Ricerc@Sapienza

In opposition to the classical assumption that would see maps as neutral and objective products, deconstructionist critique has long explained their ideological and instrumental nature. This decisive intellectual reorientation of the conception of the map has clearly shown that maps conceal within a power of persuasion and that they have served discourses of power. But the deepening of the relationship between maps, authority and scholars via this approach has granted prominence to the first two elements, leaving the third in a distinctly subordinate position.

Dryland biomes cover two-fifths of Earth's land surface, but their forest area is poorly known. Here, we report an estimate of global forest extent in dryland biomes, based on analyzing more than 210,000 0.5-hectare sample plots through a photo-interpretation approach using large databases of satellite imagery at (i) very high spatial resolution and (ii) very high temporal resolution, which are available through the Google Earth platform. We show that in 2015, 1327 million hectares of drylands had more than 10% tree-cover, and 1079 million hectares comprised forest.

Here we provide geographic distribution ranges for 205 species of terrestrial non-volant mammals in the 1970s. We selected terrestrial non-volant mammals because they are among the most studied groups, have greater availability of historical distribution data for the 1970s decade, and also show the largest range contractions compared to other taxonomic groups (Di Minin et al. 2013; Ripple et al., 2014). Species belong to 52 families and 16 orders. Range maps were extracted from scientific literature including published papers, books, and action plans.

This study builds on existing work on cartographic thinking in everyday life to better understand how our communication with others and use of media influences our perceptions of continental scale geography. Using a mixed, US-Italian sample of college students living in cities on similar latitudes (40N), we found that there is a bias in placing U.S. cities further north and European cities further south than where they should be.

UnLost Territories: Ricostruire la periferia a Roma. Architettura e società nei territori abbandonati è una proposta progettuale sviluppata a partire dal 2016 e conclusasi nel 2019, dalla Cattedra di Antonino Saggio alla Facoltà di Architettura di "Sapienza" Università di Roma.