{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02549800796812749, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00597609561752988, 'mean_word_length': 5.215346534653466, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Incorporating global and inter-disciplinary elements into physical geography

‘‘At a fundamental level, Physical Geography has always sought to describe and understand the multiple subsystems of the environment and their connections with human activity: it is global and globalizing at its very roots’’ (Clifford, 2009: 5). This quote is from our managing editor, Professor Nicholas J. Clifford. I would like to take this opportunity to discuss how it has shaped my view in serving as the new Asian editor of this journal. The first point is about the global nature of physical geography. Environmental systems are intimately linked. At the same time, many large-scale environmental problems are transboundary in nature (e.g. air pollution, water pollution, global warming, etc.). To better understand their intricacies, it is not only necessary to examine the interactions among different environmental systems, but also to collect empirical data and generate research findings across the world. This is about globalizing knowledge creation in physical geography. On the other hand, when large-scale environmental problems are downscaled to regional or lower geographical levels, regional contextual information becomes critically important. To this end, apart from globalizing knowledge production, globalizing author profiles seems to be equally important, as scholars from different continents may have different place-specific knowledge and wisdom. In 1986 Professor D.R. Stoddart gave me his famous book, On Geography, when I was a Chinese student in Nanjing University. I was very surprised by his viewpoint that geography is a European science supported by Americans and Africans (Stoddart, 1986). Nearly 30 years have since elapsed, and Asia has become important in the world in the political and economic domains. However, contributions of Asian researchers to many geography journals are still relatively few. Perhaps globalizing the author profile is one of the key directions that I should follow. The second point is about the inter-disciplinary nature of physical geography. Subject to global warming and various environmental issues, in recent years scholars have tended to focus on how human activities affect environmental systems. Yet, it is still very much a taboo to talk about how the environmental systems shape the well-being of human societies because it smacks of environmental determinism, which has been regarded in some quarters as an anachronistic if not superseded paradigm. As a