This volume provides specialized insights into selected Mediterranean geographies, such as info-communication technologies, tourism, urbanization and climate change threats, with a focus on emerging and often overlooked, in light of the impact of current trends of globalization and the financial 'crisis', in the broader context of contemporary world processes of environmental change and accelerated human mobility. Specifically, the book contains sections on emergent and increasingly significant or highly innovative issues specific to the Mediterranean, often providing alternative perspectives on various pressing issues, such as the northward shift of climatic types; littoralisation processes and urbanization trends; tourism growth problems; human exposure to environmental stresses; and the boom in info-communication technologies. As such this book provides new insights into a region that has absorbed the sustained impact of human growth in precarious environments, often at the interface of many worlds, co-existing at various states of development and inter-scalar or cross-border interrelationships.This volume does not cover every aspect of the human and physical geographies of the Mediterranean region, but rather addresses contemporary issues of increasing significance to the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on emergent and pressing issues, as well as new perspectives or methods of approach, of special relevance to the Mediterranean. The core of contributions to this volume originated from an initiative undertaken by the International Geographical Union (IGU) Mediterranean Renaissance Program, now the Commission on the Mediterranean Basin (COMB). Most papers are authored by members of the latter Commission and additional papers are included, in order to cover more aspects of contemporary Mediterranean geographies.
About the Author: Theano S. Terkenli is Professor at the Department of Geography and in the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Tourism Planning, Administration and Policy, at the University of the Aegean. His research, publishing and teaching interests focus on cultural geography, landscape geography and critical perspectives in tourism. Annick Douguedroit is Professor Emeritus at Aix-Marseille University/UMR7300 ESPACE. A participant in the 4th IPCC Report in 2008 (which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010), he chaired the IGU Commission on Climatology, and launched the AIC (Association Internationale de Climatologie), in Aix-en-Provence in 1988. His research focuses primarily on Mediterranean forest ecology and topoclimatology and climate variability and change. Louis F. Cassar is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute of Earth Systems of the University of Malta, and adjunct Associate Professor at the Faculty of Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is Coordinator of the University of Malta-James Madison University dual MSc in Sustainable Environmental Resource Management, and specialises in landscape ecology and environmental planning.