Geographies of Environmental Data 1

Massive changes to the physical environment over the last decade have been understood by geographers in relation to new social, economic, and institutional imperatives to collect and circulate data. This review, the first of three on “environmental data,” diverts from common approaches to the concept to consider the distinctive ‘environments’ that result from data's geographical, material, and spatial entailments. Examples are drawn from economic geography – which began to engage data-driven spatial transformation in the 1990s – and political geography, political ecology, which has highlighted the ecological costs of data-driven AI and Bitcoin economies and data center projects beginning since the early 2010s. The review also considers parallel engagements over the same period by scholars working in media studies, concluding that investigations into data's geographies recommend new forms of correspondence between these disciplines.