IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v47y2015i6p1265-1282.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The comparative tableau of mountains and rivers: emulation and reappraisal of a popular 19th-century visualization design

Author

Listed:
  • Baptiste Hautdidier

Abstract

The ‘comparative tableau of mountains and rivers’ is a recently ‘rediscovered’ cartographic layout, aiming to illustrate the size distributions of the world's highest mountains and longest rivers. Its ‘river’ component is basically a barplot of the rivers’ unbent shapes, retaining a ‘thick’ cartographic description of their immediate hinterland. This display was a common feature of French and Anglo-American atlases during most of the 19th century, before it fell totally into disfavour, supplanted by more watershedcentred approaches. The paper is a critical assessment of the design principles of this visualization, via a modern emulation based on generic GIS rubbersheeting algorithms. A recreation of the chart of the world's longest rivers allows for a showcasing of the characteristics of the layout, its intellectual framing, and its political uses. Beyond a discussion of the approach's limitations, its innovative merits are demonstrated with two mapping applications on the evolution of landcover and administrative zonings alongside the Garonne River (southwest France), highlighting complex relationships of human societies along the streams of ‘their’ rivers.

Suggested Citation

  • Baptiste Hautdidier, 2015. "The comparative tableau of mountains and rivers: emulation and reappraisal of a popular 19th-century visualization design," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 47(6), pages 1265-1282, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:6:p:1265-1282
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X15594901
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X15594901
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0308518X15594901?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. François Molle, 2009. "River basin planning and management," Post-Print hal-03061694, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gary Brierley & Ian Fuller & Gary Williams & Dan Hikuroa & Alice Tilley, 2022. "Re-Imagining Wild Rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-20, August.
    2. Nygren, Anja, 2021. "Water and power, water’s power: State-making and socionature shaping volatile rivers and riverine people in Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    3. Alice Cohen, 2012. "Rescaling Environmental Governance: Watersheds as Boundary Objects at the Intersection of Science, Neoliberalism, and Participation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(9), pages 2207-2224, September.
    4. Fang, Yiping & Deng, Wei, 2011. "The critical scale and section management of cascade hydropower exploitation in Southwestern China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 5944-5953.
    5. Farhad Mukhtarov & Andrea Gerlak, 2014. "Epistemic forms of integrated water resources management: towards knowledge versatility," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 47(2), pages 101-120, June.
    6. Samira Idllalène, 2013. "Re-thinking coastal adaptation strategy: from SLR to land risks—Can the water policy fill the coastal strategy vacuum? The case of Morocco," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 120(4), pages 713-725, October.
    7. Valérie Nicollier & Marcos Eduardo Cordeiro Bernardes & Asher Kiperstok, 2022. "What Governance Failures Reveal about Water Resources Management in a Municipality of Brazil," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-30, February.
    8. Emma S. Norman, 2019. "Finding Common Ground: Negotiating Downstream Rights to Harvest with Upstream Responsibilities to Protect—Dairies, Berries, and Shellfish in the Salish Sea," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 19(3), pages 77-97, August.
    9. Van Herzele, Ann & Ceuterick, Melissa & Buizer, Marleen & Leone, Michael, 2019. "Ecosystem Services as (Co-)performative Practice: Experiences from Integrated Water Management in Flanders," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 29-38.
    10. Fanus Asefaw Aregay & Liuyang Yao & Minjuan Zhao, 2016. "Spatial Preference Heterogeneity for Integrated River Basin Management: The Case of the Shiyang River Basin, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-17, September.
    11. David Benson & Andrew Jordan & Laurence Smith, 2013. "Is Environmental Management Really More Collaborative? A Comparative Analysis of Putative ‘Paradigm Shifts’ in Europe, Australia, and the United States," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(7), pages 1695-1712, July.
    12. Yinghong Li & Jiaxin Tong & Longfei Wang, 2020. "Full Implementation of the River Chief System in China: Outcome and Weakness," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-16, May.
    13. Jing Zhu & Shenghong Kang & Wenwu Zhao & Qiujie Li & Xinyuan Xie & Xiangping Hu, 2020. "A Bibliometric Analysis of Food–Energy–Water Nexus: Progress and Prospects," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-22, December.
    14. Kenji Kitamura & Chigusa Nakagawa & Tetsu Sato, 2018. "Formation of a Community of Practice in the Watershed Scale, with Integrated Local Environmental Knowledge," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-19, February.
    15. Bernard O. Barraqué & Patrick Laigneau & Rosa Maria Formiga-Johnsson, 2018. "The Rise and Fall of the French Agences de l’Eau: From German-Type Subsidiarität to State Control," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 4(03), pages 1-30, July.
    16. Aleksi Räsänen & Paula Schönach & Alexandra Jurgilevich & Milja Heikkinen & Sirkku Juhola, 2019. "Role of Transformative Capacity in River Basin Management Transformations," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 33(1), pages 303-317, January.
    17. Megan Mills-Novoa, 2020. "Making agro-export entrepreneurs out of Campesinos: the role of water policy reform, agricultural development initiatives, and the specter of climate change in reshaping agricultural systems in Piura,," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(3), pages 667-682, September.
    18. Verena Rodorff & Marianna Siegmund-Schultze & Maike Guschal & Sonja Hölzl & Johann Köppel, 2019. "Good Governance: A Framework for Implementing Sustainable Land Management, Applied to an Agricultural Case in Northeast-Brazil," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-20, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:6:p:1265-1282. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.