Research

Centre of Excellence in Research

Human Geography

Research of Regional Transformation (Regional and Political Geography). Research is concentrated on the transformation of regional systems, on the social and cultural construction of regions, as well as on economic, political and cultural processes, phenomena and ideologies affecting on these transformations.

In Social Geographical research the core question is to map the ways in which space, place and landscape appear as experiential phenomena, that is, as lived environmental relations.

Tourism Geography

Tourism Geographies. Main research themes tourism and regional development, impacts of tourism, environment and sustainable tourism and local culture and regional and local identities in tourism.

Geoinformatics

Geoinformatics studies cartography, Geoinformation systems (GIS), geocoding and  basic and applied research of location based services.

Rural research

Rural research is concentrated in rural policy and development of rural areas.

Applied Geography and Regional Planning

Regional and urban policy, regional and urban development and planning. Research is conducted about regional development, regional and urban policies and regional development networks and zones in Finland and in the Baltic Sea region.

High technology cooperation and development networks. Research is conducted about innovation systems, innovation policy and high technology networks in northern Europe, especially in peripheral areas.

Social environment research and local planning.Research is conducted about environment and local planning in northern Finland, especially about mining localities and rapidly growing and declining localities.

Physical Geography

Remote sensing  and GIS in biodiversity modelling -project develops species distribution models of plants and animals based on satellite images and geographic information.

Spatial modeling of periglacial processes -project concentrates in environmental factors controlling geomorphological processes in cold environments. Additionally, the project develops novel approaches in predictive geomorphological mapping.

Global change -project focuses on assessment and forecast of changes in habitat and species distribution and in structure, function, and dynamics of ecosystems.

Research of Spesific features of high-latitude climate concentrates on two common phenomena (inversion and tykky/snow and ice gathered on trees) which in practice are purely known in details.