriate destination: a doctorate.
The journey to becoming a scientist is rarely as linear as implied by the notion of a pipeline. This is especially true in geography, a discipline that readily exchanges ideas with—and to which scholars often come from—corollary disciplines. Indeed, in the United States, there is no one linear track or pipeline that leads students into geography early on at the collegiate level. Recognition of this has led scholars to advocate for eliminating or replacing the pipeline metaphor in framing STEM workforce development and equity.
We need to be intentional in forging new pathways by which BIPOC students can find physical geography and achieve their desired level of education.
Geography has historically been a discipline that students serendipitously discover on their own during their undergraduate education—most often through enrolling in introductory courses to fulfill curricular breadth requirements. We need to be intentional in forging new pathways by which BIPOC students can find physical geography and achieve their desired level of education, because regardless of career end points, diversification depends on drawing in more students from marginalized groups.
That not all of these students will pursue doctorates and become professors is no failure. The failure, we contend, has lain in not doing enough to expand the pool of BIPOC students in physical geography. By increasing the numbers of BIPOC students at all levels in the field, the pool of applicants for all career paths will grow (and a representative portion of them will, if the environment is welcoming, become professors).
Below we propose a series of concerted actions for universities, departments, and professional organizations to take to increase the involvement and enrollment of students from historically marginalized groups in physical geography. Such efforts should begin by quantitatively defining the scope of the problem. However, demographic data describing the numbers of students and faculty from historically marginalized groups in physical geography are lacking. Data for geography as a whole are publicly available, but they are not partitioned between human and physical geography or by other specializations.
We therefore urge that professional organizations such as the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and AGU help collect and make such partitioned demographic data available to researchers and their members so the extent of the diversity problem can be quantified.
Active Engagement to Expand Representation
In university and departmental settings, efforts to attract diverse students to physical geography are generally passive, limited to encouraging BIPOC students who happen to show interest, whereas active approaches are more likely to make a difference. Such approaches include encouraging community college students and veterans (both groups that tend to be more diverse than the general student body at 4-year institutions) to transfer into the field and minimizing curricular obstacles to doing so.
We also recommend publicizing to students the relevance of climatology, biogeography, and geomorphology to tackling problems like climate change and environmental degradation so they see that they can pursue societally productive careers within the natural science realm. Further, eliminating the GRE (Graduate Record Examinations), which has been shown to be a barrier to entry for students from historically marginalized groups, as an application requirement could facilitate more diverse enrollment in graduate programs.
Geography departments should set goals for measurable improvement in recruiting and retaining students from historically marginalized groups.
Geography departments should set goals for measurable improvement in recruiting and retaining students from historically marginalized groups, and they should track the numbers of new students entering physical geography specifically. These departments should also provide mentoring and support systems to help BIPOC students overcome the challenges and stressors outlined above while combating discrimination and stereotyping within undergraduate and graduate programs.
Institutions should encourage physical geographers to build outreach to marginalized groups into the “broader impacts” components of their research and grant applications. Scientists can engage local community members and students by, for example, sponsoring short-term field experiences, college camps, or summer programs on university campuses. Such outreach builds awareness of the field and can help demonstrate its relevance to environmental and social issues facing these communities.
Professional organizations such as AGU and AAG are also well positioned to facilitate recruitment of BIPOC students into physical geography and to support them within the discipline. The AGU Bridge Program is a promising example of such facilitation, but there is more that both AGU and AAG can do. Unlike individual institutions, these organizations can more readily operate on a national scale while helping individual departments to engage locally through initiatives like Science Olympiad, which exposes secondary students to topics connected to physical geography.
They can also participate in—or sponsor representatives from individual departments to participate in—conferences that highlight racial and ethnic diversity, such as the annual conference of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science to help raise the visibility of physical geography in those communities. Professional geosciences organizations should also seek partnerships with organizations such as the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education program, and the Association for Women in Science to expand the visibility of physical geography to their constituents.
Professional organizations and academic departments should organize outreach efforts to institutions that do not have formal geography programs to facilitate ways to expose students at these schools to physical geography.
Institutions that primarily serve historically marginalized groups, including historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), members of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), should be productive settings for exposing BIPOC students to physical geography in the classroom and field. A few HBCUs, HACUs, and TCUs have formalized geography programs (and several others have programs in environmental, atmospheric, or ecological science), but most do not. Professional organizations and academic departments should organize outreach efforts to institutions that do not have formal geography programs (some of these institutions have individual geographers on faculty who may serve as points of contact) to facilitate ways to expose students at these schools to physical geography programs, research, and opportunities for graduate study in their regions. Joint course offerings, field trips, and other avenues for students to meet working physical geographers are ideal ways to generate such exposure for students who may never otherwise know what the field has to offer.
The body of students earning associate degrees at 2-year colleges is more diverse than at other levels of higher education, according to recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, so similar efforts should be made to recruit transfer students from this pool into physical geography programs at 4-year institutions.
Making a Difference for Diversity
Physical geography in the United States has traditionally been dominated by white men. The field has made little progress in diversifying, especially regarding race and ethnicity. This lack of diversity is morally problematic and detrimental to education and research in the field.
Benevolent indifference has proven insufficient to solve this problem. We therefore urge proactive targeted actions by geography departments and their host institutions as well as by professional organizations to increase diversity in physical geography.
References
American Association of Geographers (AAG) Council (2021), American Association of Geographers 3-year justice, equity, diversity & inclusion strategic plan, 8 pp., Washington, D.C., aag.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/AAG-3-Year-JEDI-Strategic-Plan.pdf.
Bernard, R. E., and E. H. G. Cooperdock (2018), No progress on diversity in 40 years, Nat. Geosci., 11, 292–295, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0116-6.
Dutt, K. (2020), Race and racism in the geosciences, Nat. Geosci., 13, 2–3, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0519-z.
Morris, V. R. (2021), Combating racism in the geosciences: Reflections from a Black professor, AGU Adv., 2, e2020AV000358, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020AV000358.
Shepherd, M. (2020), The Race Awakening of 2022: A 6-Step Guide for Moving Forward, 70 pp., self-published, Amazon KDP Publ.
Solís, P., and I. M. Miyares (2014), Introduction: Rethinking practices for enhancing diversity in the discipline, Prof. Geogr., 66(2), 169–172, https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2012.735920.
Star Island Partnership (2021), Fire history on Star Island (Windigoominis): A starting point for conversations on resource stewardship and cultural exchange, storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/dcd66a0ed5eb42beaec348c95a893206.
Urban, M. A. (2013), Philosophy and theory in geomorphology, in Treatise on Geomorphology, vol. 1, The Foundations of Geomorphology, edited by J. Shroder, A. R. Orme, and D. Sack, pp. 124–129, Academic, San Diego, Calif., https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-374739-6.00008-7.
Author Information
James Marshall Shepherd (marshgeo@uga.edu), University of Georgia, Athens; Jacob Bendix, Department of Geography and the Environment, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.; and Michael A. Urban, Department of Geography, University of Missouri, Columbia